🗓💊 Meta NFTs Fail Already - Muh Adoption!
Daily Bullets - Tuesday, March 14th
Theo Delarosa
March 14, 2023
Today’s newsletter is 1189 words, a cool 5 minute read.
What a bounce! From crazy fear and uncertainty over the weekend over 3 different banks failing and serious concerns over USDC depegging to a crazy rally yesterday when the Fed announced they would be “bailing” the banks out and covering deposits.
Sentiment shifted from max bearishness to full bull at the drop of a hat.
This space moves so fast and sometimes it’s unbelievable what can happen in such a short period of time and how quickly sentiment can change. We’re not out of the water yet though and we still need to keep an eye on the Fed for clues as to what to expect next.
After the recent Fed/Banking bailout development, are you bullish or bearish? |
Today we’re looking at:
- 🖼🤡 Meta NFTs Fail Already - Muh Adoption!
- 🏦🤝 Few Remaining Crypto Friendly Banks
- 🕵️♂️📱 The US Keeps Probing Crypto
- ✅ Daily Bullets
- 📊 Market Dashboard
- 📚 Research/Reads
- 📝 Good Tweets
🖼🤡 Meta NFTs Fail Already - Muh Adoption!
Quick Take: Meta (formerly Facebook) has decided to halt its NFT efforts for the time being, according to their head of commerce and financial technologies. Meta previously stated that NFTs could help expand the creator economy.
Key Details:
- Part of a broader effort to prioritize and increase the company's focus
- Will instead focus on other ways to support creators, people, and businesses
- Areas of focus include messaging and monetization opportunities for Reels
- Will continue to support NFT creators who use Instagram and Facebook to amplify their work
- Streamlining payments with Meta Pay and investing in messaging payments across Meta
- Meta’s Reality Labs division had a net loss of nearly $4.3B in the final three months of 2022, for a total net loss of $13.7B last year
Significance: That was quick. Meta first announced plans to expand into the NFT space in May 2022 and allowed select creators and NFT collectors to post their digital property on Facebook and Instagram.
NFTs were all the rage in 2021 and Meta as well as many companies were eager to jump into the scene and capitalize on the hype. Now, that momentum has fizzled and these companies are reassessing their strategies. Curious to see how Amazon’s NFT pursuits play out.
Go Deeper:
🏦🤝 Few Remaining Crypto Friendly Banks
Quick Take: Many crypto VCs are seeking new banking partners for portfolio companies following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and Silvergate with some major banks still willing to work with crypto firms, but may restrict services.
Key Details:
- Santander, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, BankProv, Bridge Bank, Mercury, Multis, and Series Financial are still willing to connect with crypto firms
- May restrict some services for crypto firms, such as brokerage and money market services and the ability to wire money to third parties
- Traditional banks may set up banking accounts for crypto firms, but would place restrictions based on the level of crypto exposure
- Western Alliance and Bridge Bank are still opening accounts for crypto firms
- BlackRock, JPMorgan, and Bank of America, and international banks including Revolut, UOB, and Bank Leumi have yet to comment
Significance: Crypto companies being limited in their ability to bank was one of the major concerns stemming from the crypto bank collapses we saw so it’s promising they still have some options left.
We should hope that more failures don’t occur or that more banks shy away from working with crypto companies all together because that would be bad news bears. Attacking the money is a solid way to attack an industry.
Go Deeper:
🕵️♂️📱 The US Keeps Probing Crypto
Quick Take: The US Department of Justice has launched an investigation into the collapse of TerraUSD, the stablecoin issued by Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon, specifically for cases of market manipulation by large players.
Key Details:
- Federal prosecutors are examining Telegram conversations among employees at Jump Trading, Jane Street, and Alameda Research related to a potential bailout of UST in May last year
- The group chats are being investigated for possible market manipulation, but no one has been accused of wrongdoing
- The FBI and Manhattan federal prosecutors have questioned former employees of Terraform Labs, and the DoJ is seeking interviews with other people involved in the matter
- The investigation comes a month after the SEC charged Kwon with orchestrating a multi-billion dollar crypto asset securities fraud, and with Jump Trading being one of the firms that reportedly made $1.28B before Terra's collapse
Significance: How slow do the wheels of justice turn? Why is this news coming out a year later? We should’ve expected to hear about investigations many months ago, so why now? It feels like everything cumulatively is conspiring to target crypto at one time.
SEC regulations, banking, etc. The crypto industry is being stress tested and the government definitely feels like it wants to reign things in. And you know what else? Still feels like there’s more to come.
Go Deeper:
✅ Daily Bullets
🔥 Highlights
- Meta plans to stop working on NFTs
- Justice Department investigating Do Kwon and Terra’s collapse
- US probing Jane Street, Jump, Alameda over Terra stablecoin bailout group chats
- Binance GBP funding on/off-ramp to be suspended in May
- Bitcoin Miner Marathon still has access to $142M at Signature Bank
- Coinbase disabled trading for BUSD
- Gemini had no customer funds at Signature Bank
- BlockTower Capital funds had exposure to Silvergate
- Okcoin suspends USD deposits in wake of Signature Bank closure
- BitMEX halted all activities for a short time temporarily
📰 Crypto News
- DeFiance Capital completed the first close of a $100M liquid token fund
- Dogecoin, Zcash, Litecoin resolve possible exploit; 280 other chains may be at risk
- Worldcoin unveiled its identity protocol, which people can use to prove they’re real online
- NFT artist Beeple opens digital art gallery in Charleston
- CZ denied that Binance was trying to acquire CoinDesk via CoinMarketCap
💲Coin/Project Updates
- Euler Finance Incident Post-Mortem
- DYdX voted to reduce trading rewards by 45%
- Gearbox V3 Teaser: ReDEFIning Leverage and Lending
- Sei launching the final version of testnet, Atlantic-2
- Ex-Babel Finance CEO released the HOPE stablecoin
- Binance.US will delist Helium (HNT) and JasmyCoin (JASMY)
- Stellar linking to Polkadot and its sister network Kusama via the newly built Spacewalk bridge
- Gnosis Chain bounties for solo stakers
- Unstoppable.nft - secure domains with UD Parking
- The Iron Fish Mainnet launch is delayed until April 20th, 2023
- Feedgenie - a fully customizable terminal to receive actionable news in real time
- deltaDAO, Membrane Finance, and Polygon Labs bring EUROe to the Gaia-X Web3 ecosystem
📊 Market Dashboard
Chart of the Day - Interest Rate Target Probabilities
This is fascinating. Just last week the market had begun to flip and start favoring odds of raising rates by 50 bps at the next meeting but the recent banking failure has caused investors to pivot and now they foresee the Fed only raising rates by 25 bps with the potential for zero.
In fact, several are even optimistic that the stress caused by this debacle will accelerate the Fed having to pivot soon - which explains the rally we saw yesterday.
📚 Research/Reads
- Predictions on rates, the macro and future asset bids | Hello, plumber? - source
- A debate from the 2008 financial crisis resurfaces | Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank Reignite ‘Moral Hazard’ Dilemma Bitcoin Was Designed to End - source
- Glassnode | Three Fallen Banks - source
- Government interventions doesn’t yet resemble the large-scale, taxpayer-involved rescue in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown | Is This a Crypto Banking Bailout? - source
- BlockFi, Circle, Avalanche, Yuga Labs, and Proof | Silicon Valley Bank Contagion - source
- 1401 developers from 100 different countries | Solidity Developer Survey 2022 Results - source
- Fan Tokens | A Bet on Your Favorite Soccer Team? - source
📝 Good Tweets
nic carter on how Barney Frank admits Signature was closed to target last pro-crypto bank
Dear God. Barney Frank openly admits that Signature was arbitrarily shuttered despite no insolvency because regulators wanted to kill off the last major pro-crypto bank. Colossal scandal
— nic carter 🌠 (@nic__carter)
Mar 13, 2023
nic carter on speculation that U.S. banking crisis was a ploy to push CBDCs
unfortunate but true: the political case for CBDCs became much, much stronger this weekend. the issue with CBDCs was always disintermediating commercial banks, but now that no one trusts commercial banks...
— nic carter 🌠 (@nic__carter)
Mar 13, 2023
Arkham Intelligence Euler deep dive on Euler Finance $200M exploit
The popular DeFi Lending platform Euler Finance was exploited today for losses of almost $200M.
The attacker used over 20 different contract addresses in order to take a variety of crypto-assets from Euler.
Let's take a look at where these assets are now. 👇
— Arkham (@ArkhamIntel)
Mar 13, 2023
Do you find this newsletter shareable for other people in crypto? |