March 9th, 2023: Weekly Web3 Newsletter by Sujith Godavarthi

Subscribe to my weekly newsletter here

Wassup web3 people! Sujith.eth is back with another weekly web3 edition!!!

What’s Happening in Web3

I swear..that’s not me. Coz my wife already left me! Ok, back to action:

1. FTX

The drama still going on…

FTX has confirmed that $8.9 billion in customer funds are missing.
SBF deleted a Slack message and tweets after FTX’s top lawyer told the company to preserve records for regulators, prosecutors have said.
Alameda Research has filed a lawsuit against Grayscale Investments seeking injunctive relief to unlock $9 billion in value.

Here is some alpha for you:

2. Being Rich is Boring?

A Bitcoin multi-millionaire “who retired at 35” complains that being rich is ‘boring’.

The unnamed man worked reasonably successfully as a content creator. And then he discovered Bitcoin and “fell down a deep rabbit hole,” putting almost everything he had saved into it.

“Over the span of a year and a half I put almost everything I saved into it – figuring my earnings would set me back ahead even if it tanks. (Again, crazy/foolish I know).”

By 2017, he was able to cash out more than £2 million after tax.

After hitting more than £26 million in 2019, he decided to “take a break completely from work” and took time to travel, start new hobbies, and visit friends.

Despite his fortune, the man says he now has a “two-fold problem” as he cannot “recreate” the excitement of his life with just money, while also feeling like he “doesn’t deserve” the cash.

And that is why I stay poor!!

3. The $232 Million Bitcoin Dilemma

Man Has Two Attempts Left to Guess The Lost Password!

Once upon a time, when Bitcoin was worth only five bucks per coin (yes, it was a loooong time ago), a guy named Stefan Thomas got paid 7,002 Bitcoins for making a video on how they work. Nice gig, right?

But here’s the kicker: Stefan stored the keys to his Bitcoin wallet on a tiny hard drive, which was password protected. Unfortunately, he wrote down the password on a piece of paper, and then… oopsie! Lost it. D’oh!

Now those 7,002 coins have ballooned in value to over $232 million. Awesome, but…..

The only problem is, Stefan has just two more guesses to crack that elusive password.

Do you think he is GMI?

4. A Survey Says..

Paxos launched their annual cryptocurrency adoption and purchasing behavior survey in January 2023, and their research revealed three key takeaways:

52% of crypto owners continue to be interested in crypto as an investment, crypto owners also want to use digital assets for everyday financial transactions, including payments and remittances.
75% of participants remain confident in the future of crypto.
72% of respondents reported that they are a little or not at all worried about the volatility of the crypto markets seen over the past year.

Uff! That’s definitely a relief.

5. ERC-4337 Baby!!

Account Abstraction accounts are coming! What??

Currently, web3 wallets’ traditional approach is to generate the seed phrase and store it safely (keep it far away from SBF).

With account abstraction, the benefits include:

💠 No seed phrase
💠 Smartphone compatible
💠 2 Factor Authentication
💠 Social recovery in case of loss (but not if SBF already knows your keys)

Learn more about these smart accounts here.

Quick Bites

Franklin (Bored Apes holder) sold 87 Azukis for 1284 ETH ($2M) and made a 1.55 ETH ($2000+) profit after gas and royalties in this overnight flip. $2k profit for a 2M trade, overnight!!
Unstoppable Domains added Dogecoin as a payment option.
Binance is releasing a new AI product called Bicasso allowing users to generate and mint NFTs utilizing AI.
Ethereum developers are delaying the Shanghai upgrade until early April.
The developers of ArbiSwap, a DeFi exchange on Arbitrum pulled the rug! Minted 1 billion fake tokens, swapping these for USD Coin and then for nearly 69 ether (what??). The $ARBI tokens fell from $1.5 to a fraction of a cent in the past 24 hours.
Mt Gox is about to proceed with payments to their creditors. The repayments will start from March 10, with a deadline to be paid out by September 30. And payments will be made in a mix of crypto and cash.137,890 Bitcoin with a value of more than 3 Billion will get unlocked.
A poop emoji ordinal sold for 1.2 BTC ($28k). Welcome to crypto!

PolygonID went live on March 1st and Sandbox is already using the technology.
Xapo Bank becomes the first bank in the world to integrate the Bitcoin Lightning Network.
Bitcoin fell over 5% early on Friday. Glassnode reported that exchanges were forced to liquidate more than $62 million worth of long positions on Friday due to a loss of margin.
Stablecoins settled $1.2T in Jan & Feb 2023.
US Senators led by Elizabeth Warren sent letters to Binance and Binance US CEOs accusing the exchanges of failing to comply with US laws and also of transferring billions to criminals and sanctioned entities.
$STX is up 200% against $BTC in February.
Uniswap launched a self-custodial, open-sourced mobile wallet.
Blue-chip NFTs witnessed a substantial contraction in the number of holders:

UK banks to ban credit card crypto-purchases.
Snoop Dogg launched Shiller, a platform for web3 creators. The features include the ability for creators to create their own tokens and digital passes, reach their fans, and monetize their content.
A Binance spokesperson claimed that the exchange has no plans for layoffs. Moreover, 600 people have been hired since January.
The hosts of the Bankless podcast, are raising $35 Million fund to invest in emerging Web3 startups.
SBF & DoKwon get roasted at ETH Denver‘s opening ceremony😂😂
El Salvador’s tourism increased by 95% since making Bitcoin legal tender – President Bukele.
YugaLabs TwleveFold auction ended. Top bid: $160k, Minm bid: $50k. Many aren’t happy with the auction process .
Yuga filed a trademark for “DON’T DRINK ME” in the soft drink category 👀

‘OneOf’ to bring Pamela Anderson Digital Collectibles. The general public can buy any remaining slides for $300 on March 14 (after the OnePass holders sale: $199 and Presale: $250).
Amazon‘s NFT marketplace coming in April (?)
Vitalik Buterin nets over 220 ETH ($700k) after dumping altcoins Like $CULT, $MOPS, $SHIK, $BITE, and more. All of these coins were airdropped to him.
John Reed Stark, a former attorney for the SEC has labeled Binance a “shadow bank” that mints its own “counterfeit currency” while providing financial services with little US regulatory oversight. “Binance is FTX Redux, Bank Run Seems Inevitable”
Ethereum Non-Zero Addresses: 95M (up 25% in 12 months).
Mastercard partners with ByBit to launch a new crypto debit card.
Sandbox announced an NFT collection based on Gordon Ramsay, which will consist of 2,333 NFT avatars and will be released later this month.
Crypto exchange Kraken’s chief legal officer says the exchange plans to launch its own bank.
A bored ape was sold for 440 ETH ($693k):

A federal judge has granted the approval to sell over $1 billion of Voyager’s assets to Binance US.
Silvergate Capital to shut down operations and liquidate the bank.
Jack Dorsey’s Block wants to innovate Bitcoin mining rigs by building a simple DIY “Mining Development Kit” (MDK).
Forkast Labs launches a new set of indexes to measure the NFT economy and provide clean views from a multi-chain perspective.
Report: DeFi funding rose by 190%, while CeFi funding fell 73% from 2018 to 2022.
The Balvi Filantropic Fund, directed by Vitalik Buterin, has donated $15 million in USDC to the University of California San Diego for research into airborne pathogens.
Bitcoin miner and manufacturer Canaan’s Q4 revenue was $56.8M, a 60% drop from Q3. The net income noted a $63.6-million loss in Q4 2022 compared to a profit of $182.0 million in Q4 2021.
Thailand’s cabinet has agreed to waive corporate income tax and VAT for companies that issue investment tokens.

Interesting Tweets

1. Ethereum just had its highest month of earnings ever (in a bear market) [@tomuky]

2. The total fee spent inscribing Ordinals is approx. $1.5M. [@sujith_god]

3. “Crypto is the most important technology that can help update the financial system. The rest of the world is trying to draw crypto companies in. The U.S. really risks falling behind.” – Coinbase CEO, Brian Armstrong [@SquawkCNBC]

4. agreed. always respected silvergate for being unapologetically pro crypto when virtually no one else was. sad to see their current predicament, hope they make it through the other side. [@nic__carter]

5. Data from an ongoing crypto hackathon. “the US establishment can’t stop crypto”. [@balajis]

Interesting Numbers

2B

That’s the amount NFT sales brought in Feb 2023. 117% higher than the previous month ($946M) and also the highest since May 2022.

91.4%

Investment firm Multicoin Capital reportedly suffered a 91.4% loss in 2022.

17.4M

17.4M ETH (4M ETH was staked after the merge) is staked right now waiting to be unlocked in the next month (probably).

4.5B

Bitcoin NFT Market to Hit $4.5 Billion by 2025: Galaxy Digital Research’s baseline forecast.

16.5M

Yuga Labs earned $16.5M from the TwelveFold (Bitcoin NFTs) auction.

Interesting Reads

Do You Know?

According to WSJ: Binance wanted to hire SEC Chair Gary Gensler as an advisor years before he became head of the SEC.

Meme Of The Week 😂

Actually, it’s only been 25 years.

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.

.

.