In one of the most shocking community votes ever, a DAO called Juno, part of the Cosmos ecosystem, voted to strip a whale of 98.5% of its tokens.
Like most events in crypto, it's not exactly what it sounds like at first glance.
The initial reason for the proposal was that the whale was perceived to have cheated to obtain an amount of airdropped tokens that was larger than the airdrop cap.
However, the whale defended itself, saying that it was a company representing 30,000 users.
How this resolves remains to be seen, but on this Friday's Unchained, Andy Beal, head of ecosystem development at Forta and author of the 30,000 Feet newsletter, explains all the backstory and drama, what proposals the community is considering, and what the main takeaways are for future airdrops.
And now onto the rest of the news this week.
Coming off a busy week that included the purchase of CryptoPunks and Meebits IP rights, along with the arrival of ApeCoin, Bored Ape Yacht Club creator Yuga Labs kept the good times rolling with the announcement of a $450 million raise led by a16z. The funding round values the firm at $4 billion, which is, interestingly, less than one-third of the current value of ApeCoin, the cryptocurrency with a $12 billion market cap that will act as the main currency for Bored Ape Yacht Club, of which the BAYC founders own 8%.
Yuga Labs will be using the influx of cash to build out its metaverse, dubbed “Otherside.” Yuga dropped a trailer for Otherside over the weekend via Twitter, revealing that the product will launch in April.
Source: Yuga Labs
The trailer follows the journey of a BAYC Ape after it chugs a potion labeled “Don’t Drink Me” and takes a psychedelic adventure across a dystopian metaverse landscape. Notably, the video includes references to a few other popular NFT projects, including Mutant Ape Yacht Club, Cool Cats, CryptoPunks, CrypToadz, Meebits, Nouns, and World of Women.
As an aside related to Yuga Labs, CryptoPotato calculated how much an original BAYC member would have made by holding a single NFT from mint until now. In total, an OG BAYC buyer spent .08 ETH in 2021. Since then, original minters received a Mutant Ape Yacht Club NFT, a Bored Ape Kennel Club NFT, and rights to the APE airdrop – which, all told, adds up to something close to $477,000 from a ~$500 initial investment.
El Salvador’s $1 bitcoin bond offering is delayed, as Alejandro Zelaya, El Salvador’s finance minister told Reuters on Tuesday. Zelaya cited unfavorable conditions like Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion and Bitcoin’s volatility as reasons for El Salvador pushing the launch date back.
The bond was initially planned to go out between March 15-20th. Zelaya says El Salvador is still looking to launch before September 2022.
However, Adam Cochran, partner of Cinneamhain Ventures, was unconvinced that El Salvador’s decision to postpone its bond to market conditions. “El Salvador postponing their Bitcoin bond due to "unfavorable market conditions" is hilarious. If you actually believe in an asset and can drum up demand for your bond, a down market is ideal to sell it. Pretty clear no one wanted this instrument,” he tweeted.
Once issued (or if issued), El Salvador, which made BTC legal tender and holds the crypto-asset in its treasury, plans to use $500 million to purchase more BTC, with the other $500 million going towards the construction of energy and mining infrastructure.
The news comes during the same week as a bill looking to mitigate the risk of El Salvador’s BTC adoption passed out of a Senate committee. Dubbed “The Accountability for Cryptocurrency in El Salvador Act,” the legislation would monitor remittances from El Salvador. President Nayib Bukele expressed disdain, tweeting: “Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that the US Government would be afraid of what we are doing here.”
Source: Nayib Bukele
Goldman Sachs made its first-ever over-the-counter crypto transaction this week via Galaxy Digital. The traditional finance behemoth executed a Bitcoin non-deliverable option, says Galaxy, claiming that Goldman’s trade is the “ first OTC crypto transaction by a major bank in the U.S.”
Coinciding with Goldman’s trade was a change to the front page of their website, goldmansachs.com. On Wednesday, Goldman featured “digitalization” as the key trend on its main website, touting research and insights “From cryptocurrencies to the metaverse.”
Source: goldmansachs.com
On the topic of traditional finance adoption of crypto, CoinDesk reported this week that the world’s largest hedge fund, Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater, is preparing to back its first crypto fund. While CoinDesk reports that Bridgewater will not be investing directly in crypto assets itself, the $150 billion asset manager has plans to back an external vehicle. Ray Dalio himself disclosed a position in BTC back in May 2021.
Additionally, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink revealed the $9.6 trillion asset manager is “studying digital currencies” after seeing “increasing interest” from clients in a Thursday shareholder letter.
Bitcoin is suddenly all the rage in DeFi.
Luna Foundation Guard, a developer supporting Terra’s main stablecoin, UST, revealed that it has already amassed a $3 billion treasury that it will soon use to purchase Bitcoin. LFG plans to use the purchased BTC as a forex reserve mechanism to help keep UST’s peg at $1 in any market condition. According to Terraform Labs CEO Do Kwon, LFG plans to up its forex reserve to $10 billion by the time it is done – which would cover 2/3rds of UST’s market cap.
LFG’s actual plan to back UST with bitcoin remained a mystery until Wednesday when JumpTrading’s crypto arm published a proposal on Terra’s governance forum outlining a “Bitcoin Reserve Pool” that illustrates how LFG will help keep UST’s price pegged to the dollar.
Source: JumpTrading's proposal
On the other hand, at the Avalanche Summit in Barcelona, Ava Labs, the firm developing Avalanche’s blockchain, announced two significant updates. First, it will be launching a wallet called “Core.” Secondly, the firm will add Bitcoin bridging functionality to Avalanche.
GameStop launched the beta version of its NFT marketplace this week on top of Loopring, sowing confusion among anyone who has been keeping up with the gaming company’s foray into crypto. According to Loopring, “The new GameStop NFT Marketplace is built atop the second layer of Ethereum, specifically Loopring L2.”
Source: Loopring
This is a bit surprising because, in Q4 2021, GameStop announced a partnership with Ethereum scaling solution Immutable to support the development of an NFT platform in a deal that included millions in IMX tokens.
GameStop and Loopring’s announcement prompted a response from Immutable (disclosure: a former sponsor of my show), claiming that this was the plan all along. “LRC integrating was not a surprise (and we welcome them!),” explained Immutable on Twitter. “The GameStop marketplace will ultimately be an aggregator, with Immutable as its preferred partner.”
Not surprisingly, Loopring’s native token LRC shot up 27% on the day of the announcement. Immutable’s token dropped half a percent.
On Wednesday, Cashio Dollar, an algorithmic stablecoin project built on Solana, was exploited for $27 million. On Twitter, Cashio described the bug as an “infinite mint glitch.” According to Paradigm researcher samczsun, “because Cashio didn't establish a root of trust for all of the accounts it used, an attacker was able to steal approximately $50M by forging a chain of fake accounts.”
The result of the hack decimated the project, with the total-value-locked in the protocol crashing from $30 million to roughly $500,000, according to data from DeFi Llama, and the price of a single CASH dropping from $1 to far below $0.
The US Department of Justice is charging two individuals with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering related to an NFT project called Frosties.
It is the first such action against an NFT project by a US regulator. According to the DOJ, the two Frosties founders allegedly “abandoned the Frosties NFT project within hours after selling out of Frosties NFTs, deactivated the Frosties website, and transferred approximately $1.1 million in cryptocurrency proceeds from the scheme to various cryptocurrency wallets under their control in multiple transactions designed to obfuscate the original source of funds."
If you are a Crypto Twitter native, you probably follow the meme account @greg16676935420. In a VERY humorous exchange with FTX founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, it appears Greg won himself a free Tesla after cheekily asking SBF for a free Tesla if Greg could type more than 100 words per minute.
If you want a smile or a laugh, you should definitely check out the video Greg posted to show off his accomplishment. It’s a riot.
Source: Greg
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Cover photo credit: Right-clicked saved from Goldman's front-page :)
