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
Axie Infinity virtual land slot sells out for 550 ETH
A plot of virtual land in the widely popular monster-battling NFT game Axie Infinity sold for 550 Ether (ETH) this week, with the sum worth more than $2.2 million at the time of writing.
The piece of virtual land was purchased on Thursday and is classified as Genesis, the rarest form of virtual real estate available in the Axie Infinity ecosystem. The game enables players to use Pokémon-like Axie monster NFTs to battle other players or complete challenges to earn blockchain rewards. Users can also buy, sell or rent land to other players.
The game’s developers said on Thursday that they believed it was “the largest sum ever paid for a single plot of digital land.” However, a quick Google search shows that a piece of virtual real estate in Decentraland sold for 618,000 MANA ($2.9 million at current prices) the previous day.
eToro to delist Cardano by 2022 for US users due to regulatory concerns
Retail trading platform eToro announced on Tuesday that it will be delisting Cardano (ADA) and Tron (TRX) for U.S. customers by the end of the year due to regulatory concerns.
By the start of 2022, users will no longer be able to open new positions in the tokens or stake them. Additionally, wallets holding the assets will effectively be in withdrawal-only mode until the first quarter of 2022, when the selling will also become limited.
In the case of ADA, many onlookers were puzzled by the move, as the asset has never had any notable regulatory troubles or legal issues. Cardano has also worked to ramp up its regulatory compliance this year, partnering with blockchain analytics provider Confirm as part of a push to meet financial regulations.
Celsius expands funding round to $750M, tips $7B to $10B valuation in 2022
Celsius Network expanded its $400-million Series B funding round, undertaken in October, to $750 million earlier this week as a result of oversubscription in the firm’s capital raise.
CEO Alex Mashinsky told Cointelegraph that the firm’s valuation stands at $3.5 billion following the Series B, and bullishly predicted that Celsius will be worth “double or triple” that in 2022.
Mashinsky pointed to the firm’s ability to provide services in almost every sector of crypto when highlighting the growth potential of the business. The company currently offers lending and DeFi services along with yields from its crypto mining business, and the CEO said it has plans to enter NFTs soon.
Shiba Inu team issues scam alert to SHIB investors
The team behind beloved memecoin Shiba Inu (SHIB) issued a public warning on Sunday against online scams that primarily target SHIB-curious altcoin investors.
The scammers are said to be circling on Twitter and Telegram, waiting for any chance to pounce on unwary investors by impersonating official accounts and targeting hashtags such as #shib, #shibarmy, #leash, #shibaswap and #bone.
Shiba Inu’s scam alert wanted users to be careful in fake Telegram groups in particular and noted that the official community is not offering any kind of promotions, including airdrops, bonuses, giveaways or gifts, and will not ask for any wallet keys and credentials.
1 million ETH has been burned since the implementation of EIP-1559 in August
Blockchain research firm CryptoRank highlighted on Wednesday that over 1 million Ether, worth around $4 billion, had been burned since the London hard fork went live in August. The upgrade to the network saw the introduction of a burning mechanism as part of Ethereum’s fee structure.
According to CryptoRank, the platform responsible for wiping the most Ether out of existence was NFT marketplace OpenSea with 110,237 ETH ($439 million) burned, while decentralized exchange Uniswap V2 accounted for 97,583 ETH ($388 million).
Data from Ultrasound Money shows that the current burn rate for Ethereum is 10,451 ETH per day, equating to 7.26 ETH per minute. While many onlookers said that the London hard fork would see ETH promptly become a deflationary asset, it appears there is much more room to burn. The current yearly burn rate is 3.8 million ETH compared to the 5.4 million ETH that is issued every 12 months.
Winners and Losers
At the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is at $54,292, Ether (ETH) at $4,020 and XRP is at $0.94. The total market cap is at $2.43 trillion.
Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are Gala (GALA) at 173.91%, Zcash (ZEC) at 58.07% and The Sandbox (SAND) at 57.88%.
The top three altcoin losers of the week are Nexo (NEXO) at 22.53%, WAX (WAXP) at 21.17% and ICON (ICX) at 20.83%.
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