🗓💊 More Insider Trading: SVB Edition
Daily Bullets - Wednesday, March 15th
Theo Delarosa
March 15, 2023
Today’s newsletter is 928 words, a cool 4 minute read.
The crypto market is taking a breather after that impressive rally. Bitcoin shot up to $26.5k and has retraced to mid $24k with ETH spiking to high $1700s before cooling off as well.
All this on the back of CPI, which came in at 6% for February, exactly as expected, down from a previous 6.40% and has fallen for the eighth consecutive month.
Do you believe the Fed will pivot at the next FOMC? |
Today we’re looking at:
- 👮♂️🕵️♂️ More Insider Trading: SVB Edition
- 🖼📈 NFT Powerhouses Bullish on Amazon NFTs
- 🎮 👾 Epic Games Crypto Gaming Spray N’ Pray
- ✅ Daily Bullets
- 📊 Market Dashboard
- 📚 Research/Reads
- 📝 Good Tweets
👮♂️🕵️♂️ More Insider Trading: SVB Edition
Quick Take: The US SEC and DOJ are investigating the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and more potential cases of insider trading.
Key Details:
- Examining stock sales made by SVB's executives before the bank failed
- CEO Greg Becker sold $3.6M of company stock just two weeks before the collapse
- The Justice Department involved its fraud prosecutors in Washington and San Francisco
- SVB's closure was the second biggest banking failure in the history of US finance after Washington Mutual's fall in 2008
Significance: The investigations are in their preliminary phases and may not lead to charges or allegations of wrongdoing.
Why do we see so many cases of insider trading and shady goings ons from the world of finance? It’s almost like there’s something fundamentally wrong with the system…
Go Deeper:
🖼📈 NFT Powerhouses Bullish on Amazon NFTs
Quick Take: Several top players in the NFT space, including Blur, OpenSea, Orange Comet, and Magic Eden, expressed support of Amazon entering the NFT market.
Key Details:
- Amazon's entry could legitimize NFTs and offer an opportunity to onboard the masses into web3
- Amazon, with its ownership of Twitch, could be well positioned to take advantage of any NFT-gaming boom
- Amazon has more than 300 million active users worldwide
Significance: While early NFT hype emerged during a frothy bull run, it has been more established companies like Starbucks and Reddit that appear to be leading the way in luring first-time crypto adopters over to web3.
Amazon could help to distinguish NFTs from crypto and lend credibility to an area dominated by first-time CEOs running fledgling companies.
However it’s important to note how many duds there have been in this sector with many companies, including Meta struggling to find a product-market fit.
Go Deeper:
🎮 👾 Epic Games Crypto Gaming Spray N’ Pray
Quick Take: Fortnite developer Epic Games plans to add about 20 more crypto games to its marketplace by next year.
Key Details:
- Currently, Epic has five crypto games in its marketplace
- None of the upcoming games will be developed or published by Epic itself
- Publishers are responsible for aspects such as transactions, customer service, and refunds
- The first crypto game in Epic's marketplace is Blankos Block Party, a free-to-play multiplayer game where players can collect and personalize their own digital vinyl toys
- Being cautious about the reputation of crypto ventures and will be intolerant of any "bad behavior" from gaming projects
Significance: Epic Games is one of the largest players in the gaming space and their foray into crypto gaming should give us a lot of insight into the potential of the crypto gaming industry.
Will gamers be receptive? We’ve traditionally seen gamers shun crypto moves from their favorite gamemakers such as Ubisoft.
With so many titles coming out, do probabilities favor at least some will succeed?
Go Deeper:
✅ Daily Bullets
🔥 Highlights
- Facebook-parent company, Meta, to fire 10,000 employees in a second round of job cuts
- Euler Finance's offer to hacker: keep $20M and return 90% of the funds stolen or face the law
- Signature Bank regulator says it was closed for not providing data
- Circle and USDC partnering with Cross River Bank
- Circle able to access $3.3B of USDC reserves at Silicon Valley Bank
- Stablecoins: USDT, DAI, TUSD, LUSD thrived as USDC wobbled
- Ethereum final dress rehearsal for Shapella upgrade
- OpenAI’s newest version of Chat GPT-4 taking the crypto world by storm
- U.S. Government says Voyager-Binance.US' $1B deal should be halted
- Prosecutors were investigating Signature’s association with crypto clients ahead of its collapse
- Filecoin successfully implemented its own virtual machine, enabling it to support smart contracts
- 3 addresses connected to FTX and Alameda moved around $145M in stables to exchanges
📰 Crypto News
- EU policy makers play down fears of SVB contagion
- Anchorage Digital strategic layoffs - 20% staff, ~75 people
- Goldman Sachs filed a patent for blockchain tech it hopes to integrate with settling mechanism
- Web3 data warehousing platform Space and Time partnership with Korean gaming firm Wemade
- Blockchain firm RockX unveils institutional liquid staking platform Bedrock
- Kraken reassures customers and urges users to self-custody and diversify
- Coinbase opens local bank transfers for Singapore users at no cost
- CFTC new advisory committee in response to recent events
- User swaps $2M for 50 cents via Kyber Network
- Tari Labs won a temporary restraining order against Lighting Labs' Taro protocol
- MakerDAO voting to limit DAI volatility during market emergencies
- Crypto therapist reports sharp rise in people seeking addiction help
- Blockchain.com suspends operations of Asset Management Arm
💲Coin/Project Updates
- Ethereum has burned more than 3M ETH since EIP-1559, worth more than $9.09B
- Bitfinex and Binance walking back support for Stargate Finance’s plans to reissue its STG token
- Binance continuing zero maker and taker fees on the BTC/TUSD spot trading pair only
- Coinbase adding Uniswap and Aave to Base blockchain
- Euler hack affected protocols: Angle, Balancer, Yearn, and Alchemix
- MetaMask fixes privacy issue that linked accounts together in latest update
- Celestia - The Blockspace Race network is now live
- Cosmos Hub released Replicated Security, allowing other chains to lean on its network security
- Metamask record volume of swaps amid the demise of Silvergate, SVB and Signature Bank
- NounsDAO passed a proposal to create an animated film featuring its NFT characters
- Uniswap v3 deployment on KAVA passes phase 2 of 3 unanimously
- Cryptio partnered with Protocol Labs, to help Filecoin miners meet audit obligations
- Blockchain data verification network KYVE mainnet launch
- NFT Forever Project - trustless, perpetual storage for NFTs possible with Filecoin’s new VM
- Introducing Capsule, a better way to sign transactions
- STRDY airdrop announcement
📊 Market Dashboard
Chart of the Day - Stablecoin Exchange Reserves
Why aren't there more stablecoins coming onto exchanges to buy all the bitcoins and ethers?
Stablecoins are the lifeblood of crypto and also signify buying power on exchanges. Price has rallied spectacularly, yet no further buying power has been flowing onto exchanges.
We’d ideally like to see an influx of stablecoins flowing to back up the price moves we’ve seen.
📚 Research/Reads
- Ethereum on-chain perspective | Thread discussing weekend’s events - source
- $USDC, $USDT, $CRV, $DAI, $FRAX, $MIM, $LUSD, and $TUSD | How various tokens reacted to the recent bank run - source
- TON blockchain | A group of related whales mined 85% of TON supply - source
- Bitcoin Ordinals | How to create and sell NFT on Bitcoin - source
- Web3's Multiplayer Era | Technologies convergence : AI and crypto new perspectives - source
- Move-to-Earn Has a Ponzi-Economics Problem | M2E Business models : SweatEconomy Vs Stepn - source
- Proposes a new dynamic challenging period and decentralization paradigm for Optimistic Rollups | Challenging Periods Reimagined - source
📝 Good Tweets
Pentoshi on Bitcoin vs alts and the key to making it
I think if you're established $BTC is great, or even for your more conservative play
The odds of a 10x from here next cycle. Not so great. Diminishing returns but the safest bet
For those trying to still make it. You'll need the right alts and narratives
— Pentoshi 🐧 (@Pentosh1)
Mar 15, 2023
HashBastards NFTs detailing some of the controversy around Mario Nawfal
🚨THE BALLS OF MARIO NAWFAL.
Mario Nawfal pretending he's not a criminal
While on stage with a US Representative.
While threatening the only Youtuber calling him out for his years of fraud with a lawsuit citing $10M in damages.
Let's explore 👇
— HashBastards NFTs 🤑 (@HashBastardsNFT)
Mar 12, 2023
Pocket Universe details how Blur signatures are being used to steal NFTs
Blur signatures are now being used to steal NFTs ☠️
These are even more dangerous than the Opensea/Seaport signatures because the message is unreadable
We've already added a security measures to keep you safe
Here's a quick rundown 👇— Pocket Universe 🟣 (@PocketUniverseZ)
Mar 14, 2023
Route 2 FI with a reminder that strength tends to stay strong
A mistake I do over and over:
I see altcoins that break out but fade the strongest ones in the hope of catching some who haven't moved yet.
Most often the strong coins keep pumping, while laggards keep lagging.
And every time I fall for it.
— Route 2 FI (@Route2FI)
Mar 14, 2023
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