A Look Into This Weekend’s NFT Action
- OpenSea continues to dominate the NFT market, accounting for over 95% of total volume. Daily volume hit an all-time high this Sunday with a $300 mn turnover.
- CryptoPunks and Bored Apes Yacht Club had a monster weekend, with news of Chinese billionaires and Stephen Curry buying up these blue-chip PFP projects. FOMO ensued and drove floor prices significantly higher in just 2 short days.
- ArtBlocks has an explosive week with just over 80,000 ETH of volume coming through. This anomaly mostly stems from several high profile purchases of Curated Art Blocks such as Fidenzas, Ringers, and Squiggles.
US Global Investors bought crypto exposure through Grayscale funds
- Texas-based investment manager U.S. Global Investors, which reported $4.6 billion in assets under management as of Q1 2021, has bought exposure to Bitcoin.
- According to a Monday filing from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, U.S. Global Investors added more than $566,389 worth of shares of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, or GBTC, to three of its eight mutual funds as of June 30. The filings show the company invested $302,899 GBTC in its Gold and Precious Metals Fund, $222,532 in its World Precious Minerals Fund, and $40,958 in its Global Resources Fund.
Cream Finance exploited in $18.8 million flash loan attack
- Decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocol Cream Finance suffered an exploit Monday when a hacker utilized a weakness in the $AMP token contract to level a flash loan attack — resulting in $18.8 million stolen.
- The protocol notified the community this morning that 418,311,571 in AMP and 1,308.09 ETH were lost in the attack. For the time being, AMP supply and borrow have been paused. The team has not responded to a request for comment on the findings of the ongoing investigation or the timing of when AMP lending will resume.
Institutions remain bullish on Cardano and Ether while BTC outflows persist
- Institutional inflows to altcoin investment products have continued to increase this past week, but the same cannot be said for Bitcoin.
- Ether was the favored asset among institutional investors, with ETH-based products posting a weekly inflow of $17.2 million.
- Cardano-based institutional funds posted record weekly inflows with $10.1 million, representing 32% of the week’s total altcoin inflows.
- Polkadot and Solana-based funds also saw inflows with $1.5 million and $2.7 million respectively. Solana has now surpassed Bitcoin Cash for assets under management in related funds with $16 million, ranking ninth in terms of AUM with BCH funds in tenth.
Three Arrows Capital execs launch NFT fund
- The fund, dubbed Starry Night Capital, was founded by Three Arrows Capital’s CEO, Su Zhu, 3AC co-founder, Kyle Davies, and the pseudonymous NFT collector, Vincent Van Dough.
- Van Dough announced the fund via an Aug. 31 tweet, stating: “Our thesis is simple, we believe the best way to gain exposure to the cultural paradigm shift being ushered in by NFTs is owning the top pieces from the most desired sets.”
