We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey! (weekly crypto updates)

Let's start to look at the last week, when a lot of things happened, not necessarily in a way that I like it. Bitcoin is the top crypto now if you talk about adoption, NFTs, or just as a digital currency. Celsius is probably solving the issue of giving back the funds, but we need to wait until it is happening. Tornado Cash is on the news, with talks about illegally being sued by the US, some hacking on the DAO, and some price manipulations. What else? Check below:

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• Bitcoin: Strike expanding its services to 65 countries and it is relocating in El Salvador to align with Strike's goal to make Bitcoin a global currency. Marathon Digital, a leading BTC miner, pledged $500K to support the development of the open-source Bitcoin Core client software. Meanwhile, Bitcoin is now the second most popular blockchain for NFTs, outperforming Solana. Bitcoin-based Space-Pepes become top-traded NFT collection, surpassing BAYC. One-year BTC HODLing hits net ATH. Florida governor DeSantis wows to protect Bitcoin. Bitcoin volatility is now 48.2%, down from 63% in 2022, and 79% in 2021.

• Ethereum: ETH experienced a big decline, dropping by 25% and reaching $5.26B, a 13.7% fall from its peak price in 2023. Check Assymetry with its safETH token, a basket of Lido, Rocketpool, Frax, Stakewise and Ankr tokens.

• Altcoins: DASH blockchain halted after a failed hard fork. Multichain's MULTI token experienced a 30% price drop due to an backend node upgrade delay and a rumor that the team was arrested by the Chinese police. Check X-Portal - Elrond, they are still offering a nice interest for now, around 10%, and they keep adding more features, showing potential for profit long-term. OpenAI Worldcoin raises $115M, and it is planning to create a global digital system using biometric scanning, but there are concerns over privacy and ethical implications associated with the eye scanning. A group of people, backed up by Coinbase, filled a lawsuit against US Dept of Treasury, saying that they violated the law with the Tornado Cash sanctions. Across Protocol seems to do alright with an up to 15.70% interest on my staked USDC, I am pleased with the results for now, I must to admit. Fluidity Labs is running an airdrop campaign, as it is set to launch its own governance token, FLUID. Ledger delays Key Recovery Tool launch after community backlash. Stablecoins market is down 0.45% for the 14th month in a row, the lowest market cap since September 2021. Ripple got a minority stake in crypto exchange Bitstamp. Coinbase-backed Base blockchain mainnet will launch soon. Uniswap V3 was deployed on Phantom. Circle brings digital Euro (EUROC) to Avalanche network.

• Blockchain games and NFTs: Splinterlands is preparing a cool event, based on DEC token burning, with some serious prizes for the top of the leaderboard. I half-hearted decided to participate, but I have some doubts about this being the right way to reach the peg once more. Season 10 on Wombat Dungeon Masters is getting close to its end in less than 3 weeks, and until now it looks great. You can use the Wombat game to stake NFTs on wax and get some nice rewards. Binance NFT launches loan service with NFT collateral.

• Good news: Haskey Group seeks $1B funding round after growing interest from institutional investors in digital assets. The court gave Ripple access to the Hinman documents, related to a speech given by a former SEC director, impacting the case and the future of the crypto regulations. Hong Kong plans to lift its ban on retail crypto trading and embrace crypto, implementing the changes on June 1st. Crypto protocol attacks and hacks in Q1 2023 decreased by 70% compared with the same period last year. Consensys clears up confusion over Metamask's tax policy, as some users believed that they collect taxes from its crypto users. Apple changed his usual policy, allowing STEPN users to buy and sell digital assets directly within the app.

• Bad news: Tornado Cash experienced an attack resulting in the hijacking of its governance DAO. The security of the protocol was not affected, but the crypto TORN price was down considerably. The attacker makes offer to revert attack, with concerns raised about price manipulation. Digital Currency Group (DCG)misses $630M payment to Genesis. FTS reboot may come, with the name of FTX 2.0, according to the court documents. Would you trust them with your money? Terraform Labs Co-founder Do Kwon bail was revoked, and he is now in custody in Montenegro. Japan is looking to implement stricter rules on crypto exchanges. Huobi exchange was ordered to shut down in Malaysia after it failed to acquire its Recognized Market Operator (RMO) license. Emerging markets like Pakistan, Nigeria and Turkey are turning to crypto, as they battle inflation, despite their governments warnings. Binance denied comingling billions worth of customer funds in 2020 and 2021, as Reuters report cited three unnamed sources.

• Joke of the day: A consortium of crypto investors and companies called Fahrenheit won the auction to buy the assets of the bankrupt crypto lending platform Celsius for $2B, planning to create a new decentralized lending platform using Celsius assets, while honoring existing contracts and obligations. As long as they pay my crypto back, I'll be happy.

All the best,

George

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Why not...

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...have fun and win rewards on my favorite blockchain games (Splinterlands - Hearthstone-like card game) (Mobox - GamiFI NFT platform) (Wombat Dungeon Masters NFT staking on WAX) and (X-Portal - Elrond all in one app, free NFTs, and more).

...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.