Daily Bullets 💊: Tornado Cash Sanctioned - Regulators Coming Down Hard!

💊 M6 Daily Bullets 💊 Monday, August 8th

The crypto markers are seeing a little bit of oomph today. Bitcoin tagged $24k and ETH was able to kiss $1800 before retracing. Let’s see if we see any follow through. The biggest developing narrative we see today is that on the regulatory front with the US officially sanctioning Tornado Cash. This, in addition to recent developments by the US Department of Justice and SEC to label certain cryptos as securities highlight that crypto is at the stage where this type of regulation feels inevitable. The suits are coming. Crypto exchanges and entities are also in the process of declaring sides in the upcoming potential PoW forking of Ethereum after the merge

The U.S. Treasury Department has barred all U.S. persons from using Tornado Cash, alleging its use in laundering stolen crypto funds by North Korean hackers poses a national security threat

Three crypto exchanges so far will allow traders to speculate on tokens for anticipated Ethereum fork. Poloniex and MEXC listing tokens tied to a possible miner-led fork of Ethereum. BitMEX - futures derivative product. Huobi, Gate, Digifinex, and OKX evaluating official support

Cryptocurrency lending platform Hodlnaut has frozen withdrawals, deposits and token swaps after facing "difficult market conditions"

The victim of an email-based cyberattack, cross-chain protocol deBridge Finance says its investigation shows the action likely came from the North Korea-associated Lazarus Group

Galaxy Digital eyeing growing via mergers and acquisitions, particularly in the area of tokenization - despite $554M loss

Beanstalk stablecoin relaunches four months after $182M exploit

Forked versions of the Ethereum blockchain, including PoW forks, will not be supported by the Chainlink protocol

Polygon-Based Web3 Game Dragoma Supporters Fall Victim to $3.5M Rug Pull

Redacted v2 launch on August 8 - transition from a bond-centric, dilutive token model to a model focused on producing real yield for rlBTRFLY holders

Ren has integrated Kava to provide native BTC and more cross-chain support

zkLend - Artemis test is live

Arweave ecosystem is launching 6 new services and protocols

New ACA Staking Program, Altair rewins parachain slot on Kusama, Polkadot Weekly Digest

Aston Martin has announced the implementation of crypto payments on its official online store

BitMEX, one of the longest running derivatives exchanges in the crypto market, is moving into traditional financial markets with the launch of perpetual swap contracts tied to foreign currencies

Crypto.com receives South Korean regulatory licenses after buying local firms

📊 Data:

Nansen Smart Money Holdings Token Inflow and Outflows: Tracking what the whales are up to...

- Inflow: WETH ($23.3M), USDC ($9.7M), USDT ($6M)

- Outflow: WBTC ($6M), aWETH_v2 ($1.4M), APE ($775k)

Nansen NFT Hot Contracts:

The Awakened Woman: $471k
Webaverse Genesis Pass: $296k
ProjectAtama: $95k

🎓 Research:

Wu Blockchain - Weekly Project Update: Aptos Update, Optimism Bedrock, Polygon unlock and Top 10 Projects - source

Delphi - The Complete Guide to Rollups - source

Variant Fund - Sufficient Decentralization: A Playbook for web3 Builders and Lawyers - source

Nansen - How Is Smart Money Playing The Bounce? - source

What the Ethereum Merge Means for Crypto Projects and Investors - source

A Framework for Web3 Infrastructure - source

Manifold Finance and how they aim to target the $650m+ MEV industry - source

Messari - State of Metaplex Q2 2022 - source

Messari - State of Decentral Games Q2 2022 - source

Bankless - The AMM Edition (Part I) | DeFi Download - source

USDT, US Banks & More Coincidences - source

Derivatives markets & products - source

Web3 — Tokenised Communities vs. Tokenised Economies - source

🖼 NFTs/Metaverse News:

Animoca Brands releases the TOWER Token Web Store - currently available in Phase 1, allowing players to purchase in-game items for Crazy Defense Heroes using the $TOWER token on the Polygon network
Luxury jewelry retailer Tiffany & Co. debuted and sold out all 250 NFTiffs in about 20 minutes. Each NFT sold for 30 ETH, or about $50,000, generating some $12.5M in revenue

Netflix Builds Metaverse Experience from Netflix’s new action movie “The Gray Man” in Decentraland

Coca-Cola has distributed the new NFT collection launched on Polygon, among participants that joined its metaverse last year

🌍 Crypto Twitterverse:

📈 Fundraises:

Multi-blockchain platform Geeq has received a $25M 'capital commitment' from alternative investment group Global Emerging Markets

Social gaming platform INK Games Raises $18.75M

FiNANCiE, a crowdfunding platform that utilizes blockchain, Raises $5.8M

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