Poking the Big Bad Red Bear from the East, as the Polar Panda of crypto roams free (crypto updates)

It was quite an eventful week, with lots of things happening in the last seven days. Ukraine is legalizing crypto and Russia is trying to support new Bitcoin mining farms, and tax them later. SuperBowl was a crypto-centered event, and, as expected, Coinbase servers couldn’t keep up with the new wave of customers, after their ad was live. Salvador is warned by IFM, by the US, and probably invaded soon, as they are stubborn enough to not leave all those BTC dreams. What else?

• Bitcoin: US Senate introduced a new piece of legislation requiring the State Department to submit a report on El Salvador’s Bitcoin Law, raising concerns about the economic stability, just weeks after the International Monetary Fund was warning them too. I want only for the Bitcoin to go to 100K, so Salvador can pay all external debt and be prospering, and then we will see who will have the last laugh. As for BTC mining, the difficulty is all time high right now, and miners started to sell in order to maintain their cash reserves. Russia proposed legalizing and taxing Bitcoin mining too, even lowering electricity rates for new mining farms. Did they realize that they need to join the crypto-world? Bitcoin failed to break the $46K and it is going down, being around 38K at the moment. Drake won $300K, betting with BTC on Super Bowl winner.

• Ethereum: Twitter adds Ethereum support for its tipping feature. Cryptro.com now supports NFTs minted and hosted on the Ethereum blockchain. If you have anything to do on ETH, do it now, as the fees are at their lowest level since October 2021.

• Altcoins: US court orders Terra (LUNA) to comply with SEC subpoenas regarding their DEFI, Mirror Protocol. Render, a peer-to-peer distributed GPU computing platform provides access to computing and rendering power, helping to create 3D environments, high fidelity art and extended reality experiences. Flow Network has some issues making the network unstable in the past 2 days, but everything is sorted out now. BlockFi added 6 more tokens to their portfolio, offering interest now for ADA, ATOM, AVAX, DOT, FIL and SOL. This may be a move to regain popularity, after SEC charged BlockFi with failing to register the offer and sales of its retail crypto lending, and they agreed to pay a $100M penalty for it, as they did not comply with a 1940s law. Something is happening with ADA (Cardano), as their monthly volumes increased x4 times in January. Hong Kong tests China CBDC for cross-borders payment.

• NFTs: NYSE (New York Stock Exchange) filed in a patent for an online marketplace selling digital goods (NFTs, digital media, art). One CryptoPunk just got sold for $23.4M. In a first time ever move, UK Tax authorities seized 3 NFTs worth $6700 amid tax fraud probe. Disney has appointed Mike White to coordinate the company’s metaverse initiatives, connecting Disney’s physical and digital worlds.

• Blockchain games: JPMorgan opened a lounge in Decentraland, being one of the first big banks to arrive in the Metaverse. The other well-known names are Samsung, with a digital store, and Barbados, with a digital embassy on the same platform. Axie Infinity, the Origin update will be probably released end of March, and you will have 3 Starter Axie for the adventure, as for the Land NFT, they decided to make the jump from 2D to 3D. As for Splinterlands, there are less than 4 days until the Wacka Floka collab summoner is up for sale, for an equivalent of 1800$ (50000 SPS and 500 Vouchers). To be honest, I was not impressed with the campaign, and the rapper seems to make the minimum effort required, and did not have a clear idea of what Splinterlands is. Pegaxy is trying to learn from Axie Infinity mistakes, but I got the feeling that soon they will try to make it harder to earn the tokens, and they can do that addding more horses to the race, most probably. R-planet is staking again, with some old and some new collections, if you fancy getting some more WAX selling AETHER. On BSC, I found this cool game which looks like a mix between Pegaxy and Heartstone, but with tanks. Age of Tanks is still in Alpha, and you need 100 AOT tokens staked in order to play it.

• Good news: MasterCard is now offering consulting for crypto and digital currencies, open banking and open data. Ukraine legalized crypto last Thursday, in a bit to reduce corruption risks and prevent fraud using exchanges, as they need now to comply with the regulations. They are issuing permits and monitoring activities, but crypto is legal. FBI created the Cryptocurrency Crimes Unit, focused mainly on ransomware and other criminal use of cryptocurrency. Sequoia Capital is launching their first ever sector specific crypto fund, since their inception in 1972, and they will primarily invest in liquid tokens. The fund will have $5-600M, including the likes of FTX, Fireblocks, Starkware and Filecoin. Circle has doubled their value, up to $9B, after they merged with Concord Acquisition Corp, a blank-check company. Colorado is set to accept crypto payments for taxes, said the governor, Jared Polis, a well-known crypto enthusiast. Super Bowl was here, and cryptocurrency apps joined the fun, with Coinbase, FTX and Crypto.com spending millions to secure ads during the event. Uber will eventually accept crypto-payments, its CEO said. Actor Ryan Reynolds thinks crypto is emerging as a huge player. Bybit signed a $150M, 3 years deal with Redbull F1 racing team and there are even talks regarding fan tokens.

• Bad News: Canada Police has ordered to the banks to stop the activity for all the accounts tied with 34 crypto-wallets connected with the trucker-led protests. 29 out of the 34 wallet addresses are Bitcoin wallets, with one having more than 1 million. Check one of the wallet providers response for the fun of the game. Bank of Russia is starting the trial for the digital Ruble. Singapore State Investment Fund sold their small position ($2.1M) with Coinbase and bought $400M FTX Series A shares. Chainalysis, the crypto analytics firm, researched and discovered that more than 74% of the ransomware revenues were received by Russian affiliated addresses. South Korea jailed 7 executives of the V Global exchange for a $1.7B fraud. The CEO was sentenced to 22 years in jail and $89M fine.

• Joke of the week: Initially I planned to talk about this thing, as Binance is the latest company that got infected with the Rename virus, and Binance Smart Chain is now called BNB Chain, with BNB standing for Build ‘n’ Build. My only comment related to this is: Why? But, as always, life is stranger and funnier than fiction, and this week award goes to the IRA Financial Trust, you know, those guys who are supposed to take care of our pension and stuff. Seems that their wallet was hacked, and more than $21M in BTC and $15M in ETH were stolen.

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 (Rising Star - Music creators game).

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