July 11, 2022       /       Unchained Daily       /       Laura Shin

Daily Bits✍️✍️✍️

  • Justin Sun, the founder of the TRON blockchain, says he could spend up to $5 billion in acquisitions.
  • UK fund managers are pushing for blockchain-traded funds.
  • Binance experienced a massive spike in BTC trading volumes due to the implementation of the zero-fee policy.
  • Russia is working to improve its monitoring of crypto transactions as they approach further regulations.
  • Regulators from Texas and Alabama are investigating Voyager Digital’s collapse.
  • Elon Musk terminated the deal to purchase Twitter for $44 billion.
  • Wintermute, a crypto market maker, has repaid hundreds of millions to various lenders.
  • Crypto exchange Blockchain.com may lose $270 million due to exposure to Three Arrows Capital.
  • Omni, an NFT platform, suffered an exploit worth $1.4 million.
  • CoinFLEX is looking to recover $84 million to strengthen its position.

Today in Crypto Adoption…

  • Ripio, an Argentinian crypto exchange, will launch a web3 wallet.

The $$$ Corner…

  • Crypto trading platform Thalex raised $7.6 million in series A funding.
  • CoinFLEX is looking to recover $84 million to strengthen its position.
  • Crypto startup DeepNFTValue raised $4 million led by Rockaway Blockchain Fund.

What Do You Meme?


What’s Poppin’?

Mt. Gox BTC Will Be Released Next Month

By Juan Aranovich

Last week, the creditors who have had their funds locked for eight years since the Mt. Gox scandal, received an email which stated that they would soon be getting them back. This has led to rampant speculation about what could happen to the price of bitcoin at that time.

In case you don’t remember (or you weren’t around back then), let’s do a quick recap of the Mt. Gox situation. Mt. Gox was the biggest crypto trading platform back in 2014. It handled around 70% of all Bitcoin transactions in the world.

However, in February 2014, the exchange got hacked, and it accounts for the largest Bitcoin hack to the date. Mt. Gox had 840,000 BTC stolen from it; at the time, that was about $450 million. At today’s prices, that amount of BTC would be worth ~$17 billion.

A few weeks after the exploit, the company announced it was able to recover 200,000 BTC, which were supposed to be distributed among the users who were victims of the hack. But since Mt. Gox has been under bankruptcy protection, those BTC have been held in a trust.

Finally, several years later, the victims are getting closer to receiving their funds back. The email they got last week said they had the option to receive the funds in USD, BTC, or BCH (Bitcoin Cash).

Though this represents the end of a long saga for the Mt. Gox creditors, the news brought some concern to many around the BTC and crypto community. One hundred and thirty-seven thousand BTC (~$3 billion) will be released to them very soon, which, if the Mt. Gox creditors sell, could have quite an impact on the price.

According to David Puell, on-chain researcher for ARK Invest, Mt. Gox coins account for 0.72% of total supply, 0.94% of illiquid supply and 1.03% of long-term-holder supply.

Miles Deustcher, crypto analyst, doesn’t believe all these BTC will be sold. Some people might, but others will realize that might not be the best strategy. Some will just HODL and others might DCA (dollar cost average) out of their positions.

Others in the Ethereum community took advantage of the situation to express hope that, since the release will happen around the same time the Merge is currently projected to occur, it could be the perfect catalyst for the flippening (the moment at which ETH obtains a larger market cap than BTC). “The Flippening is upon us frens,” said crypto user EthereumJesus.

The current market cap of Ethereum is about $140 billion, while the market cap of bitcoin is at almost $400 billion.


Recommended Reads

1) Alec Chen on modular blockchains:

2) Ali Sheikh on MEV Profit Sharing Validators:

3) Jump on token design:


On The Pod…

Amir Haleem, CEO of Nova Labs and founder of Helium, talks about the use cases for Internet of Things (IoT), how blockchain and crypto help to construct a decentralized internet infrastructure, and what is the future of Helium. Show highlights:

  • what Helium is and what it is trying to solve
  • how, after struggling for years, introducing crypto tokens, finally helped Helium grow
  • who the users of Helium are and how they differ from each other
  • how Helium grew to have one million devices around the world
  • what the challenges and use cases of the IoT space are
  • why Helium decided to add new networks
  • why Helium is launching specific tokens for each of the new networks
  • what proof of coverage is and why it is useful
  • what an open-source cellular network is and how it would work
  • whether there is a need for some centralization of the network
  • what Helium’s roadmap is and what the major milestones are for the future

Book Update

My book, The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze, which is all about Ethereum and the 2017 ICO mania, is now available!

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