Nov-Dec Edition: Bitesize Crypto News
Adoption, development updates, and other news you should know.
Welcome to another edition of Crypto Explained.
We are on the mission of making crypto easy for everyone. If you’d like to learn more about the world of crypto, don’t forget to subscribe to receive this Newsletter directly in your email!
Here is the Nov-Dec edition of Crypto Explained’s bitesize News.
These last two months have been heavily dominated by the FTX and Alameda collapse (read full saga here), its terrible contagion on other players in the space, and the ongoing Congress hearing. This is a story in development, and we do not doubt there will continue to be plenty of news coverage.
However, there are still other interesting things happening in this space, and we are bringing a summary of the main headlines to you.
As usual, we are splitting into 3 categories:
Adoption News: government, institutions, and/or companies that are getting involved with crypto in one way or another.
Crypto Development: updates and further development from particular crypto projects.
Other News: bear-ish news, as well as other crypto news that does not fall into the previous categories.
Adoption News
Fidelity opens retail crypto trading accounts, promising commission-free trading of BTC and ETH (read more here).
After acquiring the NFT platform RTFKT in 2021, Nike launches its new Web3 shopping platform dotSwoosh (read more here).
El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele announced that the government would start purchasing one BTC every day (read more here).
Japan kicks off the Central Bank Digital Currency experiment with three megabanks as well as regional banks in the Asian nation (read more here).
Brazil’s congress has passed a bill that paves the way for banks to begin offering payment services around Bitcoin and other crypto assets (read more here).
Global payments processing company Stripe is launching its own fiat-to-crypto on-ramp, allowing customers to exchange dollars for cryptocurrencies (read more here).
Messaging app Telegram has sold $50 million in usernames in less than a month through its blockchain-based auction platform, Fragment, and plans to build a decentralized exchange and non-custodial wallets (read more here).
OpenSea says NFT creators earned $1 billion in royalties this year (read more here).
Warner Music Group to release Music NFTs through LGND Platform on Polygon (read more here).
Alibaba Cloud, or Aliyun, a subset of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, announced an integration with Avalanche blockchain to power the company’s Node-as-a-Service initiatives (read more here).
Development News
Ethereum developers determined that the Shanghai Hardfork will have a target release time frame of March 2023. This upgrade will include code known as EIP 4895 that will allow Beacon Chain staked ether (ETH) withdrawals (read more here).
Emurgo, the official commercial arm and a founding entity of the Cardano blockchain, plans to launch USDA, a U.S.-pegged stablecoin, in early 2023 (read more here).
Cardano is releasing a new privacy-focused blockchain called Midnight and a token called dust to accompany the new network. Midnight, which is underpinned by zero-knowledge proof technology, is one of many side chains now being deployed around Cardano (read more here).
Onomy, a Cosmos-based decentralized finance protocol, has raised $10 million in a private token funding round. The round was backed by investors including Bitfinex, GSR, Ava Labs, CMS Holdings and DWF Labs (read more here).
Chainlink has introduced staking of its native token LINK to its network to help keep the protocol secure (read more here).
Hardware wallet developer Ledger say it’s seeing an uptick in sales in the wake of FTX’s collapse as investors seek to self-custody their crypto (read more here).
The metaverse platform Decentranland announced a new platform feature that allows its users who own virtual LAND to essentially become landlords. Owners can now officially rent out their property to other users on the platform for predefined periods of time (read more here).
In other News…
New York imposes 2-Year moratorium on new Proof-of-Work Mining after Governor Hochul signs bill (read more here).
BlockFi has announced that it is filing for bankruptcy, becoming the latest crypto firm affected by the bear market and the FTX collapse (read more here).
Talking of FTX, the Block Chief Executive Officer Michael McCaffrey resigned after failing to disclose a series of loans from former FTX head Sam Bankman-Fried’s Alameda Research. He was the only person with knowledge of the funding at the company (read more here).
Ardana, a once-promising decentralized finance project built on perennial top proof-of-stake blockchain Cardano, has halted development (read more here).
Coinbase is waiving the conversion fees for users who wish to switch to a "trusted stablecoin" in a new campaign that highlights the quality of reserves that back Circle-owned USD coin (USDC) (read more here).
Thanks for making it this far! If you enjoyed it, hit like, subscribe, and share, so more people can find us!