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This Week in Web3
1. OpenSea.eth was acquired for 99 ETH ($163,000). OpenSea, is that you?
2. The world’s largest stablecoin issuer, “Tether” is launching a P2P Video Chat app called Keet along with sister company Bitfinex. [Decrypt, Tether]
3. 1,002 Americans participated in a survey. A study found that 50% of female respondents believe crypto investors are more attractive than non-investors. Meanwhile, 40% of male respondents believe crypto investors are more intelligent than non-investors. Data-driven or bull shit? Anyway, I think it’s time to update your Tinder profile with web3 stuff. [Finbold]
4. Spanish soccer giant FC Barcelona sold an NFT artwork featuring club legend Johan Cruyff for $693,000 via Sotheby’s auction house in New York. [CryptoTimes, Official Tweet]
5. The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) has sued Meta, citing a violation of antitrust laws to stop it from buying the VR fitness app ‘Supernatural’. Should we worry that Meta (or Mark) will eventually end up owning the entire metaverse? I don’t think so!! [beincrypto]
6. To hedge against collapsing local currency, Nigerians are preferring Bitcoin. Bitcoin P2P trading surged by 258% in 7 days. [nairametrics]
7. Michael Saylor, the CEO of Bitcoin (just kidding!) is no longer the CEO of Microstrategy. He is now the Executive Chairman of MicroStrategy. This decision was taken by the Bitcoin King to better pursue strategies of acquiring and HODLing bitcoin. Just in case you don’t know, the firm holds 129,699 bitcoins, purchased for nearly $4 billion, or an average price of $30,664 per coin.
8. Gucci is accepting ApeCoin through Bitpay integration. This ain’t a big deal for me, as I can’t afford Gucci.
9. Stat: In July 2022, Ethereum miners generated $571M in revenue, and Bitcoin miners generated $555M in revenue. Note: Mining will be eliminated once Ethereum switches to the Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism (aka ‘The Merge’).
10. The robot known for outperforming crypto markets has its biggest allocation in $ETH. [dailyhodl]
11. Quote: The “metaverse” is going to happen but I don’t think any of the existing corporate attempts to intentionally create the metaverse are going anywhere – Vitalik Buterin.
12. Ethereum Mainnet Shadow Fork 10 goes live. One step closer to ‘The Merge’. [You Should Check This]
13. Another week, another bridge hack. Nomad cross-chain bridge has been hacked, and over $190M stolen. People are calling it the ‘first ever decentralized robbery’. [Twitter Thread]
14. Binance Wazirx Drama: Indian crypto exchange WazirX is being investigated over claims that $350 million was laundered on the platform. At the same Binance’s CEO says they don’t own a stake in WazirX’s parent entity Zanmai Labs. Nischal Shetty, CEO of WazirX doesn’t agree. [Economic Times]
15. MetaMask adds a new feature to stop ‘Wallet Drainer NFT Scams’, the very same week a lot of funds got stolen from Solana wallets. Close to 8000 Solana wallets got hacked! Users’ funds (more than $8M+) got drained from Phantom and Slope wallets. And to stop the FUD around Solana, the L1 blockchain had nothing to do with the hack. My 0.45 SOL is still in my phantom wallet, safe and sound. [NFT Evening, Twitter Thread, Dune Analytics]
16. Pre merge, Ether (ETH) has taken over Bitcoin (BTC) in the options market for the first time in history as the open interest (OI) of Deribit Ether options. A hint of the flippening?? [Cointelegraph]
17. Magic Eden, a top Solana NFT Marketplace adds Ethereum NFT support. Previously, OpenSea added support to Solana NFTs (TBH I still use ME for SOL NFTs).
18. Study: The majority of US Adults with an income of $50,000 or less sold crypto holdings during the market collapse. [dailyhodl]
19. Tiffany sold custom CryptoPunk pendants for $50,000. A limited supply of 250, each costing 30 ETH and only to Punk HODLers. CryptoPunk sales jumped 248% after this announcement. And the floor price of Tiffany NFTs is already below the mint price. [Official tweet, GQ]
20. Report: $2.7B was spent on NFT minting in the first half of 2022. [Watcherguru]
21. Firing Numbers: Bear market firings by crypto firms – Gemini (10%), Coinbase (18%), BlockFi (20%), Crypto.coM (5%), Banxa (30%), OpenSea (20%), Blockchain.com (25%), and Robinhood (23%). [Decrypt]
22. Voyager approved to return $270 million in cash deposits to customers. [TheBlock]
23. Binance and Mastercard to launch prepaid crypto cards in Argentina. [Forkast]
24. The CEO of Tinder, Renate Nyborg, revealed that heavy investments in the metaverse will now take a backseat. [CryptoPotato]
25. Web2 domain NFTs.com bought for $15,000,000. [DomainNameWire]
26. Starbucks is about to introduce a Web3 plan during their Investor Day next month (Sept 13). Legend has it that they’ll be releasing NFTs that are somehow related to Starbuck rewards. [Twitter Thread]
27. Instagram expands NFT display options to more than 100 countries. This can take the NFT adoption to the next level!! [TechCrunch]
28. MoonDAO sent a Youtuber to space, after raising $8 million. [CoinDesk]
29. Stat by Glassnode: 65% of #Bitcoin circulating supply hasn’t moved in a year.
30. BlackRock is entering crypto. Coinbase to help. [Bloomberg]
31. Top NFT traders spent, 32.5 ETH on Goblin Town, 29.2 ETH on Rektguy
, and 12 ETH on Azuki. [Tweet]
32. Elon Musk (aka The Doge Father) on DogeCoin: “To be honest, the main reason I’m for Doge is that I believe he has the dogs and memes, and he also seems to have a sense of humor and not take himself too seriously. Although Doge was only intended to be stupid joke money, I find it odd that it has a considerably larger total transaction throughput capacity than bitcoin.” [Investing]
Interesting Reads Of The Week
- What I’m frustrated by in crypto
- Debate over crypto use cases
- A guide to dune analytics
- DAO Tokenomics – Using Tokens For Governance & Incentivizing Communities | Lucas Campbell
- Soulbound Tokens: The Basis of a Decentralized Society w/ Glen Weyl
- Aptos Airdrop Strategy
- The Merge, Surge, Verge, Purge, and The Splurge Explained
- The problem with every approach to music NFTs
- A short thread on EthPoW and ‘The Merge’
- Why it’s worth paying attention to generative art now
- Why Musician and NFT Artist Jimmy Edgar Remains Skeptical on Music NFTs
- What Are the Seven Layers of the Metaverse?
- 15 constantly updating Notion pages and Databases full of crypto and web3 resources