All Been Crypto — Week 6 May 2022
Another volatile week dominated by macro and FED, crypto markets took a beating down 7.5% WoW in terms of market cap with correlation between crypto and equity markets continue to hover around all time highs. We are looking at a sea of red now across the board, SOL even down -15% after another outrage of the network and the only major up on the week is TRX on pulling a Luna with their USDD stablecoin launch. Speaking of Luna they announced another $1.5bn worth of BTC added to the LFG treasury which now holds ~$3.5bn in BTC (vs $18bn of UST outstanding). On the regulatory side Binance got their approval in France, Argentinian Banks got a slap on the wrist from their Central bank and in Dubai crypto regulators launched a HQ in the metaverse. And of course there’s some update on Twitter and Elon too. Enjoy reading!
Bat Tai Chi — btc21@mail.com
HEADLINES:
Binance chips in on Elons Twitter bid
You have seen the headlines Elon taking Twitter private in a $44bn bid. Now the whole saga is interesting for crypto for multiple reasons. Elons love for DOGE, Twitter being one of the primary sources for news and updates in the space, but also the development of open source alternatives and the whole saga of Stani trolling as CEO while others suggesting an airdrop. All of this would break the scope of this weekly however i want to focus one one new aspect to the story that just got revealed this week. $44bn is a lot of money even for the richest man in the world and so Elon was looking for partners for his bid. Among those that joined the calling was Binance. CZ committed $500 in what he called a ‘blank cheque’ for the acquisition and of course he’s also a proponent of tokenizing the company. It’s interesting against the aspect of a more mixed relationship between CZ and Elon in the past (see Nov issue) and the stake that Balance bought in Forbes earlier this year. Reputation is everything in crypto and so I guess it’s important to have some influence on message control.
The other side of the Otherside
Last weekend many spent time trying to mint Otherdeed NFTs — Yoga Labs official launch of their Metaverse ‘The Otherside’. The drop was so hotly anticipated that a gas war was inevitable and I guess the expectation that gas would be refunded if mint was unsuccessful further added gas to the fire (excuse the pun). So depending on who you speak to you could say it was a successful launch. They sold 50k NFTs in a few hours worth >300mm USD but for an insane amount of gas. 60,234 ETH was used to just mint the Otherdeed NFTs and about 14k transactions failed. Now the project has indeed announced they will refund some of the 1,6k of ETH that these users spent on gas for unsuccessful transactions. This whole episode of gas wars also led to them openly floating the idea of their own chain. Which in turn has been critiqued because of course it was foreseeable that this hotly anticipated mint would spike a gas war and moving away from the Ethereum chain onto an own one could risk losing decentralization. As a case in point for this effort though OpenSea said they’ll accept APE as currency on their platform for Otherside NFTs.
Argentina’s Banks are banned from crypto
The central bank announced yesterday that it has barred banks in the country from facilitating for clients the use of crypto assets. This comes only two days after the two largest banks of the country, Banco Galicia and Brubank, said they would allow crypto. The move should not surprise us much though as the $45 billion IMF debt package approved in March included a provision discouraging the use of cryptocurrencies. We know Central banks are generally against crypto and saw the same happen in Russia as well where the Bank of Russia was against BTC and in favor of a ban only to be put into place by the president himself. Given Argentina's dependence on the IMF and their openly hostile take on crypto we were a bit surprised for Banco Galicia and Brubank to actually push ahead with crypto. Maybe Argentina would be well advised take an example of El Salvador where the country has actively defied pressure from the IMF because of its reliance on bitcoin
QUOTES:
Taking it [Twitter] back from Wall Street is the correct first step
Former Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey
The Wikimedia Foundation has decided to discontinue direct acceptance of cryptocurrency as a means of donating. We began our direct acceptance of cryptocurrency in 2014 based on requests from our volunteers and donor communities. We are making this decision based on recent feedback from those same communities. Specifically, we will be closing our Bitpay account, which will remove our ability to directly accept cryptocurrency as a method of donating.
Lisa Seitz-Gruwell Chief Advancement Officer, Wikimedia Foundation
The arrival and presence of FTX underscore the readiness of the Bahamas to be a home for global leaders in the crypto space
Bahamas, Prime Minister Davis
We add an optimistic roll up to Doge Everyone puts up 1 doge for unlimited posts. If anyone contests a post and humans confirm it’s spam, they get the spammer’s Doge. Spammer has to post 100x more Doge If it’s not spam,the contestor loses their Doge. DogeDAO FTW !
Mark Cuban
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