Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here
This Week in Web3
1. Polkadot -based Defi platform Acala’s native stablecoin aUSD lost its dollar peg as attackers exploited the flaw in the smart contract. The coin de-pegged and dropped to a new all-time low of $0.0054 on August 14. It is currently doing better because of a new burn scheme that the Acala community voted on. [Tweet]
2. Pension Funds are bullish on crypto despite losses from the bear market. [WSJ Report]
3. Alex Mashinsky, CEO of the bankrupt company Celsius Network reportedly sold hundreds of millions worth of Bitcoin from users’ funds and bought it back a day later at loss. Another loss on top of huge losses. Just a reminder: Celsius isn’t a Defi protocol, it’s a bank. [Tweet]
4. BNB chain releases a list of red-flagged coins. The coin that you want to buy might be part of the list. Just make sure! [Cointelegraph]
5. Heard this bullish news? Google invested $1.51B into blockchain companies from September 2021 to June 2022. Not just Google, but biggies like Samsung($979M), BlackRock($1.1B), and Morgan Stanley ($1.1B) have made bets on crypto companies. They are in the top 40 blockchain and crypto investors. [TimesNowNews]
6. According to Whalestats, an Ethereum whale known as Naruto (A funny name for a billionaire) went from a balance of $1.98B to $2.96B in a month, just by holding ETH. This whale has 1.49M ETH in his/her wallet. That’s a looooootttt!!
7. Cameo’s CEO Steven Galanis’s Bored Ape got stolen. And then it was sold for $130k. The account that allegedly stole and then resold the NFT is no longer active on OpenSea. Thank God! At least I don’t have to worry about losing my NFTs as they aren’t worth anything!!!
8. 76% of financial institutions expect to use crypto by 2025, as per a report by Ripple. Good for us! [Finbold, Download Report]
9. BNB Chain will launch a Web3 development course for over 30,000 students in Latin America. Now that is some move for adoption. [Cointelegraph]
10. Gordon Ramsay, the world-famous chef (also known for yelling?) is entering the Metaverse. He partnered with Sandbox to bring his reality cooking show Hell’s Kitchen into the metaverse. [LedgerInsights]
11. CA$30,000 annual limit orders for Altcoins purchase per year is being introduced to select provinces of Canada. I don’t like this limit. The limit will not apply to Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Bitcoin cash. At least that’s a relief. [beincrypto]
12. Consumer watchdog group “Truth in Advertising” has called out 19 celebrities for allegedly promoting NFTs (aka paid shilling) without disclosing their connection to the projects. Jimmy Fallon, Gwyneth Paltrow, Paris Hilton, Shaq, and more. [Cointelegraph]
13. HUSD stablecoin depegged temporarily this week. Traded at 0.85$ range (it’s lowest) and currently back to 0.99$. [Tweet]
14. Genesis lays off 20% of its employees. The CEO Michael Moro steps down. This is nothing compared to what Hodlnaut did. They laid 80% of their employees, to balance to former 20%. Anyway, the firm is being investigated by the Singapore police. [Cryptobriefing, Decrypt]
15. Beware when some Binance employee messages you on Linkedin. He/she is most probably trying to scam you. Only around 50 profiles out of 7,000 Binance employees on LinkedIn are real, says CZ. [Tweet]
16. Do Kwon (you know who he is): “I Think I Should Have Known the Risks of UST Much Better”. Here is a twitter thread for you!
17. Because of the massive liquidation risk, the floor price of BAYC and MAYC tanked down to an 8-month low. 30,300 ETH ($55m) worth of NFTs were on the line. [Twitter Thread]
18. OpenSea’s trading volume plunged to its lowest level in 13 months on Tuesday this week. The marketplace handled $6.5M worth of trades, a fraction of the $204M executed at its peak in February, according to data from DappRadar. [TheDefiant]
19. Dogechain (What is it?) is not related to Dogecoin. But.. [Tweet, Tweet]
20. Ethermine, the largest Ethereum mining pool, no longer produces blocks containing Tornado Cash transactions. Is this considered censorship at a protocol level? Maybe, a better question would be “Will Ethereum Be Vulnerable to Censorship After the Merge?”. [Tweet]
21. Stephen Tual, one of the key persons in “The DAO” creation in 2016 leaves Ethereum after nine years saying “As of August 15th, 2022, the “blockchain” (or should I use the hedge-fund coined terminology “distributed ledger”?) has turned into a circus of centralized NFTs, endless Ponzi schemes, illegal securities or turncoat sycophants pledging loyalty to the nearest regulator. I do not recognize myself in that space, not even one bit.” [Open Letter]
22. South Korea to block 16 unregistered foreign crypto exchanges. The Financial Services Commission (FSC) reported these exchanges to investigative agencies for violating the Specific Financial Information Act. I have no idea what these laws and acts are, but the point is the law prevents unregistered crypto exchanges from operating without a license, but the 16 firms have been providing crypto services for Koreans and hosting events targeting Koreans. [CryptoSlate]
23. Uniswap has blocked 253 crypto addresses related to stolen funds or sanctions. [Twitter Thread]
24. ENS domain names are on fire. It took 3.5 months for ENS domain names to reach 2 million, after taking 5 to reach 1 million users. There were 379,00 new .eth registrations in July 2022. [beincrypto]
25. We have seen a lot of Defi protocol hacks. But now, we have something similar but a bit different hack. Hackers have exploited a zero-day vulnerability in General Bytes Bitcoin ATM servers to steal cryptocurrency from customers. [BleepingComputer]
26. Coinbase will pause ETH and ERC-20 token deposits and withdrawals during Ethereum’s upgrade to Proof-of-Stake as a precautionary measure. [cryptobriefing]
27. Now you can easily use your crypto with PayPal. [Tweet]
Interesting Reads Of The Week
- Ethereum’s roadmap to 100k TPS: Scalability
- 10 research tools that are not that well known
- The NFT industry isn’t much more than JPEG speculation
- What the next crypto cycle is gonna look like
- How Bitcoin Proof Of Work, works?
- A signature can drain funds from your Metamask. How to avoid it?
- Dispelling huge myths about “The Merge,” and why L2 rollups are next
- A thread on NFT lending
- A definitive breakdown of the NFT-specific situation in a PoS/PoW chain split scenario
- The modular blockchain stack of Polygon
- Crypto Mixers and Privacy Coins: Can They Resist Censorship?
- OFAC Sanctions & Ethereum PoS – Some Technical Nuances
- How to Arbitrum 101
Do You Know?
The CEO of Bitcoin once hated Bitcoin. Ok, sorry, it’s the CEO of MicroStrategy. Oh no, it’s the executive chairman of MicroStrategy. Michael Saylor once tweeted: “#Bitcoin days are numbered. It seems like just a matter of time before it suffers the same fate as online gambling.” [Tweet]
Meme Of The Week
