Issue #18

Market Overview

As of the time of writing (Monday 5pm), the total market cap of the crypto asset market is $US907.4B, up 6.4% from last week.

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

News Headline Highlights

• Payments firm Stripe has debuted a project to facilitate fiat-to-crypto payments for companies in dozens of countries around the world, the company said Thursday.
  
• The world's largest financial derivatives exchange, Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), is introducing reference rates and real time indexes for three leading DeFi protocol tokens, AAVE (Aave), CRV (Curve Finance) and SNX (Synthetix).
  
• The biggest interdealer-broker in the world, TP ICAP, which offers broking services across commodities, credit, equities, FX asset classes, has got a licence to register as a crypto asset exchange provider with the UK's financial regulator.
  
• FTSE Russell, a leading global index provider, has launched several multi asset crypto indexes. The FTSE Global Digital Asset Index Series, covers eight indices from large to micro cap.
  
• Hong-Kong based web3 group, Animoca, plans to launch a $2b fund, Animoca Capital, to invest in mid to late stage metaverse businesses. The fund plans to make its first investment next year.
  
• BlockFi has filed for bankruptcy, citing the inability to conduct business or meet customer obligations after the fallout from FTX’s collapse. In the bankruptcy hearing, it was revealed that FTX and Alameda owe BlockFi ~$1b ($671m in a loan to Alameda and $355m in assets frozen).
  
• Opensea announced that NFT creators have earned more than $1b through royalty payments in 2022. Once championed as a prime use case for artists in the NFT space, "creator fees" are generated through taking a cut on the resale of NFTs on the company's platform.

 Crypto Asset Project Updates

• Maple Finance has had one of its accredited borrowers, Orthogonal Trading, default on $36 million of loans. Maple Finance is a decentralised under collateralised lending platform and as such lenders are left with little to no recourse (at least in the short term). Magnet Quick Take: Under collateralised lending requires off-chain trust. Blockchain technology is designed to eliminate the need for trust in off-chain centralised counterparties. 'DeFi under collateralised lending'  is an oxymoron of blockchain and is a fundamentally broken application of the technology.
  
• The leading Ethereum and Decentralised Finance oracle provider, Chainlink, is set to start staking this week in a closed launch for LINK holders. Expected to begin on December 6th, this will be the first opportunity for holders of LINK to participate in securing the oracle network without running node infrastructure to do so. For taking part, stakers will receive a share of revenues generated by Chainlink from customers that pay to utilise their oracles. 
  
• Yearn Finance, Ethereum’s leading decentralised asset management protocol, is expected to initiate phase 2 of its evolving token economic design this week, with the launch of veYFI. Post implementation, holders of Yearn’s normative token, YFI, will be able to lock their asset for up to 4 years and receive veYFI (vesting YFI) in return. Holders of veYFI are expected to have a claim to rewards and fees the protocol generates in proportion to their holdings and the duration they’ve locked the assets for.
  
• Bored Ape and Mutant Ape staking has launch. From today (Tuesday morning Aus time), holders of ApeCoin, the yuga launched metaverse token, will be able to stake their asset against Bored and Mutant Ape NFTs they hold to access inflationary rewards. It is expected that over time, the inflationary aspect reduces as utility for ApeCoin is announced and fees start to accumulate to the ApeCoin DAO.

The Weekly Deal Room

• Magnet portfolio company update - Decentralised options protocols Lyra raised $3m in a strategic  round via a private sale of Treasury assets to Framework and GSR.
  
• Digital asset market maker, Keyrock, has raised $72m in a Series  B funding round to invest in infrastructure development, scalability tools and regulatory licensing in Europe, the US and Singapore.
  
• Web3 developer platform, Fleek, raised $25m in a Series A funding round led by Polychain Capital to build an interface and protocol layer “to make the base layer of web[3] services” accessible to anyone.
  
• Kiln, an enterprise-grade staking technology provider with over $500m of assets staked under management, raised €17m in a financing round from Illuminate Financial, Consensys, GSR, Kraken Ventures and others.
  
• Web3 gaming studio, Roboto Games, raised $15m in a Series A led by a16z to add Web3 elements to its forthcoming survival/crafting MMO game.
  
• Ngrave, a Belgian secure digital asset wallet and services provider raised $15m in a Series A funding round led by Binance’s VC arm.
  
• CyVers, a leading provider of ‘proactive’ Web3 security for centralised and decentralised smart contract applications raised $8m in a round led by Elron Ventures.
  
• NFT art creator platform, Wildxyz, raised $7m in seed funding led by Matrix Partners. 
  
• Catapult raised $5m in a seed round led by Blockchain Capital to build infrastructure that hopes to enable better coordination in decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs).
  
• Daylight, a crypto wallet analytics tool to inform users of all activities they can participate in based on their token holdings, raised $3m in a seed round led by Chapter One and Framework Ventures.

Metric of the Week

Whilst there is no consensus as to how much of the world’s population currently holds cryptocurrency, market research firm GWI suggests that as much as 12.3% of global internet users aged 16 to 64 own crypto. 

Interestingly, ownership continues to remain strongest in countries with unstable currencies and/or where government trust is low.  

Source: GWI