Issue #36

Market Overview

As of the time of writing (Monday 5pm), the total market cap of the crypto asset market is $US1.23T, up (1.9%) from last week.

Below is the weekly performance of the top crypto and NFT assets. 

News Headline Highlights

• An unknown Apple employee (presumably) hid the Bitcoin whitepaper inside every copy of MacOS shipped since 2017 (MacOS versions from Mojave to Ventura). Users can open a copy by entering the following commands into the terminal app: “open /System/Library/Image\ Capture/Devices/VirtualScanner.app/Contents/Resources/simpledoc.pdf”
• For the second week running, Microstrategy purchased another 1,045 bitcoin (BTC). The software company turned BTC accumulator now holds 140,000 bitcoin on its balance sheet.
• Swiss Government owned bank PostFinance, in partnership with digital assets bank Sygnum, is rolling out Bitcoin, Ethereum and other crypto services (buy, store and sell) to clients.
• UBS and a global Asian bank successfully executed the first cross-border intraday repo transaction on Broadridge’s blockchain enabled Distributed Ledger Repo (DLR) platform. This intraday trade marks the launch of the next phase in the rollout of Broadridge’s DLR platform.
• Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) completed its use case in the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot. ANZ partnered with Grollo Carbon Ventures to trade carbon credits.
• Brazilian bank BTG Pactual ($73B in assets) is planning to launch a US Dollar stablecoin to help position itself as a leading LATAM bank within the digital asset market.

 Crypto Asset Project Updates

• OpenSea has launched a 'Pro' marketplace to compete with rival Blur. The new marketplace is touted to launch with more robust trading tools than the standard version, plus zero marketplace fees (for now) and NFT-based trading rewards.
• Luxury fashion house Gucci announced a metaverse-oriented partnership with Yuga Labs, that would blur “the boundaries between the physical and digital.”

Regulation Station

• Last week the Swiss National Bank (SNB) outlined its Swiss payments vision, in which it shared plans to issue a real wholesale CBDC on the SIX Digital Exchange (SDX) for a limited time. The central bank has already conducted various wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilots. 
• The U.S. Treasury Department published its first illicit finance risk assessment report focused specifically on decentralised finance (DeFi). The 42-page report states that "actors like the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), cybercriminals, ransomware attackers, thieves, and scammers are using DeFi services to transfer and launder their illicit proceeds".
• Singapore banks are working with the city-state’s authorities to set uniform standards on screening potential customers from the crypto and digital assets sectors. This will better permit traditional financial service providers to service legitimate crypto businesses.

The Weekly Deal Room

• LayerZero Labs, the developer of the blockchain interoperability protocol LayerZero, raised $120m in a Series B at a valuation of $3b from investors including a16z Crypto, Sequoia Capital, Circle Ventures, Samsung Next, OpenSea and Christie's.
• M^ZERO, a decentralised infrastructure layer for digital asset value transfer, raised a $22.5m Seed Round led by  Pantera Capital.
• RACA, a web3 gaming ecosystem developer, raised $16m in a strategic round from DWF Capital.
• Delphi Labs, the incubator arm of Delphi Digital, raised $13.5m in a round led by P2P.
• Bitget, a centralised spot and derivatives cryptocurrency exchange, raised $10m in a strategic round from Dragonfly.
• Decentralised finance (DeFi) hub Nibiru Chain raised an $8.5m Seed Round at a $100m valuation that was co-led by Tribe Capital, Republic Capital, NGC Ventures and Original Capital
• Astria, a modular blockchain network, raised a $5.5m Seed Round led by Maven 11.
• Satsuma, a blockchain data indexing platform, raised $5m in a Seed Round co-led by Initialized Capital and Archetype.
• Lore, a web3 co-ownership platform, raised $4m in a strategic round led by Multicoin Capital.
• Franklin, a crypto payroll company, raised a $2.9m Seed Round co-led by Gumi Cryptos and CMT Digital.
• DappBack, a web3 loyalty platform, raised $2.5m in a Seed Round co-led by Greenfield and IOSG.

Metric of the Week

Bitcoin dominance, a metric that denotes the size of Bitcoin’s market capitalisation relative to that of the whole crypto industry, rose sharply in March from 40% to 44% and into a strong resistance level of 44%. 

This metric is commonly used to measure the relative performance of Bitcoin against the rest of the crypto asset class. Bitcoin’s relative strength increase is of little surprise given its categorisation as a non-sovereign asset in the backdrop of the banking issues in the US.

Source: Coingecko