👴SEC Gensler Strikes Again - The WAGMI Journal #71
The SEC is continuing its probe into firms that pay interest in crypto deposits.
In today’s issue:
The crypto market is flat with the global market cap sitting at ~$1.7 trillion. Crypto markets are paying attention to the TIME Wonderland saga as it unfolds and anticipating the potential effects on other DeFi protocols. Powell endorsed an interest rate hike in March to contain inflation.
In other news, SEC continues to scrutinize crypto interest-payment, Binance plans to reinstate payments from EU’s SEPA, and Tesla reports its BTC holding was unchanged in Q4 21.
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
⎆SEC Scrutinizing Crypto Firms Over Interest-Paying Services
Unsurprisingly, the SEC continues to take steps in probing crypto firms that provide interest on crypto assets deposits including Voyager, Gemini, and Celsius. The agency has not officially decided on any outcome and is still pondering whether these firms should classify their offerings as securities due to the nature of the interest payment.
⎆Binance to Reinstate Payments From EU's SEPA
Having been under a lot of regulatory scrutinies in the past year, Binance had temporarily stopped payments from the EU SEPA region last year. The world’s largest crypto exchange has just announced that it will reinstate payments from the EU SEPA region, starting with Belgium and Bulgaria, expanding slowly throughout the bloc for the next few weeks.
⎆Tesla Reports Bitcoin Holdings Unchanged in Q4
Despite his recent criticisms towards web 3.0 and the broader crypto market, TSLA earnings report from Q4 21 showed that the firm’s BTC holdings remained the same at an approximate valuation of $1.26 billion. Musk is known for his affinity towards DOGE, but perhaps this provides a slight hope that BTC might be integrated with TSLA in a much more meaningful way.
👨🏻💻Decentralized Finance (DeFi)
Anchor Protocol Burns Through Its Reserves As Deposits Pile Up
Metamask’s New Inbuilt Multichain Institutional Custody Feature
Synthetix L222 Roadmap
Coinbase Close to Listing Solana Ecosystem Tokens
MakerDAO’s Expulsion of Content Team Stirs Debate
Tracer DAO Perpetual Pools V2 Coming Soon!
RLY Backer SuperLayer to Bring Social Tokens to Solana
SundaeSwap Switcheroo Leaves CardStarter Users With Losses
Diem to Sell Assets to Silvergate Bank for $200M
Avalanche-Based Wonderland Is Allegedly Run by Quadrigacx Co-founder
🏛Governance - Active Proposals
Cryptex - CIP-12: Q1 + Q2 Brand, Marketing & Development Budget
Fei - FIP-70: ETH/FEI Liquidity migration to Balancer
Fei - FIP-72: New DAI PSM
🦮NFT & Metaverse
MoonPay Rolls Out Credit Card Checkout Tool for NFT Purchases
NASA Blasts NFTs: Says They Won't Take Off with Its Imagery
Coinbase's VP of Product Demos Forthcoming NFT Platform
Reddit Is Testing Out NFT Profile Pics, but ‘No Decisions Have Been Made’
Warner Music Plots Metaverse Concerts in Ethereum Game The Sandbox
Top Sales (Last 24-h); Source: https://dappradar.com/nft
It was suspected that these trades were wash trading on the LooksRare marketplace.
📈Deal Flow & Capital Raise
TRLab - $4.2M Unknown Round
Prismatic - $2M Seed Round
HAL - $3M Seed Round
Flint - $5.1M Seed Round
Superdao - $10.5M Seed Round
Blockdaemon - $207M Series C
Railgun - $10M Strategic Partnership with DCG
Sandbox - $50M Incubator Program
CoinTracker - $100M Unknown Round
ZkSync - $200M Investment from Matter Labs, BitDAO
Apifiny - $530M SPAC Merger
⚖️Regulatory Update
Trezor Adopts Swiss Travel Rule Protocol for Private Crypto Wallets
Crypto Policy Advocacy Group Warns of ‘Disastrous’ Provision in a US Bill
Russian Finance Ministry Submits Crypto Regulatory Framework for Review
House of Representatives Schedules Hearing on Stablecoins for February 8
📚Noteworthy Reads
useWeb3’s Thread on 3 Main Layers of Web3
SynthaMan’s Thread on Synthetix 2022 Roadmap
Panda Jackson’s Thread on Stablecoin
Feel free to reach out to manoppomarco@gmail.com — feedbacks and constructive criticisms are much appreciated.