Issue #53

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 assets. 

News Headline Highlights

• Paypal have announced a new stablecoin, PayPal USD (PYUSD) built on Ethereum. It’s designed for payments and is backed by highly liquid and secure assets (Dollars and Treasuries). Launching today, Paypal users will be able to buy, sell, hold and transfer PYUSD. Below is Paypal's smart contract launched just a few hours ago on Ethereum mainnet!

•  MicroStrategy, the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, plans to buy more BTC with proceeds from sales of up to $750 million of common stock.
• VanEck, Roundhill and Volatility Shares are among six issuers that have submitted applications with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to list Ether-futures ETFs since Friday (Jul 28). The flurry of applications came after reports that the SEC is open to considering potential approval of ETH futures ETFs, something they had explicitly ignored previously. 
• Crossover Markets Group, an institution-focused digital assets firm, has announced a collaboration with the Cboe Digital, a US regulated crypto exchange, to develop clearing solutions for spot and futures crypto trades.
• In their quarterly earning announcement, payment company Block said that bitcoin sales on its Cash App platform jumped 34% (to $2.4 billion) in the second quarter from the same period last year. The company said customers were buying more of the digital asset, even with declining prices. 
• The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) has signed a strategic agreement with Fireblocks, an enterprise digital asset management platform. The partnership empowers TASE to offer a comprehensive range of innovative and secure digital asset products and services.
• Cumberland and XBTO Group executed the first block trade of an ETH/BTC futures contract on CME. The ETH/BTC contract is new for CME and allows traders a way to express a view on the value of Bitcoin versus the Ethereum ecosystem.

 Crypto Asset Project Updates

• Coinbase, the largest US regulated crypto exchange, plans to release Base, an Ethereum Layer 2, for full public access on August 9 and has launched an Ethereum bridge ahead of time. “Base’s bridging functionality is live today, and the mainnet is set to be accessible to all by August 9,” said Jesse Pollak, protocols lead at Coinbase.
• Magnet Portfolio Company: Lyra, a decentralised options trading protocol, announced v2 of their platform, improving on-chain capital efficiency (by 15x) and enabling developers to generate and build financial products that harness the power of derivatives.
• nWayGames and Animoca announced the upcoming release of Wreck League, a Web3-powered multiplayer fighting game that allows players to assemble Mechs, own their creations, and fight other players’ Mechs in real time in various game events and competitions.

Regulation Station

• Coinbase filed an order in court on Friday (5/8) to dismiss the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) lawsuit against them "in its entirety". In June, the SEC accused the exchange of violating securities laws earlier this summer. Coinbase has “full confidence” in its arguments made to the court, Paul Grewal (Chief Legal Officer) commented in an earnings call last week.
• Bloomberg has reported that Asian regulators have stolen a march on the US by clarifying crypto rules, exemplified by Hong Kong’s first licences for trading platforms under the city’s new digital-asset framework.
• The latest tax guidance from the Internal Revenue Service outlines that activity on a proof-of-stake network should count the rewards as income in the year the investor gets control of those tokens.
• United States Representatives Gus Bilirakis and Jan Schakowsky penned a formal letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook, raising concerns that Apple’s App Store policies on emerging technologies, like blockchain and nonfungible tokens (NFTs), may be too restrictive and inadvertently hinder the progress and growth of cutting-edge innovations.

The Weekly Deal Room

• Orbital, a traditional fintech service provider seeking to explore crypto solutions such as stablecoin cross-border payments, raised $6.3m in a round led by Golden Record Ventures.
• zkPass, a composable, privacy-preserving identity protocol, raised $2.5m in a Seed Round from Binance, Sequoia China and others.
• D8X, a decentralised derivatives exchange, raised $1.5m in a pre-seed round from Polygon Ventures, Axelar and SwissBorg.
• Binance has invested in a private round of four new projects that will join its startup program Binance Labs:
  • AltLayer,  a decentralised layer2 infrastructure service provider.
  • KiloEx, a decentralised perpetual exchange.
  • Kinza, a decentralised lending protocol.
  • Sleepless AI, an AI blockchain based virtual companion game.