Heads up folks. I will be taking the next couple of weeks off to recharge. Hence, this one is the last newsletter of the year. When I come back next year, there will be more and better articles and newsletters. Happy Holidays and a very happy and peaceful New Year to all!!
FTX’s new leadership is seeking permission from a federal bankruptcy judge to sell off parts of the company that it claims to be solvent. FTX filed a motion to auction crypto derivatives platform LedgerX, stock trading service Embed, FTX Japan, and FTX Europe.
The US subsidiary of crypto exchange Binance has added a new feature to its mobile app called Pay. Pay allows users to send, request, and receive crypto instantly, with zero fees. Close to 150 cryptocurrencies are currently supported, including bitcoin and ether.
Mazars, the auditing firm working with Binance, Crypto.com, and KuCoin, among other crypto companies, announced a pause on its work on proof of reserve reports. Mazars said the decision was due to concerns regarding public misunderstanding of these reports.
Crypto exchange Coinbase launched a new asset recovery tool that helps users recover close to 4,000 unsupported ERC 20 tokens mistakenly sent to their Coinbase address. Coinbase will charge a fee for the service.
Cathie Wood’s Ark Investment Management has bought an additional 78,982 shares in Coinbase, adding another $3.2 million worth of Coinbase stock to its portfolio. With it, the ARK Innovation ETF holds 5.8 million Coinbase shares.
OpenZeppelin’s Metaverse Security
Web3 security firm OpenZeppelin launched its metaverse security service this week and signed up The Sandbox as its first client. The Sandbox will use OpenZeppelin’s security tools called the Defender to detect potential threats in real time. Furthermore, OpenZeppelin will audit the smart contracts for the metaverse project.
Revival of Hal Finney’s Twitter Account
This week, the Twitter account of one of the bitcoin pioneers, Hal Finney, was in the news. First, it was at the risk of getting purged as a part of Twitter’s decision to delete 1.5 billion inactive accounts. Then, mysteriously, some activity was detected on his Twitter page, which added suspicions about it being compromised. It, however, became clear that it was his wife, Fran Finney, who was tweeting, in an attempt to prevent the account from getting deleted.
Trump’s NFTs
Former president of the US, Donald Trump, announced a new NFT series on his Truth Social account. Each card’s initial mint price was “only $99,” as per the collection’s website. The 45,000 NFTs were sold out in a matter of hours and had racked up over 648 ether or about $785,000 in trading volume.
Raydium Exploited
The decentralized exchange built on Solana, Raydium, suffered an exploit with the hacker transferring more than $2 million from Solana to the Ethereum network. Raydium stated that the attacker took control of the admin wallet to perpetrate this exploit.
Bitcoin Group to Buy German Bank
Crypto investment company Bitcoin Group SE is acquiring Bankhaus von der Heydt, the German bank established in 1754, for 14 million euros and 150,000 shares. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of 2023, subject to approval from the German regulator, BaFin.
MetaMask and PayPal Join Hands
Crypto wallet provider MetaMask and payments giant PayPal are collaborating to offer an ether onramp. Users can log into their PayPal account using MetaMask and buy ether, which is then sent back to the web3 wallet.
Credit Suisse, Pictet, and Vontobel tested issuing tokenized investment products on the Ethereum testnet and settled the transactions with fiat by trading them on the BX Swiss securities exchange.
Nillion, a decentralized data transfer and storage platform that does not use blockchain, has secured $20 million in seed funding in a round led by Distributed Global.
B.Riley Financial is providing a lifeline to the struggling bitcoin mining firm Core Scientific by offering a $72 million package to extend its runway by over two years.
Web3, 2, 1...Tech 