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This Week in Web3
1. Chainalysis released a report titled Mid-year Crypto Crime Update. I’ve read the full article and published a tweet thread too. In Summary: Crypto scams are down, Darknet activity is down but crypto hacks are up ($1.9B lost in the first half of 2022). Better in some areas, but we still have a lot of work that needs to be done.
2. FTX grew 1,000% last year!! Some numbers were just leaked showing that revenue grew 1,000% in 2021. The exchange took revenue from below $90 million in 2020 to more than $1 billion last year as cryptocurrencies hit an all-time high. SBF! SBF! SBF! [CNBC]
3. Miley Cyrus files for Web3 Trademarks. [Tweet]
4. Metaverse company Sandbox’s Alpha Season 3 launched on Wednesday. And holders of NFTs from collections such as Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), Moonbirds, and World of Women will be able to play using avatars based on their NFTs. [TheBlock]
5. Samsung to launch a crypto exchange in South Korea in 2023. [Decrypt]
6. 2.08 million people own Bitcoin in South Africa. [TodayqNews]
7. Despite the bear market, the floor price of Pudgy Penguins NFT collection
Increased by 400%. But why? Here is a thread on it. Moreover, a pudgy sold for 400 ETH! The buyer bought it for $627K when converted into Fiat.
8. 115M Indians have invested in Cryptocurrencies as per a Kucoin Survey. I’m one in 115M. Sorry, I’m one of those 115M. On the other hand, Sumit Gupta revealed the number as 20-25M. Another bullish stat from another report is that more than half of Indian crypto investors plan to invest more in the next six months.
9. Telegram CEO Pavel Durov reveals that he wants to “add a little bit of Web 3.0 to Telegram.” He proposes auctioning usernames, links as NFTs. He revealed that he was inspired by The Open Network (TON)’s recent sale of over 2,000 .ton domain names. [Decrpyt]
10. Hackers lost 5 ETH while trying to submit a fabricated transaction on Near Protocol’s Rainbow bridge because of automated security processes. [Coindesk]
11. Bullish News: Visa, Mastercard, and Binance are suddenly making Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Solana, Cardano and Tether payments a reality despite price crash. [Forbes]
12. M&M enters the Web3 space with the launch of 3 Bored Ape products. [DappRadar]
13. Crypto whale Cobie donates $100,000 to YouTuber sued by BitBoy for fight the lawsuit. [cryptobriefing]
14. Stat: Nearly Half of Americans Have Heard of NFTs. [UToday]
15. Shopify buys into Web3 future helping back $24 million Thirdweb funding round. [Forbes]
16. Hardware wallet company Ledger revealed that sales blew up 4.5x after the bankruptcy of crypto lending company Celsius. Other companies Trezor and SafePal have also reported hefty sales figures. [Decrypt]
17. COINBASE STARTS LIQUID STAKING!! Coinbase just dropped a new token – cbETH. [Key Takeaways, Coindesk]
18. Tornado Cash Developer Pertsev Remanded For 90 Days. [TheDefiant]
19. Afghan Authorities Shut Down 16 Crypto Exchanges in One Week: Report [Coindesk]
20. Founders of Metaverse project Netvrk were accused of embezzling investor funds. [Tweet]
21. Prediction: NFT Transactions Projected to Hit $40m by 2027. [BlockchainNews]
22. Enjoying 0 fee while trading Bitcoin on Binance? Well ETH trading is now free on too!
23. Reddit Launched NFTs!!! Beginning on August 17th, it began to give away Blockchain-Backed Collectible Avatars (they never mentioned or used the word ‘NFTs’) for free to 10 million users. About 50,000 have been given away so far to long-time Redditors who have made popular contributions to their communities; the remainder will be given out over the next few weeks [Twitter, TheVerge]
24. Stat: USDC whale holdings percentage lowest in almost two years. [Cointelegraph]
25. Bitboy (who is probably well known for predicting the opposite) has a prediction on “wen Bitcoin bottom?” He tweeted: “#Bitcoin bottoms 3-5 weeks after Midterm elections. November 28th is the date we are targeting for the $BTC bottom. Next halving should be ~March/April 2024. New ATH should be around December 16, 2024. Dates are estimates. Specific date is just a reference.” [Tweet]
26. MtGox is NOT distributing any $BTC this week, the next week, or the week after that.
27. Bitcoin slipped below $20K region for the first time since mid-July and so it ETH and other Altcoins. The global crypto economy slid below $1 Trillion. Should we wait for more bloodbath or is it already time to BTFD? Doesn’t matter if you don’t have any cash left, like me. Relax and enjoy the bloodbath. I’m touching the grass these days
28. According to Stockwits data on the 23rd of August, the following NFT trading volumes were recorded: Ethereum: $12.3 million, Solana: $2.2 million, ImmutableX: $1.1 million, Flow: $0.57 million, BNB Chain: $0.55 million, WAX: $0.48 million, Cardano: $0.25 million, Algorand: $0.04 million, Elrond: $0.03 million, and, Hedera Hashgraph: $0.02 million. [Reddit]
29. Dogecoin co-founder Billy Markus (known for sharing some good memes on twitter) rejects $14M (10B DC tokens) offer to promote Dogechain. [Tweet]
30. The domain Eth.link registered by Virgil Griffith (is serving a 63-month prison sentence for helping North Koreans use cryptocurrencies to circumvent sanctions and has been unable to renew the domain from prison) will be expired on July 26 and will be up for grabs on Sept. 5, according to GoDaddy. [Coindesk]
31. A new Forbes analysis of 157 crypto exchanges finds that 51% of the daily bitcoin trading volume being reported is likely fake or non-economic. And also we have a stat from the same survey: 573 million people (That’s a more than half a billion and there are 7B+ people on earth) visit crypto exchange websites on a monthly basis. [Forbes]
32. Another week, another stablecoin depegs. Algorithmic stablecoin USDN depegged from dollar and traded at 91 cents on August 26th. Current price is at 98 cents. [Coindesk]
33. Cloud service provider Hetzner, which hosts 10% of Ethereum nodes, said that using its products for crypto mining and trading was against its terms of service, and it’s “discussing” what to do with the users who run them, the company wrote in a statement on its subreddit. [TheBlock]
34. Final stat of the week: Over 60% Of Parents Want Their Kids To Learn Crypto In School. [Bitcoinist]
Interesting Reads Of The Week
- NFT Brands Case Study Overview
- A Thread On ZK-ZK-Rollups
- A Thread On 2022 Gamefi Industry Report, First Half Of 2022
- Top Dune Dashboards To Follow The Merge
- NFT Business Models After Advising 100+ Businesses
- The case for why today’s optimistic rollups (not ZK rollups) may have the best chance of winning the L2 wars
- To Slash or to not slash? On Ethereum’s Censorship Resistance
- What would you do differently if you could invest in crypto again with the current knowledge you have gained? [Reddit Discussion]
- Is The Merge Overhyped?
- Youtube video on Helium: The Billion Dollar Network No One Uses
- Hal Press on ETH Merge with Sassal on The Daily Gwei
- Thinking Through CC0 and IP for NFT Communities
- Some amazing stats on GameFi
- Optimal Vesting Schedule
Favourite Web3 Takes Of The Week
1. This bear market will be boring. There’ll be times when it seems like there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. Many will give up. Most already have. But. If you play your cards right, it’s giving you a rare chance to build generational wealth. Don’t waste it. [Miles Deutscher]
2. Beacon chain withdrawals (scheduled for the Shanghai upgrade in 2023, not The Merge) is the greatest derisking event in crypto history and will lead to an immense net increase in demand for staking (contrary to the “huge unlock dump incoming” balderdash). [polynya]
3. Yes, decentralization is core to the ethos of crypto. But so is ownership. And creators should be the ones who decide under what conditions their works are sold. [cantino.eth]
4. People continue to underrate how often cryptocurrency payments are superior not even because of censorship resistance but just because they’re so much more convenient. Big boost to international business and charity, and sometimes even payments within countries. [Butalik Viterin ]
5. The internet didn’t threaten the bookstores. It’s the bookstores’ slowness in adopting the internet that threatened themselves. [CZ Binance]
Do You Know?
This popular crypto Twitter account named Algod is trying to turn $50k into $1M+. Ok, but what’s so interesting here? Well, this anon is trying to do the exact opposite of whatever Jim Cramer says. Already made a 2x profit!!
Ethereum Merge
- Want to make a million dollars? Find any merge-related network vulnerabilities before The Merge happens.
- Ethereum’s final upgrade before ‘The Merge’ is scheduled for September 6th. [AltcoinDaily]
- Ethereum exchange inflow volume just hit a 19-month low, and Ethereum number of addresses (6,395) holding 1k+ ETH hit a 10-month high, this week. [Tweet, Tweet]
- The chief investment officer of Valkyrie Investments revealed that the crypto fund is moving towards Bitcoin and Altcoins, shorting $ETH ahead of ‘The Merge’. He said, “Right now Bitcoin is really the flight to safety for a lot of our funds…some of the more established proof-of-stake protocols are also a great place to be. Places like Avalanche and Zilliqa…”. [DailyHodl]
- Ethereum whales are moving ETH to crypto exchanges ahead of ‘The Merge’. [MSN]
Topic Of The Week
NFT Use Cases: I’ve published an article on why NFTs matter and how they can be used in real life. From fundraising to getting access to a saas application, they can be applied in different fields.
Meme(s) Of The Week
Not just 1 or 2, but I’ve got 6 memes for you this 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.