We had some stuff happening this week, and as always, i will be one of the first to talk about, as my time is unlimited, and my writing appetite never ends.
First important news, decentralized exchanges volume in January was close to 55 billion dollars. This is huge, but for you to understand, is half of what was traded in the whole 2020. Uniswap was the most used (hard to imagive with these fee levels on ETH network), followed by Sushiswap, who is closing the gap faster than you can imagine. I do not like Sushiswap for obvious reasons, but crypto booming is good for us, i presume. As long as they are innovating, this is alright. DEFI started to rise, better than before. If only we can solve those pesky fees. ETH 2.0 is not coming here fast enough.
Bitcoin is getting traction. Francis Suarez, Miamy's mayoris thinking to invest some of his city treasury reserves in Bitcoin. eToro warned its clients about bitcoin weekend trading being limited due to unprecedented demand and limited liquidity. They were strugling to keep up with traders orders lately, and apparently the staff doesn't like to work overtime in the weekend. As BTC was crashing close to 30k, Tyler Winklevoss tweeted ''Don't listen to the noise!''. He was right this time. Talking about Winklevoss brothers Gemini Exchange, seems that they are thinking to taking the company public very soon. Many things to offer, including a 3% cashback on BTC credit card (and maybe other cryptocurrency to be offered for cahsback also in the near future).
Deltec Bank, the ones with Tether, is trying to play the popular card, revealing that they are investing in BTC from the times it was 9k, but this is a bit vague, as it can be anytime from 2018 to summer of 2020. They will be like ''remember when you complained about us having 1.8 billion dollars reserves in cash and other assets, there it is, we are rich now'' kind of like. We remember, and if you don't, Bitfinex used USDT reserves 'borrowing' to cover their losses when payment processor bank accounts were frozen and funds were seized (they lost close to $1 billion back then). Right now Tether (USDT) has a market cap of 24.21 billion dollars, with 2 billion dollars m inted just last week.
Remember how in 2019 Web3 Foundation issued more than 200 grants worth 52 million dollars to developers and researchers working on Polkadot, Kusama and Substrate blockchain application framework. Many of them are now self-funded, or they are using Polkadot treasury, but they are doing great work. You don't believe my work, just check how much their price increased lately.
CREAM ecosystem is introducing the Iron Bank (no, not the Game of Thrones one) with lots of fancy words, but the important bit is zero-collateral lending. Now, this reminds me of the real estate boom and crash from the last decade, but what they are doing is to try to create a credit system where whitelisted protocols can borrow directly from CREAM, starting only with wETH, Dai and Y3Crv. They plan to add USDT, USDC, sUSD, mUSD, DUSD, LINK YFI, SNX and wBTC. I neved heard of mUSD and DUSD. They started with Alpha Finance as first trial protocol, but they are also backed by Yearn Finance, so they must have done something right. I know that it is enough to be backed by Andre Cronje to prove the world that you have potential. (Read this part PVMihalache, i know you are a long-term supporter of Alpha Finance starting from last year.)
Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve said that stablecoins are to ''become systematically important overnight'' and asked for better regulatory answers. This is his high priority, which make me think that the banks already have a strategy, and that strategy implies to start with stablecoins in order to minimize risk.
Coinbase is launching a feature called Asset Hub, where any asset supplier can be listed, after they are vetted through a high standard process to ensure they meet the legal, compliance and technical security requirements. Their words, not mine. Is this a gimmick before their IPO, or something to look into? You decide. But i think that supporting issuers is good for bussines. I believe that they got partially inspired by Binance LauchPad.
Elon Musk scams are on rise on Twitter. Think about it, if Elon Musk, who is now richer than Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos, is telling you that he can give you 0.2 BTC if you send him 0.1 BTC, this must not be true. He is far to busy to travel to Mars.
And with this, i finish this week gloriously and go back to my League of Legends game. Just to help a bit, now you can use Torum website to promote your article links there for extra rewards. Once signed in, you only need to join the read.cash clan. See you soon.
G.
Will check later