Market Summary

Bitcoin Price: US$ 47,434.80(+0.66%)
Ethereum Price: US$ 3,400.51 (+2.03%)

Funding Frenzy, BTC Breakout, & AAVE-BAL Collab

• Crypto VC funds are hungry for deals even in the face of market uncertainty. February 2022 saw the largest number of project fundings to date, with a total of 182.
• Investments categorized as Web3 were the most popular, taking the majority of February’s investments. Infrastructure investments seem to be gaining traction in March, when it spiked to 36 raises, the largest number of investments it has seen in a year.
• In the year so far, the largest raises were by Citadel Securities, Luna Foundation Guard, and Fireblock, which raised $1.15B, $1B, and $550M, respectively.
• Crypto is also seeing one of the largest weekly inflows of funds in 2022 at $193M over the past week. The main inflows were directed towards BTC and Solana, which represented $97.8M and $87.1M, respectively.
• The crypto market is back in the limelight as Bitcoin’s price jumped to its highest level of 2022, breaking through key resistance levels along the way. We’ve been waiting for BTC to break through the $46-48K range, for example, before sounding the alarms of a potential trend reversal. The low-end of that range is where Bitcoin’s price started the year, while the high-end marks the anchored VWAP since BTC’s all-time high.
• Bitcoin’s recent price strength pushed its 14-day RSI above 70 for first time in over five months. Historical precedent favors the bulls here as average forward returns over the subsequent 30-90 days tend to be largely positive.
• The Llama Community, through Mathew Graham, is proposing a partnership between Balancer and Aave. Aave will swap 14,666 AAVE from the reserve for 200k BAL tokens from Balancer as part of the partnership. Aave will acquire an additional 100k BAL through a 50bps bonding curve, at $11 per BAL. Aave will deposit the 300k BAL tokens in Balancers v2 BAL:ETH pool and use them to participate in Balancers ‘ve’ tokenomics. Aave’s new governance power in Balancer will be used to drive rewards and liquidity to a-token pools. This purchase would give Aave control of 3.8% of the total veBAL supply, which they could use to direct 3,085 of the BAL distribution each week.

MetaMask rolls out Apple Pay integration and other iOS updates

• ConsenSys-owned MetaMask tweeted a thread of updates on Tuesday for iPhone and Apple Pay users. The main feature is the ability to buy cryptocurrency using a debit or credit card through the mobile application, eliminating the need to transfer Ethereum (ETH) from a centralized exchange like Coinbase into the app. 
• MetaMask uses two payment gateways, Wyre and Transak, to support debit card and credit card transactions. Users can now use their Visas and Mastercards stored in Apple Pay to buy ETH and deposit a daily maximum of $400 into their wallets, thanks to the Wyre API. Gas fees are reportedly lower, and according to MetaMask’s tweets, some transactions may even be gasless if done on a private blockchain or if a project pays for the gas on the user’s behalf. When completing an ETH purchase, MetaMask discloses that it does not profit from gas fess.

Dubai school will welcome tuition payments in Bitcoin and Ethereum

• According to local news outlet Arabian Business, Citizens School, located in Dubai, will accept tuition payments denominated in Bitcoin (BTC) or Ethereum (ETH). Payments using digital assets are facilitated via an unnamed processing platform and are automatically converted into United Arab Emirates Dirhams (AED). Dr Adil Alzarooni, the founder of Citizens School, commented: 
• “We look forward to enhancing the role of young generations in achieving the UAE’s digital economy. As more people embrace the era of digitalization, today’s children will become the entrepreneurs and investors of tomorrow.”
• Meanwhile, Hisham Hodroge, CEO of Citizens School, added: “Introducing the ability to pay tuition fees through cryptocurrencies goes beyond just providing another payment option. It is a means to drive further interest in the applications of blockchain — a technology that Citizens School intends to deploy, in time, across several aspects of its academic and administrative operations.”

MicroStrategy subsidiary will purchase Bitcoin after closing $205M crypto-collateralized loan

• MacroStrategy, a subsidiary of business intelligence firm MicroStrategy, said it will purchase Bitcoin after obtaining a multimillion dollar loan from Silvergate Bank.
• In a Tuesday announcement, MicroStrategy said Silvergate issued a $205 million loan “secured by certain Bitcoin held in MacroStrategy’s collateral account.” The firm’s subsidiary MacroStrategy will be using the proceeds of the loan to purchase Bitcoin (BTC), pay fees and interest related to the loan and handle general corporate expenses.
• “The SEN Leverage loan gives us an opportunity to further our position as the leading public company investor in Bitcoin,” said MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor. “Using the capital from the loan, we’ve effectively turned our Bitcoin into productive collateral, which allows us to further execute against our business strategy.”

Axie Infinity’s Ronin bridge hacked for over $600M

• According to Axie Infinity’s official Discord and Ronin Network’s official Twitter thread, along with its Substack page, the Ronin bridge and Katana Dex have been halted after suffering an exploit for 173,600 Ethereum (ETH) and 25.5 million USD Coin (USDC), worth a combined $612 million at Tuesday’s prices. In a statement, its developers said they are “currently working with law enforcement officials, forensic cryptographers and our investors to make sure that all funds are recovered or reimbursed. All of the AXS, RON and SLP [tokens] on Ronin are safe right now.” 
• As told by Ronin developers, the attacker used hacked private keys in order to forge fake withdrawals, draining the funds from the Ronin bridge in just two transactions. More importantly, the hack occurred on March 23 but was only discovered on Tuesday after a user allegedly uncovered issues after failing to withdraw 5,000 in ETH from the Ronin bridge. At the time of publication, RON, Ronin’s primary governance token, has fallen nearly 20% to $1.88 in the past hour.

ETF provider WisdomTree launches Solana, Cardano, Polkadot ETPs

• The American exchange-traded fund (ETF) provider WisdomTree continues expanding its cryptocurrency products in Europe by launching three new crypto exchange-traded products (ETPs) backed by Solana (SOL), Cardano (ADA) and Polkadot (DOT).
• WisdomTree announced Tuesday the launch of three new physically-backed crypto ETPs, including WisdomTree Solana (SOLW), WisdomTree Cardano (ADAW) and WisdomTree Polkadot (DOTW).
• The ETPs are already listed on major European digital exchanges like Deutsche Boerse’s Xetra, the Swiss SIX exchange and the Swiss Stock Exchange. The pan-European exchange Euronext is expected to list the crypto ETPs in Amsterdam and Paris on Thursday, the announcement notes.

Indian state gov’t uses Polygon to issue verifiable caste certificates

• The government of Maharashtra, one of India’s state governments, has started issuing caste certificates over the Polygon blockchain to citizens residing in Etapalli village, Gadchiroli district, as a part of the Digital India campaign. 
• In partnership with LegitDoc, a blockchain-based application, the Maharashtra state government is in the process of rolling out 65,000 caste certificates to aid the process of delivering governmental schemes and benefits.
• Speaking to Cointelegraph, Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer Shubham Gupta revealed that the Indian government is always on the lookout to implement disruptive technologies that can help democratize citizen services, adding:
• “Web3 takes the concept of democratization to a whole new level, whereby, data/information can not only made openly sharable but can be made openly unfalsifiable.”

Canadian PM candidate supports freedom to use Bitcoin as money

• The Canadian Conservative Party candidate for prime minister, Pierre Poilievre, has come out in support of allowing Canadians to use Bitcoin (BTC) as legal money in the country.
• The YouTube channel BITCOIN posted a video on Tuesday of Poilievre saying that the people of Canada need “more financial freedom” before a crowd of about 100 at a local restaurant. He added, “That includes freedom to own and use crypto, tokens, smart contracts and decentralized finance.”
• “People should have the freedom to choose other money. If the government is going to abuse our cash, we should have the freedom to use other, higher quality cash.”

Institutional crypto funds see largest capital inflows for 3 months

• CoinShares data revealed on Tuesday that institutional investments into cryptocurrencies are at the highest levels in three months, a sharp rise from the previous week which saw outflows of $47 million.
• The Digital Asset Fund Flows Weekly Report revealed that investment products for digital assets saw total inflows of $193 million last week, a level not seen since early December 2021.
• The last time investment levels were near the current figure was in the week ending on Dec. 3, which saw $184 million worth of inflows.
• The fund flows had a big focus on Bitcoin (BTC), with just over 50% of the capital going into products based on BTC, which saw inflows totaling $98 million.
• Solana (SOL) was runner-up, seeing $87 million inflows for the week, a figure that CoinShares says is the “largest single week of inflows on record.” SOL-based funds now represent 36% of assets under management with institutional firms, the largest altcoin after Ether (ETH). ETH-based funds saw inflows last week totaling just $10.2 million.