Liz Truss, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom announced her resignation just 44 days after assuming office on September 6. Representing an event that is not uncommon in modern democracies, the announced departure of Truss has left many wondering what the fate of some key industries will be in the near future.
In her announcement at Downing Street on Thursday, Truss said she will no longer be able to deliver on the mandate for which she had been appointed as the Prime Minister. Over the course of the next week, an election to choose the new leader will be conducted and many things will change in terms of direction for the UK.
The resignation of Liz Truss was fueled by the errors in her so-called mini-budget and tax cuts that were announced by the now-fired Finance Minister Kwasi Kwarteng. The policy riled the markets with the stock market recording unprecedented slumps which also affected the British Pound.
Surprisingly, the market has started showing signs of recovery across the board, as many are now looking forward to the ascension of a more economically versatile Prime Minister, with Truss’s contender, Rishi Sunak among the favorite candidates.
Where is Crypto in all of This?
While it is well understood that Liz Truss does not have anything against the digital currency ecosystem and was set to continue on the positive path set by the Boris Johnson administration, her short reign as Prime Minister had not done much to make a sizable impact in the industry.
Her departure only leaves room for speculation as no one can tell who the next leader is, and whether he or she will be a positive fit to help drive the growth of the ecosystem. The uncertainty in the UK at this time might be a factor in the marginally lower growth the crypto ecosystem has experienced over the past 24 hours.
At the time of writing, Bitcoin (BTC) was changing hands at $19,046.10, down 0.8% while Ethereum (ETH) has dropped by the same percentage to $1,285.22 per data from CoinMarketCap.
Following its collaboration with Web3 Pro™ and INVNT.ATOM™, Lamborghini is set to releasefour limited editions “World tour” themed NFTs thatcomes with unique utilities and reflects the true fortune of the Italian luxury car company’s history.
The four limited NFTs have three based NFTs and one rare NFT. There are only 1,963 of the base NFTs and 63 of the rare design NFTs. Each based NFT will be priced at $196.30, while each rare design NFTs will be priced at $1,963.
The Lamborghini NFT series is called the ‘The Epic Road Trip’ collection,’ it kicked off in August 2022 and will be running until March 2023.
The third NFT series, themed ‘World Tour,’ will start on Monday, October 24th, via nft.lamborghini.com at 4 PM CET. Each NFT will be available for only 24 hours. The theme ‘’World Tour’’ symbolizes Automobili Lamborghini’s celebration of its eminent journey since its establishment in 1963.
The theme takes customers on a spectacular journey across New York City, Japan, Dubai, and their iconic Italian Headquarters.
Furthermore, as limited as the NFT collection is, it comes with some great utilities. Customers who collect the base NFTs only will receive an NFT token that releases a piece of the final limited silver puzzle NFT.
While those who collect the complete set of the NFTs, including the rare ones, will earn a unique NFT token, revealing a section of the final limited gold puzzle NFT.
Other benefits include wallpapers, Lamborghini Centro Stile Sketch, Lamborghini GLB File, and VIP Tour, only if the customer collects NFTs throughout the eight-month-long NFT series project.
Notably, Lamborghini is not the only leading company introducing its way of utilizing NFTs. Last week, Budweiser and FIFA collaborated to create an intriguing method for football fans to experience the world cup by introducing the “Budverse x FIFA World Cup.”
According to Budweiser, a digital scoreboard will be present at the Budverse x FIFA World Cup. The NFTs are now accessible and may be bought and minted at Budweiser.com/nft through December 18.
Binance.US, the American arm of the Binance cryptocurrency exchange has announced the appointment of BJ Kang as its Head of Investigations as it seeks to expand its role in tackling crimes related to cryptocurrencies.
As contained in a Blog Post shared by the trading platform, BJ Kang has served in his professional career with the United States Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), helping to uncover the most complex crimes relating to insider trading and the digital currency ecosystem.
For his decades of experience, BJ Kang has helped solve numerous cases in conjunction with other government agencies, making him a professional with very wide access to key organizations in the government.
In his role at Binance.US, Kang will “help lead and oversee all aspects of Binance.US’ commitment to protecting users by partnering closely with law enforcement, regulators and industry peers – along with building Binance.US’ own investigations infrastructure – to identify and mitigate criminal activity related to digital assets on the platform as the company continues to strengthen its legal, compliance and risk functions.”
Binance has always played a pivotal role in policing the crypto ecosystem and has contributed its quota to mitigating risks and crimes in the industry. In one of its most direct efforts, the exchange’s parent company helped Axie Infinity’s Ronin Bridge to recover the sum of $5.8 million that was looted when the protocol was hacked by the Lazarus Group from North Korea.
By onboarding Kang with his wealth of experience, Binance can easily do more to fight crime across the board in the industry by leveraging his network with law enforcement agencies.
“Close coordination between the crypto industry and relevant law enforcement agencies to identify and punish bad actors is required to increase trust and enable the crypto ecosystem to continue to grow. Binance.US is already a leader in working with law enforcement to establish a secure digital asset marketplace, and I look forward to using my experience to take those partnerships to the next level,” said Kang.
Martin Gruenberg, the acting Head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Commission (FDIC) has assured that banking regulators in the United States will be responsible for providing adequate guidelines to financial institutions on how to deal with digital currencies.
Speaking at the Brookings Institute on Thursday, Gruenberg said this guidance will only come when regulators have gained a proper understanding of the risks that are associated with these nascent and volatile asset class.
“We must understand and assess the risks associated with these activities the same way that we would assess the risks related to any other new activity,” said Martin Gruenberg.
Gruenberg is not dismissive of the potential of digital currencies and foresees a scenario when assets like Stablecoins can be adapted to complement the Federal Reserve’s forthcoming FedNow service. Additionally, Gruenberg insinuated that stablecoins can also complement the Digital Dollar, the United States proposed Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) when it finally decides to float one.
In his caution, however, the acting FDIC Chairman said stablecoins that are designed for payments will be safer if they are hosted on permissioned blockchains with robust governance and compliance mechanisms.
“A public unpermissioned blockchain… poses enormous challenges in terms of basic supervisory responsibilities for safety and soundness, consumer protection and anti-money laundering,” Gruenberg said.
Over the years, the FDIC has played a more subtle role in regulating some Virtual Assets Service Providers (VASPs) whose business models appear like banking services. In one of such move, the regulator issued a cease-and-desist order against the now embattled crypto lending firm, Voyager Digital as well as a warning to FTX US for presenting their products to its customers as though they were insured by the FDIC.
Overall, the FDIC has maintained that any form of deposits made at non-banking institutions are not insured by the government and that investors cannot access any form of protection in the case of a mishap.
American multinational entertainment company, Warner Bros. Discovery Inc has launched its first mega Non-Fungible Token (NFT) collection featuring the 2001 mega movie series, the Lord of the Rings.
Powered by Eluvio’s highly functional Content Fabric Blockchain, the Lord of the Rings NFT will come in two versions including the Epic Edition and the Mystery Edition.
The Epic Edition will comprise 999 digital collectibles that will be going for sale at a price of $100, while the Mystery Edition will go on sale for $30 each.
Users who gain access to one of these limited NFTs will be able to “watch the extended version of the film (which clocks in at 3 hours and 48 minutes) in 4K UHD, along with access to more than eight hours of special features; hundreds of images; and hidden AR collectibles.”
As one of the most revered epic movies of all time, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring movie has garnered a unique fanbase, most of whom will be thrilled with the NFT launch.
Jessica Schell, Warner’s EVP and General Manager of Warner Bros. Discovery Home Entertainment said the launch of the Lord of the Rings NFT is based on an experiment to see how well consumers welcome this new model of distributing content.
“It will be easy to miss that it’s actually using Web3 or NFTs under the hood, and that is by design,” Schell said. “We think the initiative has implications as a potential new way to handle movie distribution directly to our fans.”
With the current buzz in the Web3.0 world featuring new innovations including the metaverse and NFTs, entertainment brands have been exploring new initiatives to connect with their global audience. Besides Warner Bros, Netflix, Marvel Studios and Time Warner are among the entities that have explored NFTs in the past year.
Arcade2Earn has earned $3.2 million in a seed funding round led by Crypto.com Capital.
The play-to-earn (P2E) gaming platform – built on the Solana blockchain – also announced that other investors included Solana Ventures, Shima Capital, KuCoin Labs and GSR.
According to Arcade co-founder Jaleel Menifee, the funding was realised via a simple agreement for future tokens (SAFT). The company’s utility token is also known by the same name, arcade.
According to research, funding for web3 investments has fallen this year, however, gaming projects have remained valuable or popular as most venture funding has gone to NFTs and gaming in the third quarter.
Arcade claims a unique selling point, it says that it has a unique concept called “mission pools” which allows gamers to make money without owning NFTs.
According to the company, users who have gained approval from the company can be a mission pool operator and gain access to games using NFTs owned by Arcade’s treasury or lent to Arcade. Later, they can be used to generate rewards.
Furthermore, mission pool contributors can become arcade token holders who get to decide which operators and in-game activities they wish to support by depositing their xarcade tokens in a mission pool.
“Not everyone is good at playing or has time to play games and earn,” Xinlu Yu, head of KuCoin Labs, said in a statement. “This is where Arcade fills the gap by enabling those groups of people to enjoy earning yields through their specific products without directly playing the games themselves.”
Currently, Arcade has 20 people working for the company, including its six co-founders. Menifee has also said that the Arcade platform is currently under development and its demo has been scheduled to launch before the end of this year.
Shapeshift has now created a new open-source app to which users will have to migrate, to take additional steps into complete decentralization.
On Wednesday, noncustodial crypto exchange and decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), Shapeshift, announced the launch of its new open-source mobile application to move fully into decentralization.
According to Shapeshift, this new move would enhance user mobility, and in addition, provide an authentic DeFi universe experience for its users, as well as also offer additional flexibility, mobility, and features when interacting through the wallet and trading crypto on the platform.
Willy Orgorzaly, head administrator for Fox Foundation, stated that the mobile app is fully ‘’open source’’ and that the only backend is ‘’blockchain data,” — which is also advancing into the process of being truly decentralized.
In addition, to go fully decentralized, Shapeshift has provided users with more options for crypto asset services such as investing and managing crypto assets. It has also vowed that it will permanently erase all users’ data once the company’s centralized infrastructure has completely worn out.
Notably, this news comes after the organization transitioned into a DAO last year as a part of a broader assurance of its aims to decentralize its operations.
Founded in 2014, Shapeshift started as a DAO and eventually evolved into a community-owned and governed crypto platform. The platform aims to be the pathway into a borderless financial system, and an open-source self-custody crypto platform that will enable individuals to achieve financial sovereignty.
Speaking of DAO, Binance is now ranked as the second largest voting power in Uniswap DAO (after mega Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz 16z) with its latest delegation of 13 million UNI tokens to Uniswap DAO. As reported by Blockchain.News, Binance holds 5.9% voting power against the 6.7% commanded by a16z.
Shapeshift has now created a new open-source app to which users will have to migrate, to take additional steps into complete decentralization.
On Wednesday, noncustodial crypto exchange and decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), Shapeshift, announced the launch of its new open-source mobile application to move fully into decentralization.
According to Shapeshift, this new move would enhance user mobility, and in addition, provide an authentic DeFi universe experience for its users, as well as also offer additional flexibility, mobility, and features when interacting through the wallet and trading crypto on the platform.
Willy Orgorzaly, head administrator for Fox Foundation, stated that the mobile app is fully ‘’open source’’ and that the only backend is ‘’blockchain data,” — which is also advancing into the process of being truly decentralized.
In addition, to go fully decentralized, Shapeshift has provided users with more options for crypto asset services such as investing and managing crypto assets. It has also vowed that it will permanently erase all users’ data once the company’s centralized infrastructure has completely worn out.
Notably, this news comes after the organization transitioned into a DAO last year as a part of a broader assurance of its aims to decentralize its operations.
Founded in 2014, Shapeshift started as a DAO and eventually evolved into a community-owned and governed crypto platform. The platform aims to be the pathway into a borderless financial system, and an open-source self-custody crypto platform that will enable individuals to achieve financial sovereignty.
Speaking of DAO, Binance is now ranked as the second largest voting power in Uniswap DAO (after mega Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz 16z) with its latest delegation of 13 million UNI tokens to Uniswap DAO. As reported by Blockchain.News, Binance holds 5.9% voting power against the 6.7% commanded by a16z.
The latest data shows that although cryptocurrencies witnessed a massive market crash experienced in Q2 2022, the digital assets made some relative recovery in Q3 amid the ongoing bearing market conditions, according to the third-quarter report published by data platform CoinGecko.
Per CoinGecko, the report highlighted that such recovery is manifested based on the fact that the cryptocurrency market increased its market cap from a low of $903 billion in July to reach up to $1.2 trillion in August.
While Bitcoin struggled in Q3, it managed to outperform other commodities such as gold, oil and other traditional assets, except for the US Dollar Index (DXY), which tracks the greenback’s value against major currencies. However, from Year to date (YTD) perspective, Bitcoin still experienced the largest loss of -58% compared to all other asset classes. In other words, the cryptocurrency plunged more than 58% year-to-date and is now hovering around $19,113.66 per coin, according to data from CoinGecko. Bitcoin continues to trade mostly in lockstep with US equities but largely recovered compared to the equities market in Q3.
DeFi Rebounds
Data from CoinGecko has also disclosed that the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) market recovered by 31% in the third quarter, from $54.66 billion it was on July 1 to stand at $63.02 billion as of August 23 2022. It’s no news that the DeFi space has been facing it rough as data showed that the DeFi ecosystem lost 68.13% representing $155.79 billion in Total Value Locked (TVL) in the second quarter of 2022.
The rally can be traced to the crypto market’s slow but steady recovery, which is led by Ether, the native token of the Ethereum blockchain. Even though Ether (ETH) has plunged 33% to $1,330 from its quarterly high in mid-August, it is still up by 26% compared to Q2. The Ethereum blockchain accounts for $35.44 billion, or 56.24% of the TVL seen in the crypto space today.
Besides DEXs (decentralized exchanges) maintaining their status as the largest component of DeFi, they gained a significant rise in market share, increasing 36.8% to $10.9 billion, according to the data. This has been driven by the uptick in trading volume, majorly propelled by the Merge narrative, and with the continued popularity of the liquid staking sector. In 3Q, the liquid staking landscape almost tripled its market cap to $1.54 billion, and Lido, the market cap leader in that category, rose 264% to $1.60 within that period.
NFT Winter
Based on data from CoinGecko, sales of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) dropped significantly in the third quarter, as crypto investors struggle with the ongoing “crypto winter” and the demands for the highly speculative digital assets show little sign of returning. The NFT market witnessed a heavy hit in the past quarter, as it experienced a -77% plunge in total trading volume across the top 5 NFT marketplaces, OpenSea, Magic Eden, LooksRare, X2Y2, and CryptoPunks.
MagicEden was the only NFT marketplace that witnessed growth in September, doubling its MoM volume and dominance while the rest of its competitors continued to dip. With its recent expansion into the Ethereum blockchain and the launch of its headline-grabbing y00ts NFT collections, MagicEden gained significant dominance (from 9% → 22%) in 3Q. The Solana-based NFT marketplace appears to be eating OpenSea’s market share, which now stands at 60% from 90% in Q3. But it remains to be seen if MagicEden can sustain the momentum.
Stablecoin movements
Lastly, in the last Q3, the stablecoin economy’s market valuation dropped by 3% from $156.7 billion to $152 billion. The major 5 stablecoins are Tether (USDT), USD Coin (USDC), Binance USD (BUSD), Dai (DAI) and Frax (FRAX), as they have continued maintaining their positions, having no new entrants nor changes to their order.
However, data showed interesting movements in market cap within the top 5, with USDC dropping 16% or $9 billion after the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions on Tornado Cash. BUSD’s market cap grew the most, increasing by 18% or $3 billion because of inflows from USDC, triggered by Binance’s announcement on BUSD auto-conversion. USDT also witnessed a slight increase, possibly having absorbed some of the selloffs of USDC.
As of September, USDT crossed above $68 billion, USDC dropped to $49.39 billion, while Binance USD (BUSD) increased its market cap to $21.63 billion.
Bankrupt crypto lender Voyager may repay customers 72% of their accounts’ value if the company can sell itself to digital-asset exchange FTX US.
FTX US was able to secure a two-week-long auction for Voyager under a deal connected to court approval of the creditor payment plan, according to lawyers.
However, Voyager can choose to cancel the deal if they are able to get a higher deal that will pay its customers more. US Bankruptcy Judge Michael E. Wiles approved this agreement on Wednesday.
Wiles has also urged Voyager to a “fiduciary out,” which is a standard bankruptcy clause. It allows companies under protection from the bank to accept higher offers until a sale is final.
Voyager bankruptcy attorney Christine Okike has told Wiles that FTX is currently the “only viable alternative” for the company. Still, they have agreed to change how the fiduciary out is worded to ensure a better offer can be considered.
According to Voyager, Wiles has been requested to provide permission to send the payout plan to creditors and customers for a vote. Following that, Wiles has also been asked to approve the sale if creditors vote in favour.
Voyager’s sale to FTX has been valued at about $1.4 billion, of which $51 million is in cash. Also, part of the sale, FTX will be moving customers onto its platform.
Under the payout plan, customers who had digital currencies on Voyager’s platform can be paid in that form once FTX takes over if FTX supports that type of currency, lawyers told Wiles.
The purchase has come after several earlier attempts by the FTX to bail out or acquire Voyager, according to Bloomberg.
New York-based Voyager had about 3.5 million users at the end of March and 1.19 million funded accounts.
Voyager filed for bankruptcy protection in July. It did so after a failed attempt by Alameda Research to bail it out with a revolving line of credit. Alameda Research is a trading house affiliated with FTX.
Soon after that attempt, FTX and Alameda disclosed a joint bid for Voyager. However, Voyager called it a “lowball” offer and declined the attempt. While in September, Alameda said it would return about $200 million worth of Bitcoin and Ether it had borrowed from Voyager by the end of the month.
Besides Voyager, Bankman-Fried has bought several distressed crypto firms, through which he has scooped customers and valuable technologies at a cheaper price.
Bankman-Fried is estimated to own more than 50% of FTX, 70% of FTX US, and almost all of Alameda.
