Market Summary

Bitcoin Price: U$42,534.32 (-3.07%)
Ethereum Price: U$3,240.36 (-3.84%)

NEAR raises $150 million as it looks to become a hub of web3 development

• The NEAR Foundation has closed a $150 million funding round less as it looks to become the hub of an open web3.
• Three-Arrows Capital led the token sale with participation from Mechanism Capital, Dragonfly Capital, a16z, Jump, Alameda and Circle Ventures, among others. 
• The NEAR Foundation launched in 2020 after a $21 million token sale and help from backers including a16z and Pantera Capital. The non-profit platform oversees the development and governance of the proof-of-stake NEAR blockchain. 

Tonga to copy El Salvador’s bill making Bitcoin legal tender, says former MP

• Another domino is lined up to fall down the route to Bitcoinization. On Wednesday, a former lawmaker of the Pacific island nation of Tonga shared a play-by-play approach to adopting Bitcoin (BTC) as legal tender. 
• In a series of tweets, Lord Fusitu’a, a former member of parliament for Tonga, released an ETA for Bitcoin becoming legal tender in Tonga. Copying El Salvador’s playbook, the move could onboard more than 100,000 Tongans onto the Bitcoin network.
• The announcement sowed the seeds for questions, predictions and outright jubilation from Bitcoin Twitter before the Tongan set the record straight. He enthusiastically replied that the timeline for BTC becoming legal tender could happen as early as November or December this year, replying, “Boom! That’s us, brother!” in a tweet.

Visa survey shows that 24% of SMBs plan to accept crypto payments

• Back in 2021, a study showed that there is a high demand for cryptocurrency payment abilities among both crypto holders and non-holders. However, in the same study, 50% of participants noted that there are not enough businesses that accept crypto. This may change very soon.
• Almost one out of four small and mid-size businesses (SMB) that participated in a survey by Visa said that they were planning to accept payments in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC). In the same study, 73% of respondents stated that accepting new forms of digital payment options is a key factor that will affect business growth in 2022.
• About 2,250 small business owners located in nine countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, the United States and Canada participated in the study. Among these respondents, 82% said they plan to implement a form of digital payment option in 2022. 

Visa and ConsenSys team up on CBDC tech

• Visa has teamed up with blockchain tech provider ConsenSys in order to develop new infrastructure that will support the rollout of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).
• Catharine Gu, head of CBDC at Visa, told The Block that the pair has been consulting with central banks around the world about its development and potential. 
• The new Visa and ConsenSys tech will be able to plug into existing payments modules, meaning companies will be able to integrate infrastructure to issue things like CBDC-linked payment cards or wallet credentials. It is designed to provide an on-ramp for existing networks. 
• The pair are in the process of integrating the Visa payment module with the ConsenSys infrastructure, so that the platform can be ready to tap into enterprise blockchain technology. 

Interest wanes in Bitcoin futures ETF’s as contracts fall below 5K

• After a stellar launch, interest has waned in the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy Exchange Traded Fund (BITO), which now has the lowest amount of CME contracts since Nov. 2021.
• The Bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund (ETF) holds a total of 4,904 Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) futures contracts, according to the fund’s latest update from Tuesday. A Bitcoin futures ETF allows investors to speculate on the future price of Bitcoin (BTC) without having to hold the asset themselves.
• BITO’s assets under management (AUM) figure has retraced to $1.16 billion from a high of $1.4 billion last November. This is about the same amount it held two days after its Oct. 18 launch when it became the fastest fund to reach $1 billion in AUM ever.
• Arcane Research discussed possible reasons for the BITO retrace in its latest Weekly Update. As you might expect, the poor price performance of BTC over the past two months is the chief explanation, as Bitcoins drifts ever further from the $69,000 it reached on Nov. 10 down to its current price, which is around $43,700.

First DEX on Oasis Network hits $100M TVL in 24 hours

• YuzuSwap, the first decentralized exchange operating on the Oasis Network, has seen rapid uptake since launching on Jan. 11, underscoring heightened demand for decentralized finance protocols. 
• In its first 24 hours of operation, YuzuSwap achieved a total value locked, or TVL, of $100 million, the exchange reported Wednesday. Trading volumes over the 24-hour timeframe reached $323 million. Within DeFi, TVL refers to the total value of assets being staked on decentralized protocols.
• YuzuSwap was built using Oasis Network’s Emerald, a smart contract environment that is fully compatible with Ethereum Virtual Machine. The DEX uses a peer-to-peer automated market maker to provide users with low-cost token swaps on Ethereum and within the Oasis ecosystem, and also supports token and nonfungible token asset transfers from six other blockchains via Oasis Network.

OpenSea competitor LooksRare exceeds $394M in sales

• Daily volume on NFT marketplace LooksRare has already exceeded $394 million following the platform’s official launch on Jan. 10.
• The platform was able to bring in this customer base by offering only 2% fees on basic sales and zero fees on private sales, compared to competitor OpenSea’s 2.5% fee on every transaction. The project also allows traders to earn rewards in the form of its native LOOKS token for buying and selling NFTs.
• The premier NFTs that have taken LooksRare by storm are the Meebits collection, which come from LarvaLabs — the same creators behind Cryptopunks and Autoglyphs. 
• Meebits are currently the top collection on the market at the time of writing, according to data from DappRadar. It’s worth noting that DappRadar has included a disclaimer to highlight the potential wash trading going on with Meebits on LooksRare. 

dYdX outline plans for full decentralization in late 2022

• dYdX, the layer-two derivates protocol, has published the fourth iteration of its roadmap detailing its intentions to evolve into an open-source, community-governed and fully decentralized exchange by the end of this calendar year.
• The platform currently runs on a hybrid model whereby a portion of operations are decentralized, most notably staking and governance, while other components, such as the off-chain order book and matching engine, are managed by dYdX Trading Inc, alongside external support from a number of partnered centralized servers such as Amazon Web Services.
• “There will no longer be central points of control or failure of the protocol,” they stated, before continuing on to say that “all aspects of the protocol that can be controlled will be fully controlled by the community.”