Sam, A Vegan, Taken Down By Guy Named Salami

Daily Bullets: Thursday, December 15th

Dec 15, 2022

Juicy details continue to leak out and help paint the picture of what really happened at FTX. It was FTX Digital Markets co-CEO Ryan Salame who helped spark the flame that would take down SBF. In a Nov. 9 call with Bahamian regulators, he alerted authorities that customer funds may have been used to plug holes in Alameda’s balance sheet and the only people who were able to transfer client assets to Alameda with the necessary codes were CEO SBF, director of engineering Nishad Singh, and FTX and Alameda co-founder Gary Wang. Despite the trickling of answers, so many questions still remain. How many people actually knew what?
In an interesting development for DeFi, Coinbase is launching an asset recovery tool to help recover unsupported ERC-20 tokens sent by mistake. This is interesting as it addresses a huge pain point for current on-chain participants. If anyone accidentally sends funds to an incompatible chain/address then - poof. Those assets are essentially gone. Let your guard down, make a careless mistake and you can lose your assets irreversibly. This is just one obstacle that DeFi will have to overcome to go mainstream. Of course this is a CEX that's doing it, a centralized entity, so there’s that. Baby steps.
For today’s dose of audacity, Binance delisted Mithril, a blockchain social media project, that has largely been inactive for almost two years with its website appearing to be offline. Now they re-emerged from the dead to demand a refund for the 200,000 BNB tokens it deposited back in 2018. That deposit is now worth $53M but at the time of listing in 2018, it would have been worth about $1M. Essentially abandoned their project and now acting like they were wronged.

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Daily Bullets:

Coinbase launched a new asset recovery tool to help customers recover mistakenly sent funds
MetaMask partnership with PayPal allows purchasing and sending ETH to connected wallets
Microsoft updated its policy terms to not allow cryptocurrency mining on its online services
Unstoppable Domains will integrate in early 2023 with Etherscan and Polygonscan
Binance Futures integrated with TradingView
Curve Finance will deploy on zkSync’s mainnet in 2023 - first Curve deployment on a ZK-rollup
Trust Wallet adds in-app cross-chain swaps functionality with THORChain integration
Magic Eden Rewards - ranking system will reward users with unique benefits
Forbes partners with The Sandbox for an interactive multiplayer experience
The Sandbox hiring blockchain infrastructure security provider OpenZeppelin for security service

Data:

TL;DR: MetaMask now has a partnership with PayPal that allows purchasing and sending ETH to connected web3 wallets, so let’s look at some MetaMask metrics. For users per week, we see a rough average of 20k-40k users in 2022. Old users (purple) have stayed fairly consistent this year while new users (orange) have fallen with a now characteristic spike in November that overlaps with the FTX collapse. People rushed to DeFi alternatives amidst the trust lapse in CEXs. Overall, not bad for a bear market drawdown. Total daily swaps have similar behavior and we can see that the average swap size since June has fallen to below $5000. Question is whether integrations such as this with Paypal will eventually be able to open the floodgates for mainstream users. Lastly, we can see that Coinbase has hit another all time low. Stock started the year around $250 down to $38.

Metamask:

Coinbase Price:

Now for a more expanded and detailed look at the day for those who like detail and sources…

Crypto News:

MetaMask onramp partnership with PayPal allows accounts to purchase ETH and send to connected web3 wallets

Canadian entrepreneur and “Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary claims Binance caused the collapse of FTX on purpose

Digital asset custodian BitGo refused to allow Alameda Research to unwind $50M worth of wrapped bitcoin days before bankruptcy

Wintermute and Venture Cap Octopus given seats on key FTX Creditor Committee which will play a key role in representing the issues of the million or so potentially owed money

Crypto trading firm QCP Capital has at least $97M stuck on FTX

The GAM3 Awards - December 15th, 3PM UTC - recognizing this year’s best web3 games

Mithril, a blockchain social media project, says it deposited 200,000 BNB tokens to Binance to list its MITH token in 2018 and now wants a refund after Binance delisted the token

Microsoft updated its policy terms to specify it will not allow cryptocurrency mining on its online services without prior approval - in line with other tech giants like Google, which prohibits crypto mining on its cloud platform without approval

Web3 domain provider Unstoppable Domains will integrate in early 2023 with Etherscan and Polygonscan

Web3 browser Opera announced Web3 Guard - a suite of browser security features that promises to protect users against malicious DApps, seed phrase phishing attacks and malicious actors

Crypto lender Amber Group will cancel performance-based bonuses in 2022 to help survive the crypto winter meanwhile they acquired Singapore crypto exchange Sparrow

DeFi, dApp developer Core Business Holdings goes public in the US through ARAX acquisition. ARAX is currently investing in WEB3 projects, as well as future WEB4 projects

B. Riley Financial, one of Core Scientific's largest creditors, proposing a $72M financing package to extend Core Scientific’s runway by more than two years and help stave off bankruptcy

Economic/Government/Regulatory:

The U.S. Department of Justice filed charges against nine individuals for operating two crypto Ponzi schemes, IcomTech and Forcount, also known as Weltsys

The New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) issued digital asset guidance to state-regulated banks laying out what information financial institutions must submit before getting approval to engage in virtual currency-related activities

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) will utilize Stellar Blockchain to send USDC stablecoins o Ukrainians

A central bank digital currency is a legislative priority for the European Union in the coming two years

Japan moves closer to easing tax on corporate crypto holdings

G20 economic leaders aim to develop an agreement on policy for crypto assets to inform global regulation at a meeting with finance and central bank deputies in Bengaluru, India

Exchange News:

In a Nov. 9 call with Bahamian regulators, FTX Digital Markets co-CEO Ryan Salame told Bahamas Securities Commission Executive Director Christina R. Rolle that client assets possibly held by FTX were transferred to Alameda Research to cover the hedge fund's financial losses

Binance Futures integrated with TradingView - will allow Binance users to trade USDⓈ-Margined futures perpetual and delivery contracts directly within TradingView’s browser and desktop apps

Coinbase launched a new asset recovery tool to help customers recover more than 4,000 unsupported ERC-20 tokens sent to its ledger

Binance may significantly reduce this year’s year-end bonuses

Paradigm, the crypto derivatives trading platform not to be confused with the crypto investment firm with the same name, cut salaries company-wide by 15 percent due to the contagion stemming from FTX

Coinbase has added Axelar (AXL) to its roadmap

Binance will delist MITH, TRIBE, REP and BTCST

DeFi News:

Curve Finance will deploy on zkSync’s mainnet in 2023 - first time Curve will be deployed a ZK-rollup

Trust Wallet adds in-app cross-chain swaps functionality with THORChain integration for BTC, ETH, BNB Bep 2 and BUSD Bep 2

ENS DAO finished voting on stewards for three working groups: Meta-Governance, ENS ecosystem, and the Public Goods - terms on Jan. 1, 2023 with six-month terms

MakerDAO and GnosisDAO join forces to launch the DAO-to-DAO strategic alliance

NFT/Gaming/Metaverse News:

Magic Eden Rewards launch will allow users to create a profile across all wallets and award users with “Magic Points” based on secondary trading transactions. Ranking system will reward users with unique benefits

Magic Eden now supports Polygon NFT minting and trading

Forbes partners with The Sandbox and enters the metaverse with an interactive multiplayer experience

Crypto.com DeFi Wallet now allows storing NFTs on Polygon

The Sandbox is hiring leading blockchain infrastructure security provider OpenZeppelin to audit smart contracts, monitor vulnerabilities and alert for potential threats to the metaverse

Yuga Labs public launch of bug bounty program

Bangalore International Airport Metaport: World’s 1st Airport Metaverse launches via Polygon’s help

Former US president Donald Trump unveils NFT trading card collection minted on Polygon. A Sweepstakes offers prizes like a 1-on-1 Zoom call or one hour of golf with Trump

Fundraises:

SudoRandom Labs, the main developer of the NFT AMM SudoSwap, completed a private placement financing of $12.5M @sudoswap

Digital Entertainment Asset (DEA), operator of the PlayMining NFT gaming platform, raised $10M from LA-based LDA Capital @PlayMining_SG

Anima, creator of “the first on-chain AR” digital assets Onlybots, raised an additional $3M from Polygon Studios, Not Boring Capital, HashKey and others @onlydotbot

Nametag, creators of the new standard for end-user identity verification with web3, raised a $2M seed round co-led by GSRV and OKX Ventures, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Alchemy Ventures @nametagtweets

Early Stage Projects:

Sui token allocation - community reserves 50%, early contributors 20%, investors 14%, and Mysten Labs treasury 10%, Community Access Program 6%

Introducing StarkNet's next step in decentralization - voting on protocol changes. Next is StarkNet's governance, which will span over the next few months

Introducing StarkNet's Builders Council - will be delegated 23.3% of the first phase voting power to the Builders Council members

Covalent, a Web3 data provider partnership with SKALE, a multichain Ethereum scaling solution offering a gas-free transaction solution

Research/Reads:

Lessons from the crypto winter - source

Andre Cronje - The decentralized CEO - source

FTX Investor Impact: Timeline of Realized Cryptocurrency Gains and Losses Shows FTX Hit Investor Wallets Less Than Previous Crises - source

How to Design a Compliant, Privacy-Preserving Fiat Stablecoin via Zero-Knowledge Proofs - source

Why is on-chain data analysis prone to misunderstanding? - source

Have you seen our institutional-quality research?

M6 Research

Crypto Twitterverse:

Dani Cloud @daniiicloud

1. My ex - FTX 🧵 Two(ish) weeks ago, I formally resigned from my position as an FTX employee.

Cold Blooded Shiller @ColdBloodShill

BREAKING Project that hasn't tweeted in 2 years and has no functioning webpage asks Binance for it's 200,000 $BNB deposit back. 💀💀💀

ZachXBT @zachxbt

1/ A thread on how @jyxdi profits off the work of an Fiverr artist while implying the art is her own to launch NFT projects such as @spiritgates. Let’s dive in.

Did we miss anything or is there anything you want to discuss? We’d Love to hear your feedback and engage with the community! Feel free to leave a comment and let us know your thoughts on the Crypto market!