January 20, 2022       /       Unchained Daily       /       Laura Shin

Daily Bits ✍️✍️✍️

• Total NFT sales volume on Solana recently crossed $1 billion.

• The hack of Crypto.com (disclosure: a sponsor) could have seen more than $30 million stolen, according to on-chain data; Crypto.com’s CEO confirmed over 400 accounts were hacked.

• Multichain, a cross-chain bridge, lost $1.5 million to a bug exploited by multiple hackers – though one hacker is offering to give back 80% of the $200,000 in funds they stole.

• A UK regulator plans to issue draft rules that would tightenlaws regarding crypto regulation.

• An EU regulator is calling for a ban on proof-of-work mining.

• Crypto exchange Gemini acquired Omniex, a prime brokerage service.

• Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust hit a record discount of 26.5% yesterday.

• Curve launched on Optimism.

Today in Crypto Adoption…

• Autograph, Tom Brady’s NFT platform, raised $170 million in a Series B funding round.

• iTrustCapital, a crypto IRA company, raised a $125 million Series A.

• Polygon is setting aside $189 million worth of MATIC to delegate to Bitfinex for staking.

The $$$ Corner…

• Grayscale Investments is partnering with Bloomberg to launch a new index.

• Two FDIC-insured banks sent a stablecoin transaction to each other using USDF, a stablecoin built by a group of FDIC-insured banks.

• Google is paying a lot of attention to crypto, says Google’s President of Commerce Bill Ready

What Do You Meme?

What’s Poppin’?

SCRT Pumped – Before a Big Announcement

The market capitalization of crypto tokens is down roughly $250 billion since January 1st. Bitcoin has fallen below $40,000. Ethereum has been just barely surviving over $3,000.

However, SCRT, the native token of the privacy-focused Secret Network, has started the year on a tear. The token has outpaced any token listed in the top 200 of CoinMarketCap in terms of percentage growth in price. SCRT is up roughly 50% in the past nineteen days. (FTX’s token, FTT, is the second-highest gainer during that time, jumping up approximately 16%).

What could be pumping SCRT while the rest of the market looks bearish? Well, yesterday, Secret Network announced a $400 million raise for an ecosystem fund and accelerator program. In addition to the raise, Secret announced that DeFiance Capital, Alameda Research, CoinFund, and HashKey were “joining the ecosystem as critical stakeholders.”

According to Secret, the funds will be used to expand Secret’s DeFi and NFT application layer.

The news of an ecosystem fund and a coin pumping should sound eerily familiar. NEAR (disclosure: a former sponsor) hit an all-time high in token price last week after announcing a $150 million ecosystem fund. Notably, as mentioned in the article referenced in the last sentence, NEAR was climbing in the days leading up to the announcement and was up 18% on the week. Similarly, the price of SCRT climbed before yesterday’s press release.

The trend of tokens pumping in anticipation of a news release (where it seems insiders have information the public does not) is, sadly, more of the rule than the exception. For example, check out the chart of the tokens for Algorand and Hedera Hashgraph from last summer – the tokens actually peaked just before the foundations announced raises.

ALGO:

HBAR:

To be fair, not all tokens continue to drop in the days after an ecosystem fundraise announcement:

AVAX:

CELO:

FTM:

For now, the jury is still out on NEAR and SCRT. NEAR is down ~10% on the week but is up almost 94% over the past 30 days. As of press time (7:00 p.m. ET Wednesday), SCRT is down 5.9% in the last 24 hours.

Recommended Reads

1. Dragonfly Capital’s Haseeb Qureshi on blockchain cities:

2. DappCamp’s Preethi Kasireddy explains what it means for Ethereum to be “Turing complete:”

3. NFT Ethics on the allegedly shady actions and backstory of @beaniemaxi, an NFT influencer:

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