🌌$500 Billion Apollo to Enter Crypto - TWJ #135
The firm hires former JPM's exec Christine Moy.
In today’s issue:
The crypto market is down with the total market cap sitting at $1.7-1.8 trillion. Tron (TRX) is the best performer in the top 100 in the past 7-d. The Fed is expected to raise rates by 50 bps soon.
In other news, Apollo Global Management hires JPM’s Christine Moy, SEC ramps up anti-crypto scam efforts, and Crypto.com restarts staking rewards.
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- Curated by Marco Manoppo (@manoppomarco)
📰Market News
⎆Apollo Global Management Hires JPM’s Christine Moy
One of the world’s largest private equity firms, Apollo, has just hired former JPM’s crypto executive, Christine Moy, to head its new digital assets strategy. Apollo will look for investments in the web 3.0 space between the $50M and $250M range.
Apollo has ~$500 billion in AUM. Exploring crypto with less than 0.1% of your capital will not provide the learning experience that they seek. This is akin to buying $50 worth of SHIB tokens for a 25 y.o. young professionals.
⎆SEC Ramps up Anti-crypto Scam Efforts
The US SEC is hiring ~20 enforcement staff that will focus on investor protection in the crypto space, specifically from scams and cyber attacks. The addition would bring the number of staff that deals with crypto-related activities (including NFTs, coin offerings, etc.) to 50 people.
The SEC has arguably failed at providing a regulatory framework for crypto builders. While the SEC’s main task is to protect consumers, it is extremely sluggish at reacting to crypto developments in a constructive yet critical manner.
⎆Crypto.com Restarts Staking Reward
Crypto.com is known for its crypto-linked cards, a product that allows crypto asset holders to spend their holdings in a tangible way without directly moving their funds. The card product growth relies on the attractive opportunities provided by the CRO token staking reward, which was going to be removed before it faced a backlash that made its CEO reinstate the staking rewards.
Token rewards as a growth hacking strategy have been working for many top crypto projects but their sustainability is increasingly being questioned. It makes sense for Crypto.com to want to reduce this incentive for long-term growth, but this event proved that taking rewards away from existing users is a difficult challenge.
👨🏻💻Decentralized Finance (DeFi)
DeFi Transactions at 1-Year Low, NFTs Set All-Time High in Q1
Fei Protocol Offers $10M Bounty After $80M Rari Capital Exploit
Solana Reckons With Seven-Hour Outage After Bot Swarm
Crypto Added to Telegram by TON Stewards, Opening Path to Payments
Portal Partners With Mintlayer To Boost DeFi On Bitcoin
🏛Governance - Active Proposals
Compound - Update High-TVL cToken Implementations
Terra - Terra x Citadel DAO - Accelerating the growth of BTC/4pool
Unlock - Marketing unlock - david moderator
🦮NFT & Metaverse
OpenSea Now Accepting ApeCoin
Coinbase NFT Marketplace Beta Sees Less Than 900 Transactions
ApeCoin Integrates With Polygon Amid NFT Mint Backlash and Speculation
VanEck Enters Metaverse With Launch of NFT Collection
Bored Ape Creators Slammed for 'Nightmare' Ethereum NFT Land Drop
Pplpleasr Releases Producer Pass Ethereum NFTs for Cannes
Square Enix Sells Off Tomb Raider and Three Studios to Fund NFT Games
Okay Bears NFT Projects Hit $18M in Sales in One Day
4-Digit ENS Domains Spike in Demand This Week and Continue Soaring
Top Sales (Last 24-h); Source: https://dappradar.com/nft
📈Deal Flow & Capital Raise
MYSO - $2.4M Seed Round
CrowdPad - $2.5M Seed Round
Revise - $3.5M Seed Round
Rivermen - $4.5M Unknown Round
Gate Ventures - To Close $200M Crypto Fund
⚖️Regulatory Update
SEC to Add Staff as It Ramps Up Anti-Crypto Scam Efforts
US Lawmakers Reintroduce Bill to Give CFTC Crypto Spot Market Oversight
EU Regulator: Banks Don’t Need Extra Crypto Protection Yet
Labor Department Criticizes Fidelity’s Plan to Put Bitcoin on 401(k) Menu
EU Commissioner Calls for Global Coordination on Crypto Regulation
Uzbekistan’s President Issues Decree to Adopt Special Crypto Framework
📚Noteworthy Reads
Aylo’s Read on Bancor V3
Solana’s Read on Mainnet Beta Outage Report and Mitigation
Will Robinson’s Thread on X-to-Earn Economic Model
Feel free to reach out to manoppomarco@gmail.com — feedbacks and constructive criticisms are much appreciated.