“reHash” — Your Weekly Summary of Everything Important in the Crypto World — issue no. 27

reHash issued for March 18th to March 24th

“The world has gone terminally insane,” as commented by John Cleese ( he does not agree with NFTs, so naturally he’s selling one as a joke). TIME magazine is also selling NFTs. Turtle.dex was an exit scam (probably the biggest shock is that not all assets on exchanges called Pancake and Ape are scams). You can buy Tesla with Bitcoin, but you don’t have to pay for reHash. Hope you enjoy this penultimate issue of reHash!

NOTE:
reHash is not intended to be original journalism. It is intended to be a brief summary of significant articles and events from the past week with links to the original sources. Sources will always be linked and credited. If you know any good newsletters or Twitter accounts which provide news we have been missing, please mention them in the comments!

ADOPTION

1. Chinese smartphone company Meitu has purchased another $49 million in Bitcoin and Ethereum; they now hold approximately $90 million worth of cryptocurrencies
   SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4
2. Fireblocks, a digital asset custodian, has attracted $133 million in Series C funding; amongst entities that invested are: Coatue, Ribbit, Stripes, SVB Capital and BNY Mellon; Fireblocks already raised $30 million in November 2020 Series B; Stripes Group founder and managing partner Ken Fox said: “Fireblocks is leading the breakthroughs in MPC wallets, settlement network and access to DeFi and tokenization services. It has the versatility that banks and fintechs need to continue competing in this market.”;
   SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
3. Blockchain.com has raised $300 million Series C funding at $5.2 billion valuation; this funding round follows a $120 raise last month; they report a “3x increase in active users over the past 12 months alone.” to a total of more than 31 million verified users;
   SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
4. Brazil’s regulators have approved a Bitcoin ETF launched by QR Capital; it is the first Bitcoin ETF in Latin America and are seeking to raise $90 million; per QR Capital’s announcement: “URGENT: CVM has just approved the first Bitcoin ETF in Latin America, the QBTC11.”; “The ETF of QR Asset Management, manager of the QR Capital Group, will be listed on B3, which becomes the second exchange in the world to have a 100% Bitcoin ETF.”; “(…) investors gain even more legal certainty to add Bitcoin to their portfolios in the most professional way possible. (…) QBTC11 places Brazil at the epicenter of the most modern financial regulation,”
   SOURCES: 1, 2, 3, 4

REGULATION

1. Coinbase has been fined $6.5 million by CFTC over trading irregularities; the irregularities happened on GDAX (now Coinbase Pro), which “recklessly delivered false, misleading, or inaccurate reports concerning transactions in digital assets”; in particular the irregularities related to two software programs Hedger and Replicator; CFTC alleges that those software programs traded between each other resulting in inflating prices and trading volumes; CFTC also alleged that one of the employees was involved in wash trading on GDAX; “Coinbase has reached a settlement with the CFTC regarding activities that happened and ended years ago. The settlement order today does not include any finding of harm to any Coinbase customer,”
   SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
2. Anthony Scaramucci’s SkyBridge Capital has filed for a Bitcoin ETF with the SEC; “I do believe that this will be an approval process that happens in 2021” commented Scaramucci; so far still no Bitcoin ETF has been approved in USA; meanwhile VanEck’s Bitcoin ETC application has been published by SEC which means they have 45 days to make a decision (but that period can be severely extended as it was in the past before rejections);
   SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
3. According to a senior official of Nigerian Central Bank only banks cannot work with crypto companies; it is still legal for people to own and trade digital currencies; “The CBN did not place restrictions from use of [sic] cryptocurrencies and we are not discouraging people from trading in it,” commented CBN official, Adamu Lamtek and added “What we have just done was to prohibit transactions on cryptocurrencies in the banking sector.”
   SOURCES: 1, 2, 3, 4

GENERAL UPDATES

1. TIME magazine is auctioning three images of covers as NFTs; it will also begin to accept cryptocurrency for subscriptions within 30 days; the high bid on the cover that says “Is Fiat Dead?” is over $35 thousand already;
   SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
2. Microsoft is reportedly polling users about Bitcoin payments for Xbox; it was reported by the users of Xbox Insider program for beta testing; “Which of these other payment methods would you like to use on Xbox?,” is the question asked with “Pay with Bitcoin” as a possible answer; while Microsoft is accepting Bitcoin for funding Microsoft accounts in US, the cryptocurrency-based payments are not supported on the Xbox online store yet;
   SOURCE: 1, 2, 3
3. Jack Dorsey’s first tweet ended up selling for $2.9 million; it was auctioned in the form of a NFT; buyer is Sina Estavi, CEO of Bridge Oracle; all proceeds will be donated to a charity called GiveDirectly;
   SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
4. John Cleese is selling a drawing of a Brooklyn Bridge that he made on an iPad; he’s interested in selling it for $69.3 million; John Cleese is “a young unknown digital artist or a collective of artists,” in his own words; he commented further: “You and me we get it. Our parents laugh at non-refundable tokens and cryptic currencies. ‘It can’t go on the wall!’ they say. ‘Is the world ending?!’ No, hardly.”; as of writing the price sits at $35 thousand; about $69.3 million short of the desired $69.3 million;
   SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
5. Turtle.dex turned out to be a an exit scam; creators of the Turtle.dex managed to steal over $2.4 million worth of BNB (9000 BNB tokens raised in presale); project’s online presence has completely disappeared; Turtle.dex has completely drained liquidity pools on Ape Swap and Pancake Swap, converted funds to ETH and sent the funds to Binance wallets;
   SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4
6. $4.6 million in Filecoin was seemingly deposited more than once on Binance; however there was no double spend on the blockchain; “the issue was caused by the incorrect use of the Lotus [Filecoin’s software suite] API logic and its integration in transferring and depositing into the Filecoin Network,”; thus it can be called more a double deposit than a double spend; according to Binance’s spokeperson there was no loss of funds involved;
   SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4
7. BitClout has been able to get about 2,705 BTC worth about $155 million; BitClout tokenizes Twitter and has a lot of skeptics; the site has downloaded some 15,000 of the more popular Twitter profiles and assigned tokens to them; influencers tweeting about the site can claim a portion of the tokens; it is impossible to withdraw tokens from BitClout network currently and payment is only in BTC, some have touted BitClout as Bitconnect 2.0, at the very least caution is advised;
   SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Thank you, as always, for reading and hope to see you next week! We will have news next week too!

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