May 20, 2022 / Unchained Daily / Laura Shin
Daily Bits✍️✍️✍️
- Crypto exchange FTX will allow users to buy stocks and ETFs on its platform.
- Arthur Hayes, former BitMex CEO, will be sentenced for violating the US Bank Secrecy Act.
- Tether released its first attestation report in six months.
- Hashed Wallet lost billions and Delphi Digital sitting on “large unrealized loss” due to the Terra collapse.
- BTC and ETH hashrate levels are at all-time highs.
Today in Crypto Adoption…
- Revolut’s CEO revealed details on the release of a native token.
- Finance Ministers from G7 countries urged more crypto regulation.
- Republicans sent a letter to Fed Chair Jerome Powell, asking the Fed to analyze US CBDC.
- Panama’s president said he might veto a crypto friendly bill.
The $$$ Corner…
- Azra Games, a GameFi startup, raised $15 million led by a16z.
- Questbook, a Web3 grants platform, raised $8.3 million.
- Saga raises $6.5 million with the backing of major investors.
What Do You Meme?
What’s Poppin’?
Solana NFTs > Ethereum NFTs
Magic Eden, the NFT marketplace built on the Solana network, surpassed its Ethereum competitor Opensea in daily transactions.
Data from DappRadar shows that in the past 24 hours the Solana marketplace had a volume of around $25 million across 350,000 transactions and had 47,000 unique addresses interacting with the platform. In the same period, Opensea only had around 90,000 transactions.
However, Opensea is still leading in volume ($31 million) as the NFTs sold on its platform are more expensive than the ones sold in Magic Eden.
This data shows that users are migrating to other blockchains with lower fees. The cost of buying an Ethereum NFT on OpenSea is about $30 in fees alone, while Magic Eden can offer gas fees that are worth cents due to Solana’s high scalability. Also, this shows that Ethereum might be losing some of the monopoly it used to enjoy in the NFT industry, and some other players such as Solana’s Magic Eden and Wax’s AtomicMarket are catching up.
In related news to the NFT ecosystem, the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) floor price has suffered a huge drawdown from its all-time highs. According to The Block, the BAYC floor price, which is the lowest current sale price for an item in an NFT collection, is currently at 96 ETH ($192,000), while only two weeks ago it was trading at 153 ETH. If we measure it in ETH terms, that’s almost a 40% drawdown. But in the same time period, ETH has also plummeted in terms of US dollars, so the blue-chip NFT collection is down much more than 40%.
Recommended Reads
- Solo Ceesay, COO at Calaxy, on breaking barriers to the web3 creator economy.
- Swan Bitcoin Analyst Sam Callahan on how coins perform after being listed on Coinbase.
- Pranav Kanade on why web3 and why now?
On The Pod…
The 5 Biggest Lessons From Terra/Luna’s Collapse, According to Tascha Che
Tascha Che, founder of Tascha Labs, unpacks the Terra/Luna debacle and reveals what she believes are the five main takeaways from its collapse. Here are some highlights from the show:
- how stablecoin issuers make money
- what caused Terra’s downfall
- why Tascha is bullish on algo stablecoins
- whether she believes undercollateralized stablecoins can work
- how fast market cap expansion without actual network effect equals death for stablecoins
- why she doesn’t believe a stablecoin’s network effects mean much for its success
- why small(er) stablecoins are better
- how blockchains mirror national economies
- which stablecoins is Tascha excited about
- how FRAX is a stablecoin that resembles fiat currencies
- whether the UST collapse will affect the stablecoin development and further regulation
- how cross-chain agreements would be helpful for the stability of the crypto ecosystem
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
