You can be in the storm, but don’t let the storm get in you! (weekly crypto updates)

Interesting week, from some perspective, with the Ethereum Merge being closer and closer (and most of my ETH stuck on Celsius, but this is another story). Blockchain games are a bit quiet lately, and Bitcoin tested 25K and fell back. Tornado Cash closed their business for the moment and Gemini is launching a staking side of the exchange. What else? Check bellow:

• Bitcoin: $210M of BTC long positions were liquidated on Friday as the market dropped sharply. Active addresses fail to support breakout, as there is not a sufficient increase in active addresses on the BTC network. On the good side, the energy consumption for BTC mining dropped to levels not seen in over a year, after the price collapse. Still, BTC mining consumes more energy than a small country, like Belgium.

• Ethereum: The Merge is expected on September 15, and the whole world is watching. Ethereum consumption is pegged to 33% of the Bitcoin's, but the proof of stake will substantially reduce its environmental impact. Do not forget, that you need to stake 32 ETH in order to become a proof of stake ETH validator. Fun fact, you will need around half of the total staked ETH to manipulate a 51% attack, as in $25B today, compared with an attack on proof of work ETH, estimated to cost 'only' $5B. The world's leading derivatives marketplace CME Group plans to launch Ether futures on September 12, pending review.

• Altcoins: Spot trading on all centralized exchanges decreased by 1.34% in July, down to $1.39 trillion, and Binance, FTX, OKX, and Coinbase all dropped in trading volumes (in order, by 12.9%, 15.5%, 57%, and 57%). AAX exchange was on the other end of the line with a 26.5% increase. On BlockFi, you no longer need to move funds from Interest Account to Trading Account, as trading is now possible in both accounts. Gemini is launching Gemini staking, a program similar to Binance Earn, with Polygon being supported first, and ETH, DOT, SOL, and Audio to be launched soon. Blockchain venture firm CoinFund has a new investment fund, trying to invest $300M into early-stage Web3, crypto, and blockchain companies (you know him as a previous investor in Rarible and Solana private sale). Huobi's HUSD stablecoin depegged under 0.8 Thursday, after a liquidity issue. Dogecoin's new blockchain allows users to interact with DEFI services, this is not a layer 2, but a separate network on a custom blockchain, Polygon Edge.

• Blockchain games and NFTs: NFTs sales are 6.3% higher than the last week, with more than $153M in sales. Fantom was the most traded blockchain, with a 75% increase, followed by Immutable X with 56%. One Bored Ape #5383 was sold for 777 ETH ($1.4M) and Magic Eden had x319 times more SOL trading volume than OpenSea. NFT platform Fractional is rebranding as Tessera, raising $20M in a Series A funding round. Then, we have also a Cardano Island NFT sale, on Virtua Metaverse. The Splinterlands blockchain game will change its match rewards from DEC tokens to SPS tokens, paying better for every win. SPS tokens will be also used to buy packs from their newest mini-collection, Riftwatchers, which will be launched soon. Mobox is into an improvement frenzy, gaining a solid Play2Earn reputation and success all over Asia as a blockchain gaming platform. Just a side notice, I have found an interesting game on Hive, called Wrestling Organization Online, where you can earn using multiple ways, more or less passive (you can delegate Hive for WOO tokens rewards - their native token, stake WOO, get WOO airdrops for every game pack in your wallet, and even use your NFTs for mining, with prize draw rewards every hour). I am looking around, but it is hard to find a blockchain game where you can get more than 100$ profit weekly (to be deemed worthy). Although, I did buy some Wombat tokens and staked them on.

• Good news: Huobi Group founder, Leon Li, is looking for alternatives to sell his majority stake at $1B, as the crypto exchange was valuated at $3B, with Justin Sun and FTX CEO among the ones interested in buying it. Pension funds are still interested in crypto, despite the bearish market. Houston firefighters pension fund put $25M into BTC last October and has lost more than half of the value by now. Brazilia broker XP launched a crypto trading platform yesterday, allowing its users to trade BTC and ETH on their mobile app. Crypto illicit activity is down 15% so far this year, compared with a 36% drop in legitimate transaction volumes. While this seems good, some specific forms of crypto-based crime decreased, while others actually increased. Google is coming! Alphabet, their parent company, invested $1,5B capital in the blockchain industry, between September 2021 and June 2022, more than any other public company. They were focused mainly on 4 companies - crypto infrastructure firm Fireblocks, Web3 gaming company Dapper Labs, BTC infrastructure startup Voltage, and Digital Currency Group (parent company of Greyscale). They are closely followed by BlackRock ($1.17B), and Morgan Stanley ($1.11B). RobinHood buys the crypto exchange Ziglu with a 58% discount, compared with their $170M initial offer, after it was found out that they are one of the top 50 unsecured creditors to crypto lender Celsius. Binance froze and recovered $450K out of the $570K from the Curve Finance hack last week. Digital asset investment firm Eqonex is shutting down on August 22nd, and users will be allowed to withdraw funds until September 14th, as their EQO token will stop trading immediately, and they are moving their principal business from Hong Kong to the UK. Dragonfly crypto venture capitalist bought the digital asset hedge fund MetaStable for an undisclosed amount. MetaStable was one of the early investors in projects like ETH, Filecoin, and Algorand, being founded in 2014. Bank of China announced a new program bridging primary school education with smart contracts, allowing parents in Chengdsu to enroll their children in afterschool and extracurricular activities using the digital Yuen, e-CNY. If you are a Houston Texans fan, you can rent a luxury private viewing box (game suite) using crypto to pay for it. Crypto.com exchange reduces trading fees by 80%.

• Bad news: Hodlnaut is one of the latest crypto-lenders pulling up a Celsius move, and freezing all the funds, transfers, and swaps for their clients. Polkadot-based DEFI platform Acala was hacked and their stablecoin aUSD went down to 99% after hackers exploited a bug and minted 1.28B tokens. By now, all the 1.29B aUSD from the hack were burned, and the peg was regained. New court documents show Celsius running out of cash, with $2.8B less than is owed to its users. Canadian Pension fund Caisse has written off their investment in Celsius (200M CAD). BitGo is seeking $100M in damage suing Galaxy Digital for their failed agreement to buy the crypto custodian BitGo. SEC is filing a complaint against the open-source hybrid blockchain startup Dragonchain for failing to register more than $16M in crypto asset securities offerings in the past 5 years. ICO and selling tokens considered securities are subject to the federal securities laws and information disclosure, SEC announced. Not a big surprise here, insider trading at Coinbase seems to spread much further than in the US, as some traders bought tokens ahead of up to 25% of their Coinbase listings, with a price increase jump of 40% on average in the listing day. BlueBenx, a Brazilian crypto-lending platform paused withdrawals for its 22.000 users and laid off most of its employees, claiming they lost $32M in a hack, but many investors find that hard to believe, and they think they were scammed. Crypto.com had another layoff, not announced publicly, bigger than the last 5% done in June when 260 employees were fired. Talking about them, they received regulatory approval from the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK, after a whole campaign to get approval in Canada, Dubai, South Korea, Singapore, and Italy. Celer Network's Bridge frontend was hijacked via DNS poisoning, and funds were drained, with a $240K stolen. Celer pledged to fully compensate all affected users.

• Joke of the day: Crypto broker Genesis is cutting 20% of its 260-person workforce and the CEO is stepping down from his position. A member of the Tornado Cash team confirmed that the project was shut down to keep members safe and avoid legal issues, as Dutch authorities arrested Alexey Pertsev, one of the Tornado Cash software developers. This is a dangerous precedent and a direct attack on crypto, yet, without it, all the hackers will have a hard day trying to launder the stolen crypto funds. Seems to be an American-directed attack on crypto, and we even have senators like Pat Toomey claiming that FDIC has taken improper action to deter banks from doing business with lawful crypto-related companies.

All the best,

George

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Why not...

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

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