Exciting things are in store for us this week. NFTs are about to hit the news after VISA invests in CryptoPunks, Facebook talks about adding them to Novi's portfolio, and Justin Sun randomly buys stuff from EtherRock. Paypal is coming to the UK, Avalanche and Cardano are coming, and Ethereum is almost splitting. If you want to know more about this, continue reading:
- Bitcoin: Currently 90% of all BTC addresses are green, making a profit. Neuberger Berman's $164 million value fund received approval to invest 5% of its assets in bitcoins. Online content platform Substack has finally introduced BTC as a payment option using Lightning Network. US bank Citigroup applied to be the second firm trading BTC futures contracts, after Goldman Sachs. Microstrategy bought another 3907 BTC ($ 177M), now holding a total of 108.992 BTC (worth over five billion dollars). Bitcoin ATM operators are working to comply with US money laundering law.
- Ethereum: Yesterday a major bug exploit affected more than 50% of ETH nodes, opening those running on GETH 1.10.7 or earlier versions to a 51% attack. The bug has been fixed with the latest version of GETH 1.10.8, but you should still be careful if you are doing a large ETH transaction as you need to make sure you are using the latest GETH. The bug was exploited by a Tornado Cash client where 73% of the GETH nodes were running older versions. Huobi now has one-click wagering solutions for quite a few cryptocurrencies, including ETH.
- Altcoins: Bull runs in place, with some nice numbers increasing (SOL 98%, ADA 60%, DOT 43%) even if ETH has only increased by 19%. Avalanche has entered apricot phase 3 with some juicy upgrades, so I can totally see this happening soon (6-18 months). Just to add to that, Avalanche Rush's $180 million liquidity extraction initiative expanded this week to SushiSwap, allocating $7.5 million each month for the next three months to Sushi, following the already implemented AAVE and CURVE programs. Just in case you thought the resilient stablecoin was the hit, I'll introduce you to the hydrid stablecoin, Sperax USD, a partially-backed stablecoin that is passing on the interest to its holders. It's new, it's hot, and for that reason I'll stay away from it. Paxos becomes USDP, making it clear that they are stablecoins. Looking at my portfolio, I see XTZ is pumping well too. September 12 is the day ADA (Cardano) launches the Alonzo test network, testing smart contracts. Is this a good signal to buy or sell? ADA is now $ 2.88, gaining an impressive 116% this week. Solana also jumped to $ 75-78, from a $ 40 average a week ago. Cardano (ADA) is also regulated, according to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and they use Coinfirm for analytics. The Philippines Finance Department announced it would tax Play2Earn's income like any other job after Axie Infinity was played by impressive numbers across the country as a way to pay bills and food. DJ Justin Blau, also known as 3lau, launched a blockchain-based music investment platform called Royal as a $16 million seed round raised by people like Peter Thiel and Paradigm. On the Hive blockchain, LEO (those behind BSC's CUB.Finance project) is the coin to keep an eye on, as it's one of the few teams that doesn't overpromise and overdeliver. If that's not the recipe for success, let me know.
- NFT: Splinterlandsas the blockchain game has been a huge success, with their one-year one-month issue lasting another 11 months. More than $ 7K in one month is a decent gain and I think I'll keep the tokens manageable for the time being as there is some potential to rise a bit more than the $ 0.40 average over the last week. Axie Infinity is a distant second, with 30 times smaller gains, but still a good return on time invested in it. Okex used the $10 million grant from BlockDream Ventures to arrange for GameFi to accelerate and support early-stage projects, in collaboration with Animoca, Yield Guild Games, and several other well-known names. VISA bought Cryptopunk for $ 165,000, setting the NFT world on fire (all the major NFT collections - EtherRock, CriptoPunks, Pudgy Penguins, Ape Yacht - are shooting sky high with some amazing ETH prices ranging 5-160 ETH this week). A $55 million outlay soon followed. One million NFT properties were minted on Upland, and $1 million was earned by its players selling them. The head of Facebook Finance and Novi's blockchain wallet, David Marcus, said that "we're definitely thinking about it," referring to NFT and NFT support on their brand new wallet. Pretty funny, maybe we'll see an investment portfolio allocation for NFT, which I still think they're kind of in a bubble, maybe we'll never know. These EtherRock people who show up and sell for a fortune are trying to prove me wrong. Even Justin Sun bought an EtherRock for half a million dollars, which is a good price now that the daily price is $1 million. On August 19, Marvel also released classic Marvel comics like NFT, starting with Spider-Man and Captain America. Not to say I told you so, but if you're investedMobox A year ago when I told you about this, you would have already noticed that the price of their MBOX token jumped from $ 0.60 to almost $ 10 after they were listed on Binance. And even more, if you like NBA Top Shots NFT, WNBA just partnered with Dapper Labs to release their own NFT.
- Good news: Blockfi changes its interest rates, offering more -big interest for Tier 1 (up to 0.10 BTC, 1.5 ETH, 40,000 USD in stable coins, 20 LTC, 100 LINK, 1.5 PAXG, 4,000 BAT, 100 UNI), but decreases Tier 2 and 3. I'm safe as I keep going out to 0.1 BTC, but right now Celsius seems to be better than Blockfi to safely store your crypto there for interest. Paypal is launching its crypto services in the UK, allowing you to buy, sell and hold BTC, ETH, LTC and BCH on its platform. They have 2 million active users here, including myself, so there is some potential in this move. Although I wouldn't store crypto there if it has the same wallet as the one used in the US, for the simple reason that you can't send crypto to an external wallet from it. For now! Just in case you didn't know, there are 6 exchanges that have received the highest level AA on the Exchange Benchmark and while I know of Coinbase, Kraken and Gemini, I don't know any of my friends using Cross Tower, itBit or Bitstamp. Circle and Coinbase have announced that their USDC stable will be 100% backed by cash and US government bonds by September. We have a liquidity, algorithmic ETH borrowing protocol with 0% interest loans, with decent 110% collateral required. Just check them out. The Indian rupee as a test trial for CBDC will start in December this year, said an official from the Reserve Bank of India.
- Bad news: the Uniswap v3 fee is running wild these days, keep that in mind and double check if your transaction fees are too high. Japanese exchange Liquid was hacked last week, losing more than $90 million, but they just got a life-saving $120 million loan from FTX Trading. A Turkish crook who promised 100% of Dogecoin in 40 days just disappeared with almost $120 million worth of DOGE. He offered investment products at crypto conferences and live events and paid for 3 months only to run away after more investors joined the scam. Binance's UK arm, Binance Markets Ltd, the one with crypto stocks and regulated products, was banned by the Financial Conduct Authority. The unregulated crypto exchange, the main one, is still operating as usual as only one company dealing in derivatives is banned. However, the announcement makes it so that all Binance activity is banned. Twice this year, just outright manipulation. And then, Paypal launched, as another option. Is this great timing or something else?
- Mass adoption: according to Chainalysis, the top five countries that have adopted DEFI are the UK, Vietnam, Thailand, China and the UK. The Deloitte study estimates that crypto will become a strong alternative to fiat or even replace it in the next 5-10 years. It's still time to get your bags pumped. Blockstream raised $ 210 million in a major Series B round, and now the company's total value is $3.2 billion (Baillie Gifford and iFinex - those with the Tether exchange and Bitfinex - were some of the major investors). Morgan Stanley bought 6.5 million shares in Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, with Growth Portfolio second in number with "only" 2.4 million shares. Microsoft successfully applied for a US patent for asoftware, helping users easily create tokens for various blockchains without worrying about the token's specific code. To me this seems pretty ridiculous and I'm sure they are tracking in some way so not so much betting on decentralization while using it. But hell, I could be wrong. Okay? Bybit has said it will sponsor a couple more eSports teams, Astralis and Alliance, and their brand will be featured in Twitch's feed and gaming apparel line.
- Joke of the week: the Poly Network hacker(s) just gave back everything they stole after hinting that it was just helping keep the project secure. He even refused a $500,000 reward, but security experts believe he may have made some critical mistake in transferring the funds, exposing his main wallet, and once he realized his identity could be revealed, he chose to return the stolen crypto. He even posted an imaginary Q&A interviewing himself and describing the hack, all embedded in the blockchain.
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