crypto recap 2/19 - 2/25
crypto recap 2/19 - 2/25
news, notes, charts, tweets and funding to recap the week in the crypto ecosystem
as always thanks for reading and you can follow me here
tl;dr: another week of volatile, ranging markets as the macro environment continues to be uncertain and speculation surrounding a rate hike at the upcoming FOMC meeting increases. currently a difficult time where covering a permissionless, global, 24/7 financial system can seem inconsequential, but this week is a rare occasion. my thoughts, along with the contributors to Page One and the 20k+ in The One discord, are with our friends in Ukraine and Eastern Europe.
news & funding:
Amber Group, liquidity and market making firm, raises $200M, valuation @ $3B
Helium ($HNT) raises $200M @ $1.2B valuation to continue building decentralized telecommunications and scale into 5G coverage
$LUNA foundation closes $1B private token sale to establish $1B BTC reserve backing decentralized stablecoin $UST — led by Jump & Three Arrows
FTX launches blockchain gaming and fashion/luxury brand partnership units — gaming unit is “crypto-as-a-service” platform for easy launch of tokens/NFTs
ZK ETH scaling solution StarkNet completes launch, to launch token “in the second half of the year”
Opera Android browser integrates StarkWare powered DEX DeversiFi, allowing users to transact directly with ETH L2
Vesta Equity launches NFT marketplace for fractionalized NFT equity of homes on….Algorand (???)
Warner Music Group partners with blockchain gaming developer Splinterlands giving artists signed to WMG the ability to use tokenization and NFTs
ConsenSys alum raises $34M for web3 infrastructure (cloud services, staking) startup Aligned
Zebec raises $15M to continue scaling programmable money on Solana (Superfluid has raised funding in the past for same concept on ETH)
InfStones, blockchain infrastructure provider, raises $33M — customers include Binance, Dune Analytics, Polygon, Circle, Compound, others
Skale, ETH native multi-chain network, announces $100M ecosystem fund
Developer community behind Kucoin Exchange announces $50M accelerator program to grow network
Celsius Network, lending platform, partners with Maple Finance to commit $30M in wrapped ETH to their liquidity pools
Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten to launch NFT marketplace
Jambo, African Web3 super app (banking, ride-hailing, food delivery, etc.), raises $7.5M from Delphi, Coinbase, Three Arrows, others
Bulgarian Stock Exchange enables crypto trading on its platform
1Password adds credential storage integration for Phantom wallets
Laura Shin releases Cryptopians book and new information regarding the infamous DAO hack of 2016 that resulted in ETH fork ETC
Coinbase reports ~$2.4B in 2021 Q4 revenue, CashApp generates ~$2B of BTC revenue in Q4 2021, CoinShares reports highest quarterly earnings
Sling TV to accept crypto payments through BitPay for monthly subscriptions
thoughts & notes:
as noted in weeks prior, the sleeping giant ZK tech is beginning its rollout to scale ETH. StarkNet released a new alpha version of their product and announced partnerships with Aave, Opera Browser, DeversiFi, and Argent. They’ve also committed to “decentralizing to the community in the second half of the year” (token) which will apply pressure to Arbitrum, Optimism, and other ZK solutions to launch tokens in the coming months.
Jambo raise and wallets as super apps — I’ve previously written about this topic here, and I think this funding, along with the angel investors behind it, highlights the push for redefining what a wallet can be. The tech is improving and the theoretical limits to what a wallet can be are advancing. Ultimately, years from now, we’ll ideally have privacy enabled wallets/profiles that can operate similarly to WhatsApp (banking services, food delivery, social and messaging, yield generation, consistent log-in etc. all natively within one wallet)
a weekly recurring theme of investment in blockchain infrastructure, specifically highlighting decentralized cloud services and liquid staking solutions this week by Aligned and InfStones
NFT highlights (s/o Terv for the assist):
imagine not loving (and buying) the never-ending variety of traits they provide. in all seriousness, Tubby Cats completed their launch this week and seem to have overcome distribution issues after a single botter bribed miners 500k to mint 950 of the remaining 5k supply in a single transaction that were available for public mint.
20k supply, 0.7 ETH floor, 0.1 ETH mint price
propelled by an insane Twitter following and an even more insane 1/1 Golden Friend auction that sold for the low price of 469.69 ETH (~$1.2M)
possibly the most hyped NFT drop ever (while raffling some WL spots to people who purchased merch ~before the drop~) released on Wednesday and the collection currently sits at an astonishing 8.5 ETH floor while holders wait for reveal
5k supply, 8.5 ETH floor, 0.25 ETH mint price
Other Notable Mints (one of the most anticipated mint weeks ever)
10k supply, 2.4 ETH floor, 0.75 Dutch Auction price
10k supply, 0.4 ETH floor, 0.18 ETH mint price
5k genesis supply, with 10k more soon, 0.69 ETH floor, 0.25 mint
9.6k supply, 0.68 ETH floor, 0.11 ETH mint price
Notable Sales
0xb1 mints his second Mega Mutant Ape for ~$3.65M
104 CryptoPunks Sothebys lot auction pulled at the last minute
BAYC 1837 was purchased for 569 ETH (~$1.5m)
BAYC 4580 was purchased for 666 WETH (~$1.8M)
around the ecosystem:
Elena with a good thread on web3 media and current/future use cases
Bobby with a invaluable google doc of 2022/23 token unlocks
Knower’s article on the past of DeFi and what DeFi 3.0 might mean
gigabrain Tarun with great research on the mechanisms behind OHM
Galois Capital with a must read on every aspect of the crypto markets
Erik Voorhees building on the previous meta interpretations with a thread on the Cosmos ecosystem
tweets of the week:
current meta interpretation (s/o cobie):
L2 szn and ZK tech are rapidly advancing and positioning yourself to benefit from the release of their tokens in the coming months is forming
music NFTs — it’s becoming difficult to be insulated in NFTs and Web3 and not hear about the building momentum of music NFTs. It’s difficult to find the best positioning to benefit currently (if they take off at all) but Kyle Samani has a great overview of how we got here and potentially where we’re going