This Week In Crypto #8
This week, just like last week, fear has taken hold in the crypto markets. At the time of writing, the market is down about 5% in the last 7 days. However, price talks have taken a secondary position. Probably the most debated subject was the offer made by Elon Musk for the purchase of Twitter and the implications that this acquisition will have for the crypto space.
The discussion about market regulation has somehow lost its focus also. Instead, states seem to want to show that they can be a necessary factor in industry stability. A DAO has been sued for violating an investor’s rights, and US institutions have found evidence linking North Korea to one of the largest crypto thefts.
And Ethereum delayed its announced merge, but I believe that this is the opposite of news for many. The news will be when something around the impending transition of Ethereum to proof of stake will not be delayed.
Bids made on Twitter
7) Because it would all be on-chain, it would be trivial to integrate the following into Twitter:
a) tips/payments/monetization for content creators
b) NFTs/profiles/avatars
c) sure, why not DOGE pic.twitter.com/btc8Dz0uUL
— SBF (@SBF_FTX) April 14, 2022
Shortly after Musk’s announcement Justin Sun, the founder of Tron blockchain, raised the bar and twisted that he would pay 60$/share.
I believe @Twitter is far from unleashing its full potential, thus I am offering $60 per share to take the platform private. But we fully support the reform initiatives of @elonmusk and would love to see Twitter becoming crypto-native and Web3 friendly.
— H.E. Justin Sun🌞🇬🇩🇩🇲🔥₮ (@justinsuntron) April 14, 2022
Whether the Twitter board will accept one of the offers or not is of secondary importance. What is probably more relevant is that there seems to be an increased interest in decentralized, censorship-resistant social platforms designs.
Twitter may receive enticing offers; the same cannot be said about the first tweet ever
In March last year, the first tweet was sold as an NFT for $ 2.9 million. Last week, the buyer tried to sell it by putting it up for auction on the OpenSea.
I decided to sell this NFT ( the world's first ever tweet ) and donate 50% of the proceeds ( $25 million or more ) to the charity @GiveDirectly
🖇 https://t.co/cnv5rtAEBQ pic.twitter.com/yiaZjJt1p0— Sina Estavi (@sinaEstavi) April 6, 2022
During the auction, the highest bid was only 0.09 ETH. Although the auction has ended (an NFT holder can receive an offer even if he does not have an active auction), the highest bid at the moment is 4.75 ETH, still far from the expectations that the seller had, respectively 48 million dollars. Many may see this as a bursting of “the NFT bubble”.
However, if we dig deeper, we find that the seller is a controversial figure in the crypto space, being the founder of some doubtful ventures. Even Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter and the tweet’s author in question, asked him why he does not donate 99% of the income from the sale, but only 50%, as he initially stated.
Apparently, the value of a crypto asset is more linked with the seller’s reputation than many may think
Olympus DAO under trial
An early investor sued Olympus DAO, a financial protocol that promised huge gains and was considered by some an up-and-coming venture.
Jason Liang made a private funding agreement with the founders of Olympus DAO, giving them 50000 $ for 4 million pOHM tokens. He alleges that the core principles of decentralization were breached when the founders rendered unusable the smart contract that made the swap between pOHM and OHM possible, practically restricting his right to sell.
It’s interesting, in this case, how decentralization seems to need a centralized authority to be enforced.
When Lazarus robs Ronin: North Korea’s hackers linked to $625 million theft
A couple of weeks ago, Ronin Bridge, a Layer 2 network used by Axie Infinity play to earn game platform, was hacked. Over 173,600 ETH and 25.5 million USDC were stolen (approximately 600 Million $).
On the 14th of April US Department of the Treasury introduced on its sanctions lists against North Korea an Ethereum address linked to a North Korean hackers group known besides its many names as the “LAZARUS GROUP”. The same wallet seems to be involved in the hack we already mentioned.
This leads us to wonder how many of the problems highlighted by states as reasons for enforcing regulations are, in fact, the work of state actors and how many are made by simple individuals, people against whom these excessive regulations are usually directed.
Robinhood added trading options for another four crypto coins
Robinhood, the trading platform that introduced the financial markets to the everyday millennial, announced the introduction of four new tokens that could be traded on their platform: Solana, Polygon, Compound, and the meme coin Shiba Inu.
It is interesting to note how the crypto space reacted to this news: somehow indifferently. This attitude may signal the maturation of the crypto market. If in recent years it has been eagerly awaited ” crypto adoption” by as many financial institutions as possible, now it seems that this adoption is considered natural, and the talk of the town is directed to other issues.
Ethereum merge delayed
On April 11, the developers responsible for transforming Ethereum into a chain based on a proof of stake consensus algorithm announced the successful completion of another step.
BTW, the mainnet shadow fork was a huge success! Nethermind and Besu stopped at the transition, but a fix is being deployed for Nethermind that allows them to sync up. Geth and Erigon are progressing happily. All beacon chain clients are in agreement. https://t.co/Khn8oenqGa https://t.co/E099k5e3PM
— MariusVanDerWijden (@vdWijden) April 11, 2022
Still, this success does not mean that everything will go according to plan. Shortly after the first announcement, Tim Boiko announced that “The Merge” would be postponed and would not take place in June.
It won't be June, but likely in the few months after. No firm date yet, but we're definitely in the final chapter of PoW on Ethereum
— timbeiko.eth (@TimBeiko) April 12, 2022
The Merge is one of the last steps toward merging the Ethereum mainnet with the “proof of stake” algorithm, thus transforming Ethereum into an energy-efficient chain, dramatically reducing electricity use. This delay is the latest from an already proverbial chain of hold-ups encountered by Ethereum’s transition.
Yet, before interpreting this delay negatively, we must understand that a potential failure of this transition will not only endanger the Ethereum ecosystem, but the entire crypto space. So, let’s give them all the time they think they need.
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