Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here

Gm! sujith.eth is back with another interesting weekly edition of web3.

First of all, I asked this chat GPT thing to teach me how to make money off of crypto. It said: “F U”. I don’t know what that even means, but anyway…let’s get into web3 stuff.

FTX & SBF Updates

Before talking about SBF… just a reminder that..

• SBF is unlikely to testify before US Congress on December 13th. He is only interested in doing interviews for now.
• Sam has hired Mark Cohen (a former prosecutor who helped take down El Chapo) as his defense attorney, who formerly represented Ghislaine Maxwell. I don’t know who these people are, but the point is he has and will have a world-class legal team.
• Law enforcers in Texas want Sam Bankman-Fried to attend the hearing in February.
• Saylor on SBF: According to Saylor, Bankman Fried’s use of FTT and other tokens as collateral for taking out loans was “particularly diabolical,” given their relative illiquidity. However, traditional banks such as Goldman Sachs would refuse to lend money on such risky collateral. On point, ser!!
• CZ (of Binance) on SBF: “SBF is one of the greatest fraudsters in history and a master manipulator”

• US federal prosecutors investigating SBF for market manipulation.
• Kevin O Leary (yeah, that Shark Tank guy) was paid $15M for the role of FTX’s paid spoke person. He claims to have lost $9.7 million in tokens. But the point is he is still supporting SBF. How do I tell him that he is not gonna get his money back (if he lost money at all)?

Do you know that SBF has plans to onboard Taylor Swift? Reportedly, she said ‘No’ to a 100 Freaking Million Dollars deal.

The Block Chief Executive Officer Michael McCaffrey resigned after failing to disclose a series of loans from disgraced former FTX head Sam Bankman-Fried’s Alameda Research. The Block’s Chief Revenue Officer Bobby Moran was named CEO.

Quick Bites

• Pakistan is planning to launch CBDC in 2025.
• The Nigerian Government has restricted people to a maximum $45 withdrawal at the ATMs in an effort to push the CentralBanks eNaira, the country’s CBDC. You know the drill, right? They control our money. And then they control out freedom.
• China reveals digital yuan with expiry date where people are forced to spend and not allowed to save.
• Holdings of Bitcoin Whales (investors with 1k BTC to 10k BTC) are going down since June.

• Zipmex Asia is poised to be acquired by a venture capital fund for about $100 million.
• Metaverse comes second in Oxford Universities 2022 word of the year, losing to Goblin mode. What the heck is Goblin Mode? “A type of behaviour which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations”. Yeah, whatever that is.. I didn’t get it.
• Nexo, a digital assets platform which offers lending services and an exchange, said it will gradually phase out US operations as a direct result of a “dead end” in its attempts to gain clarity from US regulators.
• Crypto.com has released a report on assets (Proof of Reserves) audited by Mazars.
• OnlyFans model Vanessa Sierra rugged her NFT project for 127 ETH.
• Solana is launching Saga DVT-1, Saga’s developer unit program, and is giving early access to a limited group of developers.
• Grayscale Bitcoin Trust GBTC hit an ATH (or low?) of 48.62% discount

• The Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA), the single regulator of financial services in Malta, is planning to remove non-fungible tokens (NFTs) from its Virtual Financial Asset (VFA) framework.
• Justin Bieber, Jimmy Fallon, and Madonna are among many celebrities named in a class-action lawsuit against the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT founders. The lawsuit alleged that the stars “misleadingly promoted” BAYC NFTs, resulting in buyers facing substantial financial losses.
• Web3 developer platform Alchemy is rolling out a decentralized application (dapp) store.
• Avalanche announces its integration with the Alibaba Cloud services that will help developers with validator infrastructure & other tools.
• Litecoin is the most preferred form of payment after BTC on the world’s largest crypto payments processor BitPay.
• Amber Group owes $130M to the CEO of troubled crypto lender Vauld. It is also to cut jobs by 40% and terminate Chelsea FC sponsorship as part of a major cost-cutting strategy.
• Circle $USDC cancels plans to go public at a $4.5 billion valuation.
• Bybit is planning to layoff around 30% of its global workforce.
• Twitter is looking to launch it’s own coin? And no Dogecoin integration??
• Gnosis chain transitions to a proof-of-stake network.
• 7 of the top projects occupying Polkadot’s parachain slots (Acala, Astar, Interlay, Kilt, Moonbeam, Phala, and Subscan) come together to form PolkaDOT Alliance to protect blockchain from bad actors.
• Amazon will be launching an NFT marketplace in Feb, 2023??
• Warner Music Group to release music NFTs in January 2023.
• China arrests 63 people for laundering $1.7B with crypto.
• BlackRock says to get ready for a recession never seen before.
• 👀

• Chainlink launched support for the beta version of its staking service on Dec. 6, allowing holders of its LINK token to earn a native yield for the first time. Here is an amazing thread on staking.
• Iran is blocking the bank accounts of women who refuse to wear a hijab. The first step to take away people’s freedom is to take control of their money.
• ConstitutionDAO has declared to take part in the auction of Sotheby’s for US Constitution’s copy once again. Last year, it raised over $40M but was outbid at the last moment by billionaire Ken Griffin – KennyG’d.
• Ethereum addresses holding 32ETH hit an ATH, according to Glassnode.
• Reportedly, Do Kwon is hiding out in Serbia.
• Cardano saw its daily active users grow to more than 75,000 in November.
• Goldman Sachs reportedly plans to spend “tens of millions of dollars” to buy or invest in crypto firms after FTX’s demise.
• VeeFriends NFT collection has just launched its Winter ’22 Apparel Collection.
• Strike now lets Africans receive instant, zero-fee remittance payments in local currency with the Bitcoin Lightning Network.
• Starbucks Odyssey, a Web3 and NFT-based extension of the Starbucks loyalty program, launched its beta on Polygon.
• The next Ethereum hard-fork named “Shanghai” will enable the withdrawal of staked Ether tokens and rewards from their validator balance. The Ethereum developers are targeting March for this to happen.
• Let’s end this section with a fact:

Numbers Of The Week

99 $ETH

metaverse.eth sold for 99 ETH!!

4M+

4M+ Reddit NFT holders.

$30M

US$30 million staked on the first day of ApeCoin staking.

$50M

Judge ordered Celsius to return $50M worth of crypto to their users. These are funds that are stored in custody accounts.

$400k

That’s the amount the EU foreign aid department spent on a Metaverse party with the goal to encourage 18-35-year-olds to learn more about the EU and engage with politics. The twist here is only 6 people showed up. Yikes!

41%

Crypto startups gathered nearly $20 billion of capital across 616 deals through the first three quarters of 2022, 41% more than they attracted in the same period last year, according to new data from Pitchbook this week.

Interesting Tweets

‘OFAC compliant blocks’ topped out at 80% & is trending down (currently 65%). This is thanks to:
– Flashbots open-sourcing their relay/builder infra
– More non-censoring relays coming online
– Relays accepting submissions from external builders
– People using Flashbots’ minbid

[sassal.eth]

A few of the alternatives that web3 is building to web2 giants. [Blockworks]

Bitcoin has a $478.8 trillion total addressable market. Bitcoin’s market cap today: $330 billion. That’s a 14,500% difference. Yes, we are painfully early. [Dennis Porter]

This number is finally heading in the right direction. [Tascha Labs]

Interesting Reads

• Is Solana Missing Something?
• Vitalik’s article in a tweet thread
• Sam Williams On Storing Files On-Chain For Eternity
• The fundamental differences between stablecoins and CBDCs
• I Accidentally Got SBF To Admit to Fraud
• The War On Code: Investigating the Tornado Cash Sanctions and the Arrest of Alexey Pertsev
• Bad Debt Piles up at DeFi Lending Protocols
• Why Every Business Should Have A Metaverse Strategy
• Nike .Swoosh community-building machine
• Ledger Stax Video

Do You Know?

1/4th of all Bitcoin has not moved in half a decade. And over 66% of the total Bitcoin
supply hasn’t moved in the last one year.

Meme Of The Week 😂

Disclaimer: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice. Please be careful and always do your own research.