“Corey Frayer, who spent a decade working as a senior adviser to members of Congress before becoming a senior staffer on the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs under committee chairman Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), has been tapped for the role.

Gensler’s appointment of a crypto-focused senior adviser is in line with his stated focus on establishing a regulatory framework for crypto, as well as a signal that the SEC could step up its efforts to regulate the industry in 2022.

According to a source familiar with the Senate Banking Committee, Frayer spearheaded crypto policy for Brown – who has been outspoken about his concerns about the risks cryptocurrencies could pose to investors, calling blockchain a ‘shady diffuse network of online funny money.’“

See Also: SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce Says Washington Doesn’t Need a New Crypto Regulator
See Also: One Big Regulatory Question Holds Advisors Back From Crypto

---

“According to Rekt Capital, ‘BTC has turned the February, August and September resistance into new support this month.’ Lifchitz pointed to $52,000 as “the main hurdle.”

If BTC is able to reclaim ~$48500 as support by the end of the week then BTC could once again revisit ~$52000 resistance. Should that resistance get overthrown, the next upside stops are the $60,000 region then $70,000 ATH.

If bears manage to break below support at $46,000 and complete the large head and shoulder pattern forming on the BTC chart, Lifchitz suggested that ‘the next stop could be ultimately down to $30,000‘ but stated that ‘we’re still far from that and too obvious technical patterns tend to not complete as expected.'”

See Also: Bitcoin Investors Protect Against Even Lower Prices Ahead of New Year

---

“On Wednesday, two Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) parody projects gained momentum on crypto Twitter, igniting plagiarism accusations, several trading bans and a robust supply of ape-themed memes. The two collections – both named PHAYC, a play on “fake” and “BAYC” – appear to be identical copies of the original BAYC collection, but with each ape’s profile mirrored to the opposite side, or “left-facing”.

Both PHAYC projects sold out in several hours, but were subsequently banned on OpenSea for allegedly violating the platform’s intellectual-property policies. @phunkyApeYC is currently live on Mintable, while @phaycbot is available on Rarible.

I think the project is a satirical take on the current state of NFTs and members of the NFT community who might be taking the NFT market a little too seriously.

It is not uncommon for successful NFT projects to be imitated through what are essentially copy-and-paste jobs, but whether those projects have violated an unspoken “code of ethics” is still a point of contention in the NFT community.”

See Also: Gamers Rally Behind ‘More Than Gamers’ NFT Project and Its Metaverse Roadmap

---

“On Wednesday, Coinone announced that it would reject deposits from unverified private wallets starting Jan. 24, 2022, to reduce the risk of money laundering. All Korean exchanges, including Upbit, Bithumb, Korbit and 20 others, are expected to have implemented similar or identical measures as Coinone by or before March 25.

Globally, South Korea’s exchanges are the outliers in complying with the rule. As of now, there are no other major crypto spot exchanges that require users to verify their private wallets.”

---

“The Mexican government tweeted that it considers these new technologies and payment infrastructure of “utmost importance” to advance financial inclusion.

We don’t want to be absent from these technological advances.

Mexico joins Brazil and Peru as Latin American countries working on the development of CBDCs.”

“Jamestown, the owner of One Times Square, is recreating the 26-story tower at the heart of New York’s New Year’s Eve ball drop in Decentraland. The virtual One Times Square will span 170 parcels of Decentraland property and include the unveiling of the game’s first high-rise building.

The celebration, dubbed “MetaFest 2022,” will include non-fungible token (NFT) art galleries, rooftop VIP lounges and virtual music performances. Virtual billboards will tie the experience to the event’s meatspace counterpart via livestreams of New York City.

As the value of virtual real estate in popular metaverse games like Decentraland and The Sandbox continues to soar, involvement from real-world real estate developers like Jamestown could be a trend to watch.

The metaverse is an important part of the evolution of real estate and the built environment.”

---

“Real Vision CEO Raoul Pal believes the recent volatility in Bitcoin’s (BTC) price is due to institutions selling to help shore up their end-of-year profits.

It looks like they’re done because the market has been chopping around for the past week, which was the traditional last week of everybody squaring their books.

Considering that much of the selling in December has come from wallets that accumulated Bitcoin around the summer, according to Glassnode, and that institutional assets under management of cryptocurrency surged in May and October, according to CoinShares, the timing of the selling indeed points to institutions unloading some bags.

Pal expects 2022 to begin with a strong start for the crypto markets as the capital from institutions gets redeployed.”

See Also: Bitcoin dominance falls under 40%

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“South Korean crypto exchange Coinone has announced it plans to no longer allow withdrawals of tokens to unverified external wallets starting in January. In March, the South Korean government implemented a previously passed bill that requires local crypto exchanges to meet requirements for a real-name account and ISMS authentication.

According to Coinone, it planned to verify users’ names and resident registration numbers — issued to all residents of South Korea — to ensure crypto transactions were ‘not used for illegal activities such as money laundering.'”

See Also: Korean government tells Apple and Google stores to take down P2E games

“Aave today added a new market using real world assets (RWAs). The initiative is in partnership with Centrifuge, a crypto company that lets businesses tokenize aspects of their operations such as trade receivables and invoices. Once tokenized, these assets can then be used as collateral to borrow cash.

Not only does this initiative offer lenders more markets to earn interest on their holdings, but it will also provide the businesses behind each of these markets to access liquidity they may not have had access to traditionally. With today’s launch of RWAs on Aave, another seven permissioned markets have opened up.

The RWA Market is a much-needed building block not only for protocols such as Aave, but across DeFi as a whole. The RWA Market bridges the regulated world of TradFi to the trustless world of DeFi.

A similar arrangement is already live on Maker, the protocol that mints and manages the DAI stablecoin.”

---

“FTX said it was exploring forming relationships with banks in different regions to allow users to have “near-instant and near-free deposits and withdrawals” through stablecoins.

The exchange floated the idea of offering a $1 million prize for the first bank in each region to accept the tokens but hinted it would be open to giving more. FTX said it aimed for an audience including but not limited to U.S. banks in calling for an agreement on stablecoins, and would be open to speaking to credit unions.”

See Also: India’s Central Bank Recommends Basic Version of CBDC

---

“Bitcoin dropped by more than 6% to under $48,000 during the U.S. trading day on Tuesday, despite continued muted spot market activities.

A total of 129,800 option contracts worth more than $6 billion are set to expire on Friday. The max pain point for Friday’s option expiration is $48,000. Bitcoin tends to move toward the “max pain” point in the lead-up to an expiration and sees a solid directional move in days after settlement.”

See Also: Bitcoin Long-Term Holders Stay Strong Despite $20K Drop From Last Month’s High
See Also: Crypto Futures See $300M in Losses After Spot Market Drops

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“On Christmas, NFT traders awoke to an airdrop of SOS tokens – the governance token for the newly formed OpenDAO. The airdrop applied to any Ethereum address that purchased a non-fungible token (NFT) on the popular OpenSea marketplace – a potential pool of more than 850,000 addresses.

To be clear, OpenDAO has no relationship with OpenSea aside from targeting its user base with an airdrop.

According to a Dune Analytics, so far nearly 275,000 addresses have claimed the airdrop, with the median claim worth $125 at current prices. Despite the blazing-hot start for the project, however, multiple experts have cautioned that, due to exploit vulnerabilities and a hazy road map, SOS may already be on the downswing.

Shortly after the airdrop, multiple Ethereum developers raised red flags on social media concerning potential attack vectors in the project’s code – namely, the risk of a “rug” from the founding contributors. Fifty percent of the token supply is in the hands of three addresses controlled by the core team, and has no on-chain security guarantees – such as a time lock, vesting schedule or a multisignature wallet.

Hypothetically the team has the ability, at any time, to take these tokens and dump them on centralized and decentralized exchanges.“

---

“Bahrain has become the first Middle Eastern-North African country to give Binance approval in principle to establish itself as a crypto-asset service provider. The exchange also registered Binance Canada Capital Markets with FINTRAC, the country’s anti-money laundering (AML) and anti-terrorism financing regulator.

The developments are part of Binance’s plan to become a fully regulated centralized cryptocurrency exchange. During 2021, Binance drew the attention of regulators around the world for its operations, with many saying it’s not authorized to conduct business in their jurisdictions.”

---

“Luxury marketplace UNXD, which is built on the Polygon network, and Decentraland, a virtual reality platform built on the Ethereum blockchain, plan to offer a metaverse fashion week with catwalk shows, pop-up shops and afterparties in March.

The show will allow users to view fashion in a virtual environment and purchase outfits for their online avatars. Decentraland called for designers, brands and fashionistas to have their virtual collections ready to present in the metaverse.

In September, UNXD worked with Italian haute couture label Dolce & Gabbana to launch its NFT collection, Collezione Genesi, which fetched approximately $5.65 million in a sale.”

---

“Mexico’s third-richest person sent out a heart-warming New Year message to Bitcoin (BTC) enthusiasts on Christmas Eve. Ricardo Salinas Pliego recommended moving away from fiat money and buying Bitcoin in a two-minute festive video.

Steer clear of fiat money. Whether it’s the Dollar, the Euro, or the Yen –it’s all the same. It’s fake money made of paper lies. Central banks are producing more than ever.

Salinas aims to make Mexico’s second-largest retail bank, Banco Azteca, the first lender in the country to do business in BTC.”

See Also: Bitcoin Continues Its Low-Volume Rally Before Tapering Off

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“Public DeFi applications are absent on Cardano in December 2021, but that’s not deterring Hoskinson from visualizing widespread activity on the network in 2022. [😂]

My goal for the second half of 2022 is to figure out how to put all the pieces together to get an end-to-end microfinance transaction on Cardano.”

See Also: DeFi Traders Push Terra’s UST Stablecoin to $10B Market Cap

“The cryptocurrency and blockchain industry experienced explosive growth in 2021, particularly in its decentralized finance (DeFi) and nonfungible token (NFT) sectors. The year was also marked by continued price volatility, baffling behavior from China, a grand experiment in Central America, escalating institutional interest, and the rise of some faster smart-contract networks — all of which is reflected in this year’s list of industry “winners and losers.”

WINNERS

• Kazakhstan – When China effectively banned Bitcoin (BTC) mining operations in May 2021, Kazakhstan rushed in to fill the vacuum. By July 2021, Kazakhstan’s average monthly hash rate share stood at 18.1% — that is, it accounted for nearly a fifth of the world’s Bitcoin mining output, second only to the United States (42.7%), and a stunning increase from only 1.4% in September 2019.
• Coinbase – Coinbase Global became the first crypto company to list on a U.S. stock exchange when it debuted on April 14 on Nasdaq. Coinbase’s listing was widely viewed as another sign that crypto had gone mainstream, with more public offerings to come.
• Solana et al – A tide of new smart contract-enabled networks emerged on the scene in 2021. The largest and fastest-growing among them was Solana.
• El Salvador – El Salvador made history in 2021 — becoming the first country to declare Bitcoin (BTC) legal tender. Only time will tell whether all this amounts to a clear economic “win” for El Salvador’s people, but Bukele arguably, through buying the dips, brought some 21st-century innovation and luster to a poor Central American land whose economy is heavily dependent on remittances.
• Beeple / NFTs – When art house Christie’s put up for auction in February a digital collage — the first major auction house to offer a purely digital work with a unique NFT – the work “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” by Mike Winkelmann (aka Beeple) sold for $69.3 million, and the art industry may never be the same. Sales of NFTs skyrocketed through 2021, and in late November, “NFT” was declared “word of the year” by dictionary publisher Collins.
• FTX – By the end of 2021, FTX had become the second-largest crypto derivatives exchange, according to CoinGecko, trailing only Binance (Futures). Messari called FTX “the fastest-growing company of all time,” noting that Bankman-Fried had built a $25-billion enterprise in less than three years with fewer than 100 employees.
• OpenSea – OpenSea, a first mover in the NFT art sector and the leading marketplace, emerged as one of the year’s biggest winners. Through part of November, revenues exceeded $235 million YTD.
• ProShares ETF – A barrier of sorts was surmounted in mid-October with the launch of the first Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) sanctioned by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. The ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO) made a dramatic debut on the New York Stock Exchange as the second-most heavily traded opening-day fund on record, with some calling it “a watershed moment for the crypto industry.”

LOSERS

• China
• Meta (Diem)
• Central Bank of Nigeria
• Virgil Griffth
• Iron Finance (TITAN)“

---

Did anybody notice?

The stock-to-flow (S2F) of ETH has risen above BTC since EIP-1559 activated. It’s now 32.8% higher for ETH.

BTC supply/BTC issuance last 30 days
18906868/(6.25*6*24*30)
700.25

ETH supply/ETH issuance last 30 days
118830157/127806
929.76

— Erica Wall (@ercwl) December 21, 2021

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“Tech executives and engineers are quitting Google, Meta, Amazon and other large companies for what they say is a once-in-generation opportunity with crypto.

It’s the perfect storm. The momentum we’re seeing in this space is just incredible.

But beyond the speculative mania, a growing contingent of the tech industry’s best and brightest sees a transformational moment that comes along once every few decades and rewards those who spot the seismic shift before the rest of the world. With crypto, they see historical parallels to how the personal computer and the internet were once ridiculed, only to upend the status quo and mint a new generation of billionaires.

People are interested in working at crypto firms for more than just money. Some are drawn to the ethos of web3, which strives to decentralize power and decision making.

Back in 2017 or so, people were mostly in it for the investment opportunity. Now it’s people actually wanting to build stuff.

There is a giant sucking sound coming from crypto. It feels a bit like the 1990s and the birth of the internet all over again. It’s that early, that chaotic and that much full of opportunity.”

---

“Where Li sees correlations breaking down isn’t between macro assets and, say, bitcoin but between bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Between bitcoin and ether, the 90-day correlation coefficient is at a very high 0.80 even though ether trounced bitcoin’s returns in 2021, as did many others. Li holds that those correlations will fall as well as other smart-contract platforms see more adoption. And there’s one more contributing factor he sees: ‘In centralized and dexes [decentralized exchanges] we are seeing more volumes in the stablecoin pairs instead of the BTC or Ethereum pairs.’

Perhaps, then, 2022 will be the year altcoins become more uncorrelated with bitcoin which, in turn, is uncorrelated with macro assets. In that case, we could be seeing a world where traditional portfolio managers will have to give the alts a once-over at the bare minimum just to have a diversified portfolio.”

See Also: Crypto VCs Are Making a Big Bet on Gaming Guilds. Why?

---

“We (and others) believe that, in the near future, end-users will conduct the majority of their activity on L2. However, some applications need specific tailoring that may better be served by a new and separate layer: Enter L3!

L3 relates to L2 just as L2 relates to L1, where the compression benefit of L2 proofs is multiplied by the compression benefit of L3 proofs. In other words, if each layer achieves, for example, 1000X in cost reduction, L3 can reach 1,000,000X reduction over L1 — while still retaining the security of L1. Imagine, transactions for a fraction of one gas!

L3 promises hyper scalability, better control of the technology stack for various needs, and privacy, while maintaining the security guarantees provided by Ethereum (L1). The recursive concept it employs may be extended to additional layers for fractal layering solutions.”

---

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“The recently proposed tokenomic changes are going to turn Yearn into a black hole for its own tokens, massively rewarding token holders and governance participators through what looks to be an incredibly strong flywheel. Under a current governance proposal which we expect to pass, 4 tokenomics revision stages have been laid out.

Yearn has already begun to use protocol fees accrued to the treasury to purchase YFI tokens from the market. These tokens will be used to reward YFI stakers under an xYFI model, which is stage 1 of the tokenomics revisions. This finally addresses the criticism surrounding a lack of value accrual to token holders, but this is only the beginning.

Stage 2 introduces a Curve-esque vote escrow model, wherein YFI token holders are incentivized with rewards in exchange for locking their tokens, with rewards increasing with the amount of time that tokens are locked.

Stage 3 introduces Vault Gauges. These gauges allocate rewards on a vote based system, and introduce the likelihood that veYFI token holders may earn external voting incentives. Stage 4 allows veYFI holders to earn even more rewards for “useful work” or contributing.

If this proposal passes, YFI has a clear pathway to rapid value appreciation driven by value accrual and simple supply and demand market dynamics.”

---

“The bitcoin-holding U.S. senator is trying to “fully integrate” crypto into the U.S. financial system, an aide said. Lummis, who sits on the Senate Banking committee, wants nothing short of full normalization for digital assets in the U.S., the aide said.

Her upcoming bill will propose doing just that with federal rules for stablecoins, consumer protection provisions and updated taxation guidance, as well as a new watchdog: a self-regulatory organization administered by the executive branch’s securities and swaps regulators.”

---

“Global interbank messaging network Swift plans to explore how it can support interoperability in the tokenized asset market. Swift is planning a series of experiments in the first quarter. The experiments will use central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) as well as established forms of payment.

The organization, which links more than 11,000 institutions, aims to support the issuance, delivery-versus-payment and redemption processes, demonstrating how it could support ‘a frictionless and seamless tokenized digital asset market.‘”

---

“The marketplace will provide custody, and the exchange is figuring out how to determine the liquidation value of NFTs deposited so that users can use them as collateral for loans.

While decentralized finance project NFTfi, founded in February 2020, and crypto lender Nexo already offer NFT-backed loans, Kraken will probably be the biggest exchange thus far to try it.”

---

“A senior executive at newly-branded Meta reportedly urged staff to explore ways in which the company could embrace blockchain technology.

My overall guidance is to target a deep compatibility with the blockchain. There aren’t many places where I expect us to depend on it exclusively yet, but if we see an opportunity to work jointly with entrepreneurs in the Web3 space I expect it to be worth the effort.

Bosworth also acknowledged users who are choosing decentralized equivalents over traditional social media and tech platforms.”

See Also: Consultants Are Entering the Metaverse – Literally

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“Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have grown increasingly popular in Turkey, where inflation has soared and the country’s currency, the lira, hit record lows against the U.S. dollar earlier this year. Many consumers have seen crypto as a way to circumvent these issues.

But the growing acceptance has challenged the authoritarian Erdogan, who has been looking to strengthen the lira and bolster Turkey’s struggling economy. In April, Turkey’s central bank said it was banning the use of cryptocurrency for payments, although it remains legal to hold crypto in the country.

The law is ready, we will send it to the Parliament soon without delay.”

See Also: Paraguay moves a step closer to regulating digital currency

---

“The November 2021 update identifies 9 jurisdictions with an absolute ban and 42 with an implicit ban.

Absolute bans refer to those that make cryptocurrencies illegal. Implicit bans refer to those which prohibit banks or other financial institutions from dealing in cryptocurrencies or offering services to people or businesses that involve crypto.

Countries [with an absolute ban] are Algeria, Bangladesh, China, Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, Nepal, Qatar, and Tunisia.”

See Also: Japan’s Taxes on Crypto Firms Are Leading Some to Leave the Country

---

“The foundation announced a Dogecoin “trailmap” which is explores eight projects including the launch of LibDogecoin and GigaWallet. The Dogecoin Foundation, boasts some well-known board members and advisers, including Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.

In its roadmap the foundation said it is working with Buterin on ‘crafting a uniquely Doge proposal for a ‘community staking’ version of Proof of Stake (PoS) that will allow everyone, not just the big players to participate in a way that rewards them for their contribution to running the network.'”

See Also: Telegram CEO Endorses TON Blockchain Spin-Off Toncoin

“Today, EEA Community Projects announced that SAP has become a sponsor of the initiative in support of the Baseline Protocol project. As a sponsor, SAP joins Accenture, Arca, Chainlink, ConsenSys, the EEA, EY, Ethereum Foundation, Mover, Morpheus Network, Nethermind, Provide, Splunk, and Unibright in providing strategic vision, governance, technical guidance, and financial support for the work.

SAP’s sponsorship is especially important because baselining is all about security in multi-party processes, and SAP technology is the gold standard in secure information management.

Launched in March of 2020, the Baseline Protocol uses advances in peer-to-peer messaging, zero-knowledge cryptography, and blockchain technology to coordinate complex, confidential workflows between enterprises without moving company data out of traditional systems of record.”

---

Landmark ARC proposal in discussions to list the first regulated bank as a whitelister into the Aave Arc market. Swiss-based SEBA bank becoming the first regulated bank directly bringing DeFi to the customers https://t.co/9XCnlUmFI0

— stani.eth (👻,🐻‍❄️,🦎.🦎) (@StaniKulechov) December 21, 2021

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“Coinbase said it will link to investment-management software provider Enfusion’s Order Execution Management System to offer institutional customers on Coinbase Prime a way to streamline their crypto trades.

Enfusion’s platform, which is widely used by hedge funds and family offices, allows traders to access multiple assets in one system. The partnership with Enfusion signals Coinbase is betting on the continued growth of institutional interest in crypto trading, and is making moves to court the big players.“

See Also: 100 digital payment token firms in Singapore fail to win licenses: Report

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“Participation in our micro ether futures contract has grown rapidly since its launch two weeks ago, and we are encouraged by the strong customer adoption and support thus far.

Activity in micro ETH futures may pick up in coming months as focus shifts to Ethereum’s impending upgrade to the proof-of-stake mechanism, dubbed ETH 2.0, and ether gains notoriety as a deflationary asset.

Ethereum net issuance continues to decline with only ~37K ETH issued in November. At this rate, if market demand continues, Ethereum may see its issuance become deflationary relatively soon.”

---

“Looking at the stock performance of firms with the largest BTC allocations on their balance sheets, it becomes immediately apparent that it was more profitable to hold BTC than those equities — at least this year.

Both Bitcoin and Ether (ETH) have fared significantly better than stocks from companies, such as MicroStrategy (MSTR) and Coinbase (COIN), despite the successes of both.

Further data from the largest publicly traded mining corporations supports the trend. Versus their inception and even stock price at the time of their initial public offering, the vast majority are significantly lower in BTC terms.”

---

“A report by blockchain data firm Chainalysis earlier this year said DeFi is still dominated by experienced crypto traders and investors, partly due to the costly transaction fees on the Ethereum blockchain. The popular decentralized exchange has deployed on Polygon in a bid to attract more retail traders.

As the largest DEX by trading volume, Uniswap is already deployed on two companion, or layer 2, systems, Arbitrum and Optimism. According to data from Defi Llama, about $62.19 million in value is locked on Uniswap on Arbitrum, while roughly $36.94 million worth of tokens are locked on the Optimism version.

Both numbers are much smaller than the total value locked (TVL) on the Ethereum mainnet version of Uniswap, a staggering $8.75 billion. Polygon is currently the No. 7 chain by TVL.”

See Also: What Is Loopring and What’s Driving Its Rise?

“Since returning from the Amphora merge workshop, client teams have been hard at work implementing the latest versions of merge specifications and testing them on devnets. After four ephemeral devnets, Kintsugi 🍵, a longer-lived public testnet, is now live!

The Kintsugi testnet provides the community an opportunity to experiment with post-merge Ethereum and begin to identify any issues. Once feedback has been incorporated into the client sofware and the specifications, a final series of testnets will be launched. In parallel, testing efforts will continue ramping up.

After this, existing long-lived testnets will run through The Merge. Once these have upgraded and are stable, next up is Ethereum mainnet’s transition to proof of stake 🎊.”

---

“Increased regulatory certainty regarding the status of stablecoin and their issuers may create market opportunities, as regulatory risks have deterred financial institutions from engaging in the space, Fitch Ratings said in a report published on Tuesday.

Fitch notes that the European Union is the first major economy to publish draft regulations for the sector and has called for issuers to be regulated like banks or electronic money institutions. Fitch views the U.S. regulatory approach as key to the medium-term development of the sector, as the majority of stablecoins currently traded are linked to the U.S. dollar.

If stablecoin issuers secure charters to operate as deposit-taking institutions, they could challenge incumbent banks and potentially non-bank payment providers.”

See Also: Bank of Russia to allow crypto investment via foreign firms: Report

---

“Kraken has acquired non-custodial staking platform Staked to enable an alternative to its own custodial staking service. Kraken referred to the deal as “one of the largest crypto industry acquisitions to date” but did not disclose the amount paid.

Stake’s non-custodial staking service enables users to earn yield from staking without giving up custody of their assets. This is a complement to the custodial staking service already offered by Kraken.”

See Also: BitMEX Announces BMEX Tokens to Revive Retail Interest

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“After less than a month of deliberation and voting, two decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO) have consummated one of the biggest mergers in decentralized finance (DeFi) history. On Tuesday, a vote to merge Rari Capital and Fei Protocol was approved by members of both DAOs.

Going forward, the projects will merge via a token swap and be united under the TRIBE token. The joint effort will immediately command $2 billion in total value locked (TVL). The teams built the contracts related to exchanging RARI for TRIBE, as well as a “ragequit” function – a contract that allows token holders to exchange their tokens for a proportional share of the protocol’s treasury.

It was really challenging to navigate a proposal this big. There were two whole DAOs worth of cooks in the kitchen. The ragequit allows TRIBE token holders, especially token holders that market-bought TRIBE below treasury value, to exit at intrinsic value.

Now that the votes have passed, the real experiment arguably begins: Can two separate teams with disparate leadership structures operate efficiently under the same governance token? The first product from the joint project is expected to launch in late January, early February. ‘TRIBE is moving towards becoming full-stack DeFi infrastructure.'”

See Also: Anyswap Rebrands to Multichain, Raises $60M Led by Binance Labs
See Also: Decentralized Rendering Engine Raises $30M as Metaverse Graphics Go Big

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“Blockchain gaming continues to grow with a share of roughly 22% of all NFT trading volume in the third quarter of 2021, according to a report released by the Blockchain Gaming Alliance, or BGA. The report showed that NFT games accumulated $2.32 billion in revenue between July and September.

Additionally, the report mentioned that there is a “6,566% increase in daily unique active wallets.” These are wallets that interact with smart contracts connected to games.

Metaverse-related activity was also highlighted in the report. It showed that virtual land sales reached $42.6 million while the total market capitalization for virtual world decentralized apps reached an all-time high of $4.6 billion at the end of November.”

See Also: Crypto salaries are becoming a popular way to attract young talent

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“The CEOs of Tesla and Square touched off one of the year’s best crypto spats, picking a fight with the powerful VC firm Andreessen Horowitz.

Dorsey laid the table for the dust-up earlier in the day when he replied to a tweet from the rapper Cardi B, who had asked if crypto might replace the dollar. Dorsey’s take? Bitcoin will. Bitcoin, not “crypto.” Dorsey’s reply is just the latest reminder of his staunch Bitcoin-only stance.

Hours later, Dorsey began venting in earnest when he took aim at Web3. ‘You don’t own “web3.” The VCs and their LPs do.’ Dorsey’s tweet prompted Musk to throw his own jab at Web3, and the pair engaged in a back-and-back forth that called out a16z more directly: ‘Has anyone seen web3? I can’t find it.‘ Not everyone took Dorsey’s side, suggesting he is blinded by a Bitcoin-only mentality.

So what to make of all this? On one hand, you can look at the dust-up between Dorsey, Musk and the others as just another of the beefs that bubble up on Crypto Twitter every day of the week.

At the same time, though, Dorsey’s shot across Web3’s bow may also be rooted in self-interest: Both companies he founded, Square and Twitter, exemplify the Web2 era and may face an existential threat of a more decentralized technology stack.“

“Wall Street bank JPMorgan Chase has partnered with German industrial group Siemens to develop a blockchain-based system for payments. The infrastructure uses JPMorgan’s blockchain unit Onyx, of which Siemens is the first anchor client.

The system will be used to automatically transfer money (in U.S. dollars for the time being with euros to be supported next year) between Siemens’ own accounts. The application would be geared toward the automation of the various actions required in the recording and verification of payments. The infrastructure will take programmable payments beyond current uses.

This development represents the growing appetite among the world’s major institutions to harness blockchain technology to improve the efficiency and cost of their day-to-day operations.”

---

“The National Bureau of Economic Research, an American private nonprofit research organization, released a study claiming that 10,000 Bitcoin investors, or 0.01% of all BTC holders, own 5 million BTC, or 27% of all 18.9 million coins in circulation.

The amount of BTC held by the “one percent” is equivalent to approximately $232 billion. The study aims to demonstrate that Bitcoin is not as decentralized as one might think.

Despite having been around for 14 years and the hype it has ratcheted up, it’s still the case that it’s a very concentrated ecosystem.”

---

“Notably bullish flows hit ether’s options market early Monday, indicating budding hope for a recovery rally ahead of the year-end.

Institution-focused over-the-counter (OTC) desk Paradigm saw 18,500 contracts for the $4,400 call option and 14,000 contracts for the $4,200 call option change hands during Asian trading hours. A call buyer is implicitly bullish on the underlying asset. The $4,400 call represents a bet that ether would settle above that level on Dec. 31.

The two trades were traded live and appear to be a large directional bet for a move higher into year-end.

Despite sizeable buying activity in the $4,200 and $4,400 calls, the overall options market still signals caution.”

See Also: Bitcoin, Ether Dip in ‘Bearish Asia Session’ as China Rate Cut Fails to Inspire Risk Buying

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“Ignoring the PBOC’s warnings, Chinese companies rushed to register metaverse-related trademarks such as “metaverse satellite” and “metaverse exhibition.” According to the South China Morning Post, more than 1,360 Chinese companies submitted 8,534 trademark applications related to the metaverse.

Most of the companies that applied for trademark registrations are tech firms. Tencent registered almost a hundred metaverse-related trademark applications including “QQ Metaverse,” “QQ Music Metaverse” and “Kings Metaverse.””

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“The Mirror Protocol is a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform that allows users to create and trade “mirrored assets,” or mAssets, that “mirror” the price of stocks – including major stocks traded on U.S. exchanges. It was launched last December.

On May 7, less than five months after the launch of the Mirror Protocol, the SEC opened an investigation to determine whether Terraform Labs was in violation of federal securities laws by allowing synthetic stocks to be minted and sold on its platform.

On Oct. 22, Kwon and Terraform Labs filed a civil lawsuit in New York against the SEC – a highly unusual move, as suits against the SEC are rare – alleging the SEC improperly served the two Sept. 20 subpoenas. It also claims that the SEC does not have proper jurisdiction over either Kwon or Terraform Labs, and asked the court to quash the subpoenas and end the investigation.

The SEC has until Friday, Dec. 24, to respond to Kwon’s motion of opposition. Separately, the SEC must respond to Kwon and Terraform Labs’ civil suit by Dec. 27.

The SEC’s investigation of the Mirror Protocol is just one in a sea of similar investigations the U.S. regulator is conducting against crypto companies in an attempt to sniff out scams and regulate the booming crypto industry. The lack of regulatory clarity has been an issue for both crypto companies, which struggle to know what the rules are and what they can do legally, and regulators, such as the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) that are in the midst of a power struggle for control over the regulation of the industry.”

Eth2 Public Multi-client Testnet “Kintsugi” Live

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1/ Saying that zk rollups will be huge is an understatement

Two beasts have been working on this tech in the background for YEARS. Their time to shine is imminent. What opportunities ? What differences ? Wen token ?

A 🧵 on @zksync vs @StarkWareLtd pic.twitter.com/zEbTHMMWej

— Supercycled (@_supercycled) December 10, 2021

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“Offchain Labs and Chainlink Labs are working on minimizing MEV by exploring the application of Fair Sequencing Services (FSS)—a decentralized transaction ordering solution to mitigate the detrimental effects of MEV.

Ultimately, the combination of FSS together with the Arbitrum protocol would help provide users a greater degree of assurance that the ordering of their transactions won’t be manipulated. Additionally, FSS would increase the reliability of the Arbitrum protocol by creating a decentralized sequencer, minimizing risk of downtime.

This ideal combination of Arbitrum’s leading Layer-2 Rollup capabilities and the transaction fairness provided by FSS, makes Arbitrum Chainlink’s recommended solution for scaling Ethereum to billions of users worldwide, across all dApps.“

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“To ensure that client teams have a strong incentive to maintain the core Ethereum network over the long term, the Ethereum Foundation has launched a Client Incentive Program. This program offers client teams ETH-denominated rewards which unlock over time, as long as they continue to build software which meets the performance and security requirements of mainnet.

Specifically, teams in the program will receive a total of 144 validators (4608 ETH) each to operate on mainnet. The size of these grants recognizes both the excellent work performed over the past few years and the many development challenges expected well into the future.

Post-merge, due to validators earning transaction fees, the program will begin to provide a steady source of revenue to teams. As the grants vest, teams are free to do what they please with the validators they control.

The structure of the program aligns teams with the long term health of the network and ensures they are incentivized to build secure and performant software. It was designed to be backwards-looking and reward teams who have already delivered production-quality software. We hope that it provides a foundation for a healthy incentivization of core contributors to Ethereum.”

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Aztec Connect, the first private bridge for Ethereum DeFi, is live on testnet.

Up to 100x gas savings with fully private transactions by default.

Private DeFi is here. pic.twitter.com/d7RedFHmIK

— Aztec (@aztecnetwork) December 10, 2021

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“Most types of qubits today can only hold onto a quantum state for a few microseconds before they lose it – either they drift to another quantum state unpredictably, or they interact with the environment and “collapse” any superposition they had.

Not only that, any gate applied to the qubit has some chance of causing error. Today’s qubits are close to 1% gate error. Imagine if every time you sent a bit through a transistor, there was a 1% chance of flipping the bit. You could hardly perform any computation at all!

Google’s Sycamore chip, famous because it seems to be able to solve a (useless) computational problem faster than any classical computer, can only do about 20 gates in a row before being reduced to useless noise. To break RSA-2048 would require more than 2.1 billion gates in a row.

For quantum computers to be useful, we need more qubits but we also need better qubits. A quantum computer that uses error correction to push qubit and gate errors to 0 is called fault-tolerant.

The front-runner for a quantum error-correcting code is called a surface code. We’re very close to this! However: If we need 100 physical qubits to make a single logical qubit, then that increases our qubit requirements by a factor of 100. And 100 is an underestimate: longer algorithm’s like Shor’s algorithm (to break RSA) likely require more than 1000 physical qubits per logical qubit.

Even though quantum computers are far away, you should still replace RSA and ECC. Michele Mosca pointed out the main problem: Suppose quantum computers that can break RSA-2048 are 30 years away. If it will take 10 years to standardize new cryptography, 10 years for your organization to implement it, and you need your secrets to remain safe for 12 years, then you’re already 2 years too late, since someone can record your encrypted data and break it later. Basically, it’s a race between the world’s most brilliant quantum engineers and the world’s laziest sysadmins, where the sysadmins have about a 30 year headstart.“

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“Some five years in development, the milestone follows the completion of the first five parachain auctions, a system of crowd loans amassing large amounts of DOT, the native token of Polkadot, gathered from each blockchain’s respective community.

The first five parachains going live – Acala, Moonbeam, Parallel Finance, Astar and Clover – are focused on a variety of topics from decentralized finance (DeFi), to investments and loans.

Parachains are able to lease a slot on Polkadot’s main Relay Chain for up to 96 weeks at a time. Ultimately, Polkadot will offer 100 parachain slots. Further slots will be allocated in batches over the coming months. Not all of these slots will be allocated via parachain slot auctions, as some will be used for governance-enabled common-good parachains.

After taking a bet on Polkadot and the Substrate framework when we started building over two years ago, we couldn’t be more excited to be launching Acala’s parachain to provide a DeFi platform and native, decentralized stablecoin (aUSD) to the Polkadot ecosystem and beyond.”

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“A clash is brewing. Much like the many recent examples of gamers getting angry over crypto invading their platforms, the outrage can cut the other way: crypto people can see that brands are rushing into Web3 and making it uncool. Crypto lingo like “WAGMI” (we are going to make it) could die a quick death when you have Pepsi proudly tweeting it.

Beyond their attempted adoption of crypto language, brands are rushing to stake ownership claims in the metaverse (and are already suing to do it). The idea of gated areas owned by centralized corporations is antithetical to the whole point of the metaverse. Animoca chairman Yat Siu says tech giants like Facebook and Tencent represent the biggest threat to an open metaverse.

On the other hand, if you believe the metaverse is real and here to stay, and so are crypto tools like Ethereum domain names, NFTs, and DeFi pools, then you don’t mind brands rushing in because if it all truly goes mainstream, everyone will be in. And for crypto to grow, it needs to open its arms to everyone and create easier UX onramps for newcomers.

But still. It’s hard to look at a cartoon microphone with a Pepsi logo on it without a serious sense of cringe.”

See Also: The Future of NFTs Is Fungible