This New Project Has a $100M Valuation

June 2, 2021       /       Unchained Daily       /       Laura Shin

Daily Bits ✍️✍️✍️

• Sotheby’s to host an NFT auction including the ‘first’ NFT ever minted

• Union Square Ventures has invested in crypto publisher Mirror at a $100M valuation

• JP Morgan analyst believes BTC price may decline even further

• Ethereum on-chain volume and miner revenue hit an ATH in May

• Coinbase’s debit card now syncs with Apple pay

• Dogecoin is now listed on Coinbase Pro

• DeFi protocols produced $370M in revenue last month

• dYdX hit $2 billion in total volume on its layer 2 protocol

What Do You Meme?

Unchained Challenge → send in your best meme that explains a hot topic in crypto. You can either tweet @Unchained_pod or send an email over to hello@unchainedpodcast.com!

The best three submissions will be showcased in the What Do You Meme section sometime later this week or earlier next week, along with a shoutout to your Twitter profile.

Example:

What’s Poppin’?

May was a busy month, a very busy month. Here is your 600-word recap:

Week 1 (May 1st – May 7th)

Big Story →  Fintech firm FIS announced a partnership with digital asset manager NYDIG to bring about an industry first: customers at hundreds of US banks will be able to purchase, HODL, or sell Bitcoin directly within their bank account — without having to go through an exchange, like Coinbase, or a payment application, such as PayPal.

Superlatives:

• Bitcoin’s Taproot update began its speedy trial

• Ethereum raced past $3k while Ethereum Classic hit $150

• Uniswap, the largest decentralized exchange by trading volume, officially announced the launch of its version 3

• Dogecoin hit 69 cents

• Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital announced its acquisition of BitGo for $1.2 billion in cash and stock

• A federal court in California is authorizing the IRS to obtain the identities of any user who has traded $20,000+ on cryptocurrency exchange Kraken

Week 2 (May 8th-14th)

Big Story →  Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that Tesla is suspending the purchase of vehicles with Bitcoin, citing concern over the “rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions.”

The announcement immediately sent the price of BTC plunging — because, you know, sooooo much of the Bitcoin transaction activity was people spending their BTC on Teslas.

Superlatives:

• Vitalik proposed that UNI become an oracle token

• EBay launched an NFT platform

• Tether, for the first time since 2014, revealed the breakdown of its reserves

• Bloomberg reported that Binance is under investigation by the DOJ and IRS

• Shiba Inu and other memecoins took a hit due to Vitalik’s charitable donations

Week 3 (May 15th-21st) 

Big Story → Bitcoin and Ethereum lost 30% and 40% of their value, respectively, in a single day. The stress of the dip led to Coinbase reporting “intermittent downtime” for customers attempting to purchase cryptos on sale. Binance was also disrupted, as the exchange stopped Ethereum-related token withdrawals from its platform.

Data from CoinMarketCap reveals that the total cryptocurrency market capitalization was down 15%+ over week three, declining from $2.2 trillion to $1.8.

Superlatives:

• SushiSwap reported its highest trading volume ever in a 24h period

• Elon (erroneously) hinted that Tesla had sold more BTC

• Acting OCC Head Michael Hsu announced his wish for the OCC, Federal Reserve, and FDIC to create an “interagency sprint team” to handle crypto

• US Congressman Tom Emmer sent a letter to FASB urging clear accounting standards for digital currencies

• Wells Fargo announced that it will soon introduce an actively managed crypto strategy

• Bitcoin hash rate fell almost 20% as miners in China’s Sichuan region faced temporary power limitations

• In China, three self-regulatory bodies jointly published a note reiterating a previous ban on financial and payment institutions from providing services related to cryptocurrency transactions and initial coin offerings.

Week 4+ (May 22nd-May 31st)

Big Story →  Elon Musk took to Twitter once again with some good news for the Bitcoin community, tweeting, “Spoke with North American Bitcoin miners. They committed to publish current & planned renewable usage & to ask miners WW to do so. Potentially promising.”

MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor offered further context to Musk’s potentially promising conversation, saying that he [Saylor] had, in fact, hosted the meeting between Elon and a few high-profile North American miners, forming what Saylor named the Bitcoin Mining Council.

Superlatives:

• Shark Tank “shark” Mark Cuban confirmed his investment in Polygon

• GameStop announced it’s building an NFT team.

• Large Bitcoin holders scooped up 77,000 BTC during week 3’s market correction.

• 1confirmation raised $125 million for its third fund

• Ray Dalio owns “some bitcoin” and would “rather have bitcoin than a bond.”

• Carl Icahn is considering a significant investment in crypto

• Circle announced a $440 million raise led by Fidelity, FTX, and DCG

• The US Treasury is proposing expanded crypto reporting to fight tax evasion

• A statement summarizing State Council meeting in China said: “We should crack down on bitcoin mining and trading activities and prevent individual risks from being passed to the whole society.”

Recommended Reads

• Bitcoin is Batman… 😂: 

• Glassnode broke down the last week of activity on-chain: 

• Parker Lewis on why Bitcoin could make all other money obsolete (an oldie but a goodie): 

On The Pod…

You can purchase it here: http://bit.ly/cryptopians