Binance Potential UAE HQ - The WAGMI Journal #44
The world's largest crypto firm continues its search.
In today’s issue:
The crypto market is down with the global market cap sitting above ~$2.1-2.2 trillion. Convex Finance (CVX) led the top 100 crypto assets by market cap performance in the past 24h and the global markets continue to question how tighter monetary policy will play out.
In other news, Binance is talking with the UAE, Bitwise launches an NFT-tracking index fund, and Chainalysis reported that DeFi scams caused $2.8B damage in 2021.
We’re continually improving our content, please reach out if you have any other ideas or would like us to recap a segment of the market.
- Curated by Marco Manoppo (@manoppomarco)
📰Market News
⎆Binance in Talks With the UAE on HQ Plan
On its journey to please regulators and eventually find a permanent home, Binance is in talks with regulators in the UAE for a potential HQ in the country. In the past few years, Binance has been under the scrutinies of many regulators around the world due to its unclear home base, claiming to be a “virtual company”. Singapore was speculated to be one of the main candidates for Binance HQ, but that no longer seem to be the case as the firm decided to stop pursuing appropriate licenses in the country.
⎆Bitwise NFT-Tracking Index Fund
Bitwise has launched a fairly unique product, tracking the performances of the crypto market’s top 10 largest NFT collections. The fund, which will only be made available to accredited investors, will hold notable collections such as CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club. Even though exposures to Metaverse crypto-assets exist, this level of direct NFT exposure hasn’t been made available to institutional investors in a scalable way; with this index fund, Bitwise definitely pioneered a new type of product.
⎆Chainalysis: $2.8B DeFi Rug Pull in 2021
According to Chainalysis, crypto market participants lost over $2.8 billion to DeFi scams, or otherwise known as Rug Pulls. While this figure might seem surprising at first, anecdotal evidence as a market participant would say otherwise. Keep in mind that the overall crypto market grew tremendously in the past year, with other layer-1 blockchain accelerating its DeFi adoption in 2021. In an open-source environment, bad actors will always exist. The key to preventing scams is education, not centralization.
👨🏻💻Decentralized Finance (DeFi)
Avalanche Accelerates AVAX Adoption with BitGo Deal
Balancer Launches Boosted Pools
Index Coop Makes 2X ETH Leverage Token Cheaper with Move to Polygon
ConsenSys Launches ConsenSys Rollups With The Support Of Mastercard
NEAR Foundation Appoints Ex-Circle Exec Marieke Flament as CEO
Jet Protocol Airdrops $JET Token
Social Token Platform Rally Hires Novi Legal Exec as Meta's Crypto Exodus Continues
🏛Governance - Active Proposals
Compound - Decentralized long-term security for Compound
Compound - OpenZeppelin Continuous Audit & Security Services Proposal
Compound - Continuous Security Engineering for Compound
Fei - FIP-56: Fei v2 Deployment
Uniswap - Should Uniswap v3 be deployed to Polygon?
🦮NFT & Metaverse
Nexo Partners With 3 Arrows Capital to Launch NFT Lending & Art Financing Service
Bitwise Launches NFT-tracking Index Fund for Accredited Investors
Ancient Rome Play-to-Earn Game ‘vEmpire’ Launches
Adidas Originals to Launch Debut NFT Collection
Video Game News Pushes Forgotten Runes NFT Floor Up 88%
Top Sales (Last 24-h); Source: https://dappradar.com/nft
📈Deal Flow & Capital Raise
GIANT Protocol - $5M Unknown Round
Nansen - $75M Unknown Round
League of Kingdoms Arena - $3M Seed Round
Bridgesplit - $4.25M Seed Round
Heir - $10M Seed Round
Dune Analytics - Raising at $1B Valuation
Aztec - $17M Series A
Silverflow - $17M Series A
Ramp - $52.7M Series A
Stocktwits - $30M Series B
Crypto Finance AG - Undisclosed Amount of Acquisition by Deutsche Börse
⚖️Regulatory Update
SEC Delays Decisions on Bitwise and Grayscale’s Bitcoin ETFS
Federal Regulator Says Credit Unions Can Partner With Crypto Providers
Kazakhstan Piloting a CBDC on R3′s Corda Platform
Congressional Candidate Kurani’s 2,022 Solana NFTs as Part of Campaign
French Central Bank Completes First Stage of Its CBDC Experiments
Russian Central Bank Seeks Ban on Crypto Investment: Report
US Senate Confirms New CFTC Chair
Japan’s Crypto Exchanges Grapple With Travel Rule as Deadline Looms
📚Noteworthy Reads
Coinbase’s Read on How Coinbase thinks about the Metaverse
Victor Pontis’s Read on How Solana NFTs Differ from Ethereum
Adam Cochran’s Thread on YFI
Feel free to reach out to manoppomarco@gmail.com — feedbacks and constructive criticisms are much appreciated.
DISCLAIMER:
All the information presented on The WAGMI Journal publication and its affiliation is strictly for educational purposes only. It should not be construed or taken as financial, legal, investment, and any other forms of advice. Writers, authors, and contributors of The WAGMI Journal may hold any assets mentioned in the issue.