Welcome to this 23rd issue of the Chain Reaction newsletter for the week commencing 25th April 2022. It's Anzac Day so we recognise the sacrifice of our Australian and New Zealand armed forces those many years ago and up until today.
In the news last week we saw big news in the local ETF space with Cosmos Asset Management (part of bitcoin Miner, Mawson Inc) and ETF Securities both get in the news with the potential of new crypto ETFs for Aussie investors. Additionally,there was another hack with $182m drained from the Beanstalk protocol, MakerDAO adding a StarkNet bridge and the IMF warning of crypto trading risks as just another centralised authority warning of getting into crypto.
Additionally, Aus DeFi Association was in the news with contributions to articles in the Australian Financial Review, the Tapping into Crypto podcast and also our another awesome meetup event during the week at our Crypto Hub with sponsors, guests, friends and supporters in person and online.
Anyway, check out all this and more in the newsletter below and make sure you hit subscribe so you can get access to updates directly to your inbox.
What you can expect in this newsletter
In the News
Videos of the week
Charts and Data
Around the world of social media
Education
In the news
Decrypt - Kevin Rose’s Moonbirds Ethereum NFT launch generates $280M in two days - Kevin Rose’s PROOF COLLECTIVE launched a new NFT project which dominated the NFT market after being launched on Saturday. With the cheapest Moonbird NFT listed for at 19.8 ETH, this Ethereum profile picture collection holds utility within the PROOF ecosystem, allowing NFT holders gaining exclusive perks.
Become a weeb3.0 with these 8 Anime NFT projects - An overview of the most popular anime NFT projects, one of the biggest trends in the NFT space right now, according to Rarible.
Ethereum DeFi Staple MakerDAO Adds StarkNet Bridge in First Step Toward Multi-Chain - Is quantum computing a potential existential risk for Bitcoin? This article explore that and more.
CoinDesk - Attacker Drains $182M From Beanstalk Stablecoin Protocol - Another week another hack reported this time with Beanstalk Stablecoin protocol. Blockchain security firm PeckShield highlighted that $182m in a flash loan vulnerability and whilst it had its smart-contracts audited, this was prior to the vulnerability being known.
CoinDesk - Ethereum DeFi Staple MakerDAO Adds StarkNet Bridge in First Step Toward Multi-Chain - MakerDAO is moving toward a multi-chain future by bridging to a cheaper, faster overlay network than Ethereum.
Move-to-earn: An active play-to-earn offshoot - Move-to-earn games gaining attention as STEPN’ governance token Green Metaverse Token (GMT) made parabolic moves this week. Check out the article for more.
Decrypt - Web3 Is Supposed to Be Secure. What About All These Hacks? - A slew of recent hacks has left some wondering if they should just turn our money and data over to Mark Zuckerberg and call it day.
Decrypt - Kevin O’Leary-Backed Defi Platform WonderFi to acquire Coinberry for $38M - With the acquisition of Coinberry, WonderFi consolidates as the leader among the crypto players in Canada. The deal will bring 220,000 users and $100 million in assets to the WonderFi ecosystem.
AFR - Bitcoin ETFs get the green light - In a major announcement for the local ETF (exchange traded funds) space over here, it looks like the path has been cleared for the first spot bitcoin ETF to start trading. For those that didn't know, ASIC approved crypto ETFs here but the final hurdle was the clearing portion run by ASX Clear (and which CBOE our 2nd exchange also use).
AFR - Fund managers size up $2.5 trillion crypto temptation - merging ETFs with crypto again is this piece looking at the local ETF landscape and the demand from institutional investors for crypto exposure. Our co-founder Mark Monfort appears given analysis he does with his ETFtracker tool and knowledge of crypto related data.
Cointelegraph - Blockchain games are leading the DApp industry, says latest DappRadar report - $2.5 billion was invested into blockchain games just in this Q1, meanwhile $4 billion was the total amount raised in 2021. Currently, blockchain games represent more than half of the Dapp industry with 1.22 million unique active wallets (UAW) in March. Splinterlands represented the number one play-to-earn DApp and Polygon as the layer 2 with the top P2E games.
Cointelegraph - The metaverse puts the digital asset interoperability challenge on steroids - Since the rebranding of Facebook to Meta, many metaverses are getting built. With a broad range of metaverses, the interoperability between ecosystems arises as a challenge for companies' NFTs.
Cointelegraph - The metaverse puts the digital asset interoperability challenge on steroids - Since the rebranding of Facebook to Meta, many metaverses are getting built. With a broad range of metaverses, the interoperability between ecosystems arises as a challenge.
#Regulation and Government
The Block - Rhode Island lawmakers introduce ‘green coin’ in housing bill - Lawmakers in Rhode Island plan to introduce “green coin” in order to tackle the climate crisis and housing shortage. Properties that follow sustainable guidelines could earn the token and potentially use it for paying public transport and for charging electric cars.
Crypto: IMF warns of cryptocurrency trading risks in emerging markets, bitcoin surpasses $41,000 - Cryptocurrency trading in emerging markets could imperil the global financial system, the IMF warned in a rather scaremongering report.
APRA - Crypto-assets: Risk management expectations and policy roadmap - In this new release from this local financial industry body they detail their roadmap which pushes out the expectations of modernising the prudential architecture until 2025. Worth a read if you work in this space or are just curious. It may delay certainty around some crypto projects but we shall see.
Charts and Data
CoinGecko
Top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap as of April 24th 2022 5:31pm AEST on CoinGecko. Another downtrend kind of week for BTC and other coins as it falls to below $40k after a few weeks of gains. Terra saw the biggest 7 day moveout of the top 10 coins with +13%.
This week we also check out the top 10 NFT collections in terms of 24hour volume as of 24th April 5:34pm. Moonbirds, whilst making the news this week as another big kevin Rose project was 2nd to dotdotdots in terms of volume followed by Mutant Ape Yacht Club, Meebits and BAYC.
Videos of the week
Tapping into Crypto - DeFi vs CeFi - The problems DeFi is solving - not quite a video but our very own CaptainDeFi (aka Mark our co-founder and editor) was interviewed by Alycia Chapman on this podcast and they dove into DeFi and its potential as well as how the Aus DeFi Association got started. Check it out and the other episodes which have included local guests like James Manning from Mawson Inc or Pav and Tommy from Swyftx and global guests like Raoul Pal from Real Vision. 40mins
Drake on Digital - The Stable coin that does this will WIN!!! - YouTuber and Crypto enthusiast, Drake, talks about stablecoins such as $USDC, $USDT, $UST and $frax, and considers that the stablecoin that will succeed will be the one that achieves the fastest adoption across multiple blockchain protocols. 6mins
The Defiant - Meet the war hero saving lives with crypto - Diving into the war in Ukraine and how crypto is playing a part in the actions needed to help people survive the war. We meet Rada who's in the middle of the conflict and trying to get by and see how crypto is absolutely necessary. 14mins
ausbiz - The advantage of investing in crypto ETFs over buying tokens directly - with news of a bitcoin fund of funds ETF listing coming soon, more news into how ETFs and crypto can be pieced together to make it easier for some investors to get exposure ot this asset class. 17mins
Social post(s) of the week
Here's some posts on our latest Aus DeFi Association meetup on Wednesday from our Crypto Hub (thanks to Mercari and FEX Global for the site). We had so many cool guests and you can see more in our Tweets here - https://twitter.com/AusDeFi/status/1516919398988414977 and here https://twitter.com/AusDeFi/status/1516926657357320192
In this post from Metamask they advise users to disable iCloud apps data backups after a hacker allegedly stole more than $650k in crypto assets from a user. https://twitter.com/MetaMask/status/1515727239391809536?ref_hackers-steal-655k-after-picking-metamask-seed-from-icloud-backup%2F
If you're interested in contributing to these newsletters in future - please join us on Discord or reach out to us on info@defi.org.au
If you would like to dig deeper into why and how is the blockchain relevant to international matters and to get more insights on regulations and Defi knowledge , join us on our Discord: https://discord.com/invite/ZRCTDdsVEF
