West vs East, North vs South and other messed up messages missing the point (Weekly crypto updates)

Another fantastic week, with some signs of green (it is spring after all), as Yuga Labs made their move towards world domination, even launching their own ApeCoin (APE), trying to get even more publicity than Terra(LUNA) and Binance. Coinbase is also working on a subscription fee-free service. What else?

• Bitcoin: EU crypto legislation tried to make new amendments primed to outlaw proof-of-work cryptocurrencies (mainly Bitcoin), over concerns about energy usage. Michael Saylor warned them that banning BTC will be a trillion-dollar mistake. Luckily for us (and them) the legislation proposed was rejected by the EU Parliament Committee. In the UK, all the Bitcoin ATMs were banned over money-laundering concerns, as no licence has been granted to any operator, and companies using them may face fines and criminal prosecutions. BTC holders hit a new all-time high, with more than 40M wallets, 888K new addresses being created just in 2022. SEC rejected NYDIG and Global X applications for BTC ETF. Austin, Texas will soon join Miami and New York accepting BTC payments for taxes, fees and penalties.

• Ethereum: It is done. The final Kiln test net launch is almost here, and after that, the ETH will start the transition from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake. Some as quite optimistic thinking about June this year. Optimism, an ETH scaling solution focused on the development of optimistic rollups to reduce transaction costs, raised $150M at a $1.65B valuation. Ethereum builder Consensys (the guys behind Metamask and Infura) closed a $450M funding round, with a valuation of $7B. Across protocol, one of the best, fastest and cheapest bridging solutions between Layer 2 and Layer 1 Ethereum mainnet, is rumoured to launch its own token soon.

• Altcoins: The CEO of Terra (LUNA) made a $1M bet that LUNA's price will never go lower than $88 for the next 12 months. Not caring much about it, he said that the million dollars will go to charity anyway. LUNA Blockchain has also planned to accumulate $10B in BTC, as a reserve protecting their UST stablecoin value. Superfluid staking on Osmosis will introduce a new model enabling liquid staking features in a bonded PoS System. They are looking to develop staking-as-a-service soon. The second batch of parachains was deployed on Polkadot Network, and they are Composable Finance, Efinity, Nodle, Centrifuge, Interlay and HydraDX. Arweave and Bundlr started to build a library using their immutable decentralized storage system, in order to survive numerous generations. Polycub was all over the news, and they do have an interesting concept, even if the TVL is quite small right now. Check their XPolycub feature before you dismiss them. SuperUMAns DAO is reaching maturity, continuing to do solid work creating all the DAO related features, fully supported by their vibrant community. Check them on Discord to find more.

• NFTs and blockchain games: You know Yuga Labs, the company that made Bored Ape Yacht Club? Now they acquired Larva Labs Iconic collections, Cryptopunks and Meebits, owning the brand, copyright and all the other IP rights for both NFT collections. Some even believe that Lands NFTs are coming soon and even a game, with the ApeCoin being used as in-game currency. Will this be like Axie Infinity for rich people? Holding the ApeCoin after the airdrop will give to their users full access to the DAO, and the token is already trading on most of the exchanges. Metamask is the next one planning to launch a DAO and its own token, to be used as a funding mechanism for new developments. ‘This is not a cash grab’ they said as they just surpassed 30M, active users. They are doing something right, then. LootLARP is a live-action role-playing game that partnered with a manufacturer to create foam role-playing items like swords, shields and so, all of them having embedded NFTs, and this project will probably launch at the NFT NYC conference in June. Mobox, one of my favourite projects, are increasing their projects in the Mobox Multiverse with a new game called Moland Defence, still in Alpha test, with some great rewards for the testers. Check them here. Axie Infinity continues to reveal new Origin cards, this week we have the Horn Cards. On Splinterlands, (I told you so, would be the motive of this post), The Waka summoner did not sell at all on Wax, and they will be recalled and sold on the market, with $1500 for regular foil and $7000 for Gold foil. In my opinion, this summoner is not worth his money, as you can have some overpowered legendary ones that are much more useful for less money. You can even get all the Chaos Legion regular summoners at max level with a similar amount of dollars. Instagram is promising NFT integration, ready in the next few months. Gamestop partnered with Immutable X (IMX) in order to launch an NFT marketplace by the end of July. Solana-based NFT marketplace Magic Eden raises $27M from Sequoia Capital, Solana Ventures, Greylock Partners and Electric Capital. Pegaxy is decreasing the race winning chances raising the total number of participants from 12 to 15. Today is the last day for this amazing NFT-based blockchain game, if you are posting on Publish0x and Read.cash blogs, and you liked the Chifibots game mentioned in the latest OneUp Cartel posts, you may want to get some of their NFT packs for free on this contest. Even as a referral, there are some solid rewards, giving you the opportunity to get some packs for free.

• Good News: Binance has been granted a Crypto-Asset Service Provider Licence in Bahrain and Dubai, promptly followed by FTX doing the same exact move. Next on Binance list seems to be Brazil. AMEX filled 7 trademark applications linked to virtual services for its Centurion logo, making us think that they are making a move towards the Metaverse. Crypto.com started to let their users from the US use their exchange feature. President of Ukraine signed a virtual assets bill into law, legalizing crypto in the country. Ukraine’s National Commission on Securities and the Stock Market will be the one regulating the crypto sector. HSBC is the first global bank to enter into the Metaverse after they partnered with The Sandbox, and they plan to purchase a virtual estate in the Sandbox Metaverse. Mina Protocol raised $92M from the likes of Three Arrows, FTX and a few more, aiming to bring more developers to its protocol using developer grants. Hodlnaut is sponsoring Paris Blockchain Week Summit, on 13-14 April 2022. Kevin O’Leary, the Shark Tank star, said that 20% of his portfolio is tied to crypto. We are getting in there, slowly. Spotify is looking for Web3 experts to hire. CoinbaseWallet added Solana support, as it is also testing fee-free trading, looking to change from transaction-based revenue to a subscription service that comes with zero trading fees. They got added features like up to $1M account protection and 24/7 phone support. Nobody knows the subscription price yet. Standard Chartered is working on new products aimed to generate a yield from institutional investors, with the help of their crypto-custodian. Coca Cola partnered with Diginex in order to use their ESG supply chain traceability using blockchain.

• Bad News: Everyone is talking about decentralization, to be honest, but the truth is that 5 blockchains got more than 80% of the total value locked (TVL) on just 21 different DEFI protocols. Sberbank has now a licence to issue and exchange digital assets after they warned in the past that crypto is mainly used for illegal activity. Sberbank is a state-owned bank, currently sanctioned by US and EU, and it is the main creditor in Russia. Will they do the digital ruble?

• Joke of the week: Senator Elizabeth Warren proposed a new bill aiming to give the US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen authority to block US Crypto exchanges from doing transactions with Russia. Some people from Chainalysis had a field day having fun with them Senators. They tried not to, but the US officials definitely did not finish their homework, learning about crypto. They were told that this is unnecessary, overbroad, and unconstitutional. That’s the US for us!

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 creators game).

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