Issue #60

Market Overview

As of the time of writing (Monday 5pm), the total market cap of the crypto asset market is $US1.08T, down (-2.3%) from last week.

Below is the weekly performance of the top crypto assets. 

News Headline Highlights

• Galaxy Digital is expanding their operations into Europe, hiring Leon Marshall, its existing global head of sales, as its European CEO. The expansion is designed to "aggressively scale our operations in the U.K. and Europe - a region that has committed to embracing the digital asset future and creating the necessary regulatory frameworks for our industry to operate within," said group CEO Mike Novogratz.
• Laser Digital, the crypto arm of Japan’s Nomura Bank, has launched its asset management business with a bitcoin fund. The Bitcoin Adoption Fund provides "long-only" exposure to bitcoin for institutional investors.
• FTX has sued the Sam Bankman-Fried’s parents, seeking a clawback of assets attained from the business, including a $10 million cash gift and a $16.4 million luxury condo in the Bahamas. 
• The Mt. Gox trustee, Kobayashi, has officially announced an extension of the repayment deadline for creditors of the defunct cryptocurrency exchange. Kobayashi announced in a letter posted on September 21 that the deadline has been pushed out from October 31, 2023 to October 31, 2024 with approval from the Tokyo District Court.
• PayPal announced that Venmo users will be able to buy PayPal’s new stablecoin, PayPal USD, increasing the number of cryptocurrencies customers can purchase on the app to five.
• Walmart plans to "reinvent retail" by allowing customers to purchase physical versions of items they use within its metaverse, House Flip. The retailer plans to add new décor items from Mainstays and Better Homes and Gardens into House Flip, to allow users to virtually browse and then purchase the physical version.

 Crypto Asset Project Updates

• Coinbase layer-2 network, Base, reached 1.9m in daily transactions, surpassing its previous record of 1.4m transactions on Aug. 21 — the month when the network was launched. The layer-2 network surpassed other rival chains like Optimism and Arbitrum, which had a combined 878,000 transactions for the day. 
• Tether, the largest stablecoin by market capitalization (~$84B), has increased the value of loans to customers to $5.5B as of June 30, compared with $5.3B in the previous quarter. This is after announcing they would stop issuing loans of its token by the end of 2023.
• Optimism conducted its third community airdrop, issuing ~19.4 million OP tokens (about $27 million USD) to eligible users. The team also announced a private sale of 116m OP tokens (about $162 million USD) to seven unnamed buyers.
• Ethereum’s Holesky testnet fails to launch, in rare tech misstep for the blockchain. At launch, there was a misconfiguration in one of the genesis files of the network, preventing validators from starting the network. A patch is being worked on and is expected to release within  weeks.
• Balancer, a DeFi liquidity protocol, experienced an attack on their front-end, resulting in unsuspecting users losing $250k. Since, Balancer has regained domain control.

Regulation Station

• The New York Department of Finance is seeking a tougher set of standards for adding and de-listing crypto assets. Licensees in the state will have to set out technology, market and regulatory risks for listed cryptocurrencies under the state’s BitLicense regime.
• Hong Kong lawmaker Duncan Chiu said that he hopes the stablecoin regime, currently in second consultation, could officially commence by the mid 2024.
• Binance CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao and the Binance exchange itself have jointly filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit brought against them by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In a September 21 filing with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, both Binance Holdings and Zhao contended that the SEC had exceeded its authority in the lawsuit.

The Weekly Deal Room

• Blockchain Capital raised $580m for two new crypto venture funds.
• Bastion, a web3 onboarding/custody company, raised $25m in a Seed Round led by a16z.
• GRVT (pronounced "gravity"), a hybrid cryptocurrency exchange, raised $7.1m at a $39m valuation in a Seed Round co-led by Matrix Partners and Delphi Digital.
• Freatic, a platform that improves deal flow for crypto industry investors, raised $3.6m in a Seed Round led by a16z.
• CoinScan, a crypto analytics platform, raised $6.3m from various angel investors.
• Optimism, a popular Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution, sold $157m of their native token to seven unnamed buyers.
• Essential, a MEV infrastructure company, raised $5.15m in a Seed Round led by Maven 11.
• Proof of Play, an on-chain gaming studio, raised $33m in a Seed Round co-led by  a16z and Greenoaks capital.