Rested, Refreshed, and Ready to run, the three Rs of the peak performance (weekly crypto updates)

Bitcoin seems tame, Ethereum is getting ready to go to the moon, and there are even mentions of the Flippening (the day when ETH will be more expensive than BTC), but overall, is quiet these days. Coinbase is trying to get their lost place at the top, FTX increased by an x10 factor and South Korea seems convinced that there is money to be made taxing the crypto. What else? Read below:

· Bitcoin: SBI Holdings, Japan’s leading financial service company, is ceasing its Bitcoin mining operations in Siberia, Russia, even if they actively mined crypto here since 2017. They are ranked 11th globally, with 1.2 of the network's overall hash rate. Bitcoin funds experience minor outflows ($15M only), but this is the third week in a row when this happen. 127-year-old bank, Sullivan Bank, partnered with Bakkt (the digital asset management services) in order to allow its customers to buy, sell and hold Bitcoin and Ethereum. The Bitcoin ATM manufacturer General Bytes had its servers compromised via a zero-day attack, the number of funds stolen and number of ATMs compromised has been not disclosed.

· Ethereum: Ethereum Merge is almost here, as the 15th of September is not that far anymore. Once the merge is completed, Ethereum will transition from proof of work to proof of stake. Lido is looking to expand support for wrapped staked ETH (wstETH) for Arbitum and Optimism. Coinbase is planning to introduce its own liquid staking token, cbETH. Coinbase is launching its second listed crypto-derivatives product; the Nano Ether Futures contract (ET). There are still questions, like what giants like Opensea will do when the two networks are created, and how the miners will react once the money has gone from the ETH mining. And the final question, in everyone's mind, is: when the Flippening will happen, and ETH will overtake BTC?

· Altcoins: BeethovenX is also looking to move from Fantom to Optimism. Ethereum funds experienced $2.9M inflows, with ADA and XRP joining the club, while SOL also experienced $1.4 outflows. Chiliz (CHZ), Decred (DCR), and EOS (EOS) seem to be pumped this week. FEI Protocol founder, Joey Santoro proposed to ghost Tribe Dao, following an $80M hack. Tether seems to anger US Treasury, as they did not blacklist USDT accounts associated with the crypto-mixer Tornado Cash, while Paolo Arduino, the CTO, stated that it is unclear how Tether, a Hong Kong-based company, is required to comply with the US Treasury sanction rules.

· Blockchain games and NFTs: Splinterlands changed the reward token for the game, using SPS now instead of DEC, but there is a catch as the SPS is staked already, and you need 4 consecutive weeks at 25% of the required amount weekly in order to unstake it. SPS is the governance token, and it seems that it will be used for other games to be launched soon, including a soccer one in October. Telegram is considering auctioning usernames, as NFTs, after The Open Network’s recent sale of more than 2000 .ton domains. Another cash cow to milk? Of course. NFT trading volumes are going down lately, but the hype made big brands like Nike, Gucci, Adidas, Tiffany, and D&G join the market, with more than $260M worth of NFT sales. Nike NFT projects alone brought them $185M in revenue. Pudgy Penguins NFTs spiked 83% in the past 2 weeks after they announced a line of Pudgy Toys. Distributed Finance is promoting the growth of DAO and NFT activity on Algorand after they bought Algorand NFT marketplace Rand Gallery. Mobox is becoming more and more interesting, with another game being added to the ones already available (combined with the regular token burn, I see some potential in this one). Oh, yeah, and I finally managed to mint my Genesys Island on Polychain Monsters, and they got multiple rewards letting you create and sell Personal Island NFTs. Check them out here. Also, worth to mention, that there is a new interesting game on Hive Blockchain, similar to Splinterlands, called Wrestling Organization Online. Check them out here.

· Good news: FTX recorded over $1B in revenue as in 2021 they got $89M, and now $1.02B, an increase bigger than 1000%. Given all the market manipulations that Sam Bankman-Fried, their CEO, did, it is not unexpected, with links tying FTX to the Luna disaster, Celsius CEL token sudden drop, and a few other dodgy events. Talking about all this, they seem to acquire BlockFi for $15M, which is a super bargain. As the South Korean Financial Intelligence Unit found that more than 16 exchanges are operating in SK without proper registration, taking a series of actions against them, 7 large South Korean securities companies, including Samsung, applied for government approval to create a new exchange. PayPal joined the Coinbase initiative, the Travel Rule Universal Solution Technology Network (TRUST), this rule requires financial institutions to share information about customers when they make a transaction over a certain amount.

· Bad news: Celsius Protocol got some additional funds from maturing loans and savings on sales and taxes related to their mining rigs, and now they have enough funds until the end of the year, while previously they only had funds until the end of October (we are talking about $61M in loans and $20M in taxes). But looking at the court fillings, they are still cash flow negative, having only 15K BTC and 23K WBTC, out of their 100K BTC customers deposited on the lending platform (that is 38% of it). They are also suing custodian Prime Trust to recover another $17M that they claim Prime still holds from them. But strange enough, overall, the surviving crypto-lenders increased their lending rates in August (we are talking about BlockFi, Gemini, and Crypto.com, while Ledn kept them the same). Hodlnaut seems to be quite active, sending quite a few emails, but in the end, we will probably not see any funds from them (I only had 25$ in there, but still hurts). They lay of 80% of their staff and applied for judicial management. The NFT Project SudoRare rug pulled with more than 520 ETH in user funds. Alameda Research Co-CEO, Sam Trabucco, stepped down from his position, claiming that he needs to relax and be happy. We did have a fake rumor stating that FTX and Alameda Research will merge soon but was strongly denied by both companies. Ministry of Strategy and Finance in South Korea announced that crypto-airdrops, staking rewards, and hard-forked tokens will be subjected to 10-50% tax, under the Inheritance and Gift Tax Act. Indian crypto exchange CoinSwitch Kuber was raided and searched on all its five premises by anti-money laundering agents. Siam Commercial Bank will no longer acquire a 51% stake in the Thai-based crypto exchange Bitkub.

· Joke of the week: Blockchain analytics and crypto compliance solutions provider Elliptic revealed that more than $100M worth of NFTs were stolen in the last 12 months, with most of them stolen in July 2022 ($58M worth of Mutant Ape and Bored Ape NFTs), but the most valuable one was in May 2022. Not to worry though, if you lost all your Apes, as Eminem and Snoop Dog are set to perform together a Bored Apes song and MTV Music Awards, as both of them hold BAYC NFTs, and the song will have a BAYC theme. To remind you what you lost.

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 production SIM, CryptoBrewmaster - Beer factory sim).

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