Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes,
Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.
Top Stories This Week
Binance to launch $1B fund to develop BSC ecosystem
Binance, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange, announced an accelerator fund worth a whopping $1 billion this week. The funds will go toward supporting the development of the Binance Smart Chain ecosystem.
Binance outlined that the 10-figure sum will be part of a tiered development model across four specialist areas: Talent Development, the Liquidity Incentive Program, the Builder Program and the Investment & Incubation Program.
The largest benefactor of the fund is said to be the Investment & Incubation Program, which will receive around $500 million, according to Binance. The branch will focus on multichain expansion in areas such as metaverses, gaming, virtual reality and artificial intelligence.
Coinbase follows FTX and Binance in launching NFT marketplace
Coinbase announced on Tuesday that it is launching an NFT marketplace later this year. The platform will initially support tokens from the Ethereum blockchain and will be launched in the U.S. before being expanded globally.
Given that Coinbase tallied around 68 million verified users and 8.8 million monthly active users in Q2, the firm’s new NFT platform could soon mount some serious competition to giants such as OpenSea.
Evidence of this was seen after the announcement, as sign-ups for the waitlist reached almost 1.1 million people within 48 hours. In contrast, data from DappRadar shows that OpenSea has a rolling 30-day average of 261,000 active users.
G7 leaders issue central bank digital currency guidelines
The Group of Seven (G7) forum, composed of the world’s seven largest advanced economic nations, discussed a totally centralized form of digital assets called central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) this week. The meeting resulted in the endorsement of 13 public policy principles regarding their implementation.
The G7 determined that any newly launched CBDCs should “do no harm” to the central bank’s ability to maintain financial stability, suggesting that harm to individual sovereignty by tracking one’s spending habits and programming their money is on the table.
Some of the CBDC-focused policies included mandates that the digital currencies must be energy efficient and fully interoperable on a cross-border basis, along with complementing the current cash-based system.
Crypto lending firm Celsius Network raises $400M
Crypto lending platform Celsius Network raised $400 million in an equity funding round led by Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec and WestCap. The firm said it will use the fresh capital to double its headcount to around 1,000 employees and expand its offerings and products.
“It’s not $400 million. It’s the credibility that comes with the people who wrote those checks,” Celsius Network co-founder Alex Mashinsky said in an interview with the Financial Times on Tuesday.
Another firm to close a capital raise was crypto risk management company Elliptic, which raised $60 million in Series C funding. The round was led by Evolution Equity Partners and included support from SoftBank Vision Fund 2, AlbionVC, Digital Currency Group, Wells Fargo Strategic Capital and SBI Group, to name a few.
Top engineers working on Facebook’s wallet jump ship to A16z’s crypto fund
Reports surfaced on Monday that two of the top engineers working on Facebook’s spooky digital currency project packed their bags and took a hike to venture firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).
The engineers who escaped the clutches of Mark Zuckerberg are named Nassim Eddequiouaq and Riyaz Faizullabhoy. The duo spent two years working on Facebook’s digital wallet dubbed Novi. Faizullabhoy will serve as the chief technology officer of a16z’s crypto division, while Eddequiouaq will take on the role of the chief information security officer.
“Andreessen Horowitz has shown an impressive dedication to advancing the entire crypto ecosystem over the past decade, and we jumped at the chance to join their premier team and provide technical support to their rapidly expanding portfolio,” Faizullabhoy said.
Winners and Losers
At the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is at $60,687, Ether (ETH) at $3,817 and XRP at $1.13. The total market cap is at $2.44 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap.
Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are Stacks (STX) at 38.94%, Perpetual Protocol (PERP) at 30.55% and Telcoin (TEL) at 24.63%.
The top three altcoin losers of the week are Arweave (AR) at -21.68%, Terra (LUNA) at -17.50% and Fantom (FTM) at -15.41%.
For more info on crypto prices, make sure to read Cointelegraph’s market analysis.
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