He that has been bitten by a snake is afraid of a rope! (weekly crypto updates)

What happened in the past week? Argentina and Salvador are making legal moves to support crypto in general, and Bitcoin in particular. Solana is surprising everyone. The UK government is trying to improve their crypto adoption. What else? Read below:

​

• Bitcoin: Crypto asset manager Bitwise has launched the first-ever TV ad campaign for a BTC spot ETF. Michael Saylor said that a BTC ETF approval will kickstart a major bull run next year. In Argentina, a new decree legalized Bitcoin and crypto for payments. In Salvador, you can receive fast-track citizenship if you make BTC donations for the country's development programs. Blackrock is tweaking its BTC ETF proposal to boost approval odds. 108 days left until halving, so, the time for a final push is here.

​

• Ethereum: Arbitrum Operations are back to normal after the Inscriptions surge caused an outage. EigenLayer, a protocol for restaking Ether, has seen its deposits reach $900M, a nearly x4 times increase, in just days. Ethereum's Deneb-Cancun upgrade's testnet launch is set for January 17, introducing smart tools to lower transaction fees and enable new functionalities for bridges and staking pools.

​

• Altcoins and stablecoins: Tether (USDT) reveals partnerships with the Secret Service and FBI in a letter to the US Senate. New users face an 8-day waiting period before claiming Mobile tokens earned for opt-in location tracking, to ease strains from surging demand. China recorded its first international trade using digital yuan - e-CNY, settling a $14M precious metals purchase. Crypto-hardware wallet Trezor is now supporting two new altcoins: SOL and SPL. SOL surpassed ETH for the first time, with a DEX volume of $10.1B, while ETH 'only' had $8.8B. Not only that, SOL active addresses have increased by 400%, while ETH only by a mere 3%. New times! Talking about Solana, after BONK airdrop, its Saga phone is selling on eBay for as much as $5000. Ledger promised to reimburse customers affected by its latest hack. USDC gained major ground in France, receiving conditional approval to operate as a licensed crypto company. All the over-the-counter crypto market are expanding their operations lately. The stablecoins added the largest monthly supply -3.43%, since Feb 2022. Some interesting changes with dYdX, in terms of staking and migration from V3 to V4. Check them out!

​

• Blockchain games and NFT: Immutable introduced a new wallet structure called Immutable Passport, to be used to access web3 games, and many games, including Gods Unchained, integrated this Passport. The NFT Trader P2P platform hacker returned 36 BAYC and 18 MAYC after receiving a 120 ETH bounty. Is anyone out there still not playing Golem Overlord? Wombat Dungeon Masters' current season is just starting. On Splinterlands, the Land 1.5 feature is available now, launched on November 28th, and it seems that it will take weeks, even months, to get everything in place for the optimal rewards. Still, Land 2.0 seems to be even more exciting and complex. OKX's NFT platform surged, overtaking Opensea in daily trading volume.

​

• Good news: The Ministry of Finance of Palau launched the second phase of its Palau stablecoin (PSC) program with Ripple support. Ripple registered with Ireland's central bank, looking for access to the European market. The Cardano Foundation announced a strategic partnership with the Brazilian state-owned oil giant Petrobras, to provide blockchain education to its 45.000 employers. The UK Finance Minister is currently checking claims that crypto firms are facing issues and hurdles in setting up business accounts in the country, as they are still dreaming about London becoming a major crypto hub. They are not sitting idle, as the UK government started to create a Digital Securities Sandbox too, where companies can test new products with actual customers under regulatory oversight.

​

• Bad news: Aurory's Syncspace bridge to Arbitrum Camelot DEX on Solana was exploited on December 17th. Do Kwon is still jailed in Montenegro, temporarily halting his extradition to the US. Liquidators froze $1.4B in assets tied to 3AC's founders. Good move!

​

• Joke of the week: The SEC rejected Coinbase's appeal, but Coinbase argued that the SEC's refusal was arbitrary, an abuse of discretion, and contrary to the law, violating administrative procedure. The regulators fired back saying that the request was missing specifics for proposing new rules. Meanwhile, the crypto circus is strong in America, as pro-crypto politicians formed a committee which amassed over $75M from industry players. Elizabeth Warren accused the industry of improperly hiring former government officials to undermine regulation and oversight, she keeps reminding us that crypto finances terrorism.

​

​

All the best,

George

​

Why not...

...have fun and win rewards on my favourite blockchain games (Splinterlands- Hearthstone-like card game) (Mobox - GamiFI NFT platform) (Upland - real-life virtual land) and (Rising Star - Music creators game).

...get crypto while writing on the Publish0x blog, using the Presearch search engine to maximize your income with PRE tokens. Use Torum instead of Twitter. I am also writing for crypto on Read.cash and Hive.

​

​

​

​