GM and welcome to another edition of THE W3EKLY, your one-stop shop for recapping all things crypto from last week.

Today, I made a few changes to the newsletter’s flow. Like it? Hate it? Hit reply and let me know. Let’s dive in.

EXEC SUMMARY:

Wallet development activity continues to heat up, as a few providers expanded their suite of offerings.

• Ledger launched a browser extension to improve wallet connectivity.

• Coinbase added tokenproof integration to its Wallet as a Service product.

• Microsoft is testing a built-in crypto wallet for their Edge browser.

• InstaDapp, the DeFi management platform, launched “Avocado Wallet”, enabling users to execute multi-network transactions while being connected to a single network.

ETH-based NFTs rolled out a variety of features last week. Updates are as follows:

• Blur announces mobile functionality and buy/sell notifications.

• OpenSea now checks for flagged items on collection offers.

• LooksRare discontinued its listings rewards while hinting at providing more value to existing users.

Finally, when one corporate adoption door closes, another one opens. Meta announced plans to sunset their NFT platform; however, Salesforce threw their hat into the web3 ring. The SaaS giant announced Salesforce web3, a pilot program that plans to help companies manage personalized, omnichannel experiences across Web2 and Web3.

TOP HEADLINES:

MACRO:

• US Fed: The collapse of SVB and Signature Bank calls the US Fed’s rate path into question.

• US CPI: The US Inflation print indicated that growth slowed to 6% YoY in February.

• Crypto Banking: Santander, HSBC, Deutsche Bank and others still willing to serve crypto clients despite banking failures.

POLICY/LAW:

• EU: The European Parliament’s digital identity framework has passed its plenary vote.

• CFTC: The commodity regulator doubles down on its stance that crypto and stablecoins are commodities while the SEC continues to insist they’re securities.

• US Treasury: The governmental organization proposed a 30% excise tax on crypto mining firms based on the costs of computing electricity.

• Balaji: The prominent crypto billionaire claimed banks are insolvent and made a wager Bitcoin would reach $1M in the next 90 days.

PRODUCT:

• Arbitrum: The L2’s long-awaited ARB airdrop to go live this week. They announced 11.62% of its 10 billion token supply will be airdropped to users

• Ethereum: The L1 completes final dress rehearsal for Shapella upgrade.

• Polygon: The Ethereum scaling solution partners with Unstoppable Domains to launch .polygon domains.

• Coinbase: The exchange announces plans to process ETH unstaking requests 24 hours after Shapella upgrade. They walked back this statement a day later.

• Uniswap: The DEX officially expands exchange services to BNB Chain.

• Lido Finance: The Liquid Staking Derivative company estimates staked ETH withdrawals via their protocol will be available in May after on-chain code audits pushed back the timeline.

• Worldcoin: The Sam Altman-backed project has unveiled its identity protocol, which allows users to prove they’re real online.

GOVERNANCE & OTHER TECH REQUESTS:

• MakerDAO: The lending protocol is looking to increase their US Treasury exposure.

• Balancer: The DeFi liquidity provider moves to deploy on Gnosis and Avalanche.

• Balancer: The liquidity provider is also looking to deploy on zkSync.

• Aave: The lending protocol is aiming to list wstETH on Polygon.

• Frax: The stablecoin provider is exploring a partnership with Metronome.

• Cosmos: The L1’s hub released “Replicated Security”, allowing other chains in the Cosmos ecosystem to lean on its network security.

• Coinbase: The exchange is adding Uniswap and Aave to Base, it’s upcoming L2 network.

• Filecoin: The decentralized storage network launches the Filecoin Virtual Machine.

CORPORATE ACTIVITY:

• Binance: The crypto exchange suspended GBP transactions as its payments partner moves away.

• LinksDAO: The DAO for golfing enthusiasts won its bid to buy a golf course in Scotland.

• Epic Games: The team behind Fortnite has close to 20 crypto games in their pipeline.

• Worldcoin: The crypto project founded by Sam Altman, signed a deal with manufacturing giant Jabil in Germany to ramp up production of its iris-scanning orbs.

• Copper: The crypto custody firm announced they are winding down their enterprise business.

• Euler Finance: The crypto lender was flash-loan attacked, losing ~$200M in the hack.

NFTs:

• WME: The talent agency signed AI artist Claire Silver.

• DeGods: The NFT project launched a public mint on Bitcoin.

• Axie Infinity: The web3 gaming company went live with Origins Season 3.

• Pokémon: The Japanese franchise is hiring a senior NFT and metaverse expert.

• Aéropostale: The fashion brand announced plans for NFTs, avatars, and a Tesla giveaway.

• GQ: The luxury media company’s inaugural launch failed to sell out.

• Planet Hollywood: The gym is launching a members-only club in LA, Club 3, for Animoca Brands.

• Nissan: The car maker files trademarks for NFT marketplace, virtual clothes, cars, and metaverse advertising services.

• Forkast Labs: The Animoca-backed Media and Web3 Infrastructure player launched a suite of NFT index trackers.

• Sodium: The new peer-to-peer and peer-to-pool NFT lending protocol, is now live.

• Starbucks: The coffee giant sold 2,000 Polygon NFTs in 20 minutes.

FUNDING/ INVESTMENTS:

• Orbs: The crypto infrastructure developer raised $10M from DWF Labs in a token round.

• CNHC Group: The issuer of the CNHC stablecoin pegged to the offshore Chinese yuan, raised $10M in funding, led by KuCoin Ventures.

• Jungle: The Brazil-based web3 gaming studio raised $6M in seed funding from Bitkraft, Framework Ventures and others.

• Code4rena: The DAO that creates incentives for bug hunting raised $6M in a private token sale from Paradigm.

• Smooth Labs: The blockchain infrastructure firm raised $2M from NGC Ventures and others.

• Staging Labs: The crypto security startup raised $1.1M from The General Partnership, Flourish Ventures and others.

• Capsule: The crypto wallet infrastructure startup emerged from stealth, raising an estimated $500K from a16z, Geometry and others.

• Nuqtah: Saudi Arabia's first NFT marketplace raises an undisclosed seed round from Animoca Brands and Polygon.

MY 3 CENTS:

This week, we’re going to switch it up a bit. Instead of one long-form piece of content, I’m going to concisely offer my thoughts on 3 key events. Reply to this email and let me know what you think.

1. Balaji, a prominent crypto billionaire, claimed banks are insolvent and made a wager Bitcoin would reach $1M in the next 90 days.

Where to begin… Do I think BTC goes to $1M in the next 90 days? No way in hell. Did I buy more BTC after I saw this twitter thread? Absolutely. It’s an amazingly brilliant and amazingly stupid strategy at the same time. For one, Balaji has an undeniable presence in the space, with an unrivaled CV. As the trope goes, the scariest 3 words in the English language are “Balaji was right.” And to be fair, he has a strong argument. Fundamentally, if hundreds of US banks are insolvent, the Fed finds themselves in a Catch 22 predicament. If they bail out the banks, they have to print trillions during a time of soaring inflation. If they don’t bail them out, customer deposits are potentially wiped out. Either way, items like BTC and gold likely go up (NFA). This is stupid because, as Matt Levine points out, it doesn’t take a ton of effort to label this as market manipulation... This is probably one of the reasons his team made such a fuss of “doxxing his location.”

2. The CFTC doubles down on its stance that crypto and stable coins are commodities while the SEC continues to insist they are securities.

Obviously this is a major headline, and I’m not the most qualified to weigh in here. However, I find it silly to think anyone could view ETH as a security. Imagine having to issue an ETH prospectus. Who would even lead the effort? Maybe Vitalik, but at the end of the day, regulators need to step back and realize that IT’S AN OPEN SOURCE PROJECT!? As such, the CFTC might be onto something. I have no idea why Gensler and the SEC are taking the approach they’re taking. It’s idiotic and I truly hope he goes down in history as one of the more incompetent names in finance.

3. Coinbase announces plans to process ETH unstaking requests 24 hours after Shapella upgrade.

Given all the hubbub around whether or not staking constitutes a security, this was an extremely surprising headline. It’s widely publicized that unstaking will occur in tranches, so users likely won’t be able to precisely forecast when their ETH will be unstaked. As such, I was initially skeptical that Coinbase would have to fund this via a non-protocol related strategy, rendering their argument of “staking as a public good” null. Then I realized they walked back this statement a day later... Technically, crisis averted, but do better. These types of PR mishaps are what continue to make me nervous when it comes to centralized exchanges. Not your keys, not your crypto. Please don’t ruin this for all of us, Coinbase…

Onward and upward.

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DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.