Issue #40

Market Overview

As of the time of writing (Monday 5pm), the total market cap of the crypto asset market is $US1.21T, down (-1.9%) from last week.

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

News Headline Highlights

• Stripe, a financial infrastructure platform for businesses, announced the launch of a Stripe-hosted fiat-to-crypto onramp, making it easier for Web3 companies to help US-based customers purchase crypto.
• Coinbase and Gemini have launched offshore cryptocurrency derivatives platforms that are not available to US-based clients. 
  • Coinbase's Coinbase International Exchange supports perpetual futures for Bitcoin and Ethereum with up to 5 times leverage (plans to increase over time).
  • Gemini's Gemini Foundation, governed by Singapore law, is trading dollar-based perpetual futures for Bitcoin with up to 100 times leverage.
• Nasdaq-listed crypto exchange Coinbase posted a smaller than expected loss in Q1 2023. The company benefited from cost cuts, diversification of revenue sources and a higher crypto prices, resulting in shares up 7% after the announcement.
• Mastercard is partnering with public blockchain developers from Aptos, Avalanche, Polygon and Solana to design a new set of standards it's dubbing ‘Crypto Credential’. The effort hopes to “establish a set of common standards and infrastructure that will help attest trusted interactions among consumers and businesses using blockchain networks”. 
• PayPal, who rolled out crypto transfers for its customers in June 2022, is now rolling out the same service (crypto transfers) to more than 60 million Venmo customers.
• FTX is seeking to claw back close to $3.9 billion of cash and crypto from bankrupt digital asset lender Genesis. The funds relate to $1.8 billion of loans and $273m of collateral given to Genesis by Alameda Research, Sam Bankman-Fried’s defunct crypto trading house, shortly before it collapsed into bankruptcy alongside FTX.
• Bhutan’s investment arm and Nasdaq-listed company Bitdeer Technologies Group is seeking up to $500m from investors to be used to develop green crypto mining in the Himalayas.

 Crypto Asset Project Updates

• Decentralised finance (DeFi) protocol Curve Finance has deployed its highly anticipated US Dollar native stablecoin (crvUSD) on Ethereum mainnet.
• Mysten Labs' Layer 1 blockchain, Sui, has launched on mainnet. The blockchain is Move-based and reportedly achieves high throughputs.
• Blur, an NFT marketplace, has launched a peer-to-peer lending protocol called Blend, allowing NFT holders to take out loans against their digital collectible assets and liquidity providers to earn interest on their ETH holdings.
• Circle, the issuer of US Dollar stablecoin USDC, released the ‘Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol’ (CCTP), a technology that they claim has faster, safer and cheaper than the ‘bridges’ commonly utilised in DeFi.

Regulation Station

• The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has been ordered by a court to respond to a Coinbase complaint as to the SEC’s application of securities laws to digital assets. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals commented in a filing that the SEC must file a response within ten days. Coinbase may then file a response seven days thereafter.
• House Financial Services Chairman Patrick McHenry said that he is collaborating with the House Agriculture Committee to put together legislation to oversee the crypto sector in the "next two months".
• The White House issued a report justifying their proposed 30% excise tax on crypto mining firms, citing a lack of 'economic benefits' and environmental concerns as the primary explanation.
• Former OpenSea Product Manager, Nate Chastian, has been convicted of fraudulently purchasing non-fungible tokens (NFT) he knew would sharply increase in value, in the first conviction for what prosecutors described as insider trading of digital assets.

The Weekly Deal Room

• ZK Link, a zero-knowledge rollup-backed decentralised trading infrastructure, raised $10m in a strategic funding round led by Coinbase Ventures.
• Fare Protocol, a DeFi project, raised $6.2m in a Seed Round led by Goat Capital. 
• Flux, a decentralised lending protocol for tokensied real world assets, raised $5m in a strategic round led by UXD.
• Tristero, a developer of trustless dark pool technology, raised $4.8m in a Seed Round led by General Catalyst and Steel Perlot.
• Vibe, a no-code NFT-to-product toolkit platform, raised $4m in a Seed Round led by Alchemy, Aglae Ventures and others.