Bitcoin Price: US$ 21,110.13 (+5.61%)
Ethereum Price: US$ 1,144.72 (+9.00 %)
Arbitrum Odyssey Beings, Top NFT Collections, Intro to My Pet Hooligan
- Arbitrum Odyssey has started. It is an 8-week-long event that rewards Arbitrum protocol users with NFTs.
- The current week is the onboarding week, where users must use a bridge/fiat-on-ramp to qualify for this week’s NFT. Furthermore, an extra NFT will be rewarded for using the protocol that bridges the most ETH onto Arbitrum. This event ends on June 27th, 2022, at 12:59 PM EST.
- Hop Protocol takes a strong lead with nearly 4,000 ETH bridged, with Celer and Across following behind with 1,100 ETH and 1,050 ETH bridged, respectively. At its current ranking, bridging with Hop Protocol will likely make users eligible for the extra NFT.
- Be sure to keep up to date on their challenges, as users who accumulate 13/16 NFTs over the 8 weeks will be eligible for another NFT.
- Arbitrum has not specifically indicated how or if there will be any functionality for these NFTs, but there is speculation that they could be used for an Arbitrum token airdrop.
- Once again, the ‘blue chip’ NFT collections are dominating NFT trading volumes as the free mint narrative peters out. This week, the most significant move among the ‘blue chip’ NFTs was in CryptoPunks, which soared over 40% from a floor price of 48E (17 Jun) to 68E (20 Jun). This comes on the news that Noah (previously at Christie’s) will be joining Yuga Labs as the Brand Lead for CryptoPunks, to ensure that there’ll be “no Punks on lunchboxes”.
- Interestingly, Punks were already flying off the shelves (>100 sold in 24 hours), and prices started moving up even before the announcement on 19 Jun, which has led to speculation of insider trading. It seems too much of a coincidence to believe it was just due to normal price volatility, although there’s no way to prove this conclusively. CryptoPunks have unique provenance and history, and I believe they will continue to be valuable in the years to come.
- On the other hand: Steve Aoki, famously known as a top signal in NFTs, just bought a Punk this week.
- A good piece of news — OpenSea has migrated to Seaport, its new web3 marketplace protocol. This is a long-awaited major improvement for OS and improves its competitiveness vs marketplaces like LooksRare, which has been adding features rapidly. Some benefits include:
- Save an estimated 35% in gas fees when selling or transferring NFTs.
- Make collection offers on all items in a collection, or trait offers for specific traits. This could improve the liquidity for NFTs.
- Soon-to-come: Bulk listings & purchases, real-time creator fee payouts.
- Other breaking news: Doodles announced that Pharrell Williams has joined as a Board member and Chief Brand Officer.
- Podcast to My Pet Hooligan
Breaking: Harmony’s Horizon Bridge hacked for $100M
- The Horizon Bridge to the Harmony layer-1 blockchain has been exploited for $100 million in altcoins which are being swapped for Ether (ETH).
- The hack may vindicate previously raised community concerns about the robustness of the two of four multisig that reportedly secures the bridge.
- Starting at about 7:08 am until 7:26 am ET, 11 transactions were made from the bridge for various tokens. They have since begun sending tokens to a different wallet to swap for ETH on the Uniswap decentralized exchange (DEX), then sending the ETH back to the original wallet.
- So far, Frax (FRAX), Wrapped Ether (WETH). Aave (AAVE), Sushi (SUSHI), Frax Share (FXS), AAG (AAG), Binance USD (BUSD). Dai (DAI), Tether (USDT), Wrapped BTC (WBTC), and USD Coin (USDC) have been stolen from the bridge through this exploit..
- The Horizon Bridge facilitates token transfers between Harmony and the Ethereum network, Binance Chain and Bitcoin. Harmony, the operator of the bridge, announced late on June 23 that the bridge has been halted. It said the BTC bridge and its assets have not been affected by the attack.
Chainalysis tips Australia will crack down on misleading crypto ads
- Chainalysis’ head of international policy Caroline Malcolm expects Australia’s new rules governing crypto advertising, promotion and consumer safeguards to follow a similar path to the United Kingdom when they come into place within the next year.
- “I think we’re more likely to see something along the lines of the UK model which is really focusing on a crackdown on misleading advertising or advertising which doesn’t present the risks alongside the opportunities.”
- During the Chainalysis Links event in Sydney on June 21, Malcolm told Cointelegraph that this meant treating crypto products and services in a similar way to financial products and services when it comes to advertising and promotion.
Ripple CEO criticizes SEC for ‘contradictions’ on crypto regulations
- Brad Garlinghouse, the chief executive officer of Ripple Labs, has claimed the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, has inconsistently imposed regulations on crypto firms in the country.
- Speaking to Wired editor-in-chief at the Collision conference in Toronto on Thursday, Garlinghouse pointed to Ripple’s current legal battle with the SEC, in which the federal regulator has alleged the company’s executives conducted an “unregistered, ongoing digital asset securities offering” with XRP token sales. Garlinghouse referenced the SEC’s approval of Coinbase’s public offering in April 2021 despite the fact the crypto exchange listed XRP at the time.
- “The SEC now seems to take the position when they sued us that ‘XRP is a security and always has been’, but they approved Coinbase going public even though Coinbase is not a registered broker-dealer,” said the Ripple CEO. “There’s some contradictions here of the SEC almost not, within its organization, knowing left hand, right hand.” Garlinghouse added:
- “The SEC, instead of doing the hard work to define a new set of clear rules, a new set of clear regulations […] they instead decide we’re going to do regulation through enforcement, which is not efficient and really I think has stifled innovation in the United States.”
Coinbase to track off-exchange transactions from Dutch customers
- In a new blog post published Thursday, Coinbase says that starting Monday, all of its customers in the Netherlands will need to complete new Know Your Customer, or KYC, requirements when transferring digital assets to wallet addresses that are not based on the exchange. This includes providing the recipient’s full name, the purpose of the transfer and the recipient’s complete residential address. Transfers between Coinbase accounts are not affected by the new rule.
- The exchange noted that the change will only impact Coinbase users in the Netherlands, and is being implemented to comply with the country’s digital asset regulations. Non-custodial wallets are subject to the country’s 1977 Sanctions Act, which mandates that financial service providers, such as crypto exchanges, must check the identity of the persons or legal entities with whom they have a business relationship. The law came into force to prevent the transfer of financial assets for purposes such as money laundering or terrorism financing.
Bitcoin hodler data hints BTC price ‘really close’ to bottom — nalysts
- Bitcoin (BTC) could have already seen a price bottom or be “really close” to one, analysts believe after eyeing new data this week.
- In a Twitter thread on June 22, well-known indicator creator David Puell revealed what he argues “looks interesting” about current Bitcoin buying and selling.
- For Puell, however, the dynamics between long-term (LTHs) and short-term holders (STHs) hint that the situation is not necessarily as bearish as many fear.
- Those looking for a profitable “buy the dip” opportunity on Bitcoin nonetheless may be in luck, according to another popular on-chain metric, the Mayer Multiple.
- As of June 22, the indicator, which shows how far below the 200-day moving average (DMA) the current spot price is, is hinting that return on investment rarely gets better.
- At 0.5, the Multiple is 50% below the 200 DMA, and has been lower just 2% of Bitcoin’s lifetime.
- “Macro-economic conditions are different this time but good to keep an eye on,” crypto entrepreneur Kyle Chasse commented on the figures.
- The proposed Jakarta 2 upgrade has entered the Adoption phase, which will run from Jun. 14, 2022, to Jun. 28, 2022. The proposed upgrade has now entered a “cool-down” period, allowing developers and bakers additional time to adapt their code and infrastructure to the upgrade based on the results of the Promotion vote period. At the end of the Adoption phase, the proposal will be activated as the new protocol.
- Core contributors have tagged Octez v13.0 as the Jakarta 2 release.
