Billions, minions and other onions (weekly crypto updates)
What is happening this week? We are looking good, finally. Bitcoin and Ethereum are double digits up, and some billion dollars hacked 6 years ago are coming back to Bitfinex, after FBI investigated some already closed Bitcoin mixing service and found the wallet of the hacker. Some hacks, some sponsorshipdeals, and few funding rounds. What else? Check in here:
Bitcoin: BTC price raised above the 50-day moving average, 12% last week, the first time from December, moving above 40K mark, most probably after the Amazon earnings report and the US job report, leading to a high number of short liquidations. Grayscale is looking to convert their Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into an ETF, but the SEC is delaying their decision regarding this issue, once more. KMPG Canada added BTC and ETH to their corporate treasury, but the total value was not revealed. Valkirie Bitcoin Miners ETF was approved to trade on Nasdaq. Kazakhstan government is considering a 500% hike on electricity for crypto miners, or a monthly tax, depending on equipment, similar to the casino operators. Bank of America warned that Bitcoin correlation with gold is near zero now. Why is this a bad thing?
Ethereum: Ethereum is up 10% in the first week of February. A bug on Optimism was signaled by Jay Freeman, who was awarded a $2M bug bounty, and it would have allow the creation of ETH by a repeated triggering of the selfdestruct opcode on a contract that held and ETH balance.
Altcoins: Polygon (MATIC) raised $450M from Sequoia Capital and Tiger Global in a new financing round, and it is evaluated now at $13B total, even if lately the network speed was not as fast as needed. Alchemy's valuation was raised x3 times in 3 months, with another equity round of $200M leading to a $10.3B total value. There is a new shiny kind of stablecoin in town - the fractional-algorithmic stablecoin, FRAX, already an active protocol on Curve Wars. Helium blockchain halted again on the 7th of February, due to a large block being created, and the Helium miners paid nothing for a day or two. The activity is resumed by now. Brazilian Asset Manager QR started to trade their DEFI ETF (this one including UNI, AAVE, COMP, CRV and ZEROX, among other DEFI related tokens). Did you hear about Fund-to-Earn like JuiceboxDAO? Acala team will start their liquidity rewards program on 10th of February, for the next 6 months. DEFI sector was the worst performer in the past week, with only 11.44% returns, as all the other sectors were increasing with more than 20%. Poligon QiDAO was victim of an hacking attack, losing $13M after one Superfluid vesting contract was exploited. Terra(LUNA) signed a $40M sponsorship deal with Washington Nationals of Major League Baseball, and TeraUSD (UST) is accepted for purchases starting from the next season.
NFTs: NFT market capitalization exceeds $16B now, 1% of the total crypto industry value, Avatar like NFTs being 8B of the total 16B, while gaming, art and collectibles are 2-3B, on the next 3 places. The new Alfa Romeo will issue NFTs for its service records. UN will also issue a collection on International Women Day. A home in Florida is up for sale as NFT, and more than 1500 bidders lined up to buy it via auction. Two out of the four co-founders of Bored Ape NFT collection were uncovered by BuzzFeed, and many blamed them on their move, as anonimity means safety and security in the crypto-world. Binance is partnering with the leading South Korean entertainment company YG, hinting at a connexion between K-POP start and NFT, GameFi and much more. Gucci is now in the Sandbox Universe, after they acquired Land in-game. Zynga, you know, the ones with Farmville game, are now working at their first NFT game. McDonalds and Panera Bread applied for trademark registration in the metaverse. OnlyFans integrated profile-NFT capabilities, but only for ETH blockchain. Microsoft is working at some secret project, and buying Activision Blizzard is part of it. Maybe we will have StarCraft and World of Warcraft NFTs and blockchain based games soon. Wow, the dream could be real! For the Horde!
Blockchain games: The gaming sector was one of the worst performers, until last week, when they finally had 26.94% positive returns. Nintendo president said that the metaverse has great potential, especially using blockchain gaming. Cointelegraph reports that more than 25% people in the entire world will spend time in Metaverse in 2026. Decentraland (MANA) hosted the first ever blockchain based digital wedding ceremony, with a virtual attendance of 2000 people. The game strugled to handle so many guests and they had few technical difficulties. Axie Infinity Season 20 started, and no SLP rewards are paid now for Adventure and Daily quests, with the Arena being the only source of SLP, and even teams with less than 800 MMR receiving 1SLP per win. The leaderboard prize pool and the number of winners is now much higher than before. There is also the Axie Infinity Origin coming, with a lot of battle improvements, launching season 0 (zero) very soon in Alpha Phase. There is a Valentine Day breeding event on Pegaxy these days, if you are a fan of it. Splinterlands are creating a Death summoner limited edition partnering with Waka Flocka, and you can buy it using Vouchers and SPS.
Good News: Bank of England is looking at the possibility of creating a CBDC, but they are not willing to issue an accompanying wallet to support their digital token, unlike China and San Salvador. China's debut of their digital yuan at the Winter Olympics raised concerns from US Senator Pat Toomey, as this was used only domestically until now, but foreign visitors started to use it to pay for goods in the Olympic village, and it has the potential to circumvent US sanctions. Russia recognized crypto as a form of currency, and it is working on a draft law defining crypto as analoguo of currencies, instead of digital financial assets. Messari CEO Ryan Selkis was on Fox primetime discussing crypto-regulation. Blackrock is working to create a crypto-trading service called Asset, Liability, debt and derivative investment network, short name ALADDIN. Binance invests $200M in Forbes, getting 2 out of 9 directors on the board. South Korea 's sovereign wealth fund is increasing exposure to metaverse, AI and alternative assets. Presearch, the decentralized search engine, just made some interesting improvements, allowing faster and easier to manage PRE tokens withdrawals, Smart node routing, all by Mid-March. Crypto.com signs deal with Miami Grand Prix, which will be renamed Formula 1 Crypto.com Miami Grand Prix. Assange DAO is now raising donations to free Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, and already got 12.569 ETH, almost $39M.
Bad News: The US Department of Justice seized $3.6 billion worth of BTC, and Ilya Lichtenstein and his wife Heather Morgan were arrested. 94.000 BTC, tied to the 2016 Bitfinex hack, were seized and recovered. Ratings agengy Fitch downgraded El Salvador rating to CCC from B, right before they try to issue the bitcoin bond, as they got $1.2B debt with 800M to be paid in January 2023. Volcano Bonds offer 6.5% coupon value. Are they trying to force Salvador hand? Youtube is now thinking how to adopt NFTs as they have 'incredible potential' and even some Web 3.0 integrations. They can see how they can become obsolete and try to fight back. But they are not having skin in the game, and most probably will fail, same as Facebook trying to build a monopol the Metaverse. Indian Central Bank Governor is still fuming, calling cryptocurrency a big treat, with no underlying value, not even worth a tulip, even after the finance minister announced a 30% tax on crypto income. Meter Passport, a DEFI infrastructure provider, was hacked and the attackers stole 1391 ETH and 2.74 BTC ($4.4M).
Joke of the week: From something that is just a fad, a temporary fixation and few other bad names, crypto-industry went higher and higher, Merging and Acquisition value increasing 5000% in 2021. The average merger was $180M last year, up from a $52M in 2020. 51% of these deals took place in America, biggest one being BitGo acquisition by Galaxy Digital for $1.2B, closely followed by Coinbase, who bought crypto-wallet BRD and Israel based Unbound Security and another 11 companies last year.
That's all for today.
All the best,
George
Why not...
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