Inovation versus regulation - where we draw the line? (weekly crypto updates)

Another week, this time feeling the pressure of regulators, from at least 3 continents (EU, China and US). Also, the divide between staking rewards and DEFI yields seems to get smaller, which is good for crypto, as more DEFI funds means less staking, and then the security of the protocol is at stake. Another alternative would be that the rewards from staking increase up to the DEFI yields level, but this is not happening anytime soon. 

• Bitcoin: BTC mining firm Genesis Digital Assets raised $431M with Paradigm as their main investor, with other big names like NYDIG, sTONERIDGE, ftx, Ribbit and Skybridge joining the party. Strike combined with Lightning network will make tipping with BTC effortless, and they are already used in Salvador and US (except New York state and Hawaii). Twitter is letting you to give Bitcoin tips now, but I am not impressed, as I think this is just a move to collect data linking wallets to real names and I see it just as data mining, which can easily become data selling for any government asking and paying enough for it. Wanna bet Facebook and Amazon will try to do something similar soon? Cuba said that you can now use BTC for commercial use. They are still working on the framework, but still, they follow Salvador footsteps. What they can do to them, stop letting them to use dollars? Wait, this is already done to Cuba. At least Salvador added another 150 BTC to their treasury, thanks to the latest dip. 

• Ethereum: Vitalik Buterin was spotted in Time's magazine 100 Most influential people of 2021, same category with Elon Musk. As for the work on it, one click smart contract deployment is scheduled to start in October. Still Optimism ETH bridge got only $37M staked, as opposed with $2.7B for Arbitum's bridge. Compare this with layer 2 scaling solutions, as Polygon bridge has $2.3B TVL, and Avalanche bridge got $1.9B. And to add some background noise, Senator Warren was complaining that it is inadmisible to pay $500 to transfer $100 of crypto on Ethereum blockchain. Somebody should give a link with the daily average fee to them, that is already old news. So now the approach is, crypto is for rich people to get richer, if you are poor stay away or you will lose your money. Of course Senator, the only problem is that this is not true. You may want to talk with half of the Philippines citizens, getting 20$ per day playing Axie, instead of 5$ per day for a hard to find, minimum wage job. 

• Altcoins: SushiSwap Cofounder 0xMaki is leaving the project, to look forward into another new projects. He took charge and managed the project after its founder, Chef Nomi, took $14M in ETH from Sushi treasury to retire. As you know, Sushi is decentralized, and the treasury is now a multisig wallet, as you can use SushiPowah for governance (you get SUSHIPOWAH when you own Sushi, stake Sushi or provide liquidity for SUSHI-ETH pool). Avalanche, mentioned again, will release their stable version of Apricot phase 4, on 22nd of September. Are your AVAX bags full? Basilisk Finance won Kusama 8th parachain auction. There are two more auctions scheduled before the network overall performance. Decentral Games - DG (some metaverse casino guys, if I am not mistaken) received $100M in funding from the BSC Accelerator fund. Harmony (ONE) was one of the few alts to stay into green, despite the recent market crash. Orca (ORCA) a Solana DEX, secured $18M from the likes of Polychain, Three Arrow and Placeholder as they plan to improve their AMM (automatic market maker), for a simple and elegant user experience. Bitfinex is trying to build a bridge Cefi to Defi, with their decentralized trading platform DeversiFI. They started with USDT, of course. We may know why. 

• NFTs: Snoop Dog is a NFT whale, as he seems to be the behind the anonymous account Cozomo de Medici. He tweeted from the Snoop Dog account, admiting, and he seems to know his stuff, having some really rare NFT in his 160+ collection. Axie Infinity, another update, with AXS cost going down from 2 AXS to 1 AXS, and SLP cost increasing quite a bit, in an attempt to reduce the inflation caused by the SLP mass sale. Up to date, Axie sold more than $2B worth of NFT until now. The latest shine is brought to us by the Alien Clocks collection, which sold instantly, and seems to follow an upward trend. Sorare, the fantasy footbal NFT blockchain game, got $680M in their funding round, with SoftBank as their principal investor. Their full valuation right now is $4.3B. NBA TopShots creator, Dapper Labs, just raised $250M founded by A16Z, GV and Version One Ventrures. John Cena wanted to get rich with his new NFT collection, but asking for some serious money, he only sold 37 out if his 500 NFT. His Platinum, one of its kind NFT, offering VIP tickets for Wrestlemania 38 or 39, sold with $21K. Another succesfull Play2Earn game, Splinterlands, is responsible for 99% of the Hive burned when new accounts are created. With their new set of NFT cards - Chaos Legion - soon to be launched, and all their metrics and tokens value going up, this is one good place to start investing. 

• Good news: After closing the derivatives offers in Australia, Binance is continuing their compliance campaign by hiring a Europol veteran investigator, with Dark Web Team experience as its director of audit and investigations. Crypto.com expands their Insurance policy to cover $750M, with Arch Underwriting, a Lloyd's division, exceeding the $700M policy purchased by BitGo early this year. This is coming right on the spot, as there are some rumours about insider trading, despite Binance reassuring that they have a zero tolerance policy regarding insider trading. Opensea incident is still fresh in everybody's memory. DeSo (Decentralized Social) creator, Diamondhands, revealed himself to be Nader Al-Naji, whom also founded Basis stablecoin, which was shut down in 2018 citing regulatory constraints, and who returned all the $133M raised to its investors. Deutsche Borse launched another three ETN by VanEck, which are now tradable (DOT, SOL and TRX). UAE regulators , always ahead of others, just approved crypto trading in Dubai. EU is also looking to learn more about blockchain, investing a surprising $177B in blockchain and other technological novelties. 

• Bad news: China banned all crypto and declared that mining is not allowed anymore. All the stuff related to crypto is illegal now in China. Again, as some would say! Alabama SEC claims that Celsius violated the securities laws. New Jersey, Texas and Kentucky joined the party. Coinbase was 'forced' to stop the imminent launch of their Lend feature, which purposedly was offering 4% interest for their USDC. Blockfi is also under regulatory pressure, so, you may see a pattern in here. US banks are not letting this go, and are fighting until the last drop. Of money in our case. The banking industry realised the danger, but they don't believe they are obsolete, even if they are. Coinbase even tried to propose to them a proper crypto law draft, but no officials were interested, except SEC. But something else happened, as a $1.36M deal was signed by Coinbase and US govt, for blockchain analytics software, and I see this more like a collaboration attempt, rather than a real bussiness, as one million bucks is nothing to Coinbase. Strange indeed! SUEX OTC, an exchange based in Russia, got blacklisted by US govt, as is suspected to launder money and has terrorist ties, but mostly because it was linked with US ransomware attacks. pNetwork (PNT) was just another cross chain protocol to be hacked on BSC, losing more than $12.5M. On avalanche, Vee Finance got hacked, losing more than $35M. In response to US govt veiled threats regarding stablecoins and some eventual ban, the FTX CEO, Sam Bankman Fried said that this will affect crypto usability temporary, but the blockchains will adapt and innovate even more. Saying all that, they also moved FTX headqwuarters in Bahamas, as Honk Kong seems to be a bit risky in the light ot the latest China approach related to crypto. 

• Mass adoption: Cryptocompare is working with Wiltshire to launch 10 single asset indexes and 3 multi-asset indexes, one better than another. Blockdaemon is evaluated now at $1.3B after a $155M funding round, as they want to expand their teams in Singapore, UK, Japan and Germany. Cobo raised $40M in a funding roung to build a DEFI-as-a-service feature. HSBC CEO just said: stablecoins bad, CBDC good, believe, i am to be trusted. Yah, sure, i bet you are thinking how to help us, the people, not how to make more profit. FTX continues to promote crypto, adding the F1 Team Mercedes - AMG Petronas to their sponsorship list. Bhutan is the latest country to join the numbers of the ones launching their own CBDC, looking for easier and quicker payments.

• Joke of the day: I would go for Gary Gensler, SEC Chairman, telling us that ''private forms of money don't last long'' and thinking that crypto is just a Wild West where scammers and arm dealers got rich. But this is not the joke, the good one is that he believes that SEC has the autorithy to regulate the whole world of crypto that make you chuckle. So much entitlement, you wouldn't believe. What about the crypto that is based in Asia or Africa, are you entitled to regulate that too. They will try, for sure. And there it is, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, thinking that DEFI has the potential to evolve into a threat for the banking and financial system. Potential? Evolve? We are there already, the cat is out of the bag, dear OCC! 

All the best,

George

Why not...

...have fun and win rewards on my favourite blockchain games (Splinterlands- Hearthstone-like card game) (Mobox - GamiFI NFT platform) and (CryptoBrewmaster - Beer factory sim).

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