Legal Saga: Market Manipulation & Insider Trading

Treasury Tuesday: A look at top protocol treasuries

Daily Bullets - Tuesday, January 10th  

Synopsis: The crypto market continues enjoying bullish conditions. NFTs are also seeing increased volume. Many are hopeful for some type of “echo bubble.” DCG’s Barry Silbert under heat to step down, Avraham Eisenberg now being sued by the CFTC as well as the Justice Department, the first crypto insider trading cases ends with jail time and Coinbase ramps up layoffs. A mix of good and bad. 

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Daily Bullet Highlights:

• After several years of development, Apple’s first major step into the metaverse—a high-end, mixed-reality headset, the Reality Pro headset - to be unveiled this spring

• Gemini co-founder Cameron Winklevoss called on shareholders of Digital Currency Group to remove Barry Silbert as CEO for allegedly defrauding Gemini earn users

• The brother of a former Coinbase employee was sentenced to 10 months in prison after pleading guilty in September to a wire fraud conspiracy charge, in the first insider trading case involving cryptocurrency

• The CFTC joins the Justice Department in filing a case against Avraham Eisenberg over alleged manipulation of decentralized swaps markets 

• Microsoft in talks to acquire a 49% stake worth $10B in ChatGPT owner OpenAI​​

• Coinbase lays off another 950 Employees, bringing the total number of cuts to over 2,000 since June

• WOO tokenomics revamp: will burn over 705 million WOO tokens, about 24% of the max supply and all burning mechanisms will be stopped

• Yearn Finance will allow users to create their own vaults to accrue yield and deposit proceeds to earn even more token rewards and charge 10% as performance fees

Treasury Tuesday: A look at top protocol treasuries  

• Taking a look at the top protocol treasuries, we see the top five: Uniswap, BitDAO, ENS, Lido Finance, Abracadabra.money. Lido, which is also currently seeing a boost due to the liquid staking derivative narrative resurgence has had its treasury grow by ~ 64% in the past 30 days and Abracadabra has seen an almost 400% rise in the past 30 days - perhaps due to the return of Dani Sesta? 

Crypto News: 

• CoinShares: in the first week of 2023, XRP saw $3M in inflows while investors exited ETH and Bitcoin. CoinShares cited improving clarity on its SEC case

• BlockFi CEO Zac Prince cashed out nearly $10M to pay taxes from the platform following a $400M loan from FTX designed to stabilize client funds 

Crypto Exchanges:

• The National Tax Service of South Korea has reportedly launched a "special tax investigation" into crypto exchange Bithumb

• Binance annual revenue grew 10x over the past 2 years, while OKX's grew 4x. Huobi global's quarterly revenue fell -98% since the second quarter of 2021

• The Securities and Exchange Commission of Thailand is investigating troubled crypto exchange Zipmex over its potentially unauthorized earn program

DeFi:

• Curve 3pool’s liquidity currently stands at roughly $600M, down approximately 90% from $5.5B recorded at the start of January 2022

• Cosmos-based electronic payment system e-Money has stopped issuing its euro-backed stablecoin EEUR citing bear market conditions

NFTs/​Gaming/Metaverse:

• Solana-based token Bonk Inu (BONK) will offer over 15,000 NFTs on Solana marketplace Magic Eden. All BONK tokens used to mint the NFTs will be permanently burned

• Edward Snowden Pentagon papers NFT to be auctioned via live PleasrDAO Show

Early Stage Projects:

• After a two-year wait, the Flare token airdrop has finally happened with 4.28B flr tokens released. Based on a snapshot taken in December 2020 that captured wallets holding at least 1 xrp at the time 

• ConsenSys zkEVM Private Beta is now open for selected users with more to be onboarded in the coming weeks

• ​​BNB Chain Ecosystem Job Board

• Mantle Testnet - a new generation L2 network

• MOOAR Launchpad Season 2

• Astar XVM Public Testnet- Cross-Virtual Machine: Creating a Portal to the Future of Smart Contracts

• Launch of the first global cross-chain accelerator program - the LongHashX Accelerator Cohort 10 in partnership with Axelar 

• Cointelegraph’s Accelerator Program launches and is seeking Web3 startups

• Web3 Foundation Grants - Wave 16 Recipients 

Economic/Government/Regulatory: 

• A California court ruled that two Yuga Labs leaders must be deposed (submit to a question-and-answer session in court) in "copycat" NFT project legal saga 

• Mark Cuban is scheduled to be deposed in February as part of a defense against a proposed class-action lawsuit regarding his alleged promotion of now-bankrupt crypto lender Voyager Digital

• Nepal's Telecommunications Authority has instructed all internet service providers (ISPs) to prevent all crypto-related activity

• Bankrupt Bitcoin miner Core Scientific under investigation over securities fraud

Fundraises:

• Worlds, which builds digital twins of floor operations for industrial companies to let them become more productive or efficient, raised $21.2M in a series A round. Investors: Moneta Ventures, Align Capital, Green Park and Golf Ventures, Chevron Technology Ventures, Piva Capital, Perot Jain and Capital Factory - https://worlds.io/ 

• The Easy Company raised $14.2M and launched its social crypto wallet to help onboard more mainstream audiences in an Instagram-like way. Investors: Lobby Capital, Relay Ventures, 6th Man Ventures, Tapestry VC, Upside and Scribble Ventures, and angel investors - @TheEasyCoHQ

• Rainmaker Games, a one-stop hub blockchain gaming platform, raised $4.7M co-led by Placeholder and Hivemind Capital. Investors: Shima Capital, Peer Ventures, Coinfund, Side Door Ventures, Blockwall Capital, Placeholder, and Tokenbay Capital - @RainmakerGaming

• C14, a New York-based web3 payments firm, raised $2.5M in seed funding led by General Catalyst. Investors: Fin Capital, Cipholio and Istari Ventures - @c14_team 

• Cryptiony which offers a crypto tax automation platform for individuals, traders, and tax professionals, raised €500,000 in a pre-seed funding round. Investors: ff Venture Capital, Pointer.Capital, Marcin Wenus - @cryptiony

Research/Reads:

• Kaiko Weekly crypto market overview - source

• VC Yearly Report - source

• ​​Reviving Trust in Crypto - source

•  Polygon, the Front Runner of Modular Blockchain Future - source

• Fintechs & Stablecoins : The perfect (arranged) marriage - source

• SlowMist 2022 Annual Blockchain Security and AML Analysis Report - source

Twitter: 

How staked ETH withdrawals will be enabled on Ethereum:

Christine Kim @christine_dkim

Ethereum developers are targeting March 2023 for the activation of Shanghai and staked ETH withdrawals. In my latest report, I give a detailed overview of how staked ETH withdrawals will be enabled on Ethereum. Here's the tldr🧵 (Thread inspired today by @kellyjgreer 👑)

Liquid Staking Derivatives (LSD) & the upcoming Ethereum's Shanghai Upgrade:

Viktor DeFi 🛡🦇🔊 @ViktorDefi

Crypto Narratives Alpha Series 💎 01 Liquid Staking Derivatives (LSD) is blowing up with the upcoming Ethereum's Shanghai Upgrade. I spent 1,439 minutes exploring the LSD narrative, so you don't have to. ↓🧵

Consensys zkEVM testnet - participate:

olimpio @OlimpioCrypto

zkEVM testnet is LIVE ⚡️ Consensys just launched their private testnet beta for whitelisted users. If you filled out their whitelist Form back in November, then you might have gotten an email today to get started. There's still time to participate in their testnet 🧵

Guy who got Facebook stolen from him calls for ousting Barry Silbert as DCG CEO:

Cameron Winklevoss @cameron

Earn Update: An Open Letter to the Board of @DCGco

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