Hi Insiders, I wanted to take this opportunity to let you know that today is my last day here at Inside and thank you for reading my writing over the past year. For the next couple of days, Karan Chafekar will write the newsletter before it is transitioned over to Trevor Grant. Trevor has established his technical understanding and industry knowledge through his work on the Inside VC newsletter, and I’m assured that Inside Crypto will only continue to improve under his leadership. I’m looking forward to transitioning from my position as a writer to a reader of the Inside Crypto newsletter. Inside gave me the opportunity to write over 1,000 stories and 200 newsletters, speak at multiple events, and work alongside some of the most knowledgeable individuals in their respective fields. The depth of knowledge of my coworkers and their support for each other made working at Inside an incredibly positive experience and a difficult one to leave. I’d specifically like to thank Liam Gill for introducing me to Inside, Aaron Crutchfield for bringing the memes and making my writing readable, and Asheesh Barman for giving me the opportunity to continue exploring the digital assets space through full-time employment at Inside. As always, I’ll continue to post updates on Twitter and am always happy to talk about anything crypto. My DMs will stay open, so feel free to reach out at any time. Thank you again for continuing to read the Inside Cryptocurrency newsletter. I’ve greatly enjoyed speaking to everyone who’s reached out to me over the past year, and I look forward to joining you all as a community member and reader of the Inside Crypto newsletter. | |  Griffin |  |
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The global crypto market cap is $2.00T 0.62%▲ with a 24-hour market volume of $79.71B 7.94%▲. Bitcoin's dominance is currently 40.02% 0.033%▲. CURRENT PRICES BY MARKET CAP | # | Name | Price | 24h % | | 1 | Bitcoin BTC | $42,403.19 | 0.38% ▲ | | 2 | Ethereum ETH | $3,166.53 | 1.44% ▼ | | 3 | Binance Coin BNB | $471.96 | 0.84% ▼ | | 4 | Cardano ADA | $1.47 | 7.23% ▼ | | 5 | Solana SOL | $141.59 | 1.11% ▲ | Source: CoinMarketCap, 7:00 EST
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 OpenSea officially announced the acquisition of Ethereum wallet company Dharma Labs. Dharma Labs co-founder and CEO Nadav Hollander will join OpenSea as CTO, according to a statement from OpenSea CEO Devin Finzer. More: - Dharma Labs is the development team behind the Dharma Ethereum Wallet, which enables users to borrow and lend digital assets.
- The goal of the acquisition is to continue marketplace growth in 2022 and improve the technical reliability of the platform.
- OpenSea’s acquisition terms have not been disclosed; however, Axios reported that the deal could be between $110M and $130M.
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TOP NFT COLLECTIONS (24hr Volume) | # | Name | 24h Volume | 24h % | | 1 | Wolf Game ETH | $5.59M | 63.99% ▲ | | 2 | Axie Infinity ETH RONIN | $4.94M | 17.37% ▼ | | 2 | Mutant Ape YC ETH | $4.86M | 17.98% ▼ | | 4 | Bored Ape YC ETH | $4.45M | 8.11% ▲ | | 5 | CryptoSkulls ETH | $3.33M | 59.46% ▲ | Source: DappRadar, 7:15 pm 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 82 | 1.20% ▼ | | 2 | CryptoPunks | Ξ 60.49 | 2.36% ▼ | | 3 | Mutant Ape YC | Ξ 16.20 | 1.58% ▼ | | 4 | VeeFriends | Ξ 11.90 | 2.38% ▼ | | 5 | Cool Cats | Ξ 5.45 | 7.63% ▼ | Source: NFT Price Floor, 7:15 pm EST
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 VC firm Blossom Capital raised $432M for its third investment fund. The new fund will look to invest in Series A opportunities for EU startups in consumer, SaaS, fintech, and marketplaces. More: - A third of the capital raised by Blossom will be used to invest in crypto-focused firms.
- Blossom’s only publicly announced investment in a crypto firm was its participation in MoonPay’s $555M raise back in November.
- Managing partner Ophelia Brown stated that Blossom’s second fund has been actively investing in tokens and NFTs without showcasing its investments.
- The VC firm hopes to increase its exposure to core protocols and token holdings.
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 A message from LOHIKA Learn Why Web3 Matters to Your Business. Web3 is the next evolution of the Internet. If Web 2.0 was about user-generated content and social media platforms, Web3 is about decentralized services powered by the blockchain. Smart contracts and NFTs are Web3 technologies that run on the blockchain. Lohika is hosting an online event with our friends from Refresh Miami. We gathered a panel of Web3 experts that will explain what blockchain, smart contracts and NFTs are, then discuss related business opportunities in the present and future. The panel: Join us on January 26, 2022 at 10am PT / 1pm ET. Register Here
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 🍋 Fresh Funding 🍋 Animoca Brands, Metaverse/NFT: $358.88M ⮕ The funding round was led by Liberty City Ventures and participated in by 10T Holdings, C Ventures, Delta Fund, ParaFi Capital, Winklevoss Capital, and others. More: - Animoca Brands is a digital entertainment, blockchain, and GameFi startup with a portfolio of products, including The Sandbox and the REVV token ecosystem.
- The startup issued 111,173,515 shares in the funding round, valued at around $3/share.
- Animoca has raised $500M to date and reached a post-round valuation of $5B.
Byte Trading, Market Maker/Derivatives: $7M ⮕ The seed funding round was led by Redalpin and participated in by Possible Ventures, L1 Digital, and D4 Ventures. More: - Byte Trading is a crypto market maker that specializes in crypto derivative products.
- Per the deal, Redalpine GP Harald Nieder and Possible Ventures partner Simon Leicht will join Byte’s board of directors.
- The fresh funding will be used to expand the startup’s team and integrate more exchanges onto its platform.
Hubble Protocol, DeFi/Web3: $10M ⮕ The funding round was participated in by Three Arrows Capital, Delphi Digital, Digital Currency Group, ParaFi, Jump Capital, and others. More: - Hubble is a Solana (SOL) based DeFi protocol for DeFi primitives and decentralized stablecoins.
- The first phase of the Hubble Protocol’s roadmap, the launch of its USDH stablecoin, is expected to hit the mainnet on Jan. 28.
- Hubble’s fresh funding will be used to expand the project’s team and offerings.
Metaplex Foundation, NFT/Protocol: $46M ⮕ The strategic funding round was co-led by Multicoin Capital and Jump Crypto with participation from Solana Ventures, Alameda Research, Animoca Brands, and others. More: - Metaplex Foundation is the organization that supports the Solana (SOL) based, permissionless NFT protocol.
- The Metaplex Candy Machine, a protocol feature that mints and stores NFTs on Arweave, has been used by popular Solana NFT projects, including Solana Monkey Business, Oddkey, and Degen Ape Academy.
- Metaplex will use the fresh funding to support ecosystem development through grants and working with creators.
Rain, CeFi/Exchange: $110M ⮕ The Series B funding round was co-led by Paradigm and Kleiner Perkins with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Global Founders Capital, CMT Digital, and others. More: - Rain is a licensed crypto service provider in the Middle East that offers crypto trading and custodial services.
- The fresh funding will be used to expand Rain’s presence throughout emerging economies.
- Rain offers crypto exchange services to 185,000 active users in the Middle East and Northern Africa.
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▲ TOP GAINERS | # | Name | Price | 24h % | | 1 | Stacks DCR | $2.31 | 11.76% ▲ | | 1 | ECOMI OMI | $0.007975 | 8.66% ▲ | | 3 | Theta THETA | $4.25 | 8.89% ▲ | | 4 | Secret SCRT | $9.50 | 7.57% ▲ | | 5 | BitTorrent BTT | $0.002761 | 7.02% ▲ | ▼ TOP LOSERS | # | Name | Price | 24h % | | 1 | Alitas ALT | $15.47 | 21.11%▼ | | 2 | Moonbeam GLMR | $9.16 | 10.15%▼ | | 3 | Quant QNT | $146.75 | 8.38%▼ | | 4 | Cardano ADA | $1.47 | 8.24%▼ | | 5 | Kava KAVA | $4.98 | 7.62%▼ | Source: CoinMarketCap, 7:15 EST
*Limited to cryptocurrencies in the Top 100
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BitMEX Group announced plans to acquire Germany-based Bankhaus von der Heydt. The acquisition of the 268-year-old bank by BitMEX is currently pending regulatory approval from BaFin. More: - BitMEX expects the transaction to be completed in Q2; however, BaFin approval has become increasingly difficult following fintech financial scandals in Germany like Wirecard.
- The crypto exchange and its founders have additionally faced litigation from the US CFTC since 2020 for operating an unregistered trading platform.
- Last month, BitMEX announced that it would launch its own native token, BMEX, as an incentive mechanism for traders on the platform.
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 Multichain (formerly Anyswap) was exploited for $1.34M in a DeFi hack. The hack stemmed from a critical vulnerability identified and patched by Multichain yesterday. More: - A critical vulnerability was identified that affected six tokens on the cross-chain DeFi protocol.
- Although the bug was corrected, users that were already affected were required to manually revoke permissions given to the protocol.
- Users who failed to update their permissions were exploited, and Multichain has urged everyone to do so immediately.
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 Crypto.com users reported losses totaling around 4,600 ETH ($15M) following a hack. The hack comes less than 24 hours after Crypto.com halted users’ withdrawals due to suspicious activity. More: - Crypto.com stated that withdrawals have been restored and all funds are safe.
- Crypto analytics provider PeckShield reported that at least half of the ETH was immediately washed out on Tornado.Cash.
- Tornado Cash’s TORN token jumped 9% to $33.31 following the Crypto.com exploit.
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- Coinbase partnered with Mastercard to bring Mastercard payment support to the Coinbase NFT marketplace.
- Cardano (ADA) spiked 12% to a daily high of $1.60, continuing an impressive +50% rally over the past week.
- Digital Asset Funds saw their fifth straight week of outflows last week with $73M in crypto assets withdrawn from investment funds.
- OlympusDAO’s OHM continued to fall yesterday, losing 12% in the last 24 hours and down 90% from its ATH back in April.
- Pantera’s news crypto VC fund has reportedly received commitments of over $1B.
- Chainlink is launching a price index Damien Hirst’s NFT collection “The Currency.”
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 |  | Griffin McShane is a New York transplant currently living in Brooklyn, NY. He is a graduate of Providence College, where he studied both computer science and business, and the University of Maine School of Law, where he earned his JD. Beyond his work at Inside, Griffin has written articles for CoinDesk and is a member of the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP). | | | | 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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