Rich owls, singing bowls, Mother Russia, and Father Christmas (weekly crypto updates)
We got a new ETF for BTC and ETH, the first one in Australia and another in Switzerland, ETH gains were bigger than BTC last year, Metamask can be hacked if you have Apple iCloud uploading your passwords automatically, Coinbase is going into NFTs, and much more below. Enjoy it!
· Bitcoin: Finally, Australia's first Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) will be listed next week, with more than $1B inflows estimated once it will be live. Just the first four participants will cover the initial margin requirement of 42%. Amid record profits for the first quarter of 2022, Tesla's balance sheet shows $1.26B in BTC. According to a study published by invezz.com, Switzerland has the most profitable BTC traders with an average gain of $1268 per investor, but France is the best BTC trading nation, followed by the Czech Republic and Belgium in the second and third place. We had a tweet this week about a 1P5ZED wallet belonging to Microstrategy and selling a lot of BTC, but the truth is that this address, also known as Whale no.3, is more probably to be tied to Gemini or other exchange like Coinbase or Okex. Morgan Stanley suggested in a report that BTC is getting closer to being a currency, as the fees on Lightning Network are close to zero.
· Ethereum: Switzerland-based firm 21Shares AG launched an ETH ETF, the first to directly invest in Ether. The fund will go live on April 27. Celsius Network CEO Alex Mashinsky believes that both ETH and BTC will reach all-time highs in 2022. Let’s hope he is right, isn’t it? There are talks online about another airdrop. Optimism is a layer-2 scaling solution that utilizes Optimistic Rollups to process a high amount of transactions off of the Ethereum blockchain. The project state that it can operate smart contracts five- to 500-times cheaper than Ethereum layer 1 and token prices related to projects using Optimism went up around 20% after the rumor started. Fun fact, last year's total ETH gains were $76.3B, overcoming BTC with only $74.7B, for the first time ever. Ridley Scot, the director of Alien and Gladiator, is producing a film based on the story of Ethereum – The infinite machine. Is Tom Brady playing Vitalik's role? Why?
· Altcoins: Metamask is warning users about an Apple iCloud phishing scam, as encrypted passwords for Metamask wallet are automatically uploaded on the Apple Cloud. You can disable the iCloud backups from your wallet, so I suggest you do that soon (How? Google is your friend.). Most of the sectors are up this week, except gaming, which fell 3.4%. Terra UST just became the third-largest stablecoin on the market, surpassing BUSD, with $17.5M, right after USDT ($82M) and USDC ($50M). There is some strange movement called MoneRUN, planning a Monero bank run on the centralized exchanges, after they tried some dodgy moves, suspending withdrawals. Activity on AVAX increased in the last few months, especially after the launch of their first subnet, DFK, and on April 2, they surpassed the number of transactions in Ethereum Mainnet. MakerDAO is integrating the Ethereum side chain StarkNet, a zero-knowledge chain built by StarkWare, after they integrated Optimism and Arbitum previously, aiming for faster withdrawals and reducing DAI minting times. Remember, if you need to transfer funds fast, secure, and cheaper than usual, then the Across Protocol Bridge is the answer, between ETH Mainnet and Layer 2 like Arbitum, Optimism, and Boba. Check Lido DAO, the leading liquid staking provider for Ethereum 2.0. Their own token, LDO, is looking promising for the short to medium term. They are charging a fee on the staking yield. Kadena (proof of work blockchain), announced a $100M grant program funded by its Treasury to support web3 development on their network. The largest DEFI protocol on NEAR, Bastion, is launching its token (BSTN) at a $180M valuation, giving governance rights to the holders. The initial circulating supply will be 12.6% (630M tokens).
· NFTs and blockchain games: 2022 may be the Blockchain games year, as a new report by DappRadar reveals that $2.5B in investments were raised in Q1 alone, with an estimate of more than $10B to be invested this year in games. In 2021, ‘only’ $4B was raised in the whole year. Coinbase NFT marketplace is in Beta testing, with plans to be launched in October. It is only supporting ETH for now, and it will not charge any transaction fees for a limited time, working with 0x Protocol to find a solution to optimize network fees. Tony Hawk is getting a new NFT collection ready, picturing the skateboards he used in the “Last Trick” stunt. Moonbirds are the top NFT sold this week, with an 18.45 ETH floor price, surpassing Bored Ape, Mutant Ape, and Azuki, generating $280M in just two days. The guys at OpenSea must be pleased with the largest trading day in the last two months, thanks to the pointy owls aiming for the moon. Keep an eye on $JPEG, a token integrated P2P protocol facilitating NFT lending. NBA started to mint their upcoming ETH NFT collection of 18.000 assets called ‘The Association’. They are dynamic NFTs, changing traits over time based on the player's performance. Too bad that a vulnerability was found, potentially allowing a malicious actor to mint NFTs without paying. The minting is paused for now. One hacker already minted 100 NFTs and sold them on OpenSea. There is also a Discord server and a new Twitter account – ‘NBA X NFT’. Deadfellaz NFT collection has signed an exclusive representation agreement with United Talent Agency (UTA), and they promised brand partnerships, merchandising gaming, and live events. What is this? Justin Sun launched APENFT, the first NFT marketplace on Tron, with zero initial transaction fees and ‘some’ gas fees, and The Monkey Head was the first NFT collectible listed on the market. There are talks about Tron's first native algorithmic stablecoin, USDD, pegged to the dollar regardless of the market conditions. Sound dodgy, but this is Justin Sun we talk about. Cannot be worse than USDT, right? Illuvium is getting ready to sell 100K Land NFT, with 2 Tier 5 on the live auction, then Tier 4,3,2,1 with 80, 20, 6, and 2 ETH. A bit expensive, but you will earn 5% of the total revenue from the players’ in-game purchases. A list of influencers' shilling projects was published (leaked) online, 114 of them, with Lindsay Lohan being the most expensive at $25K for a shill tweet, the rest of them charging on average $150-$350 for a tweet. To use all the 114 influencers, will cost you $80K, and just $40K for a retweet. A small price to pay, if you are planning a rug pull worth millions. Word of advice, do not buy whatever the influencers are promoting, there is a big chance that you will lose money.
· Good news: Crypto-investors took home around $162B, with the US taking 29% of it (47B), followed by UK, Germany, and Japan. The European Commission asked for feedback on the digital Euro and received more than ten thousand comments related to this issue. Louis Vuitton is testing the use of NFTs in their new game app ‘Louis: The Game’. Blockchain .com is planning an Initial Public Offering (IPO) this year, after reaching a $14B valuation. They were quite active lately, acquiring Altonomy (an over-the-counter trading desk) and closing a deal with Dallas Cowboys to become the first NFL crypto-related sponsor. RobinHood is buying the London-based fintech app Ziglu, allowing users to trade BTC and other cryptocurrencies. Rhode Island proposed a green housing bill, with a green token to help organizations to reduce their carbon emissions. The green coin will be also used to pay for public transportation and to charge electric cars. Blockchain start-up Aptos partnered with Google Cloud, to help developers to build more easily on its network, a month after a £200M seed funding round. Watch them! Stripe is joining crypto, with a feature allowing Twitter users to get paid in stablecoins (USDC), starting Friday.
· Bad news: Beanstalk Farm Protocol was exploited, losing more than $182M, as an attacker took a flash loan, bought a lot of Stalk governance tokens, passed a malicious governance proposal, and drained all the protocol funds into a private Ethereum wallet. It was confirmed by the US authorities that the North-Korean state-sponsored Lazarus group was behind the Ronin blockchain $625M hack. The CISA and FBI alert listed Lazarus, APT38, Blue Noroff, and Stardust Chollima as Advanced Persistent Threats (APT), targeting crypto-exchanges, DEFI protocol, and Play2earn games. Russian-based crypto miner BitRiver was added by US Treasury to its list of sanctions. Binance is enforcing tougher KYC for Russian users, limiting services for portfolios bigger than $10.9K. Russia’s Central Bank is already running pilot transactions for their digital Ruble.
· Joke of the week: There it is, Zeed Finance, a small-time protocol on BSC, was exploited, and $1M was minted in extra rewards, then the hacker promptly killed the main contract, including his $1M, before even transferring his money. His effort, was all for nothing, as he managed to hack himself after he successfully hacked the protocol. A close second was Andre Cronje, the Maker of DEFI, who retired from it now, after getting rich enough, and he is complaining about DEFI being seen as a culture of enrichment and big egos, asking for more regulations. Funny enough, this is exactly how he got his millions, in a heavy unregulated market.
All the best,
George
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