The biggest crypto news and ideas of the day Mar. 28, 2022 Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here. Supported by |
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Today’s must-reads Top Shelf |
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COINBASE EMPIRE: Coinbase is in talks to acquire 2TM, owner of Mercado Bitcoin, Brazil’s largest crypto exchange. Local publication Estadão first reported the planned acquisition could be finalized in April. Mercado Bitcoin had 3.2 million customers in 2021, of which 1.1 million were added last year. 2TM CEO Roberto Dagnoni told CoinDesk the exchange plans to expand in Latin America through acquisitions in Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Mexico. Elsewhere in the Coinbase empire, the cryptocurrency exchange will soon require customers in Canada, Japan and Singapore to reveal more personally identifying information when interacting with another financial institution or exchange. Beginning April, customers will need to provide the name, address and, in Japan’s case, the destination wallet of the recipient when sending crypto. AND THE FED: Kraken Bank is inching closer to gaining a Federal Reserve Master Account, which would allow it to deposit funds with the U.S. central bank and access the global payments system. Kraken Bank, the Wyoming subsidiary of the Kraken crypto exchange, was recently granted a routing number by the American Bankers Association (ABA), a crucial first step towards gaining Federal Reserve access. Crypto companies have historically found it difficult to access banking services. While this is an optimistic move forward, the news does not necessarily mean that Kraken will ultimately receive a master account. HYPERGROWTH MODE? NFTs could soon be flooding Instagram feeds and that easy access could lower the barrier for entry into the non-fungible token market, according to Germany-based financial services firm Deutsche Bank in a research report. The NFT market is currently in “hypergrowth mode,” the report said, and Meta’s (FB) potential crypto play could “supercharge” the overall market. The report follows Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s comments at the SXSW festival, where he hinted the picture and video sharing platform was “working on bringing NFTs to Instagram in the near term.” Speaking of “hypergrowth,” Google filed to trademark “Non-Fungible Planet,” thought to be related to climate activism. Meanwhile, Canadian musician Grimes has announced the launch of an “intergalactic children’s metaverse book.” The project is part of a $100 million initiative from OP3N and the Avalanche Foundation geared towards supporting the development of projects related to art, entertainment and culture that will live on the Avalanche blockchain. In Europe, Ukraine is launching an NFT museum to raise funds and to digitally preserve the previous weeks of turmoil in the war against Russia. Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation is leading the launch of the MetaHistory NFT Museum that will showcase digital art and written NFTs, some of which will drop (or go on auction) as soon as Tuesday. CRYPTO WARNINGS: Sudan’s central bank is the latest to warn citizens against dabbling in crypto, citing “high” risks including fraud, electronic piracy and potential monetary losses. The news comes amid a deepening economic crisis in the country and rising crypto adoption. Meanwhile, financial regulators in the U.K. – no strangers to issuing public warnings against crypto – are set to reveal plans for regulating the crypto industry sometime in the coming weeks. Details have yet to be set in stone, but the regulatory regime is likely to home in on stablecoins. Finally, the White House’s science and technology (OSTP) team is looking for public commentary on crypto’s impact on energy use and the climate (Deadline: May 9). TIGHTENING SANCTIONS: Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is expected to submit plans aimed at blocking Russia from circumventing Western sanctions via crypto. A finance ministry official told Reuters the country could make revisions to its foreign exchange law, which was used earlier this month to prevent nearly 30 crypto exchanges from transacting with sanction targets. SPENDING ON THE SQUARE: SK Square, the investment arm of South Korean conglomerate SK Group, is planning to spend 2 trillion won (IUS$1.6 billion) over the next three years on semiconductors and blockchain. It’s unknown where the conglomerate will target its investments, though in November it acquired a 35% stake in crypto exchange Korbit. It also plans to launch its own token by the end of this year. CEO of SK Square Park Jung-ho told The Korean Herald Monday that “this will make the first year when SK Square creates new shareholder value by investing in chips and blockchain.” –Fran Velasquez |
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Overhead on CoinDesk TV... Sound Bites |
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"Russians will have no other choice but to completely block all international [IP addresses] from entering the Russian internet." –Hacken co-founder Dyma Budorin, discussing Russia's "splinternet," on CoinDesk TV's "First Mover." |
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What others are writing... Off-Chain Signals |
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A $350,000 Bored Ape NFT was just sold for only $115 (The Block) Crypto taxes are hard on buyers but great for startups (Protocol) An annotated reading of Kevin Roose’s crypto opus in the New York Times, by foremost industry critics (Molly White/blog) UAE crypto push sees Bybit, Crypto.com announce Dubai offices (Reuters) Russian government official calls to legalize mining ‘as soon as possible’ (Cointelegraph) |
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Putting the news into perspective The Takeaway |
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The Clumsy Theatrics of Metaverse Fashion Week The metaverse comes for every industry eventually, but fashion is more ready for it than most.
That’s because the logic of the non-fungible token (NFT) market is already informed by the logic of the fashion market. You can see it most clearly in streetwear: Before NFT drops, there were sneaker drops – limited edition releases positioned more as collector’s items than everyday apparel. Even more so than with a rare run of vinyl LPs, or a set of original prints from a visual artist, you’re supposed to flip those grails, those Jordans, those Red Octobers. The secondary markets are the point.
So it should hardly come as a surprise that dozens of high-profile fashion brands piled into something called “Metaverse Fashion Week” – essentially an online-only convention for clothing companies and crypto devotees – as an excuse to peddle digital collectibles.
Over a period of four days (don’t let the word “week” fool you), Metaverse Fashion Week played host to a series of virtual catwalks, cocktail parties, gallery openings and DJ sets; Perry Ellis, Dolce & Gabbana, Phillipp Plein and Tommy Hilfiger were among the featured designers, all of which were promoting their own digital fashion lines.
It all happened on a metaverse platform called Decentraland, which is like a buggier version of the online social space Second Life; on a tech level, it’s reminiscent of early 2000s Runescape, the fantasy role-playing game – a clunky take on an embodied chatroom.
Decentraland also comes with its own token, MANA, which players can use to purchase in-game outfits for their avatars in the form of NFTs or plots of digital land. If you want to interact at all with the platform’s native economy, you’ll need to shell out real dollars for these tokens (or earn them on the platform).
The market capitalization of MANA is now over $4 billion, despite the fact that Decentraland can only host 2,500 users at a time, per the tech blog New World Notes.
There were just around 1,000 people online when I logged in this weekend, split across servers (Decentraland calls them “realms”). As with massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) like World of Warcraft, different servers host identical copies of the game, with different sets of players. It’s a way of reducing stress on the network; if you want to meet up with your friends in the virtual world, you’ll all need to be on the same server.
At a “Metaverse Cocktail Hour for Fashionistxs,” hosted by Cash Labs, it was abundantly clear who had MANA and who didn’t. My avatar was dressed plainly, with a default hairstyle and a default black turtleneck. Users with fancier gear – massive sets of wings, bear costumes, swarms of digital butterflies – stole the spotlight. Read the full article here. –Will Gottsegen |
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What Does a Successful Blockchain Look Like? Hint: Volume Isn’t Everything* How do you know that today’s most successful NFT blockchain will still be on top three months from now? You don’t – and part of that uncertainty has to do with how “successful” is defined. In the infancy of the non-fungible token (NFT) space, maybe it was appropriate to obsess over sales volume. While that provides a snapshot of how blockchains rank at a moment in time in terms of a single metric, sales volume can no longer be considered the only indicator of current performance. Nor can it be relied on as an indicator of future performance. Real-world consequences exist for ignoring other metrics. *This is sponsored content from Wax. |
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