GameStop Enters Crypto & NFTs - The WAGMI Journal #57
Meme^2 equals numbers go up, run it back turbo.
In today’s issue:
The crypto market is down with the global market cap sitting at ~$2 trillion. ATOM led the past 24-h performance amongst the top 100 crypto assets by market cap, perhaps due to the upcoming Gravity bridge excitement and ICB developments in 2022. Global markets are relatively slow as investors are waiting for US payrolls data.
In other news, NYDFS installs crypto superintendent, GameStop enters NFT & crypto, Serum community foundation raised $100M in a token sale.
We’re continually improving our content, please reach out if you have ideas or would like us to recap another segment of the market.
- Curated by Marco Manoppo (@manoppomarco)
📰Market News
⎆NYDFS Installs Crypto Superintendent
The New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) has hired Peter Marton, the former director of digital asset strategy of Promontory to become a deputy superintendent focused on crypto assets. NY residents have been prevented from participating in the more exciting part of the crypto ecosystem as the state has one of the strictest rules in the entire world (not just in the US). It will be interesting to see what sort of development will happen with the presence of a new crypto-focused superintendent. If it becomes easier for NY residents to invest in exotic crypto assets, we can expect more capital to flow into the broader digital asset market.
⎆Gamestop Enters NFT & Crypto
The flagship meme-driven stock that captured the attention of the entire world last year has hired 20+ people and launched a division that will develop a marketplace for NFTs as well as pursue crypto-focused partnerships. Although the deal hasn’t been confirmed, it is reported that GameStop is close to signing a partnership with 2 crypto firms to support the initiatives.
⎆Serum Community Foundation $100M Raise
Following suit many other ecosystem funds raised in the past few months, the community-led foundation of Project Serum has just raised $100M in new token sale funding round. Extremely notable investors participated in the raise including Tiger Global, Commonwealth, Tagus, Golden Tree, and more. This only further clarified that institutional investors are becoming more comfortable with direct token deals.
👨🏻💻Decentralized Finance (DeFi)
Index and Bankless Have a New DeFi Token
$139M Terra Proposal to ‘Bring Awesome UST U-cases’ to DeFi Projects
Arab Bank Switzerland Is Quietly Getting Into DeFi
ERC-4626 Proposes To Make Yield-Bearing Tokens Their Own DeFi Lego
JPMorgan Says Ethereum’s DeFi Dominance at Risk Due to ‘Sharding’ Delays
🏛Governance - Active Proposals
Babylon Finance - BIP-7: Mining Adjustments
Compound - Update cSUSHI cToken Implementation
Compound - Migrate Contributor Streams to Sablier
ENS - [EP2] Retrospective Airdrop
🦮NFT & Metaverse
Axie Infinity to Release Land Gaming Mode in Bid to Maintain Dominance
GameStop Shares Jump 26% in After-hours Trade after NFT Division Unveiled
Dapper Labs Becomes the First NFT Company to Register to Lobby US Gov
Polygon Network Activity Spikes as NFT Sales Reach New Height
Tezos Enters Esports With Team Vitality Sponsorship, NFT Plans
Castlevania’s Konami Is Latest Video Game Giant to Jump Into NFTs
Nas Selling Rights to Two Songs via Crypto Music Startup Royal
Top Sales (Last 24-h); Source: https://dappradar.com/nft
📈Deal Flow & Capital Raise
Pocket Network - $10M Unknown Round
xBacked DAO - $1.5M Seed Round
Cion Digital - $12M Seed Round
Goldfinch - $25M Series A
Serum Community Foundation - $100M Token Sale
Tribal - $40M Debt Round from Stellar Development Foundation
⚖️Regulatory Update
NYDFS Hires New Deputy Superintendent of Virtual Currency
SEC Charges Founder of Crypto Startup Crowd Machine With Fraud
BIS Names CBDC Expert as Head of Euro-Region Innovation Center
📚Noteworthy Reads
Darren Lau’s Thread on Mistakes Made in 2021
rΞgan.eth’s Read on Beginners Guide to Crypto Jargon: Decoding DeFi
Deribit’s Thread on Crypto Covered Calls
Feel free to reach out to manoppomarco@gmail.com — feedbacks and constructive criticisms are much appreciated.