🗓💊 Binance Wants in on Generative AI NFTs
Dapper Labs DramaRama Behind the Scenes & Visa Forging Ahead With Crypto Stratagem
Theo Delarosa
March 02, 2023
Daily Bullets - Thursday, March 2nd
Today’s newsletter is 1547 words, a cool 6-minute read.
Hope you like seafood because on the menu today is more CRAB. The crypto markets continue grinding sideways with no definitive direction yet. Bitcoin keeps trading within $23k and ETH $1600.
Do You Like Seafood? |
Today we’ve got a very heavy news day filled with plenty of announcements - always interesting to see how many projects wait till midweek to release their news and updates.
Today we’re looking at:
- 🎭 Binance Wants in on Generative AI NFTs
- 👺 Dapper Labs DramaRama Behind the Scenes
- 💪 Visa Forging Ahead With Crypto Stratagem
- ✅ Daily Bullets
- 📊 Market Dashboard
- 📚 Research/Reads
- 📝 Good Tweets
🎭 Binance Wants in on Generative AI NFTs
Quick Take: Both the AI and NFT narrative have captured the imagination of crypto investors and Binance wants a piece of that lucrative pie.
They’ve launched "Bicasso", an AI-powered NFT generator for its marketplace users that blend the best of both worlds.
Here’s a fun new #Binance AI product called #Bicasso 🎨
You can turn your creative visions into NFTs with AI. Give it a try and show me what you make with it.
Beta version live now, limited to 10k mints.
➡️
— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance)
Mar 1, 2023
Key Details:
- Users can create computer-generated images and mint them as NFTs on Binance's BNB chain
- 10K NFTs minted in 2.5 hours
- Similar to AI art platforms like DALL-E or Midjourney, where users can input a creative prompt or upload an image
Significance: Attention and speculation around AI has captured the early narrative train of 2023.
Whether it has any real substance or not, there’s no denying it has exploded in popularity fueled by the rising interest in AI services like chatGPT.
Many are also bullish on the development of NFTs as a narrative, specifically when it comes to NFT Finance.
Sounds like a winning combination to mix the two? AI & NFTs. As the world’s largest exchange, Binance sure thinks so and has been quick to position themselves in this sector.
👺 Dapper Labs DramaRama Behind the Scenes
Quick Take: A look at the chaos behind the scenes. Dapper Labs CEO Roham Gharegozlou's lavish spending and bullying of employees is said to have led to high employee turnover and a toxic company culture at the once successful start-up, which has struggled since the NFT market began to sour.
Key Details:
- Extravagant lifestyle included traveling on private jets and staying in luxurious accommodations
- Senior leaders were leaving the company often, while other employees lived in fear of the CEO's erratic behavior
- Dapper laid off 22% of its staff in November 2022, and another 20% last week
- NBA Top Shot collection saw trading collapse, with sales plummeting from a monthly peak of $224Mto $2.8M
- Current court battle to determine if they violated securities laws by selling NBA Top Shot
Corroborating Take:
"NBA Top Shot CEO’s decadent lifestyle, ‘public shaming’ led to toxic culture as Dapper flails"
Called this 2 years ago, I have never been treated so poorly by a crypto or NFT team in my life, massive red flags everywhere.
theblock.co/post/215888/nb…
— moon (@MoonOverlord)
Mar 1, 2023
Significance: Behind every company, project and team there’s always a story. How a business runs on the inside is vital to its ultimate success.
Dapper Labs had been able to land some big name celebrity partnerships, which while making for flashy press releases, didn’t really create tangible value for the company.
So many lessons to be learned from this.
Go Deeper: here
💪 Visa Forging Ahead With Crypto Stratagem
Quick Take: Visa remains committed to its crypto strategy and that fiat backed digital currencies running on public blockchains have the potential to play an important role in the payments ecosystem. They’re not backing down.
1/ This story is inaccurate as it pertains to Visa, here’s the reality 👇🏼
reuters.com/technology/vis…
— Cuy Sheffield (@cuysheffield)
Feb 28, 2023
Key Details:
- A Reuters report claimed Visa would delay launching certain crypto-related products until market conditions and regulations improve
- A spokesperson clarified that Visa's job is to support various payment methods and evaluate new technologies
- Focused on growing their web3 infrastructure competencies and evaluating blockchain protocols
- They continue to partner with crypto companies to improve fiat on and off ramps and progress on their product roadmap
- No official comment from Mastercard yet
Significance: As one of the largest payments processors in the world, the strategy that Visa follows is vital to how crypto payments will find adoption in the years to come.
We want them as our ally and not our enemy.
Both Visa and Mastercard have been slowly dipping their toes in the crypto waters and it’s promising to see them continue for the foreseeable future.
✅ Daily Bullets
🔥 Highlights
- In the last week prosecutors laid out new details and allegations against SBF
- Polygon launches web3 identification service, Polygon ID, using zero-knowledge proofs
- Fan token project Chiliz launches $50M incubator, Chiliz Labs, backed by Jump Crypto
- Binance NFT marketplace launched “Bicasso,” a new AI-powered NFT generator
- Roobet, a crypto casino, added Snoop Dogg as chief ganjaroo officer
- Robinhood Wallet, which supports Polygon and Ethereum, now available to iOS customers
- Mt. Gox early repayments starting March 10, with a deadline to be paid out by September 30
- Prime launch
- Chainlink launches dev platform, Functions - connects web3 apps with traditional cloud software
- Coinbase delisted BUSD due to liquidity concerns
- IOST strategic partnership with Amazon Web Services to drive the advancement of Web 3.0
- Silvergate bank didn’t file annual financial report on time and may be less than well-capitalized
- Kraken pulling back from using Signature Bank for some significant financial transactions
- Ethereum deployed ERC-4337, account abstraction, via a smart contract called EntryPoint
- Developers can integrate ChatGPT and Whisper models into apps and products through API
📰 Crypto News
- Australia announces CBDC pilot and study for the eAUD - taps Mastercard and others
- Lawsuit against Nexo, citing harm from “fraudulent inducement” to take out loans
- Puerto Rico extended its 4% tax incentive to crypto assets and blockchain activities
- The founders of Hodlnaut proposed selling the business rather than liquidating the firm
- Binance launching presale of Cloud Mining products for BTC mining
- CoinDesk and Art Blocks release Microcosms for IRL events with NFTs
- German court denies attempt to claim $3.6M in crypto gains as not taxable income
- Hashed co-founder Alex Shin & Sandeep Ramesh joining Mysten Labs CEO’s new venture fund
- More Than Gamers - building web3 gaming ecosystem abandoned by founders
- Quantum Temple enters NFT partnership with Indonesian Ministry of Tourism
- Indian exchange Bitbns admits it was hacked for $7.5M in February 2022
💲Coin/Project Updates
- Lido Finance V2 preliminary voting for staked token withdrawals
- The Sandbox discloses unauthorized third party access of user emails and malware
- Safe - Self-custody infrastructure, previously Gnosis Safe, launched Core, open-source stack
- Decentralized betting protocol Thales’ staking model deploys to Arbitrum
- Newly-launched ArbiSwap DEX rug pulls users for over $100K
- Illuvium launching new game "Beyond" on March 7th
- Emmy award-winning, Disney-backed Baobab Studios launches ‘Momoguro’ Ethereum NFTs
- Cosmos-based Noble XYZ paused integration with Interchain Security due to slashing concerns
- Conic Finance is live - Omnipools
- Celer Network launching Pantheon of zero knowledge proof development framework
- CollabLand Marketplace beta goes live
- BridgeTower Capital to onramp Lido and offer security token for Avalanche’s staking rewards
- Binance completed the integration of JOE on Arbitrum One Network
- Revolut now supports ACH
- Layer 1 blockchain Algorand hires its first CFO
- Pocket Network partners with Google cloud, bringing cloud infrastructure innovations to web3
- Nouns DAO 3D-printed fashion collection apparel based on the NFT-based open-source IP
- 0x launches Tx Relay API in beta on Polygon and Ethereum - Robinhood Wallet first partner
- Nubank, a Brazilian digital bank, launched digital currency Nucoin, developed by Polygon
- DeFi protocol StaFi reduces 19% fee on its Liquid staking derivatives products to 10%
- Web3 protocol Koii Labs and software company Idexo launch middleware bridge
- SIS token launched on the BNB Chain
📊 Market Dashboard
📈 Gainers:
- $T: Crypto Primitives
- $KEEP: Privacy
- $GMT: Move to Earn
📉 Losers:
- $LQTY: DeFi Borrowing
- $STG: Bridge
- $Floki: Dog Meme coin
Chart of the Day - The US Dollar - The market continues to play chicken
- Historically, when DXY rises, BTC falls and vice versa. BTC and risk assets have their strongest bull runs during DXY bear markets
- The dollar topped on September 28th and locally bottomed on February 2nd - highlighting how as the dollar recovered, we’ve seen BTC and crypto struggle. Will the dollar strengthen or weaken from here?
📚 Research/Reads
- Crypto's current PR problem is owed to its association with capitalism—but industry shouldn’t shy away | Crypto Can Save the Capitalist Narrative - source
- The crypto community weighs in | Do ‘Ethereum killers’ have a future? - source
- Solana experiencing crisis | Solving the MEV Problem on Solana: A Guide for Stakers - source
- Route 2 FI | An Overview Of Crypto Bridges - source
- Focus shift to developing products and services that optimize and provide access to blockspace | Beyond Extraction: The Role of Block Building in the Future of Ethereum - source
📝 Good Tweets
KR prob going to jail for leaking these CT wallets
I hope I am not going to jail for these wallet leaks, I feel like it is so illegal to share.
But I love CT so here you go 👇🐋
— KR - DeFi Researcher (@KRinweb3)
Mar 1, 2023
Aylo on how DeFi 100xs from here - Real World Assets explainer
How does DeFi 100x from here? 🧵
— Aylo (@alpha_pls)
Mar 1, 2023
Liam Herbst on how a streamer made $1.6M in a week and how you can too
NFTs just changed gaming forever.
@Mongraal made $1.6M in a week... DOUBLE what he earned in 4 years as a pro gamer.
Here's how he did it and how other gamers can earn too.
(1/19)
— Liam Herbst (@liamherbst_)
Feb 28, 2023
Ξnrique with Electric Capital on tracking devs and how the US is losing
1/ The U.S. is still losing its lead among crypto devs.
We (@ElectricCapital) classified the location of 5000+ web3 developers using our developer data + social profiles.
🧵 Let's see how fast the rest of the world is outpacing the U.S. 🌐🏃♀️👇
— Ξnrique ⚡ (@eherrerosj)
Mar 1, 2023
Westie explains how much Shanghai ETH may be sold on the market
Yes, Shanghai means a lot of ETH is being unlocked,
but how much of that will actually be sold on the market?
I'll give you my estimates below 🧵
(Hint: it's probably not as much as you're expecting)
— Westie 🟪 (@WestieCapital)
Mar 1, 2023
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