April 28, 2022       /       Unchained Daily       /       Laura Shin

Daily Bits ✍️✍️✍️

• Edward Snowden was one of six participants in Zcash’s trusted setup ceremony back in 2016.

• Sky Mavis plans to become a “Zero-Trust Organization” in the wake of the $600 million Ronin bridge hack.

• Binance will announce the location of its holding company soon.

• Apecoin is now the largest metaverse coin by market capitalization.

• Representative Tom Emmer is preparing a piece of legislation that would put dividend-producing stablecoins under the SEC’s purview.

• The CFTC is hosting a public roundtable to discuss FTX’s proposal to change the model for clearing derivatives.

• Foundry, a bitcoin miner, acquired Upstate Interactive, a web3 consulting firm.

• Evmos, an EVM compatible chain on Cosmos, relaunched.

• LUNA’s supply dropped to an all-time low.

• Okay Bears, an NFT project on Solana, did $18 million in sales over the past 24 hours.

• Floyd Mayweather is involved with the first boxing pay-per-view NFT project.

Today in Crypto Adoption…

• The Central African Republic is reportedly adopting bitcoin as legal tender.

• The New York State Assembly passed a two-year moratorium on new crypto mining firms using proof of work and non-renewable energy– the bill will now go to the State Senate for another round of voting.

• Goldman Sachs is examining NFTs and the tokenization of real-world assets.

• BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, launched its first crypto-exposed ETF.

The $$$ Corner…

• Dragonfly Capital launched a $650 million crypto venture fund.

• Meta’s metaverse business unit lost $2.9 billion in Q1 of 2022. (Disclosure: I write for its Bulletin newsletter.)

• Ondo Finance, protocol that offers structured products on top of DEXes, received $20 million in funding via a Series A.

What Do You Meme?

What’s Poppin’?

Finland Considering Donating BTC to Ukraine

Finland is reportedly looking to donate seized bitcoin to Ukraine. The news was broken by Helsingin Sanomat (HS), the largest subscription newspaper in Finland.

While the logistics for donating have yet to be finalized, the country’s customs department has seized 1,981 BTC, worth roughly $77 million. HS reports that it will take at least six weeks for Customs to handle the seized bitcoin, with a ‘significant portion’ of the $77 million of seized BTC earmarked for Ukraine.

Just how significant this is for Bitcoin is yet to be decided. Finland is currently in discussion over the process to move the BTC to Finland – with some government entities pushing for a direct BTC-native transfer, while others are pushing for Finland to sell the BTC for fiat and then donate the fiat, which is a more traditional way to treat seized assets.

(For context: based on average bitcoin transaction fees, it would only cost Finland $1.63 and ~10 minutes to move $77 million in BTC from Finland to Ukraine using the Bitcoin network.)

According to HS, the idea to donate its seized BTC has been floating around since early March. Currently, the decision is “pending” in both the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with Minister of Finance Annika Saarikko and Minister for Foreign Trade Ville Skinnar co-heading the operation.

As pointed out by HS, the move to donate any portion of the $77 million worth of BTC would be substantial. For example, in the wake of Russia’s invasion, Finland initially provided EUR 14 million ($14.7 million) in funding for humanitarian aid and other assistance.

Recommended Reads

1. Arthur Hayes on the “Doom Loop” that could lead to $1 million BTC by the end of the decade:

2. eGirl Capital on treasury management in crypto:

3. Alex Gladstein on Bitcoin in Africa:

On The Pod…

Amy Wu on Why FTX Is So Excited About Web3 Gaming

Amy Wu, head of FTX ventures and gaming initiatives, discusses her role at FTX, what problems need to be addressed in the web3 gaming world, and her thoughts on APE and Yuga Labs as a board member of Apecoin DAO and investor in Yuga Labs. Show highlights:

• what Amy does at FTX

• how her background investing in gaming prepared her for her role at FTX

• Amy’s vision for FTX’s gaming studio

• how FTX is helping gaming studios get into web3 and NFTs

• why Amy thinks blockchain games are the evolution of the ‘free to play’ gaming archetype

• what best practices Amy believes web2 companies should implement when transitioning into web3 gaming

• why there is so much backlash against traditional companies incorporating NFTs (hint: it’s not just about environmental concerns)

• how FTX Ventures is looking to deploy capital and why it is so interested in Korea and India, specifically

• why Amy thinks the L1 wars will end with just a few winning chains

• why “consumer products” are going to be more important than high throughput blockchains in onboarding the next billion users

• what Amy’s role as a board member of Apecoin DAO is like

• what Amy thinks about APE and Yuga Labs

• trends for the rest of 2022: social media, dating apps, and more…

Book Update

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