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Jan 15, 2024

Penguin Power 🐧❗️🪙

Valko

1/15/24: Penguin Power 🐧❗️🪙Valko

Top News

🐧 Pudgy Penguins floor hits all-time high of 12 ETH

❗️ Gensler says there’s irony in the BTC ETF approval, and he’s right

🪙 Tether’s USDT now represents 70% of stablecoin market share

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Specs’ Insights

⌐◪-◪ → Pudgy Penguins just made history with a new all-time high floor price of 12.8 ETH or $32,500.

As somebody who’s been collecting NFTs since 2017 but doesn't have a Pudgy, I've gotta say - I'm super impressed with the team.

Pudgy Penguins are genuinely defying the odds, as many of the other legacy “bluechip” projects trend downwards. I suppose new narratives beat old narratives.

For reference, Pudgy’s new floor price is 50% of BAYC and 20% of CryptoPunks' respective floor prices.

It will be interesting to see how Pudgies perform as the broader NFT market comes back, and if any holders take profits and rotate into harder assets like Punks, Ethereum, or Bitcoin.

Gensler sees bitcoin ETF irony in light of Satoshi's mission, says he respects Sen. Warren and the law

The launch of spot bitcoin ETFs is ironic given that it goes against Satoshi Nakamoto's decentralization mission, Gensler said on CNBC.

⌐◪-◪ → As much as I dislike Gary Gensler, I do think he’s right about the “irony” in the recent Bitcoin ETF approval.

Satoshi’s opening line in the Bitcoin whitepaper is, “A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.

”Key words → without, financial, institution.

Obviously, the new spot Bitcoin ETFs go directly against this mission, putting our precious assets back into the hands of incumbent financial institutions.

But, I still think the ETFs are a net good for the space, so long as we acknowledge the dark side - and slow creep of institutional dominance.

Ultimately - it’s a dilemma of mainstream adoption vs true decentralization.

Tether's market share grew by 21 points in 2023, now captures two-thirds of stablecoin supply

Crypto's biggest company now has over 95 billion tokens in circulation, as other stablecoin issuers battle for its scraps.

⌐◪-◪ → USDT stablecoin dominance just surpassed 70.9%, growing from 48.1% earlier last year, adding $29B in new supply.

The competition with other stablecoins isn't even close, with the USDC in second place at 18.3% dominance, and DAI in third place at 3.83%.

Meanwhile, the United Nations warned against USDT in a new report, stating that it’s the preferred token for money laundering and scams in Southeast Asia.

This feels like a moot point, and is no different than saying - most DUI’s happen in [insert most popular vehicle].

Hopefully, this is just an observation and statement of fact, without a hidden political agenda, but I highly doubt it.

I suppose if they snub Tether via sanctions, subpoenas, etc. - we can all just go long on Circle’s upcoming IPO.

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Everything Else

⛓️ Crypto & DeFi

  • Aave considers proposal to expand to Neon EVM on Solana

  • Google Cloud joins Flare Network as validator

  • Crypto investments saw record $17.5B trading volume last week

  • Hacker tries to attack Bitfinex via XRP partial payment exploit

  • More than 30% of crypto games have been discontinued

  • PayPal’s stablecoin market cap grows 70% last month to $290M

  • Circle highlights surge in USDC use for Asia payments

  • Taiko layer 2 deploys final testnet ahead of Q1 launch

🏦 Wallstreet & VC

  • Moody’s says tokenized fund adoption signals untapped potential

  • JPMorgan says < 50% chance of spot Ethereum ETF by May

  • Spot Bitcoin ETFs see $7B of cumulative volume by end of day 2

  • BlackRock releases Bitcoin ETF commercial for boomers

🏛️ Legal & Regulatory

  • Do Kwon appeals new Montenegro High Court decision

  • SEC comments on X account hack, says they never lost access

  • Gary Gensler declines to comment on potential ETH ETF

🌎 Rest of the World

  • United Nations identifies USDT as the preferred token for fraud

  • Venezuela ends controversial Petro cryptocurrency

  • Binance lets Indian customers access platform without VPNs

  • South Korea considers sanctioning crypto mixers like the US

🖼️ NFTs & Metaverse

  • GameStop ends their NFT marketplace due to regulatory concerns

  • Solana Game 'Nyan Heroes' hits Epic Game store ahead of airdrop

  • Sotheby’s opens bidding for curated Bitcoin Ordinals auction

  • Taproot Wizards launch Quantmn Cats using 'evolving' inscriptions

  • Mercedes Benz previews in-car NFT gallery

  • Refik Anadol launches new project, Large Nature Model

  • AVAX leads 24hr NFT volume, led by Dokyo collection

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