Come every Saturday, Hodler’s digest Helps keep track of all the important news articles that happened this week. Best (and worst) quotes, recruitment and regulatory highlights, major coins, forecasts and more — a week of Cointelegraph with one link.
Top story of the week
NFT Creator Yuga Labs Raises $ 450 Million to Raise Corporate Value to $ 4 Billion
Yuga Labs, the creator of the very popular Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT, has raised $ 450 million in seed funding with a $ 4 billion valuation. Not surprisingly, top venture capital and cash cow Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) led the round.
Yuga Labs, which recently launched ApeCoin and announced its next Metaverse platform, will use the funds to grow its employee base, attract more creative, engineering and operational talent, and support joint ventures and partnerships.
Yuga Labs has won over the last 12 months. CEO Nicole Muniz emphasizes that “there are many to come” given the “new economy” of intellectual property on the company’s list. Yuga Labs recently purchased an IP for CryptoPunks and Meebits from Larva Labs, giving NFT holders full commercial rights.
Charles Hoskinson cheekyly admits that “I was wrong” about deploying DApp.
In a bit of self-aware humor, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson points out that his prediction that there will be “thousands of assets and DApps” on the network by 2021 is significantly inadequate. Did.
He commented on Twitter, but he didn’t seem to remember his words because he predicted that Cardano would have “hundreds of assets and thousands of DApps” in July 2020.
Thanks to the NFT minting platform, the number of assets seems to have exceeded expectations. However, DeFi Llama lists only seven DApps on the blockchain, accounting for a total of $ 315.72 million in locked value (TVL).
SEC may approve Spot Bitcoin ETFs as early as 2023 — Bloomberg Analyst
Bloomberg’s highly clued ETF analysts Eric Baltunas and James Seyfert have announced that regulatory agencies will have a BTC Spot ETF by mid-2023 due to a rule change proposed within the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Suggests that it may be approved.
Balchunas said Thursday that the crypto platform could fall under the SEC’s regulatory framework if the Commission approves the proposed exchange law amendments in January. This changes the definition of “exchange”. This move will allow the law to include crypto platforms that “trade all kinds of security”.
“Once crypto exchanges are compliant, the SEC’s main reason for rejecting Spot Bitcoin ETFs is no longer valid and could open the way for approval,” analysts said in a joint statement.
Stargate Finance attracts $ 1.9 billion in 6 days
The cross-chain protocol Stargate Finance has raised over $ 1.9 billion in TVL in less than a week after its launch.
The platform’s rapidly growing TVL is most likely the result of an upper limit of 26% on the APY offered to cultivate stablecoin deposits. Stargate Finance boasts a protocol that allows users to trade native assets across different chains. Users can also bet their assets on the pool to receive Stargate Token (STG) rewards.
Sam Trabucco, CEO of Alameda Research, announced that the company has greatly supported the project and snapped up all available Stargate tokens that were auctioned at the launch of Stargate on March 17.
African crypto users increased by 2,500% in 2021: Report
Cryptographic Exchange According to a report from KuCoin, the use of cryptography in Africa surged by a huge 2,500% in 2021.
The report cited interesting data such as “more than 88.5% of cryptocurrency transactions made by Africans” are cross-border transfers. He claimed that low rates mean “users pay less than 0.01% of the total amount of transactions transferred in cryptocurrencies”.
“The adoption of digital assets in Africa will continue to grow exponentially,” KuCoin CEO Johnny Lyu told Cointelegraph. “African countries have the highest cryptocurrency adoption rates in the world, including the United States and others. Better than the largest regions. States, Europe, Asia. “
Winners and losers
Weekend Bitcoin (BTC) is $ 44,118, Ethereum (ETH) is $ 3,136 and XRP is $ 0.83.Market capitalization $ 2 trillionAccording to CoinMarketCap.
Among the largest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin winners of the week are Ethereum Classic (etc) 79.59%, loop ring (LRC) 57.71% and Bitcoin Gold (BTG) At 53.40%.
The top three altcoin losers this week are ApeCoin (Apes) 8.09%, UNUS SED LEO (Leo) 2.85% and manufacturer (MKR) At 2.02%.
Be sure to read Cointelegraph’s market analysis for more information on crypto prices.
The most memorable quote
“In my dreams, I never thought the US government would be afraid of what we were doing here.”
President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele
“Avoiding fraud should always come from a common history with the requester, that is, requesting a common reference to determine if they are who they say they are (yesterday, this kind). The question was the one I first asked this scammer, and the response almost confirmed he wasn’t John.) ”
Felix Crisan, longtime bitcoiner
“Remember when you predicted thousands of assets and DApps in Cardano? I was wrong. Currently, millions of native assets are being published and there are hundreds of DApps. . # Slowly and steadily. ”
Charles Hoskinson, co-founder of Cardano
“We will continue to see us adopting that approach to guide our enterprises to Web3. Much of this is driven by” How to accelerate Web3 adoption. ” It has been. One of the big risks we see is that if people don’t move into space fast enough, they can inadvertently create another kind of elite. ”
Yat Siu, co-founder and chairman of Animoca Brands
“By comparison, we’ve seen statistics on the number of women who are part of cryptocurrencies, which reflects the inequality seen in other financial markets. […] Cryptocurrencies began with the goal of being accessible to everyone and breaking down barriers to entry. ”
Naomi Osaka, professional tennis star
“Let’s see how cars, mobile phones and appliances have become popular on the continent. Africa is a continent where ultra-fast progress and adoption are common.”
Noorou, founder of Bitcoin Senegal
“If you want to be a pioneer in the virtual frontier of innovation, Australia is open to business. As Minister of Digital Economy and Minister of Financial Services, I am helping you.”
Jane Hume, Senator of Australia
“We cannot raise funds for business opportunities, abandon that business, or abandon the money provided by investors. Our team at the IRS-CI and our HSI partners here are this. We are closely tracking cryptocurrency transactions to uncover such suspicious schemes. ”
Thomas Fatrusso, Special Agent for IRS Criminal Investigation
This week’s forecast
The eyes of the internet computer move 50% when the ICP enters the “fall wedge” breakout area
With the recent surge in Internet computer (ICP) prices, Cointelegraph’s Yashu Gola read the charts and outlined a bullish scenario in which ICP will reach the $ 27 region by next month. The price on Tuesday was around $ 17.75, so this move shows a significant increase of 50%.
Gora pointed out a “convincing downward wedge breakout” backed by rising trading volumes and continued price increases.
“In the” perfect “scenario, when you break out of the descending wedge pattern (upward), you will see a price increase as much as the maximum distance between the trend lines above and below the wedge. This could bring ICP to over $ 27 (almost 50%) by April, “Gola said.
This week’s FUD
Thai SEC bans cryptocurrency payments and requires exchanges to disclose system failures
Thai SEC bans cryptocurrency payments and requires exchanges to disclose system failuresThe Securities and Exchange Commission of Thailand banned crypto payments after discussing its implications with the Bank of Thailand (BOT) through joint research. Some of the risks highlighted by the SEC include many common criticisms of cryptography, including price fluctuations, cyber theft, money laundering, and personal data breaches.
Companies found to violate the new cryptography are subject to legal action, including temporary suspension or cancellation of service.
“”[Crypto payments] It can affect the stability of the financial system and the overall economic system, including risks to people and businesses, “concluded a joint study conducted by BOT and SEC.
LiFinance protocol loses $ 600,000 on the latest DeFi exploit
The Li Finance Swap Aggregator Protocol is a victim of smart contract exploits, losing $ 600,000 worth of tokens such as USD Coin (USDC), Polygon (MATIC), Rocket Pool (RPL) and Gnosis (GNO). .. Please list some.
Early in the morning of March 20, hackers were able to extract different amounts of 10 different tokens from a wallet that gave the LiFinance protocol “infinite approval”. The team learned about a spectacular hack after 12 hours and shut down all swapping features on the platform to prevent further losses.
According to the team, the attackers exchanged the stolen tokens for a total of about $ 600,000 worth about 205 Ethereum (ETH).
Founder of DeFiance Capital loses $ 1.6 million in hot wallet hack
The founder of DeFiance Capital, a crypto investment company known as “Arthur_0x”, lost a whopping $ 1.6 million worth of NFTs and cryptos in a hot wallet hack.
After asking the community to help blacklist the hacker’s wallet, many also jumped in to help recover some of the stolen assets. Proponents of NFTs using the pseudonym “Cirrus” even bought two stolen Azuki NFTs and even costly returned them to their founders.
Cirrus told Cointelegraph on Tuesday, “Instead of knowing they were hacked and selling for profit like other people, [Arthur_0x’s NFTs], I decided to spend money to sell them back to him to help him. “
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