Success is the sum of small efforts - repeated day in and day out! (weekly crypto updates)

With another week lost forever in the ever-hungry Time black hole, we check what has happened lately in the crypto world. Apple, I will tell you about it right away. XRP created ETH compatible side chain. Splinterlands ecosystem will start soon with 12 months of daily airdrop (on the Genesis game, on the 28th of October).​

• Apple: And, as a one-off, Apple got its own category this week, after their dick-ish move to restrict apps using NFTs from their app store, citing the fact that the user is purchasing items or features that Apple cannot tax (and their tax is 30%, just in case you wonder about it.

​

• Bitcoin: Tesla holds $218M in Bitcoin according to their third-quarter report, the same amount as in their second quarter, so they did not sell anything in the last 3 months. Coinbase is supporting Grayscale Investments in their lawsuit against SEC, for rejecting their proposal for a spot Bitcoin ETF. Bitcoin market share went past 50% for the first time since 2020. Right now 1 BTC is $19322, a 0.21% decrease from yesterday.

​

• Ethereum: Ripple announced that the software company Peersyst created an Ethereum-compatible sidechain on the XRP Ledger Devnet. This sidechain, build on Solidity, will make it compatible not only with Ethereum but also with other chains such as Avalanche and Polygon, to name a couple of them. Is ETH2.0 too centralized? To answer your question, more than 51% of the Ethereum blocks are complying with the US sanctions actively censoring Tornado Cash. But then, with $718M stolen from DEFI in September alone, looks like 2022 will likely surpass 2021 as the biggest year for hacking on record. Ethereum's core developers launched the Shandong testnet, in order to start to work on the Shanghai upgrade, projected to happen next year. Fidelity Digital Assets will start offering institutional clients the option to trade ETH on October 28. Right now 1 ETH is $1354, 0.5% up from yesterday.

​

• Altcoins: Metamask seems to allow its users to fund their crypto wallets via instant bank transfers using its service, Sardine. There is currently a limit of $3000 daily per user. Aptos, a highly anticipated layer 1 blockchain, just launched its mainnet, and it has been duped as a 'Sollana killer'. Will it be, only time will tell. Their native token Aptos (APT) has been already listed on Binance, FTX, and a few other big exchanges. But there is a bit of scandal too, as they claimed 160k transactions per second (TPS), and some reports talk about 4 TPS instead. PancakeSwap also announced that they will deploy on Aptos Blockchain. The on-chain burn tax on Terra Luna Classic blockchain has been reduced from 1.2% to 0.2% trying to incentivize the network usage, but still, everybody is taking their toys and moving away from it. Tether is now working to make USDT widely available in Brazil, adding tokens to 24.000 ATMs via SmartPay, and you will be able to convert Brazilian reals into USDT and vice-versa from the 3rd of November. And a good one, SUSHI value dropped 10% after Jared Gray, the new head chef, was accused of scamming and being intimate with a horse. Wait, what? EOS announced the launch of a new liquidity incentive program, Yield+, where you can now receive a 5% yield based on your total value locked in EOS and USDT. Harmony is working on a recovery plan for the Horizon Bridge hack. The largest bank in Brazil, Nubank, is set to launch its own crypto, Nucoin, in the first half of 2023. At LIDO, after Ethereum's successful transition to PoS, the validator rewards increased from 0 to 6%, and the stETH discount evaporated. Check Radicle, I will only say this: censorship-resistant code collaboration network for Web3 native developer incentivization tools. Binance's dirty moves against USDC and the other smallest stablecoins seem to have paid off, as BUSD surpassed the $20B mark, being third place by market capitalization behind USDT and USDC. Bitcoin spot trading in BUSD alone increased by 79% (3.84M BTC traded in September). Near Protocol, USN stablecoin is being phased out after it started to behave like TerraUSD stablecoin.

​

• Blockchain games and NFTs: Splinterlands started to pay rewards for the Land NFT and Tower Defence game pack holders. On 27.10.2022, if I am not mistaken, their other project, the Genesis football game, will start 12 months of daily airdrop to the stacked SPS holders. The Splinterlands ecosystem seems to have a high potential to make big profits in the following years. On Solana, the Magic Eden NFT market made royalties optional on its platform. On 31 this month, we have another game stating its general sale, Wrestling Organization Online, with only $2 to be paid per NFT pack. So many events coming soon! If you did not get your Overline free Land NFT, check here. If you ever created or minted any NFT on Autominter, their airdrop is scheduled on the 8th of November, check your claim here.

​

• Good news: Mastercard is set to offer crypto trading to traditional financial institutions such as banks. The payment processing merchant will act as an intermediary between banks and Paxos, and the pilot will start to be tested in the first quarter of 2023. Nuri, the German crypto-bank, told its users to withdraw all of their funds until mid-December, as they will shut down and file for insolvency. They took care of their 500K users, and this is how you show you are a pro, no other names involved (cough, Celsius, cough). Hodlnaut and a few others won a lawsuit against Craig Wright in Norway, challenging his claim to be Satoshi. While this is commendable, can you people from Hodlnaut give us our crypto back and take care of your insolvency instead of hunting liars in Norway? Financial giant Plaid announced the launch of its first crypto product, Wallet Onboard, similar to their Plaid Link, the product that allows users to connect financial accounts to apps, letting you connect products like Metamask to decentralized apps, via a Plaid-branded interface. Each onboarded wallet goes through Plaid's compliance review, increasing security and trust. MakerDAO just announced that they approved a proposal to custody $1.6B USDC on the Coinbase Prime platform, earning 1.5% rewards.

​

• Bad news: Apparently, Avraham Eisenberg was the person behind the Mango $114M exploit, as he confirmed. Their community voted for him to keep the $47M, and the other $67M was returned to the protocol. Mango will start to return the funds stolen in the exploit after a DAO vote to decide how to do it. In Japan, the North Korean hacking organization known as Lazarus Group seems to be behind all the major incidents related to crypto, with feats ranging from exploits to social engineering. Three Arrows Capital is now under investigation by the CTFC and SEC, as they believe 3AC misled investors about its balance sheet and failed to register with the two agencies. A bit late, if you ask me. Do Kwon. the Luna guy, had an interview with Laura Shin on the Unchained podcast, claiming that he is not on the run and that he did not use Kucoin or OKX in the past. But somehow both claims sound like lies, and he is not on the run until they catch him, most probably. I am waiting for the Netflix serial about it. Moola Market has been exploited, losing $8.4M, as someone loaned CELO to Moola, borrowed a lot of MOO, sold CELO for MOO to pump the price, and then used all MOO as collateral to borrow other tokens (cEUR and cUSD). Law enforcement has been notified. According to research, more than 77% of Salvadorians want the government to stop playing and spending money on Bitcoin. But, 24.4 of the respondents have used Bitcoin since it was recognized as a legal tender. Comparing this with 8.3% of Americans (in 2021), I do not know if this is good or bad news. The members of the European Union are preparing to halt crypto mining if there is an energy emergency. They are also getting ready to launch their own CBDC, the digital EURO, no connections between these two last announcements, of course. Crypto staking platform Freeway halted their withdrawals, citing crypto-volatility. To not look that dodgy, they deleted the names of all their team members from their website. Good luck with that!

​

• Joke of the day: And the circus is back in town. FTX, FTX-US, and Sam Bankman-Fried are now being investigated by Texas regulators over potential securities violations. The Texas State Securities Board is wondering whether the yield-bearing accounts offered on FTX-US should be considered unregistered securities. The funny thing is, every time something or someone is offering a better interest rate than the lowly ones made by the banks, they are suddenly 'investigated', and soon after they negotiate with the State and stop offering the rewards in some way (see Celsius, Blockfi, Binance, and many other cases). It is like somebody wants the American common people to be poor and never find a way to raise up and make enough money to live decently. And now, turning 180 degrees, Sam Bankman-Fried stated that he is a proponent of regulation involving blacklists and blocklists (they got you too, Sam?), saying that p2p transfers in crypto should be allowed unless they are sanctioned individuals. Not very blockchain-y, isn't it? On a close second, we have Binance delegating 'unintentionally' 13M UNI tokens to its own wallet, leading to them having 5.9% of the total voting power. Just to clarify, these are the UNI tokens of their users, who are just temporarily deposited on the exchange. Not your keys...

All the best,

George

​

Why not...

...have fun and win rewards on my favorite blockchain games (Splinterlands- A Hearthstone-like card game) (Mobox - GamiFI NFT platform) and (Rising Star - Music creators game).

...get the higher rewards for your investments using Blockfi. Get crypto 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.cash and Hive.