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crypto recap 2/7 - 2/11

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Crypto Recaps

crypto recap 2/7 - 2/11

news, notes, charts, tweets and funding to recap the week in the crypto ecosystem

tolks
Feb 11, 2022
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crypto recap 2/7 - 2/11

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tl;dr: markets have bounced nicely, currently inversely correlated to NFT floor prices and liquidity which have been methodically declining this week. most everything was overshadowed by the can’t-make-up couple that was found to be in possession of $3.6 billion of stolen $BTC from Bitfinex in 2016 (~$76M @ the time).

news & funding:

  • Polygon ($MATIC) raises $450M to expand ETH scaling solution operations

  • Qredo Network ($QRDO, cross-chain crypto infrastructure) raises $80M from 10T Holdings, Terra, Avalanche, Coinbase, others. valuation @ $460M

  • KPMG (one of the Big Four accounting organizations globally) adds ETH & BTC positions to its corporate treasury

  • Salesforce to provide cloud infrastructure for NFT creation and distribution

  • AssangeDAO raises ~$54M in ETH to buy NFT supporting Julian Assange’s defense fund and awareness campaigns

  • Compute North, crypto mining infrastructure company, raises $385M

  • Alfa Romeo to debut Tonale SUV that comes with verifiable service and ownership history through the use of NFTs

  • Canadian crypto exchange Newton Crypto raises $20M @ $200M valuation

  • U.S. government seizes $3.6B of BTC moved from the 2016 hack of Bitfinex, chaos regarding the identities of the couple in possession ensues

    • No idea what to link here as crypto twitter was in absolute peak form when the news broke and you should read every possible thing about it

  • The Sandbox partners with Ubisoft to bring Rabbids to the Metaverse

  • Alchemy (crypto infrastructure) raises $200M, increasing valuation to $10.2B

  • Aleo (zk base layer, modular blockchain) raises $200M @ $1.45B valuation, to launch mainnet later this year

  • Washington Nationals (MLB team) partner with Terra ($LUNA), to accept $UST stablecoin in stadium as soon as next season

  • Gala Games ($GALA, blockchain gaming studio) confirms plans to allocate $5B by EOY to gaming, music, movie, theme park NFT operations

  • Zynga (gaming giant) plans to increase blockchain staff from 15 to 70 by EOY, launch NFT based games, and increase M&A within the gamefi ecosystem

  • Polkadot parachain Astar Network launches $100M funding/incentive program

  • Binance makes $200M strategic investment in Forbes

  • OnlyFans to support ETH NFTs as verifiable profile pictures

  • Microsoft hiring for a Director of crypto business development, to lay foundation and support their Web3 strategy

  • Russia pivots, to pass legislation that recognizes crypto as form of currency

  • BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, to offer crypto trading services

  • Sotheby’s to auction group of 104 CryptoPunks on February 23rd, expected sale price between $20M-$30M

  • Valkyrie’s BTC miners ETF approved for trading by Nasdaq

thoughts & notes:

  • ZK tech/rollups continue quiet expansion and development

    • Aleo funding round continues to highlight the excitement/future of zkTech on the crypto industry

    • Polygon raise and previous investment/acquisition of ZK scaling companies/protocols also signifies the increased focus as investors were willing to deploy $450 to Polygon’s long term ambitions

  • NFTs rule everything around me

    • even as every possible NFT metric has declined this week, NFTs are still the easiest on boarding application to “normies” and the first crypto native application legacy companies choose to engage with as evidenced weekly (this week by Ubisoft, OnlyFans, Zynga, Alfa Romeo).

    • also continues to be the case evidenced by every possible company & investor looking for exposure to the underlying infrastructure that supports NFT creation, lending, borrowing, liquidity, etc. highlighted by Salesforce announcement this week of ambitions to build NFT Cloud

  • Protocol funding rounds are drastically shifting to previous tech VCs

    • impossible to turn down funding from established, prominent VCs and was always going to eventually be the case but highlighted this week

    • Polygon raised $450 million through a token sale and the link to their announcement mentions established VC giants Sequoia, SoftBank, Tiger Global, Alan Howard and Kevin O’Leary before mentioning the crypto native participants in the next paragraph that were also involved

    • Aleo’s raise of $200M was again primarily funded by SoftBank, Samsung, Tiger Global, and the omnipresent a16z

    • face value positives are that it increases the validity and velocity of investment into the space and branches the legitimacy of the crypto to every VC and fund on the planet

  • AssangeDAO, echoing ConstitutionDAO, show new capital raise paradigm

    • for as controversial as ConstitutionDAO was, there was an equal amount of articles/thoughts highlighting the ability of crypto rails to form new global, permissionless funding vehicles used for anything

    • AssangeDAO reiterates this ethos. the use of capital within the DAO, results, and actual impact made are somewhat irrelevant imo as the core concept of permissionless capital aggregation in a time sensitive, coordinated manner should be the focus

    • we’ll continue to see experimentation with these forms of capital formation whether it’s to form a collection to deploy money and buy rare NFTs, pay for legal fees, acquire other companies, start a global, decentralized investment firm, etc. etc.

interpretation of weekly meta narrative forming (s/o Cobie):

  • Cosmos ($ATOM) ecosystem still, launch of Evmos (EVM of Cosmos) soon

    • driving the meta: IBC composability and the security and trust assumptions user sacrifice when using cross chain bridges, recently highlighted by the Wormhole hack

    • $OSMO/$JUNO and the launch of Evmos with Cosmos routinely airdropping new protocol tokens to holders drives incentives

  • GameFi 2.0

    • driving the meta: $AVAX subnets launching and the price appreciation of $DCAU/$JEWEL/$CRA launching there, GameStop’s recent partnership and fund with $IMX, Solana ecosystem games $AURY and Portals feeding anticipation of gamefi finding a boost

    • we also see Ubisoft and Zynga games announce a combination of funding and blockchain game development this week, as it’s only a matter of time until the NFT backlash subsides and every major game publisher eventually enters the space

NFT weekly highlights (s/o @terv0 for the research):

  • Cool Pets

    • the next phase after the wildly successful Cool Pets launch finally launched after multiple DNS and bot attack issues throughout the week. spoiler: bots were still able to attack the public sale, but holders are looking forward to the Pokemon style game launch and $MILK token

    • 20K supply, 0.5ETH mint, current floor: ~2.3ETH

  • Lives of Asuna

    • the much anticipated reveal occurred on Monday to holders disappointment as the floor price dropped ~90% from ~3.5ETH at their high point pre reveal. customizable attributes and tailored music are on their way for current holders as they recover from the precipitous drop

    • 10K supply, 0.08ETH mint, current floor: 0.38ETH

  • Karafu

    • a rare hyped project that lives up to the expectations. reveal for the Karafus occurred yesterday and was promptly followed by heavy volume, floor price increases, and ETH sales of 66 and 100 for legendary traits

    • 5.5K supply, 0.2ETH mint, current floor ~5ETH

  • Pixelmon

    • hyped as Pokemon/Minecraft combination, launched as DA (dutch auction) mint starting @ 3ETH, sold out instantly raising $70M, game launch slated for Q2 2023, buyers burned as hype went parabolic

    • 10K supply, 3ETH mint, current floor: ~1ETH

around the ecosystem:

  • andrewhong with a great guide to web3 data & analytics

  • Rob Sarrow with extensive, chain agnostic DAO tooling availability

  • Aave launches web3 social media protocol

  • Jason Choi with an excellent first post to a new personal blog

  • Superfluid (I wrote about last summer here) to launch token streaming to NFTS

  • Burnt Finance (zero fee, decentralized NFT platform on Solana) launches

  • Mars Protocol (lending and borrowing protocol on $LUNA) to launch 2/21/22

  • Starkswap (AMM built on StarkNet ZK-rollup) to launch soon

  • FTX now supports withdraws and deposits to Arbitrum mainnet

tweets of the week:

Twitter avatar for @mayazi
Maya Zehavi @mayazi
Something tells me law enforcement really digs crypto traceability
Image
Image
5:14 PM ∙ Feb 8, 2022
1,624Likes331Retweets
Twitter avatar for @Timccopeland
timcopeland.eth @Timccopeland
This is absolutely insane. Most important chart in crypto IMO.
Image
6:20 PM ∙ Feb 10, 2022
206Likes59Retweets
Twitter avatar for @RAC
rac.eth @RAC
ok so you hate NFTs. cool, let's talk about it. i'm not gonna convince you, but at least i can offer the perspective of an artist who has been involved in the space since 2017 before any of you heard about it.
9:03 PM ∙ Feb 6, 2022
14,082Likes3,783Retweets
Twitter avatar for @Blockworks_
Blockworks @Blockworks_
Companies hiring for crypto jobs: - NFL - Nike - Hulu - VISA - Meta - Apple - Nvidia - Disney - PayPal - Google - Fidelity - Amazon - Microsoft - JP Morgan - Mastercard - State Street - Goldman Sachs - Bank of America
6:10 PM ∙ Feb 10, 2022
9,789Likes2,640Retweets
Twitter avatar for @puttinyadown
RSN @puttinyadown
This is who stole 120k from the bitfinex hack
Twitter avatar for @fintechfrank
Frank Chaparro @fintechfrank
https://t.co/22Eo9x6U65
5:38 PM ∙ Feb 8, 2022
6,875Likes1,473Retweets
Twitter avatar for @BillAckman
Bill Ackman @BillAckman
@NYCMayor @GovKathyHochul lets fix this right away. We can’t lose any more New Yorkers. NY is on its way to becoming a crypto center of innovation. Let’s remove barriers, create opportunities for growth and innovation, and help our state and city!
Twitter avatar for @mdudas
Mike DAOdas (🏌️‍♂️, ⛳️) @mdudas
i run a crypto venture capital fund and cannot open an account with most major us crypto exchanges due to the fact i live in the state of new york the bitlicense is an absolute abomination and embarrassment to the great state of new york
11:20 PM ∙ Feb 9, 2022
1,721Likes247Retweets
Twitter avatar for @Cryptofung
Cryptofungus @Cryptofung
feds catching the bitfinex hacker
2:19 AM ∙ Feb 9, 2022
6,734Likes1,410Retweets
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crypto recap 2/7 - 2/11

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maximus
Feb 11, 2022

Glug glug glug

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