The Friday Focus: Issue 44
Welcome to our Friday newsletter. Here you find the most exciting crypto content from the previous week - curated for you by us.Weekly happenings in the crypto industry
(July 22nd - July 29th)
The prominent players who got hit the hardest during the past two chaotic months are well underway with their restructuring efforts. Crypto exchange CoinFLEX proposes a plan to compensate depositors, while blockchain Harmony intends to mint tokens to reimburse victims of its recent $100M hack. Meanwhile, bankrupt crypto lender Voyager Digital is hit with allegations from the US Fed and the FDIC of giving customers ‘false and misleading’ deposit insurance information.While the crypto lending sector is in shambles after the recent crypto crash, business continues as usual for the crypto exchanges. FTX US launches stock trading for American users. Brazilians keep showing massive interest in getting crypto exposure, as Brazil’s largest digital bank, Nubank, reaches 1M crypto users after just one month. Nubank’s successful crypto pivot has inspired banking group Santander Brazil, which plans to launch a crypto trading feature in the coming months.Significant capital raises are back as the dust has settled in the industry. Decentralized domain provider Unstoppable Domains hits unicorn status with a $65M raise, crypto VC firm Variant raises $450M, blockchain startup Aptos raises $150M from FTX Ventures and Jump Crypto, and bitcoin miner Core Scientific raises $100M.FTX is, as usual, active on the acquisition front, now talking about buying the South Korean crypto exchange Bithumb. Its CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, has recently embraced the opportunity of ‘bailing out’ struggling crypto companies, with Voyager Digital being his latest acquisition target. However, the bankrupt lender calls the proposed bailout a 'low-ball bid'.Ethereum is gearing up to transition to ‘the merge’, which will change its consensus mechanism from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake. The Ethereum Foundation plans to do ‘the merge’ on September 19th, but a final testnet merge will first need to be completed in early August. Ethereum’s transition to proof-of-stake will render Ethereum miners redundant, and we already see prominent miners starting to support Ethereum Classic, which will continue running on proof-of-work.If you haven’t already signed up, click here and subscribe to receive the newsletter in your inbox every Friday.
