April 26, 2022       /       Unchained Daily       /       Laura Shin

Daily Bits ✍️✍️✍️

• OpenSea acquired NFT marketplace competitor Gem.

• Binance did nearly 5x the volume of Coinbase, the second-largest centralized exchange, in March.

• Bored Ape Yacht Club’s Instagram and Discord server was hacked yesterday, leading to over 50 apes being erroneously transferred to the hackers.

• Near Protocol’s new stablecoin USN went live yesterday, with users able to earn 10% via Decentral Bank (a DAO on Near).

• Synthetix is incentivizing liquidity of sUSD on Optimism with Lyra.

• Reginald Fowler, the founder of Crypto Capital, pled guiltyto bank fraud, ​​bank fraud conspiracy, operation of an unlicensed money transmitting business, conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, and wire fraud.

• A Moonbirds NFT sold for $1 million.

• Shiba Inu launched a new burn portal to incentivize users to cut the meme coin’s supply.

Today in Crypto Adoption…

• Fort Worth, Texas, is voting on whether or not to become a bitcoin miner.

• Mexico plans to launch a retail CBDC by 2025.

The $$$ Corner…

• Slow news day 🙂

What Do You Meme?

What’s Poppin’?

Of Course, DOGE Is Pumping

Twitter is set to go private thanks to a $44 billion bid from Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

The news was announced in a press release from Twitter yesterday afternoon. Musk will be paying $54.20 per share in cash for the social media platform, a 38% increase over Twitter’s stock price before Elon disclosed his 9% stake in the company.

According to the press release, the deal was “unanimously” approved by the Twitter Board of Directors.

Now, what does this mean for crypto?

For starters, Elon’s pet crypto project DOGE is up 19.8% over the last 24 hours, easily outperforming any top 100 crypto asset by more than 2x. Interestingly, Elon tweeted that DOGE tipping would be “nice to have” for a business on Sunday. Of course, Tesla already accepts Dogecoin for certain products, meaning a Twitter integration would not be unprecedented. Other Musk-related meme coins are pumping. For example, Dogelon Mars(ticker symbol: ELON) is up 32.41% on the day, while Elon Buys Twitter (EBT), a crypto token created less than a week ago, is up 1,700%.

Secondly, Elon’s acquisition of Twitter must be noted because two of his companies, Tesla and SpaceX, hold Bitcoin on their balance sheet. With Twitter soon to be under Musk’s control, it will be interesting to see if he adds BTC to Twitter’s balance sheet as well – seeing as the trend of corporations like MicroStrategy and Block adding BTC seems to have fizzled out in 2021.

Lastly, Elon has made it clear that bots, the scourge of Crypto Twitter’s existence, will not be welcome on the platform in the future. “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it,” wrote Musk in the press release.

Recommended Reads

1. Not Boring on Celo and regenerative finance:

2.  Adam Cochran, partner at Cinneamhain Ventures, on the power of tokens:

3. 1confirmation’s Richard Chen on investing in the crypto space:

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