DefiLlama Puts Internal Rift to Rest
Earlier this week, one of the pseudonymous founders of DefiLlama, 0xngmi, forked the DeFi platform, accusing another founder, 0xLlam4, of launching a token without the team’s approval. Later, the DefiLlama team apologized for confusing its users and clarified that there is no llama themed token in the making.
Microsoft’s New Wallet?
Microsoft is reportedly running an internal beta test of a native crypto wallet within the Edge browser. The wallet seemingly aims to make Ethereum based fungible tokens and NFTs more user friendly with inbuilt security features.
Florida Governor Wants to Ban CDBC
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has proposed legislation that would ban CBDCs from being used in the state. He claims that CBDCs could lead to financial surveillance and pave the way for government overreach. The law would prohibit any CBDC introduced by the US Federal Reserve or foreign governments. He intends to outlaw the technology from being used as a form of money within the state.
ARB Airdrop
Arbitrum’s highly anticipated token airdrop saw over 42 million arb tokens claimed within the first hour, with 23,000 individual wallets claiming the tokens. Despite the server crash and high demand, the ARB token made its market debut at $3.99 on Uniswap with a total supply of 10 billion.
SEC Vs Crypto
The US SEC issued a Wells notice to Coinbase, indicating that the regulator is considering formal charges against the firm’s staking service, Coinbase Earn, and Coinbase Wallet. Meanwhile, it has charged Tron founder Justin Sun over the unregistered offer and sale of two “crypto asset securities.” It has accused him of wash trading as well.
FTX
Defunct crypto exchange FTX has filed a lawsuit against the liquidators of its Bahamas entity. FTX alleges that FTX Digital Markets is defrauding the customers and wrongly claiming to own the exchange. Meanwhile, emails obtained by the watchdog group Protect the Public’s Trust show that FTX sought to build a relationship with the FDIC. It had also arranged a meeting between the two in a bid to curry favor with the regulator prior to FTX’s collapse.
Do Kwon Arrested
Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon has been arrested and charged with forgery in Montenegro. He is due in court for extradition proceedings, following the collapse of the stablecoin Terra USD. Federal prosecutors in New York also charged Kwon with fraud on Thursday, hours after his arrest.
JP Morgan Blockchain Pilot
JP Morgan has gained approval for a pilot program to act as an international settlement bank in India’s international financial center, GIFT City. Through blockchain based bank accounts, JP Morgan will enable 24/7 settlement for foreign currency accounts with other GIFT City banks. The payments will be processed using a distributed ledger within JP Morgan’s ecosystem.
Bitcoin Defies Broader Market Turmoil
The premier cryptocurrency, bitcoin, seems to be holding up well against the general market sentiment. Bitcoin catapulted past $28,000 for the first time since June and gained an impressive 37.8% over last week. At the time of writing, bitcoin was cruising at $27,523.94.
Carbon Marketplace
AirCarbon Exchange (ACX) and StoneX Group will partner on a US carbon marketplace, which will be added to the StoneX Platform. The collaboration is promising as it could add corporates using StoneX for commodities trading as potential customers for the platform. ACX would bring voluntary carbon credits and scores of blockchain based tokenized carbon assets to the marketplace.
Ark Sells and Buys Coinbase Shares
Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest sold 160,887 Coinbase shares worth over $13.5 million from its Ark Fintech Innovation ETF earlier this week. However, two days later, Ark Innovation ETF added 230,599 Coinbase shares, while Ark Next Generation Internet ETF added 38,329 shares, totaling $17.8 million.
Web3 Shorts
Sotheby’s ‘Oddly Satisfying’ NFT auction was lackluster, as 60% of the NFTs sold below estimates, while the top work, Anyma’s “Eternity,” was sold for a paltry $54,600.
Defunct Swerve Finance is still in the middle of a governance attack that started last week, where an exploiter is attempting to steal $1.3 million in stablecoins. A blockchain researcher claims to have uncovered the identity of the attacker.
Bitcoin ATM maker General Bytes shut down its cloud service after a hacker uncovered a security vulnerability that allowed them to read and decrypt API keys.
MetaMask has teamed up with MoonPay in Nigeria to enable Nigerians to buy crypto tokens directly from their MetaMask wallets.
MetaMask has introduced support for EIP-4361, enabling users to use their Ethereum wallet for third party authentication.
Web3 Investments
Turkish crypto startup Metatime raised $11 million in seed funding from investment firm Yildiz Tekno GSYO and multiple other angel investors to fuel its grand vision to build an exchange, wallet, blockchain, NFT marketplace, and a stablecoin.
Crypto trading firm Crossover Markets secured $6.35 million in a seed funding round from investors such as Two Sigma and Flow Traders, which will be deployed to launch the CrossX trading platform.
Web3 investor Animoca Brands and crypto custodian Hex Trust jointly launched Gryfn, a wallet startup, which raised $7.5 million from investors, including Liberty City Ventures, Lavender Hill Capital Partners, and Animoca Ventures.
Web3 social platform OP3N raised $28 million in a Series A round led by Animoca Brands, which brought its valuation to $100 million.
AMM Auros secured $17 million from investors, including Vivienne Court and Bit Digital, to overcome the difficulties faced after the FTX collapse.
Video game developer CCP Games raised $40 million in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz to expand its R&D team working on building blockchain based multiplayer online games.
Carbonable, a web3 startup tracking carbon credits on the Ethereum blockchain, raised $1.2 million in a seed round led by Ethereal Ventures and La Poste Ventures.
Crypto exchange Bitget additionally invested $30 million in crypto wallet BitKeep at a valuation of $300 million and thereby acquired a controlling stake.
Immersion cooling tech firm LiquidStack secured an undisclosed amount in a Series B funding round from Trane Technologies and will deploy the money to scale up manufacturing.
Layer 1 blockchain Radix reached a valuation of $400 million in a new $10 million token round backed by DWF Labs.
Digital assets hedge fund BH Digital raised $9 million from three investors for its Nova Digital Opportunities fund.
Particle Network raised $7 million in a seed funding round from investors, including ABCDE, Animoca, and Longhash Ventures, to build a middleware platform for web3.
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