Put all good eggs in one basket and then watch that basket! (weekly crypto updates)

What happened in the past week? Solana is doing well, both in terms of NFT and memecoin. ETH ETFs are not yet here, but some are innovating. Spot BTC ETFs are experiencing outflows lately. BlackRock is making some interesting moves on the crypto market. Bitcoin Ordinals are going above ETH number 1, BAYC. What else? Read below:

• Bitcoin: MicroStrategy's BTC treasury surpassed 1% of the total supply. Bitcoin ETFs experienced a record three-day outflow of $742M. Spot BTC ETF frenzy cools off after a week of outflows. Did somebody get burned? Goldman Sachs's hedge fund clients ramp up crypto options trading. Now everybody's question is - will BTC reach $100K before the halving?

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• Ethereum: Fidelity added staking to its proposed ETH ETF. BlackRock announced the launch of its first tokenized fund on a public blockchain, the Ethereum-based tokenized fund called BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund - BUIDL. But BTC still tops client interest at BlackRock, while ETH sees a 'little bit of' demand, said its head of digital assets. Now the SEC is investigating ETH's potential status as a security, after the shift to Proof of Stake in September last year. Have fun with it! Coinbase's CLO, Paul Grewal, said the SEC has no good reason to deny spot ETH ETFs. Since the latest update, EIP-4844, or Dened-Cancun, as we know it, ETH introduced blobs, a new data storage mechanism for ETH l2, reducing transaction data publishing costs. But this seems to be a temporary solution as we face a growing demand for blobs. Still, some are thinking that the ETH demand will go up if the BTC price goes down. Standard Chartered predicted 8000 for ETH this December. Sweden's Riksbank is working on some CBDC, with a twist, offline functionality. How does this work? Use a shadow wallet that syncs with the main wallet once you are back online.

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• Altcoins and stablecoins: Solana's transaction fees hit a new high amid memecoin mania. Base Network seems to go deep into that rabbit hole too. But this only led to heavy congestion soon after. Feynman's update on the BSC testnet was rescheduled to March 25. Total stablecoin market capitalization reached the highest level since September 2022. If you search for something different, check out The Emerald Company, a venture firm focused on tokenizing gems, emerald mines, and jewellery. Polygon zkEVM's Network suffered a 2-hour outage two days ago. And just when I was thinking it couldn't go crazier, Floki Inu partnered with a licensed fintech firm operating in strategic locations worldwide, from Canada to the UAE, to introduce regulated digital banking accounts using your memecoin stashes. A memecoin called SLERF accidentally burned $10M of its presale funds, and this was not a costly mistake, as the price pumped higher than 2900% in the following 24 hours. Coinbase is launching Doge's futures trading. But why?​

• NFTs and blockchain games: On Splinterlands, the second round of Conflicts airdrop activity ended. I got 3 regular cards. The third part of Conflicts airdrop started. You may also want to check Holozing- a soon-to-be-launched Pokemon-like game on the Hive blockchain. Starbucks will end its NFT loyalty program Odyssey Beta by the end of March. Crypto Valleys game on Blast seems to be booming also. A new game called Colony, based on Solana, seems to be known around too. Just compare, Solana's NFT trading volume reaching $3B in 24 hours, compared to the ETH one, 'just' $2.04B, is another example. Book of Meme (BOME) seems to be responsible for this latest jump. A Bitcoin Ordinals collection called NodeMonkes went above BAYC in market cap, but retraced back to $419M, compared to the BAYC $453m right now. Immutable, Polygon Labs and VC firm King River Capital teamed up to launch a $100M Inevitable Games Fund, already touching bases with Pixelmon and Guild of Guardians. Square Enix (Final Fantasy guys) partnered with HyperPlay, a Web3 games platform built on blockchain, to expand and scale up.
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• Good news: BlackRock unveiled a new digital liquidity fund, hinting at a tokenization push. UK's FCA sets sights on crypto market integrity with measures against abuse, the initiative involving enhancing monitoring and intervention systems to safeguard market integrity. It sounds like market surveillance to me, but can they do that? The US has been working at it since 5 years ago without much success. Coinbase rolled out its Smart Wallet, complemented with a feature called Magic Spen, a functionality empowering the users to spend their assets on the blockchain seamlessly, sidestepping the hassles of the initial wallet funding and subsequent top-ups. Kraken unveiled a crypto custody solution for institutions, originally named Kraken Custody. Dubai has officially passed a new Digital Assets Law and Security Law, getting ready for the crypto boom. There is some justice too in the world, as the SEC was seriously sanctioned for engaging in misconduct against a crypto company called Debt Box, abusing the system to obtain a temporary restraining order and freeze their assets in August last year. A small victory can make it possible to win the war.

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• Bad news: Federal prosecutors seek a 40-50 year sentence for the FTX founder, SBF, scheduled to deliver on March 28. OKX phases out USDT pairs in the European Economic Area ahead of the regulatory change (MiCA). The SEC charges Genesis and Gemini for the unregistered offer and sale of crypto asset securities, requiring them to pay a $21M civil penalty and imposing a permanent injunction to settle charges. A UN study has revealed that North Korea stole more than $3B worth of crypto since 2017. The crypto hardware wallet Trezor fell victim to a major security breach as the official account on X was hacked using a SIM-swap attack, and a face TRZR token was promoted. Estonia's new crypto bill is almost approved, and tighter regulatory measures will be in place after. The hacker that hacked Rocket Pool transferred $10M of the stolen funds to Tornado Cash.

• Joke of the week: After the company pleaded guilty in November to violating U.S. anti-money laundering and sanctions laws and settled with U.S. regulators for $4.3B, now Binance put strict checks in place to keep U.S. investors away. Binance market share dropped from 60% to 30% last year, but now it is slowly recovering, reaching 40% recently. More exchanges followed them, restricting U.S. investors' crypto market access. This is probably good for the rest of us, in the long term. Please sort out China next, and we may reach the crypto ideal much faster.

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All the best,

George

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Why not...

...have fun and win rewards on my favourite blockchain games (Splinterlands- Hearthstone-like card game) (Mobox - GamiFI NFT platform) (Upland- real-life virtual land) (Holozing- Pokemon-like game)and (Rising Star - Music creators game).

...Get ETH while writing on Publish0x blog, using Presearch search engine to maximize your income with PRE tokens. Use Torum instead of Twitter . I am also writing for crypto on Read.cashand Hive.

Posted Using InLeo Alpha