The Russian bear versus the crypto-bear and other bugs (weekly crypto updates)

So, another week, another cup of tea, with Salvador buying and then being told not to buy by IMF, Russia banning crypto, and then not so much, US government fooling around as usual and the blockchain gaming expanding even more. What else? Read below:

Bitcoin: El Salvador is buying the dip, again, with another 410 BTC added to the country treasury, reaching a total of 1801 BTC ($68M). Finding this, once more, the International Monetary Fund urged Salvador to drop this 'Bitcoin as a legal tender and store of value' madness. What do you mean that your country will be financially independent, not depending on foreign loans and that you can cover expenses just by renting your BTC as soon as you get enough? Now, this is just madness, real madness. We are here to help, and to control you. Trust us, said the IMF. In the US, the New York mayor received his first paycheck in BTC, and he is not worried about the dip, as the purpose of the BTC paycheck is to show the NY city is open to technology. Crypto asset manager Valkyrie applied to list a miners exchange-traded fund (ETF)offering exposure to the bitcoin mining companies. Also in NY, Flushing Financial Corporation, the parent company of Flushing bank, partnered with NYDYG to offer Bitcoin services to their customers. At the end of 2021, they reported $8B in assets and $200M in net income.
Ethereum: On the Celsius app, you can use now 3 new promo codes: ETH20, ETH200, and ETH600, as you deposit 500, 5000, and 20.000$ in ETH. Ethereum Foundation removed all the references to ETH1.0 and ETH2.0, calling them execution layer and consensus layer, in order to avoid a confusing mental model.
Altcoins: We have now a liquidity aggregator across both centralized and decentralized markets and across blockchains, and OpenOcean is the name. They even mention CeDeFI. Is this some new kind of a monkey-donkey? The long-expected report and study about the digital dollar, yes, the one that should have been published last summer, is finally released by the Federal Reserve, exploring the pros and cons, soliciting the public to comment on it. Uniswap governance is simplified. Livepeer (LIV) is showing decent growth across network usage and supply-side revenue, keep an eye on them. Stellar network just announced that they will focus on developing smart contract capabilities next, but no expected release dates were mentioned. Avalanche is recording all-time highs (ATH) in transactions, active addresses, TVL, and market capitalization, especially after Curve and AAVE joined their ecosystem, and we see rapid adoption, mainly due to the acceptable trx fees. On the top competitors' list, the AVAX network is right behind Binance Smart Chain. Remember, all transaction costs are burned here on Avalanche. In terms of DAO, UMA protocol now has 2 DAO supporting the project, UMA token holders DAO, and the evangelist SuperUMAn DAO, soon to be fully active in terms of governance. There is still time to join them and be a SuperUMAn, enjoying a really fun and friendly collective. I think their next point on the list is the ETH Denver meeting, and I heard something about food, drinks, and music after-party. Am I right? BlockFi Personalized Yield is a new product introduced last week, for users willing to bring more than $3M assets to the company, and you may have negotiated rates, discounted trading, and White-glove onboarding. Solana was out of business, again. For the second time this month, for more than 48 hours, some DEFI customers faced heavy liquidations. Tether is playing the good samaritan card, helping people to recover more than $85M in USDT since 2014, but for me, this is not good, this is scary, as it shows how much control they got over their network. Bank of Korea completed the first phase of its CBDC simulation program.
NFTs: RPlanet is working on their next Staking 2.0 version, with only 21 first projects being able to mine Aether from all the projects involved, and their place will be determined by vote. Fidelity Investments is trying to launch an ETF tied to the Metaverse, will they, do they, we will find out eventually! On OpenSea, at least 3 people abused the system and used a bug to buy NFT at huge discounts, one of them paying $133K for 7 NFTs before selling it right away for $934K in ETH. Gucci joined the NFT world, releasing 10 NFTs on February 1st, each of them including a ceramic sculpture handcrafted in Italy and co-designed by Gucci. And China, oh, China, once again, they launched their own NFT platform, where you can trade Chinese regulations compliant NFTs.
Blockchain games: Sandbox (SAND) an Animoca subsidiary, joined efforts with venture accelerator Brink, creating a $50M incubator program, aiming to invest in 30-40 metaverse startups per year, using up to $250K grants. The good news for Axie infinity, the Ronin Blockchain token $RON is now live, and you can claim it now if you have liquidity on Katana Exchange. You will still receive free transactions based on the Axie and Land NFTs hold on your Ronin wallet. Pegaxy, the prices are going up, with the floor level around 1400 USDT at the moment. On Splinterlands, another airdrop was made (the 7th I think), this time a Neutral Spirit Hoarder, quite useful for its 3 Mana cost. Only one for 500 packs was guaranteed, and indeed, i received only 3 for my 1600+ packs.
Good News: Coinbase launched a Fee Tax Center on app and website, in order to help the US customers to work out how much they need to pay for their taxes. There is a competition lately between the main centralized and decentralized exchanges, each of them decreasing their fees in some strategic pools, in order to get a bigger share of the market. Uniswap did that on the ones using stablecoin pairs, taking the action from Curve, after lowering the fees, dYdX are trying a version with smaller fees for smaller transactions, and there are some others (see Across Protocol for the cheapest fastest bridging between L1-L2 on Ehtereum Mainnet and other layers). The Graph Foundation did a $50M sale from their treasury, aiming to create grants for core development, and R&D. Boba Network is partnering with UMA to greater WAGMI KPI options. One intelligent official, the Russian Finance Ministry, told the central bank that what they need is crypto regulation, not a complete ban, as Russia will not benefit at all if all the blockchain-related technology is leaving the country. Shortly after, Mr. Putin himself halted the Central Bank initiative, stating that should not neglect the advantages Russia has in the crypto area. Digital asset custody firm Fireblocks raised $550M in a funding round, being evaluated at an $8B total right now. Ripple brought back the shares from the investors that financed the $200M round in December 2019, and the company reached a good $15B valuation after that. Still, more centralization, I do not like that at all. Abracadabra and Wonderland continued their merge process last week. BitDAO and Matter Labs are also merging to form zkDAO. FTX US raised $400M in a Series A funding round, reaching an $8B valuation. Binance partnered for the next 5 years with the Argentinian Soccer Association, as the primary sponsor.
Bad News: We got $116B leaving the market on the last day, as the crypto sell-off continues. This may look bad, but if somebody sold, somebody also bought, right? Is this piece of news just an attempt to manipulate the market? SEC rejected MicroStrategy's BTC accounting adjustment, as the crypto should be recorded at their cost, and adjusted only if their value drops. On the market, all sectors saw losses ranging between -3.60% and -9.30% on average, with gaming losing more than 16%. Meta is giving up, and the world doesn't deserve to be saved by Zuckenberg, so they take back their toys and go home. Diem assets were sold to Silvergate Bank for $200M. The government did not let them take all the people's money for free. Oh, my! Oh, my! Thailand is planning to strictly regulate the use of crypto as payment. America COMPETES act of 2022 draft is looking to find a way to block international crypto transactions. As if! Even the White House joined the party calling BTC regulation a matter of national security. Few popular crypto Youtube accounts, including Bitboy, Altcoin Buzz, and Box Mining were hacked and used to scam viewers into sending crypto to the hacker wallet.
Joke of the week: You cannot keep a big boat afloat using a bucket if there are multiple holes under the water level. This is how it seems when JP Morgan bank chooses to close the Uniswap founder account, as a statement. They did that before, with the Shapeshift founder account in 2018, and the Kraken payroll account recently. They are just looking petty and annoying, like a small bug, and they will get squashed at some moment in the future.

That's all for today.

All the best,

George

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