September 23, 2021       /       Unchained Daily       /       Laura Shin

Daily Bits ✍️✍️✍️

  • BlockFi received an extension from New Jersey’s Bureau of Securities regarding the state’s ban on interest-earning accounts.

  • Galaxy Digital and Invesco have partnered up to develop a range of crypto ETFs.

  • Genesis Digital Assets, a bitcoin mining firm, raised $431 million in a round led by Paradigm.

  • Kava, a cross-chain DeFi platform, launched a $185 million ecosystem fund.

  • PayPal is rolling out a redesigned app that will feature crypto offerings more prominently.

  • Robinhood is set to release in-app crypto wallets that will allow customers to begin sending and receiving cryptocurrency off-platform in October.

  • Crypto.com (disclosure: a current sponsor) is now the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers official jersey patch sponsor.

  • DEX aggregator 1inch (disclosure: a former sponsor) officially added support for Arbitrum, an Ethereum layer 2 solution.

  • Michael Hsu, the acting head of the OCC, compared the cryptocurrency industry to the lead-up to the 2008 financial crisis.

  • eToro, a crypto and TradFi trading platform, will delay its public debut until Q4 2021.

  • Orca, a Solana-based DEX, announced an $18 million raise.

What Do You Meme?

What’s Poppin’?

Dapper Labs closed a $250 million funding round, raising money from Coatue and a16z, amongst others. The latest influx of cash values the NFT company behind NBA Top Shot and the Flow blockchain at $7.6 billion — a $5 billion increase from its March raise of $305 million at a $2.6 billion valuation.

Dapper also revealed a partnership with LaLiga, Spain’s top soccer league — and one of the most popular sports leagues in the world. Much like NBA Top Shot, La Liga will have its own marketplace on Dapper’s Flow blockchain, where NFT moments and highlights with varying degrees of rarity will be bought and sold.

The move comes as part of Dapper’s “master plan,” as CEO Roham Gharegozlou put it on Twitter. 

If LaLiga NFTs were to become as popular as NBA Top Shot, well, then Dapper has hit a home run with this partnership (pardon the cross-sport reference). According to Dapper’s press release, NBA Top Shot grew 30x in 2021. The NFT collectible marketplace currently has over 1.1 million registered accounts and did more than $750 million in volume over 13 million transactions.

The Dapper Lab’s news comes right on the heels of two similar announcements from Sorare, an Ethereum-based NFT fantasy soccer game (and disclosure: current sponsor).

  1. Less than two weeks ago, Sorare signed an exclusive partnership deal with LaLiga to issue NFTs for all of its players.
  2. On Tuesday, Sorare announced a raise of $680 million, valuing the NFT company at $4.3 billion. The latest funding round was led by  Softbank.

Recommended Reads

  • Check out a16z’s Chris Dixon’s latest tweet threads (metaverse version):

  • Coin Metrics with a data-driven breakdown of the NFT industry:

  • Bartek Kiepuszewski on layer 2 censorship resistance:

On The Pod…

How OG Crypto Artist Rhea Myers Sold a Never-Seen Artwork at Sotheby’s

Rhea Myers, artist, hacker, writer, and senior smart contract developer at Dapper Labs, has been making crypto art before NFTs were a thing. Check out this episode to learn about Rhea’s work as an OG crypto artist, why she believes concerns over NFT energy consumption are overblown, and how NFTs are changing the art world. Show highlights:

    • Rhea’s experience entering the crypto space
    • what inspired her to make Bitcoin-based transaction art
    • what blockchain art she was creating in 2014
    • how she helped Coin Artist create crypto puzzles
    • what Rhea thinks about Cadence, the programming language for Flow
    • what conceptual art and blockchain art have in common
    • how Rhea minted her soul on a Dogecoin fork
    • how Rhea came up with the idea of Secret Artwork (Content), which was recently sold at a Sotheby’s auction
    • what cryptographic elements influenced Secret Artwork (Content)
    • why Rhea was wrong about how the NFT industry would evolve
    • why Rhea believes concerns over NFT energy usage are overblown
    • how NFTs are changing the art world
    • what Rhea thinks about the NFT DAO movement
    • what about NFTs make them so fascinating, in a legal sense, to Rhea

Book Update

My book, The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze, is now available for pre-order now.

The book, which is all about Ethereum and the 2017 ICO mania, comes out Jan. 18. Pre-order it today!

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