#42: October 15-21

41: October 15-21

• WAX (WAXP) marketplace AtomicHub adds trading rewards. Buy and sell NFTs and earn WOMBAT.

• Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin invested 400 ETH in open-source VR headset company SimulaVR. Their headsets are expected to launch in 2024 for $2.7k (or $2k for a tethered-only version).

• Cosmos (ATOM) released a report covering DeFi markets on Cosmos.

• Squid, a cross-chain router powered by Axelar (AXL), sent an NFT to space.

• Polygon's (MATIC) zkEVM "Dragon Fruit" upgrade went live on mainnet beta. Polygon zkEVM is the first known Ethereum (ETH) L2 to support the PUSH0 opcode.

• Sweat Economy (SWEAT) launches in the USA.

• Solana-based (SOL) developer & treasury management protocol Squads raised $5.7 million.

• The Solana (SOL) Foundation partnered with the DMCC Crypto Centre in Dubai.

• Cardano's (ADA) first social media app, Cardano Spot, launched on iOS and Android.

• Brave partnered with Coinbase Pay to enable crypto purchases via the platform within the Brave Wallet.

• The discount between the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) and BTC hit its lowest point in nearly two years. The current discount is about 16%.

• BlackRock CEO Larry Fink states that crypto is a "flight to safety" like gold and US Treasuries.

• The Fantom (FTM) Foundation lost $7 million to hackers.

• Binance (BNB) stops accepting new customers in the UK.

• Opera MiniPay, powered by Celo (CELO), is now available to all Opera Mini users in Nigeria.

• Fantom (FTM) teases "Fantom Sonic," which Andre Cronje stated will increase throughput by almost 4x. The testnet and more information are expected on October 24.

• Decentraland (MANA) is hosting its first AI World Fair October 25-27.

• WAX (WAXP) launched a social network in collaboration with Uncut. The platform is visible from within WAX's native Cloud Wallet or at uncut.network.

• Tether (USDT) is getting a new CEO soon. Tether will also begin publishing real-time reserves data next year.

• Stacks (STX) nears the release of sBTC, fully programmable BTC, with the release of a localized devnet version of sBTC.

• World Mobile (WMT) launched its first aerostat in Mozambique. The aerostats are tethered to the ground 300 meters in the air and provide last-mile connectivity to individuals within a 130-kilometer radius.

• Quant (QNT) joins UK Finance, "the collective voice for the banking and finance industry."

• Tron's (TRON) Justin Sun is the largest ETH staker with over 280k ETH on staking platform Lido (LDO).

• Tether (USDT) froze addresses holding $873k that were linked to terrorists in Israel & Ukraine.

• Ethereum (ETH) layer-2 Base open-sources its code.

• Reddit's MOON token plunges after the platform calls it quits on the blockchain-based community points program.

• A couple Reddit mods sold large amounts of MOON right before the company announced its plans to end the community points program.

• Circle (USDC) launches Gas Station, which removes transaction fees for users, and Smart Contract Platform, which makes it easier to import, deploy, & manage smart contracts on Ethereum (ETH), Polygon (MATIC), and Avalanche (AVAX).

• Hamas is reportedly utilizing crypto mixers, so the US Treasury will designate the tools as money-laundering hubs.

• Aptos (APT) went down for five hours.

• Coinbase's EU hub will be in Ireland.

• Tesla didn't buy or sell any BTC during Q3. It still has an estimated 9,720 coins.

• An Aave (AAVE) proposal to add Frax (FXS) to the Ethereum Aave v3 Liquidity Pool is live and likely to pass.

• Decentralized file & document sharing portal Fileverse raised $1.5 million. Fileverse is available on Ethereum (ETH), Polygon (MATIC), and Gnosis (GNO).

• Binance (BNB) is no longer allowing direct fiat withdrawals. Customers must withdraw USD stablecoins instead.

• Solana (SOL) on Lido (LDO) will be discontinued.

• So will Polygon (MATIC) on Lido (LDO).

• dYdX (DYDX) announces that it is now a Public Benefit Corporation. It won't collect trading fee revenue from dYdX v4.

• Uniswap (UNI) has begun charging a 0.15% swap fee for certain cryptos.

• A false BTC ETF approval sent BTC to $30k briefly.

• Ethereum's (ETH) validator queue emptied for the first time as demand levels off.

• Binance (BNB) partners with several new fiat service providers in Europe.

• According to crypto research firm Chainalysis, crypto's role in funding terrorism is exaggerated.

• Perpetual futures trading on Coinbase is now available outside the US. Traders can use up to 5x leverage to trade BTC, Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC), and Ripple (XRP).

• Ethereum (ETH) whales holding at least 1 million ETH hold a larger percentage of the total supply than they ever have, at 32.2%.

~Dutchee👁️