February 2023 Crypto Events

Ordinals

  • What

    • Allows users to inscribe data e.g. images onto the Bitcoin blockchain

    • Basically NFTs except on the Bitcoin blockchain, not Ethereum

    • Has some limitations around size and functionality

  • Why it matters

    • Bitcoin has historically only been used for P2P money transfers, a ledger of transactions on the network

    • It is up to time to see if this will be good or bad for the network, and if this functionality will last

    • Bitcoin purists obviously don’t support this new feature.

  • There is no marketplace for ordinals right now, or even a website, or even ordinal friendly crypto wallet

Check Ordinal Count here:

https://dune.com/maloikka/ordinals

Stacks

  • L2 built on Bitcoin that lest developers create and deploy smart contracts like Ethereum

  • Has a native token: STX

Coinbase Base

  • What

    • L2, can build dApps

    • Built using Optimism’s OP stack (open source code powering the L2)

    • Coinbase is the initial sequencer

  • No plans to issue a token yet

  • Launched Base Ecosystem, a new fund to invest in early stage projects

  • Why it matters

    • Coinbase is the largest crypto exchange in the US

  • Opinions

    • Good: Coinbase has millions of users, the potential valule generated from even a smaller percentage of adoption is huge

    • Bad: Flops like their NFT marketplace

Value locked in L2s:

https://l2beat.com/scaling/tvl

Largest NFT sell off:

  • Jeffrey Huang / Machi Brig Brother sold 1,010 NFTs, worth $18.6mm

LIDO

  • LDO has gone up 200% this year

  • LSDs for all major cryptos

  • If you don’t use an LSD you have to stake on a CEX with big fees and risk or stake on chain and move to a hot wallet, choose validators, lock up your tokens, and it's just really hard

  • process: swap ETH token for stETH to stake. That is it

  • Lido stakes for you and you get the change in value plus staking rewards. You can still use your stETH

  • Unstake just via swapping on a major DEX

  • LIDO is rising because

    • SEC cracked down on centralizing staking e.g. Kraken

      • Goodbye CEX options hello DEX

    • The merge made it impossible to unstake your ETH

      • Shanghai update coming in march

      • LIDO will roll out V2

    • V2 is coming Feb 7 to directly unstake from the platform instead of swapping on a DEX

      • Much faster ~2 hours

  • LIDO now manages more than Coinbase, Kraken and Binance combine

Stacks (STX)

  • Stacks Network is an L2 on Bitcoin’s L1

  • Popularity reasons

    • It powers Bitcoin’s NFTs – Bitcoin only used to power monetary transactions

    • SEC approved

      • First over token to get SEC approval in 2019

      • Now legally traded on US exchanges

Google & Tezos

  • Google Cloud to be the first major cloud computing platform to be a validator

  • Tezos can now set up nodes (validates tx) using Google’s cloud platform

  • Google gets good returns too as all stakers tend to

Hong Kong

  • Crypto trading platforms need to apply for a special license from the SFC (only 2 exchanges are licensed to trade)

  • Exchanges may soon offer trading services to retail investors

  • Investors can only trade large cap tokens e.g. BTC / ETH

  • Why it matters

    • Hong kong is the gateway to China

Blur

  • One of the two biggest NFT marketplaces next to OpenSea

  • Popularity Is due to

    • No marketplace fees

    • Optional creator royalty fees

      • OpenSea maintains its royalty fees except for a LIMITED TIME

      • Pressure from Blur?

      • Lose creators?

  • Recently released $BLUR token, airdropped $400mm worth aka free mulla for everyone

Do Kwon and Terraform

  • SEC charged Do Kwon and Terraform labs with fraud

  • What went down

    • Sold unregistered securities and security based swaps and a bunch of other stuff

    • Lost $40bn

    • Worked with a US trading firm Jump that bought TONS of the stablecoin when the peg hit 10 cents in May 2021

    • Lied and said Chai (Korean payments app) used their blockchain to settle payments and replicated the transactions ont its blockchain

    • Kwon transferred 10,000 Bitcoin from Terraform into a cold wallet and slowly moved funds from it to a Swiss Bank beginning May 2020. Since then $100mm+ fiat has been withdrawn

    • No one knows where Kwon is

Tokenized Bonds

  • What is different

    • No paper

    • No central clearing

    • No bank middleman

    • Aka cheaper and faster

  • Who is using

    • Siemens (German) and HK government

      • Siemens did it without Polygon even knowing, and already collected the money

      • HK gov’t worked with Bank of China and HSBC to use GS’s tokenization platform to issue $101mm one year GREEN bonds

Napster

  • Blast from the past! It technically got shut down in 2001 and has been passed around from Roxio to Best By to Algorand etc.

  • Recently acquired Mint Songs, letting artists turn music into NFTs and integrate with Napster

FTX

  • 7 former FTX employees got subpoenaed

  • Nishad Sing, Former FTX engineering director, pled guilty to wire fraud and various conspiracies

  • FTX gave a LOC to Alameda as high as $65 billion, with cover being the staking program FTX offered for the Serum exchange on the Solana blockchain

  • FTX investors and partners got lawsuits e.g. Silvergate Bank, Sequoia, Paradigm, Thoma Bravo

  • JPM is giving away millions of SMF’s money from Modula Capital, SBF’s small hedge fund

  • A charity affiliated with an FTX executive made $150mm from an insider deal (Polaris Ventures)

Staking

  • SEC shut down Kraken’s staking service, saying it was offering unregistered securities

  • Brian Armstrong said the SEC’s 4-rule security template does NOT apply to staking

    • Staking is not an investment of money b/c you don’t lose the principal

    • Staking does not have common enterprise value – stakers are chosen randomly

    • There is no profit expectation – stakers want to validate transactions, not necessarily b/c they think they can make money

    • Staking rewards are not dependent on others – rewards are randomly automated

  • Fact:  Coinbase charges customers 30% of rewards

Shopify blockchain tools

  • Merchants can build tokengated apps using NFTs to give discounts and benefits to customer

3AC

  • Launched new crypto venture called OPNX (open exchange)

  • FLEX = native token

  • Let people trade crypto bankruptcy claims against FTX, Celsius, 3AC (lol)

  • First marketplace for trading crypto claims

  • Banned in the US

SEC

  • 2/9 SEC said it would close down Kraken’s staking service and fine them 30 million

Gemini & Genesis

  • DCG to converted IOU to Genesis into convertible preferred stock

  • Refinance term loans pay out $500mm to creditors

  • DCG to sell equity in Genesis’s trading arm

  • Pay up $100mm to Earn users

Digital Currency Group

  • Selling shares in trusts operated by Grayscale, at a huge discount  

Twitter

  • 200-300mm daily users

  • Developing in app payments function first for fiat then crypto

Meta

  • $13.7bn put into metaverse last year

  • Quest 3 VR headset coming this year

  • VR apps starting to make money

  • 100mm+ WhatsApp users created animated avatars

Celsius debacle

  • Eligible users will soon be able to withdraw 94% of assets given certain parameters, net tx and gas fees

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