The global crypto market cap is $1.65T 3.88%▼ with a 24-hour market volume of $79.86B 52.49%▲. Bitcoin's dominance is currently 42.09% 0.37%▲. CURRENT PRICES BY MARKET CAP | # | Name | Price | 24h % | | 1 | Bitcoin BTC | $38,518.22 | 1.69% ▲ | | 2 | Ethereum ETH | $2,685.81 | 3.23% ▲ | | 3 | BNB BNB | $384.27 | 1.30% ▲ | | 4 | Cardano ADA | $1.05 | 0.39% ▲ | | 5 | Solana SOL | $97.83 | 3.61% ▲ | Source: CoinMarketCap, 14:00 EST
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 Snippet from SB1341 A bill introduced by State Sen. Wendy Rogers of Arizona intends to make Bitcoin legal tender in the state. The bill only mentions Bitcoin and not any other cryptocurrency. More: - The one-page bill, SB 1341, is seeking amendments to the Arizona Revised Statutes to recognize Bitcoin as a form of legal money.
- The bill is unlikely to be accepted considering the legal framework in the U.S., which currently does not allow for digital assets to be used in lieu of legal tender.
- Steve Gannon, an attorney at Murphy and McGonigle, believes the adoption of digital currency has no specific use case at the moment, except for serving as an additional method of payment.
- Texas Governor candidate Don Huffines announced his agenda to make BTC a legal tender in the state should he win the election.
- El Salvador, in Sept. 2021, became the first country to grant a legal tender status to Bitcoin.
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TOP NFT COLLECTIONS (24hr Volume) | # | Name | 24h Volume | 24h % | | 1 | Bored Ape YC ETH | $33.17M | 65.27% ▲ | | 2 | Mutant Ape YC ETH | $15.72M | 37.6% ▲ | | 3 | CLONE X - X TAKASHI MURAKAMI ETH | $6.87M | 64.14% ▼ | | 4 | Bored Ape Kennel Club ETH | $5.59M | 16.37% ▲ | | 5 | Doodles V4 ETH | $5.56M | 139.68%▲ | Source: DappRadar, 14:00 EST (0% royalty NFTs with the majority of their daily transaction volume on LooksRare omitted)
TOP ETH NFT COLLECTIONS (Floor Cap) | # | Name | Floor Price (ETH) | 24h % | | 1 | Bored Ape YC | Ξ 116.9 | 9.35% ▲ | | 2 | CryptoPunks | Ξ 83.95 | 3.64% ▲ | | 3 | Mutant Ape YC | Ξ 26.89 | 10.27%▲ | | 4 | CLONE X | Ξ 18 | 33.46%▲ | | 5 | Cool Cats | Ξ 16.5 | 4.6% ▲ | Source: NFT Price Floor, 14:00 EST
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OpenSea refunded 750 Ethereum, amounting to $1.8M, to users whose inactive listings were sold at lower prices. The exploit was used by attackers to purchase NFTs that were apparently flagged as inactive by owners. More: - NFTs that were exploited included a few from the trending Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) collection.
- One user, Tballer’s, BAYC NFT #9991 was purchased for 0.77 ETH (~$1,700) but is currently worth 130 ETH ($330,000).
- A user named Juan Fdez now appears to have the NFT. He also holds another BAYC #8924 purchased for 6.66 ETH (about $17,000).
- Although the listings were flagged as inactive, they were never canceled on the blockchain.
- The listings had disappeared from the OpenSea UI marketplace, but could still be viewed by blockchain experts who dealt with smart contracts.
- As soon as OpenSea learned about the exploit, they sent out an email to all users directing them to cancel their inactive listings.
- Alex Atallah, OpenSea co-founder, indicated coming up with a countermeasure to this exploit to be the company’s top priority at the moment.
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 🍋 Fresh Funding 🍋 FTX, Crypto: $400M. The Series C funding round was led by Temasek with participation from Paradigm, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board, NEA, IVP, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Steadview Capital, Tiger Global, Insight Partners, and others. More: - The cryptocurrency exchange FTX's recent funding has increased its valuation to $32B, up from $25B at its last funding round in Oct. 2021.
- In October, it raised $420M, led by BlackRock and Tiger Global.
- Overall, it has raised $1.8B in funds so far.
- Its subsidiary FTX US also raised a $400M Series A last week at an $8B valuation.
- The incoming funds will be used to fuel expansion and obtain licenses to operate in several markets.
Phantom, Crypto: $109M. The Series B funding round was led by Paradigm. More: - The non-custodial cryptocurrency wallet platform is now valued at $1.2B.
- Phantom has been used to stake 112.4M SOL worth $10.4B and has facilitated token swaps worth $1.37B.
- In addition, the platform has supported 55.2M NFT, DeFi, and app transactions.
- The fresh funding will be used for cross-platform expansion and increase the workforce.
Eaglebrook Advisors, Crypto: $20M. The Series A funding round was co-led by Castle Island Ventures and Brewer Lane Ventures with participation from Gemini Frontier Fund, Avon Ventures, Jump Capital, and Sybil Capital. More: - The investment advisory firm caters to financial advisors and the wealth management industry through its separately managed account (SMA) digital asset platform.
- The firm is working with over 500 financial advisors.
- Eaglebrook has received $22M in funding so far.
- The recent funds will be used to develop the technology and products.
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▲ TOP GAINERS | # | Name | Price | 24h % | | 1 | Render Token RNDR | $3.56 | 17.30%▲ | | 2 | Decentraland MANA | $2.78 | 16.08%▲ | | 3 | Nexo NEXO | $2.06 | 12.91%▲ | | 4 | Theta Fuel TFUEL | $0.1833 | 10.19%▲ | | 5 | Maker MKR | $2,130.25 | 8.70% ▲ | ▼ TOP LOSERS | # | Name | Price | 24h % | | 1 | Waves WAVES | $9.06 | 3.66% ▼ | | 2 | IoTeX IOTX | $0.07455 | 2.58% ▼ | | 3 | Monero XMR | $144.60 | 2.27% ▼ | | 4 | Axie Infinity AXS | $52.13 | 2.20% ▼ | | 5 | Bitcoin Cash BCH | $287.34 | 2.04% ▼ | Source: CoinMarketCap, 14:15 EST
*Limited to cryptocurrencies in the Top 100
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The crypto exchange platform Binance has allocated $1B to its Secure Asset Fund (SAFU) to safeguard users’ cryptocurrency in the event of a cyberattack. The frequency of attacks and security breaches on digital asset platforms has increased — in 2021, ~$14B worth of cryptocurrency was transferred into illicit addresses, per Chainalysis. More: - SAFU was established in 2018 as insurance for the exchange’s users, with Binance initially transferring 10% of trading fees in the fund.
- Binance has since split the funds into two wallets and shared their addresses with the larger public to assure them that the funds had been allocated.
- The two wallet addresses combined were valued at ~$1B and have 7,952 BTC, 1,036,269 Binance Coins, and 300M Binance-pegged USD.
- The actual market value of the fund is prone to fluctuations owing to the volatility of Bitcoin and Binance Coin.
- The exchange platform was hacked and suffered $40M worth of losses in 2019.
- The following hacks took place in the last month alone on other platforms:
- Crypto.com’s hack saw users losing $34M.
- BitMart lost $196M to hackers.
- AscendEX wallet was compromised, causing $77.7M losses.
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Valereum will acquire 90% of Gibraltar Stock Exchange (GSX) Group located in Gibraltar, a part of the British Overseas Territory. The acquisition is expected to provide a unified fiat and cryptocurrency exchange. More: - Financial firms have been able to offer blockchain-based securities on the GSX Global Market platform since 2019.
- The Gibraltar Financial Services Commission (GFSC), which oversees Gibraltar's financial services industry, has granted regulatory approval for the use of blockchain or distributed ledger technology on the GSX.
- The acquisition, pending regulatory approval from GFSC, will enable crypto capital investments into GSX listed instruments.
- Valereum has withdrawn $3M from a $10M investment from institutional investors to advance the acquisition.
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 Vitalik Buterin, the creator of the Ethereum blockchain The Indian COVID-19 relief fund, CryptoRelief, will return $100M to Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, which he intends to channel into other charitable causes. Vitalik aims to deploy the funds in "higher-risk higher-reward" relief projects. More: - Buterin donated 50T SHIB tokens in May 2021, then valued at ~$1B, making up for 98% of the CryptoRelief's total contributions received.
- $70M worth of funds were utilized within India, and the foundation is retaining $302M.
- Regulatory compliance issues and complex crypto disbursement methodology restricted the foundation in distributing crypto funds in the nation.
- The total value of his contribution has been reduced owing to SHIB's slide in recent times, while $100M of the remaining funds will be transferred back to Vitalik via USDC stablecoin.
- Vitalik outlined that the funds will be used for biotechnology and medical science-related causes through Balvi, an organization co-founded by Vitalik, with a focus on the Indian as well as the non-Indian region.
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- Meta Platforms Inc. has joined the Crypto Open Patent Alliance (COPA), which aims to drive industry growth through patent sharing with other group members. However, it is currently unclear if Diem Association's intellectual property will also be shared among the group, considering that Facebook recently sold the project's IP to Silvergate Bank for $200M.
- The market value of cryptocurrency dropped $500M from $2.2T to $1.68T in January, after leading cryptos BTC and ETH slid 22% and 32%, respectively.
- Users made $2.5B of payments through Visa cryptocurrency connected cards in the company's Dec. 31-ending first fiscal quarter. Visa now supports 65 crypto platforms and over 100 million vendor networks.
- Binance suspended 281 Nigerian users' personal accounts in order to comply with international money laundering regulations.
- According to CryptoSlam, more than 80% of LooksRare trades totaling $8.3B were allegedly washed sales and sold for inflated prices.
- The Caribbean's central bank digital currency (CBDC), DCash, has been facing technical issues that have made it unavailable for the past two weeks. The CBDC service provider Bitt Inc. is working to solve the problem.
- Thailand has scrapped plans to introduce a 15% tax for withholding cryptocurrency, with the rules now allowing traders to report income as a capital gain on income taxes.
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 |  | Karan Chafekar is a Management Consultant, Business enthusiast, and Licensed Pilot. | | | | Editor | Aaron Crutchfield is based in the high desert of California. Over the last two decades, he has spent time writing and editing at various local newspapers and defense contractors in California. When he's not working, he can often be found looking at the latest memes with his kids or working on his 1962 Ford. | |
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