Ordinals

• What

  • Allows users to inscribe data e.g. images onto the Bitcoin blockchain

  • Basically NFTs except on the Bitcoin blockchain, not Ethereum

  • Has some limitations around size and functionality

• Why it matters

  • Bitcoin has historically only been used for P2P money transfers, a ledger of transactions on the network

  • It is up to time to see if this will be good or bad for the network, and if this functionality will last

  • Bitcoin purists obviously don’t support this new feature.

• There is no marketplace for ordinals right now, or even a website, or even ordinal friendly crypto wallet

Stacks

• L2 built on Bitcoin that lest developers create and deploy smart contracts like Ethereum

• Has a native token: STX

Coinbase Base

• What

  • L2, can build dApps

  • Built using Optimism’s OP stack (open source code powering the L2)

  • Coinbase is the initial sequencer

• No plans to issue a token yet

• Launched Base Ecosystem, a new fund to invest in early stage projects

• Why it matters

  • Coinbase is the largest crypto exchange in the US

• Opinions

  • Good: Coinbase has millions of users, the potential valule generated from even a smaller percentage of adoption is huge

  • Bad: Flops like their NFT marketplace

Largest NFT sell off:

• Jeffrey Huang / Machi Brig Brother sold 1,010 NFTs, worth $18.6mm

LIDO

• LDO has gone up 200% this year

• LSDs for all major cryptos

• If you don’t use an LSD you have to stake on a CEX with big fees and risk or stake on chain and move to a hot wallet, choose validators, lock up your tokens, and it's just really hard

• process: swap ETH token for stETH to stake. That is it

• Lido stakes for you and you get the change in value plus staking rewards. You can still use your stETH

• Unstake just via swapping on a major DEX

• LIDO is rising because

  • SEC cracked down on centralizing staking e.g. Kraken

    • Goodbye CEX options hello DEX

  • The merge made it impossible to unstake your ETH

    • Shanghai update coming in march

    • LIDO will roll out V2

  • V2 is coming Feb 7 to directly unstake from the platform instead of swapping on a DEX

    • Much faster ~2 hours

• LIDO now manages more than Coinbase, Kraken and Binance combine

Stacks (STX)

• Stacks Network is an L2 on Bitcoin’s L1

• Popularity reasons

  • It powers Bitcoin’s NFTs – Bitcoin only used to power monetary transactions

  • SEC approved

    • First over token to get SEC approval in 2019

    • Now legally traded on US exchanges

Google & Tezos

• Google Cloud to be the first major cloud computing platform to be a validator

• Tezos can now set up nodes (validates tx) using Google’s cloud platform

• Google gets good returns too as all stakers tend to

Hong Kong

• Crypto trading platforms need to apply for a special license from the SFC (only 2 exchanges are licensed to trade)

• Exchanges may soon offer trading services to retail investors

• Investors can only trade large cap tokens e.g. BTC / ETH

• Why it matters

  • Hong kong is the gateway to China

Blur

• One of the two biggest NFT marketplaces next to OpenSea

• Popularity Is due to

  • No marketplace fees

  • Optional creator royalty fees

    • OpenSea maintains its royalty fees except for a LIMITED TIME

    • Pressure from Blur?

    • Lose creators?

• Recently released $BLUR token, airdropped $400mm worth aka free mulla for everyone

Do Kwon and Terraform

• SEC charged Do Kwon and Terraform labs with fraud

• What went down

  • Sold unregistered securities and security based swaps and a bunch of other stuff

  • Lost $40bn

  • Worked with a US trading firm Jump that bought TONS of the stablecoin when the peg hit 10 cents in May 2021

  • Lied and said Chai (Korean payments app) used their blockchain to settle payments and replicated the transactions ont its blockchain

  • Kwon transferred 10,000 Bitcoin from Terraform into a cold wallet and slowly moved funds from it to a Swiss Bank beginning May 2020. Since then $100mm+ fiat has been withdrawn

  • No one knows where Kwon is

Tokenized Bonds

• What is different

  • No paper

  • No central clearing

  • No bank middleman

  • Aka cheaper and faster

• Who is using

  • Siemens (German) and HK government

    • Siemens did it without Polygon even knowing, and already collected the money

    • HK gov’t worked with Bank of China and HSBC to use GS’s tokenization platform to issue $101mm one year GREEN bonds

Napster

• Blast from the past! It technically got shut down in 2001 and has been passed around from Roxio to Best By to Algorand etc.

• Recently acquired Mint Songs, letting artists turn music into NFTs and integrate with Napster

FTX

• 7 former FTX employees got subpoenaed

• Nishad Sing, Former FTX engineering director, pled guilty to wire fraud and various conspiracies

• FTX gave a LOC to Alameda as high as $65 billion, with cover being the staking program FTX offered for the Serum exchange on the Solana blockchain

• FTX investors and partners got lawsuits e.g. Silvergate Bank, Sequoia, Paradigm, Thoma Bravo

• JPM is giving away millions of SMF’s money from Modula Capital, SBF’s small hedge fund

• A charity affiliated with an FTX executive made $150mm from an insider deal (Polaris Ventures)

Staking

• SEC shut down Kraken’s staking service, saying it was offering unregistered securities

• Brian Armstrong said the SEC’s 4-rule security template does NOT apply to staking

  • Staking is not an investment of money b/c you don’t lose the principal

  • Staking does not have common enterprise value – stakers are chosen randomly

  • There is no profit expectation – stakers want to validate transactions, not necessarily b/c they think they can make money

  • Staking rewards are not dependent on others – rewards are randomly automated

• Fact:  Coinbase charges customers 30% of rewards

Shopify blockchain tools

• Merchants can build tokengated apps using NFTs to give discounts and benefits to customer

3AC

• Launched new crypto venture called OPNX (open exchange)

• FLEX = native token

• Let people trade crypto bankruptcy claims against FTX, Celsius, 3AC (lol)

• First marketplace for trading crypto claims

• Banned in the US

SEC

• 2/9 SEC said it would close down Kraken’s staking service and fine them 30 million

Gemini & Genesis

• DCG to converted IOU to Genesis into convertible preferred stock

• Refinance term loans pay out $500mm to creditors

• DCG to sell equity in Genesis’s trading arm

• Pay up $100mm to Earn users

Digital Currency Group

• Selling shares in trusts operated by Grayscale, at a huge discount  

Twitter

• 200-300mm daily users

• Developing in app payments function first for fiat then crypto

Meta

• $13.7bn put into metaverse last year

• Quest 3 VR headset coming this year

• VR apps starting to make money

• 100mm+ WhatsApp users created animated avatars

Celsius debacle

• Eligible users will soon be able to withdraw 94% of assets given certain parameters, net tx and gas fees