Issue #21

Market Overview

As of the time of writing (Monday 5pm), the total market cap of the crypto asset market is $US844.5B, up 0.2% from last week.

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

News Headline Highlights

• Visa announced a proposal to allow owners of ETH to set up automatic payments directly from their own, self-custodial wallets. The proposal that would not require banks or other centralised entities to be part of the picture.
• Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) consented to extradition to the US where he was transferred to New York on Wednesday night. He was subsequently released on a $250m bond. 
• FTX and Alameda alum, Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang, were announced as cooperating witnesses in the FTX case after being charged with defrauding investors.
• Binance.US has entered an agreement with Voyager to purchase the bankrupt lender for more than $1 billion. The bid aims to fill the balance sheet gap left by defaulted loans and return crypto to Voyager customers. Voyager will seek court approval to enter the asset purchase agreement with Binance.US at a hearing scheduled for Jan. 5, 2023.
• Mazars Group has suspended all services provided to crypto clients including Binance and Crypto.com. The core reasoning provided was concerns over public perception of proof of reserves after the fallout of FTX.
• Grayscale, the DCG asset management subsidiary that oversees the Bitcoin Investment Trust (GBTC), reported that if it doesn’t receive permission from the SEC to convert into an ETF that it would consider a tender offer to repurchase up to 20% of outstanding shares.
• One of the largest US-listed bitcoin miners, Core Scientific, has filed for bankruptcy in Texas where it is based.

 Crypto Asset Project Updates

• Synthetix launched their perpetual v2 contracts which leverage the off-chain oracle system provided by Pyth Network to reduce perpetual contract trading fees from 25-30 bps to 5-10 bps.
• Yuga Labs have hired Daniel Alegre, the former president and COO of Activision Blizzard ($60b gaming company and owners of WoW) as its new CEO.
• Yuga Labs' metaverse project, The Otherside, announced plans to hold the second ‘trip’ in their new universe towards the end of Q1 2023.

The Weekly Deal Room

• Revel, who are building a socialised NFT marketplace that will enable users to create non-fungible tokens for their followers and communities, announced a $7.8m funding round led by Dragonfly Capital.
• Foundation Devices, a developer of Bitcoin-centric tools that include a hardware wallet, raised $7m in a seed round led by Polychain Capital.
• DeFi Structured products, Pods, who run investment strategies, receive deposits, and process withdrawals, closed a $5.6m seed round  from IOSG, Tomahawk, Republic, Framework Ventures and others.
• Utorg, a crypto exchange, raised $5m  in a seed funding round co-led by Dragonfly, TA Ventures and Hypra.
• Decentralised market maker Arrakis Finance, raised $4m from Uniswap, Accel, Polygon and others.

Metric of the Week

During the recent polar blast that impacted much of the US, Bitcoin's global hashrate dropped by an estimated 40%. As customers turned on heaters and the likes, there was a huge surge in demand for electricity. To deal with the surge and help stabilise the grid, US miners voluntarily suspended operations.

As demand dropped again, miners were able to resume operations and Bitcoin’s hashrate has since already recovered half of the observed loss.

As part of agreements with power companies, US miners that utilise local energy resources receive payment to turn off during periods of peak power demand. It’s part of their agreement with the power companies.