Issue 008: Weekly Web3 Newsletter by Sujith Godavarthi

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This Week in Web3

1. Elon Musk, the DogeFather once again shows his love for Dogecoin. Tesla launched a new Cyberwhistle that can only be bought using Dogecoin. It’s a premium collectible made from medical-grade stainless steel with a polished finish and you can buy it for 1000 DOGE.

2. Crypto Market Maker Wintermute has been hacked with over $160M stolen. Just to put some salt on the wound: Wintermute already has more than $200 million in outstanding debt to various counterparties. [InsideBitcoins]

3. $ETH isn’t ultrasound money yet. As long as there is not much usage or network congestion, it’s not gonna be one. But, one week since ‘The Merge’ happened, we saw 8x less issuance of ETH. Can be called sound money for now.

4. MicroStrategy has purchased an additional 301 Bitcoin ($5.7 million) at an average price of $19,851. The firm now owns 1 out of every 161.5 bitcoin that will ever exist, a total of around 130k $BTC ($30,639 per coin). Michael Saylor is unstoppable when it comes to purchasing bitcoins.

5. ETH price declined from around $1,650 on Sept. 15 to around $1,350 on Sept. 20, an almost 16% drop. Why? Post merge Ethereum miners have sold over $40 million worth of $ETH. [Cointelegraph]

6. Ethereum active validators have already increased by 11.4K so far in September. [Tweet]

7. Storytime: A us6er named Riptide found a vulnerability in Arbitrum Nitro, which was launched recently by Arbitrum. How much amount do you think the user has saved from being exploited? It would have been a critical $400M vulnerability. But Riptide only got paid 400 ETH (+$500k) as a reward. Arbitrum should have paid the user more, and some ETH to me.  [CryptoPotato]

8. Coinbase to hand out ENS usernames (.eth names) to simplify wallet transactions. Users will be able to claim their free name.cb.id to replace their traditional crypto wallet addresses (0xFEF…….). [Cointelegraph]

9. According to a recent report from Bloomberg News, some influential members of the U.S. Congress appear to be working on legislation that would temporarily ban certain types of algorithmic stablecoins. The legislation would make it illegal to issue or create new “endogenously collateralized stablecoins” during a two-year period as regulators study the instruments. [TheDefiant]

10. Want to check how much ETH miners are dumping? There is a tool that tracks the wallet balances of miners. 

11. It’s only a triple halving when compared to Bitcoin. It’s more than a quadruple halving when compared to ETH before the merge. Not sure what I am talking about? Read this tweet. 

12. A hacker drained $3.3 million from multiple Ethereum addresses that were generated with a tool called Profanity. The tool helps in creating “Vanity Addresses” which are a type of custom wallet that contain identifiable names or numbers within them. Kind of a showoff thing or making it easy for others to remember your wallet address. I’d say you better read the full story on the hack here. 

13. Boba Network, the layer two scaling solution that leverages optimistic rollup technology, partners with Avalanche and announced ‘Boba AVAX L2’. An effort towards blockchain scaling! [Bitcoin]

14. Jesse Powell steps down as CEO of the crypto exchange Kraken. The longtime Chief Operating Officer of Kraken, Dave Ripley will now take the CEO position in the coming months. “For me, this is about spending more time on stuff which I’m good at and enjoy doing, like working on product and industry advocacy stuff”. [Fortune]

15. While testifying before United States lawmakers, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon referred to himself as a “major skeptic” on “crypto tokens, which you call currency, like Bitcoin,” labeling them as “decentralized Ponzi schemes.” [Video]

16. Another story: More than 150 investors handed over a collective $20 million to Aiden Pleterski and his company AP Private Equity Limited, which invests in cryptocurrency and foreign exchange. Aiden, a 23-year-old self-described “Crypto King” from Canada now owes at least $35 million to investors. Nobody knows where where those funds have gone. Only $2 million of his assets (luxury cars) have been seized for now. Just in case you want to check his Instagram account, here is the link. [CP24]

17. Fed raises interest rates by 75 BPS, with Jereme Powell signaling more pain to come. Probably more blood will be spilled in the crypto markets too. [Business Week]

18. Solana network has surpassed 100 billion transactions. Yay!

19. The Helium community has voted in favour of moving its blockchain to Solana.

20. Do you know that for a transaction, Solana consumes less energy than Google, Ethereum, and Bitcoin? Solana’s Energy Use Report: September 2022 is out! [Tweet]

21. SBF (CEO of FTX)  and Changpeng Zhao (CEO of Binance) are in the race to get Voyager’s Assets. These both crypto exchanges have reportedly made the leading bids ($50 million each) for the assets of bankrupt crypto lender Voyager Digital. I was out of the race due to some financial issues. [Decrypt]

22. Ripple Labs guarantees ‘Zero Carbon Emissions’ by 2040. They signed the Climate Pledge and joined 375+ businesses that are prioritizing the planet. A more sustainable future for the XRP ecosystem. [Finbold]

23. Jack Daniels files NFT & Metaverse patents. According to Kondoudis, the whisky brand intends to sell NFT-authenticated media that could include video, audio, artwork, and text related to beverages, barware, and clothing. The trademark will also cover downloadable digital goods. [business2community]

24. 3 digit ENS Domains are selling for huge prices. 37 ETH, 50 ETH…. [Tweet]

25. Bitcoin mining data center firm ‘Compute North’ has filed for bankruptcy. The firm revealed that it owed as much as $500 million to at least 200 creditors. The company’s assets are worth between $100 million and $500 million, according to its Chapter 11 petition. Low Bitcoin prices, soaring energy costs, and at the same time rising US interest rates caused this mess. [datacenterknowledge]

26. Apple will allow apps to sell NFTs on Its App Store. But with a twist! The company is including its standard 30% transaction fees for all transactions. The NFT community is definitely not happy with that and Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney tweeted saying “Apple is killing all NFT app businesses”. [Bitcoinist]

27. Tether launched USDT on the PolkaDOT Network. This will allow Tether to move in and out of PolkaDOT network. [Tweet]

28. Check this cool video of Binance at The Burj. [Video]

29. Interpol Issues Red Notice (Yes, the Netflix film starring Gal Gadot) to Terra Luna Founder Do Kwon. $40 billion of investors’ money in a week because of this protocol and now he is in trouble. [Latestly]

30. OpenSea will soon support Arbitrum NFTs. [Tweet]

31. Remember when FIFA partnered with Algorand blockchain in May? Now, they are back with a genesis NFT collection that contains 532,980 packs containing historical highlights from past FIFA events. Check out those NFTs on the FIFA Collect platform.

32. Solana NFT transactions are on fire this month. The transactions hit an all-time high, surpassing 1M in the week ending Sept. 12 for the first time ever and 900,000 in the week ending Sept. 19. [The Defiant]

Interesting Reads

Do You Know?

$30 trillion. That’s roughly the amount of ”financial wealth” wiped out from the bond, credit, equity, and crypto markets since the peak in 2021. [Tweet]

Memes Of The Week 😂

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