January 21, 2022       /       Unchained Daily       /       Laura Shin

Daily Bits ✍️✍️✍️

• The Federal Reserve released its long-awaited report on stablecoins.

• The SEC rejected the spot bitcoin ETF proposals from First Trust and SkyBridge.

• Crypto exchanges are set to face heavier scrutiny from regulators according to SEC chair Gary Gensler.

• The central bank of Russia reiterated its stance that crypto-related activities should be banned.

• Multichain was able to partially recover some ETH following a $1.9 million exploit on the cross-chain bridge.

• Aave Arc is set to launch on Optimism and Arbitrum.

• FINRA is considering changes to its crypto regulations.

• Congress held a hearing on crypto mining yesterday.

Today in Crypto Adoption…

• Charles Schwab CEO Walt Bettinger said cryptocurrencies are hard to ignore.

• Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City, received a paycheck in the form of BTC and ETH. 🗽

• Prada and Adidas are launching an NFT collection on Polygon.

• Bud Light may use a Nouns NFT in a Super Bowl ad. 🏈

• Robinhood has selected 1,000 customers to begin testing its crypto wallet.

The $$$ Corner…

• a16z is looking to raise a $4.5 billion crypto fund. 👀

• Agoric raised $50 million in a token sale on CoinList.

• Stader Labs, a crypto staking firm, announced a $12.5 million founding round.

• POAP, an NFT project, closed on a $10 million funding round.

• NFT showroom company Cyber raised a $6.7 million round that included some of the hottest names in the NFT space.

What Do You Meme?

What’s Poppin’?

Twitter Blue Is for the Degenerates

The NFT profile picture flex just received corporate approval. Yesterday, Twitter Blue, the social media’s paywalled subscription service, announced the rollout of NFT profile pictures for iOS devices.

To implement a verified NFT, Twitter Blue users will simply have to connect to a digital wallet, such as MetaMask and crop the image to fit squarely (or hexagonally) into the frame.

“Setting up an NFT profile picture means people can associate your Twitter account with your connected wallet’s public crypto wallet address. This means your Twitter account will be associated with your current and historical crypto wallet transactions and holdings, including all other NFTs in that wallet, because this information is all available on the public blockchain,” wrote Twitter on its website.

According to Twitter’s documentation, only NFTs minted on Ethereum and using JPEG or PNG file types are currently supported. For now, only members of Twitter Blue, which costs $3/month, will have access to NFT support.

Twitter’s move comes shortly after the departure of Jack Dorsey, its former Bitcoin-centric CEO. Last year, Twitter enabled Bitcoin tipping via Lightning Network.

Twitter was not the only social media giant testing the waters of NFT integrations, according to a report from the Financial Times. According to several people familiar with the matter, Meta (for which, disclosure, I write a Bulletin newsletter), is drawing up plans to allow users to create and display NFTs on their Facebook and Instagram profiles. In addition, Meta is exploring building an NFT marketplace. Novi, Meta’s crypto wallet, could play a pivotal role in its push into NFTs.

Recommended Reads

1. CoinDesk on the death of liquidity mining:

2. Messari on Uniswap’s Q4 performance:

3. Starkware on layer 3 (!!) scaling solutions:

On The Pod…

Is Binance Smart Chain Being Run ‘Like the Project of a Stoned Teenager?’ Two BSC Execs Answer

Binance Smart Chain is the third-largest chain by TVL and its token, BNB, is the third-largest token by market capitalization. However, there are questions about hacks, centralization, lack of developer support, and sketch MEV transactions. On Unchained, Gwendolyn Regina, investment director of the Binance Smart Chain Growth Fund, and Samy Karim, ecosystem coordinator at Binance Smart Chain, give a candid interview discussing BSC, from its amazing growth in 2021 to some of the toughest questions surrounding the chain. Topics covered include:

• how and why BSC grew from 50,000 daily active users to about 7 million over the course of 2021

• what differentiates Binance Chain and Binance Smart Chain

• why Binance Smart Chain decided to design its blockchain with only 21 validators

• how Gwen and Samy envision BSC fitting into a multichain future

• what plans BSC has to scale its throughput

• why blockchain gaming is so important to BSC and how it will use its $1 billion growth fund to grow the gaming aspect of the chain

• how BSC’s relationship between Binance and BNB works

In the second half of the show, Sam and Gwendolyn respond to a few critiques, such as:

• is BSC really innovating, or is it just a copy and paste blockchain of Ethereum?

• • why are there so many failed transactions on BSC?

  • how is BSC addressing the numerous hacks on the blockchain?

  • why has BSC’s share of total value locked among smart contract blockchains fallen from 20% in May to 6%?

  • how is BSC attempting to help developers, who, according to some critical posts, are struggling to work with BSC?

  • why does it appear that some validators are front running without risk?

  • does BSC have a future if Ethereum scales?

  • what does BSC have planned for 2022?

Book Update

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