Blur NFT Marketplace Airdrop and Token Launch
Anonymity in Crypto - Mixers & Dangerous Rebrands, Bitcoin Ordinals Ain’t Slowing Down
Theo Delarosa
February 14, 2023
🗓 Daily Bullets - Tuesday, February 14th
Today’s newsletter is 1148 words. A cool 5 minute read.
Crypto whipsawed on today’s CPI print, as usual. Inflation came in slightly hot but still relatively within expectations. The question on everyone’s mind is whether this will help justify the Fed in keeping interest rates higher for longer, halting the market’s plans of a Fed pivot. Besides that it’s an action packed Valentines Day with the arrival of the highly anticipated Blur token airdrop and launch. A little respite from the regulatory FUD going around.
US CPI: 6.4% YoY, 0.5% MoM vs Expected: 6.2% YoY, 0.5% MoM
US CPI Core: 5.6% YoY, 0.4% MoM vs Expected: 5.5% YoY, 0.4% MoM
Today we’re looking at:
- 🪂 Blur NFT Marketplace Airdrop and Token Launch
- 👤 Anonymity in Crypto - Mixers & Dangerous Rebrands
- 🖼 Bitcoin Ordinals Ain’t Slowing Down
🎧 Listen: The Crypto Illuminati Twitter Spaces
🪂 Blur NFT Marketplace Airdrop and Token Launch
Backstory: Blur, the rival to NFT marketplace OpenSea, which has captured a growing market share over the past months is set to close a funding round at a billion dollar valuation.
Recall: raised $11M in a seed round led by Paradigm with participation from eGirl Capital, 0xMaki and LedgerStatus. The highly anticipated airdrop will also coincide with day one listing on several exchanges such as: Coinbase, KuCoin, AscendEX, Huobi, MEXC, Gate, OKX.
- 78% token vesting contract
- 12% Airdrop
- 9.26% Safe MultiSig
- 0.5% for Wintermute, MM
Data: Since October 2022, Blur has amassed $494.84M in volume and the question is how much of that was from airdrop farming?
Looking forward - NFT Finance is one of the most interesting developments happening in this space as it allows for more ways to increase liquidity in the NFT market and allows traders to trade NFTs in a similar way to altcoins. Illiquid JPEGs are capital inefficient and these new innovations allow for unlocking of that liquidity.
Let’s see how this plays out.
👤 Anonymity in Crypto - Mixers & Dangerous Rebrands
Quick Take: Anonymity in crypto is a foundational tenant. But what happens when scammers and ne'er-do-wells have freedom to rebrand and shift to a new project freely? Sanctioned crypto mixer Blender may have done just that and rebranded as Sinbad.
Details:
- Blender.io, was sanctioned in May 2022 for laundering North Korean hacker group Lazarus' cybercrime proceeds.
- Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic says a similar service, Sinbad, likely re-launched under a new name by the same operators.
- Before officially launching - most incoming transactions came from Blender.io-linked wallets.
- Both mixers had similar patterns of work, Russian-speaking websites, and tech support teams, suggesting roots in Russia or Russian-speaking countries.
Significance: Should anon-maxis rethink their strategy when it comes to widespread anonymity? One project gets sanctioned and shut down for illicit activity and next they come back on the market under a new name - easy as that? Hackers, phishers, scammers and grifters are able to spring back up with regularity.
Recall the ring of influencers and founders that drained $200M+ out of the ecosystem over 274 projects using a “Twitter Botnet”
This space is like the Wild West and really could use some regulation… oh wait, we’re already getting that. Buckle up
🖼 Bitcoin Ordinals Ain’t Slowing Down
New Developments for Ordinals: 87.5k Bitcoin ordinals have been created to date so far. Developers have inscribed JPEGs, audio files, videos, and even video games to test the limits of what can go on the Bitcoin blockchain, pushing the average block size to an all-time high of 2.16MB.
Fad or more? One NFT collector burned Bored Ape #1626 for a Bitcoin Ordinal equivalent which has many in both communities grumbling.
Team Bitcoin: Adding arbitrary data to the blockchain clogs the network unnecessarily and shouldn’t be used for non-financial purposes. These are the purists.
Team Innovation: Crypto is built on the principles of innovation and new ideas. It seems silly to try and tell people to stop trying new things in a space inhabited by people who live to try new things.
What team are you? Innovation or Purist?
Are You Team Innovation or Purist? |
✅ Daily Bullets
- Circle ratted on Paxos and alerted the NYDFS that Binance’s stablecoin wasn’t fully backed
- The Commodities and Futures Commission’s (CFTC) civil case against FTX’s SBF be delayed until after the criminal fraud case against him is completed
- Polygon plans to launch its new Layer 2 scaling solution, zkEVM, on mainnet beta on Mar. 27
- CME Group, the world's leading derivatives marketplace, will expand its suite of event contracts to include Bitcoin futures on March 13, pending regulatory review
- Citadel Securities takes 5.5% stake in crypto-friendly bank Silvergate Capital
- The U.S. bankruptcy court for the district of Delaware authorized and approved the selling or transferring of certain FTX assets
- Siemens issues first digital bond on blockchain in accordance with Germany’s Electronic Securities Act
- NFT platform Magic Eden partnered with web3 infra company MoonPay to help users buy digital collectibles with credit cards, Apple Pay and more. Magic Eden lays off 22, about 15% of staff in latest workforce cuts
- Pendulum Mainnet has launched
- Azuki NFT Collection - Introducing Jay & Jelly - BEANZ
- DOS Labs, a gaming studio with over 400k daily active players and a large network of Web3 game developers, launched its Avalanche Subnet
- Crypto exchange Coinmetro will acquire Ignium, a blockchain-based social fundraising platform
- XP Foundry, a Web3 game studio, is migrating on-chain assets of its mobile game Rooniverse to ImmutableX from Solana
📊 Market Dashboard
- 📈 Gainers:
- HFT: DEX
- GMX: DEX
- BGB: Exchange Token
- 📉 Losers:
- ZEON: Decentralized Financial Services
- TMG: DAO
- BNX: DAO & GameFi
Chart of the Day - BLUR Marketplace Volume
- We can see that since October 2022, Blur has amassed $494.84M in volume. Does Blur stand a chance of toppling OpenSea?
📚Research/Reads
- Recap what brought us here and where things may be headed | SEC vs crypto: A timeline of enforcement actions - source
- Wu Blockchain | Summary: US regulatory crackdown BUSD - source
- A framework for what founders need to know to survive this year | Is Funding For Web3 Ventures Dead? - source
- FEDS Notes | Residual Seasonality in Core Consumer Price Inflation: An Update - source
- Aggregation Theory, Web3, and Value Accrual | "Fat Protocols" or "Fat Apps?" - source
- An Overview of Rollup Technology | Rollups-as-a-Service: A New Era of Scalability - source
- Discusses privacy-preserving systems for blockchains | ‘EZEE’: The final answer to the tango between private and public systems- Part A - source
🎁 Bonus - Upcoming Token Unlocks
Are you making it part of your research routine to keep an eye on unlocks? Don’t forget you can use both these tools: DropsTab & TokenUnlocks
$EUL, $BIT, $GAL, $APE, $1INCH, $SNX, $UNI, $GRT, $RARE, $APE, $LDO, $ROSE, $ASTR, $METIS
We hope you find this issue engaging and enlightening. As always, we welcome your feedback and suggestions for future issues.
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