Feb 23rd, 2023: Weekly Web3 Newsletter by Sujith Godavarthi

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Gm, web3 people! It’s newsletter time, and here I am, with all the crypto, NFT, and, DeFi updates for you.

What’s Happening in Web3

Bing Search with ChatGPT received 1 million sign-ups in the first 48 hours. Just saying!

1. FTX

Updates on the most painful event that happened in 2022.

Former FTX executives donated $80M to political groups in 2022. Chart
Federal prosecutors have seized around $700M, all of which is believed to have been in accounts owned either by SBF himself or by the exchange.
Judge suggests jail limit SBF’s communications.
FTX Japan customers can begin withdrawing their funds from Feb 21.
Democrats to return 2.2% of $45.2M donation made by SBF.
FTX sent $7.7 billion in assets from the crypto company’s Bahamian estate to its U.S. counterparts in the period leading up to its bankruptcy filing last year.
SBF went to court this week because he got caught using a VPN to “watch the Super Bowl”.

2. OpenSea vs Blur

OpenSea made a big announcement.

They announced that they will be opting for a 0% OpenSea fee (for a limited time) and moving to optional creator earnings (0.5% min) for all collections.

This comes after $BLUR airdrop (12% of its 3b total token supply) and BLUR’s (OpenSea’s Competitor and a zero fee NFT marketplace) plan for the creators on the platform: Creators will get full royalties for their collections if they block their collections on OpenSea.

Moreover:

And OpenSea had no option but to make this move.

My Prediction: OpenSea will defend its position and Blur will never become the most used NFT marketplace, no matter what. At least, not for the long term.

In all this chaos, NFT bros forgot LooksRare!!

BTW…Blur to airdrop 300M tokens to their users in the next season. But you need to prove loyalty to get that. And how do you do that? Full 100% listings should be on Blur and no NFT listings on OpenSea or any other marketplaces.

They really are seeking blood. Aren’t they??

And wanna know who is the anonymous founder of Blur Marketplace? The founder self-doxxed.

3. Male vs Female in Web3

A survey was done. And…

According to that survey, Male-only founding teams typically trump all-female teams, as they’re able to raise four times as much capital, or about $30 million compared to just $8 million.

And no company with an all-female team has managed to raise more than $100 million in funding. Even the investment teams focused on Web3 are male-dominated.

4. OneCoin Founder Was Dead??

Heard about Dr. Ruja Ignatova ever?? The founder of OneCoin aka Bitcoin Killer? Ok, here is the story:

She founded OneCoin (One of the OG crypto scams) almost a decade ago. And promoted it as Bitcoin Killer. And we middle-class people got greedy and put a lot of funds (€4 billion) in her hand. And then she disappeared (which is quite common in crypto). She boarded a plane from the city of Sofia, in Bulgaria, to Athens, in Greece, on October 25, 2017.

Since then, nobody was able to find her. The FBI even listed this crypto queen (yeah, that’s what she branded herself) in their most wanted list.

Well, the legend has it that she was dead 5 years ago.

The documents claimed that Ruja Ignatova, who was reportedly also closely connected to Taki (who runs a drugs business) was actually killed (on a yacht) on the drug lord’s orders as he wanted to cover up his involvement in the OneCoin affair.

Crypto Scam. Drugs. €4 Billion. Killed. Can this get any crazier?? Read the full story here.

Here is a meme to cool you down:

5. Blood In Web3

Hope Finance (Arbitrum-based algorithmic stablecoin project) got scammed for ~$2M. “A suspected person claimed everything from genesis protocol.” The scammer moved around 1,095 Ether (ETH) worth approximately $1.9 million to the Tornado Cash mixer.
Two Estonian citizens who ran HashFlare were arrested for defrauding investors totaling $575 million. The fraud includes convincing victims to enter into a fake equipment rental contract through HashFlare and convincing other victims to invest in a fake virtual currency bank called Polybius Bank.
Hackers used ETH Denver to steal crypto. They created fake websites and used google ads to make sure they appear on top of the searches. Reportedly, $300k+ was lost. #StaySAFU
Avalance’s Defi Protocol Platypus was exploited for $8.5M. ZachXBT helped the team, and the team recovered 2.4M USDC from the attacked contract by counter-exploiting the contract.

6. Ordinals

Ordinals aka Bitcoin NFTs are doing crazy volume and miners are earning a lot of gas fee on that. Still can’t believe that someone traded his CryptoPunk for an Ordinal Punk.

The total fee spent inscribing ordinals (putting NFTs on the Bitcoin Blockchain) hit the $150k per day mark.

And now, Litecoin Ordinals arrived by forking the BTC Ordinals protocol to Litecoin.

It only costs 2 cents to inscribe stuff here, as compared to 10’s dollars on the Bitcoin Blockchain.

IMO, the tech will stay. The NFTs won’t! Will fade away, sooner or later!

Quick Bites

“People who oppose my position are IDIOTS. There isn’t a rational argument against my position on CryptoSh**t.” : Charlie Munger
Romanian Police Seized 21 $BTC Worth $500,000 From Andrew Tate.
Ripple’s Creator Fund allocated $250M to support Phygital NFT creators and developers.
According to CryptoQuant, OKX has $8.6B in clean assets with a reserve ratio of 104% for BTC and ETH, and 102% for USDT.
Loco, the largest esports streaming platform in India, announces its partnership with Avalanche to launch a subnet.
Hong Kong has announced plans to invest $50M in accelerating the adoption of Web3 technology.
Coinbase reports a hike in Q4 2022 earnings. $605M, up 5% from $590M in Q3. But, a 76% decrease from its net revenue in Q4 2021 and a 57% decrease in full-year net revenue from 2021.
Solana is shutting down its Miami and New York locations aka Solana Spaces.

$STX, the token for Stacks, a smart contract platform built on Bitcoin, has doubled in the last week. The Ordinals Effect!! Hiro, the most-used wallet in the Stacks ecosystem announced the integration of Ordinals on Feb. 20. And Gamma, an NFT marketplace built on Stacks, also introduced a tool to mint an Ordinal on Feb. 8.
71 Bored Ape NFTs were sold into Blur bids. That equates to 5,545 ETH aka $9.1M.
Filecoin Ethereum Virtual Machine (FEVM) mainnet to launch on March 14.
WazirX NFT marketplace has been Closed.
Since the Merge, which took place 157 days ago, a total of 28,730 ETH with a value of $48,885,818 has been burned. And soon a total of $25 billion worth of ETH that has been locked in initial staking contracts will be released. (Shanghai Upgrade).
21.6% of ETH Stakers are in profit:

300k+ Nike’s .SWOOSH ID’s minted.
StarkEx made 6M transactions last week, more than all other L2s combined.
Two-fifths of institutions expect the price of Ethereum’s native token ether to be above $2,000 at the end of 2023, according to a survey.
BAYC creators are accused of copyright infringement for using a wolf’s skull logo from a children’s coloring book in their Bored Ape Kennel Club charity collection.
Crypto companies spent a record $21.55M in 2022 on Washington lobbying, with major cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase leading the list.
According to Chainalysis: 25%, or over 10,000, of the tokens released in 2022 experienced a price loss of 90% or more during the first week of trade. “Pump and Dump”
Crypto companies landed $185M in funding this week.
Sony Network Communications partnered with Polkadot’s innovation hub – Astar Network – to present a Web3 Incubation Program. Users willing to join can apply until March 6, 2023.
El Salvador to open ‘Bitcoin embassy’ in the U.S as part of a partnership with Govt. Of Texas. The embassy is expected to work on joint promotions that will facilitate and accelerate the adoption of Bitcoin in the state.

Napster acquired Mint Songs, a startup that lets artists turn music into NFTs.
Cozomo de’ Medici, a pseudonymous NFT influencer, has donated 22 NFTs to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA).
Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev will remain detained until his next hearing in April, a Dutch court ruled.
Crypto community management tool Collab.Land announced its governance token COLLAB, which will be airdropped to more than 2M eligible users.
California Financial Regulator introduces Crypto Scam Tracker. The tracker lists several crypto scams identified through reviewing complaints submitted by the public.
Nexo announces US exit following SEC settlement.
Japan to launch digital yen (CBDC) pilot in April.
Rarible announced it is adding support for Tezos and Polygon NFTs.
The SEC has charged Do Kwon and his company Terraform Labs with defrauding investors.
Puma is launching Super PUMA NFTs in a new 10,000 supply PFP collection, with existing NITRO NFT holders getting an airdrop.
Norwegian authorities seized 60 million Norwegian kroner ($5.85 million) of stolen cryptocurrencies linked to the Axie Infinity hack in March 2022. (Ronin Bridge Hack)

Since the launch of Ordinals in December 2022, users have inscribed a total of more than 124,000 NFTs.
Co-founder of Solana Labs Anatoly calls Claynosaurz the next Disney.
Hadeswap acquired Solana Monkey Business.
Helium Network to migrate to Solana blockchain on March 27th.

Interesting Tweets

SBF: Playing video games at his parent’s house in Palo Alto, after committing one of the biggest financial frauds in history. Tornado Cash Developer: Rotting in a Dutch jail cell, after developing an open-source decentralised privacy protocol. [@milesdeutscher]

Polygon Monthly NFT Volume Chart [@sujith_god]

[@mooncat2878]

Some great podcasts I listened to this week. [@ThorHartvigsen]

Interesting Numbers

2.4M

During the blur airdrop, the top wallet was airdropped $2.4M in $BLUR tokens. Also, Blur now stands at a $1 billion evaluation.

220M

Polygon has reached 220M total unique addresses.

1.4M

Paul Pierce has been fined $1.4M by the SEC for promoting Ethereum Max.

397.8M

The volume of NFT sales reached $397.86M this week (till Feb 18th), with 345,716 NFT buyers and roughly 1.62 million transactions. Sales rose 43.97% compared to the previous week.

108 ETH

Jason Williams burned his 108 ETH worth of BAYC NFT just to move it to the Bitcoin blockchain.

Interesting Reads

Do You Know?

Bitcoin (+46%) has outpaced Nasdaq (+15%) by a wide margin this year. But still down 64% off its all-time highs, vs, Nasdaq’s 25%. Source: Blockworks

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.

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