Date: 12/06/2021
“Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful.” — Warren Buffett
Weekly News Report:
1. WisdomTree, a financial institution with over $76 billion in assets under management, announced it had created four cryptocurrency indices in the United States and Europe to provide diversified portfolio exposure to investors. The move comes in collaboration with Ritholtz Wealth Management, OnRamp and Gemini.
2. The price of bitcoin plummeted early Saturday, falling nearly $10,000 in roughly an hour to a temporary low of $42,000 before bouncing up to $45,000. Bitcoin has fallen some $15,000 over the past 24 hours. Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, fell around $1,100 over the same time period. Even so, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele announced another purchase of 150 BTC for around $48,700 each.
3. FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is looking to raise a total of $1.5 billion for the global cryptocurrency derivatives exchange and U.S. affiliate, FTX.US. The funding round would potentially value FTX at $32 billion and FTX.US at $8 billion. Crypto exchange FTX is pegging new funding at 39% higher valuations from its October 2021 levels. This fund will help in supporting growth for its global crypto derivatives exchange and U.S. affiliate, FTX.US.
4. OneRare, a blockchain gaming project, is seeking to establish the perfect combination of gaming, NFTs using the unique theme of Food in their metaverse. Now, they are growing their Foodverse concept by bringing celebrity chefs into the space to create an exciting food adventure for Web3 buffs. Celebrity Chefs Arnold Poernomo, Saransh Goila and Jaimie Van Heije, are collaborating with the OneRare project and its foodverse to celebrate their culinary journey and signature dishes on the blockchain.
5. Anthony Scaramucci, Founder and Managing Partner at SkyBridge Capital announced that he will be launching a 200 million USD crypto fund out of Abu Dhabi UAE in December 2021. SkyBridge Capital’s exposure to crypto has increased significantly, with capital invested in crypto assets exceeding $ 1 billion. SkyBridge Capital’s crypto exposure increased by around 150% during the third quarter, the company’s crypto hedge fund adding $ 300 million in the three months ending September 30, 2021.
6. A bucket of metaverse-related cryptocurrencies is up 37,000% this year, Macro Hive data show. Coins related to smart contracts rallied 2,355% this year, and DeFi coins jumped 548%. Bitcoin rose just 97%. The data was based on the gains of five coins: Axie Infinity, Decentraland, Sandbox, Enjin Coin, and GALA, which rallied 20% over the past seven days alone, the data showed.
7. In collaboration with MetaEstate, a leading digital real estate platform, Tron Foundation develops an ecological complex that includes the foundation’s headquarters, digital art museum and convention club. Tron raises bets on metaverses, builds ecological complex in Cryptovoxels.
8. Encryption Exchange KuCoin has announced the recruitment of Metaverse engineer positions. The candidates must assume responsibility for leading education programs. This includes structure evaluation and selection of metaverse projects. They will then be preparing for market deployment. The architect will also be responsible for the metaverse design in the KuCoin Metaverse Fund plan.
9. Ethereum’s native token ETH plunged alongside other cryptocurrencies on Dec. 4. Still, its move downside did not deter it from hitting a three-year high against BTC. While Ether’s losses were substantial, they were relatively milder compared to Bitcoin in USD terms as the ETH / BTC pair rose to a three-year high. Some analysts believed that investors began treating the second-largest cryptocurrency as a haven against Bitcoin during Saturday’s crash.
10. Marriott Bonvoy, Marriott International’s award-winning travel program has teamed up with up-and-coming digital artists — TXREK, JVY, and Erick Nicolay — to create three Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). Marriott Bonvoy will become one of the first hospitality brands to create its own NFTs and will unveil the digital art, inspired by the travel program’s recent global “Power of Travel” campaign, on Saturday, December 4 at Art Basel Miami Beach 2021.
11. Web 3 infrastructure company Mysten Labs has raised $36 million in a Series A funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). The startup was founded by veterans of Facebook’s crypto unit and will soon launch a non-fungible token platform.
12. Based on NFT and metaverse sales over the past week, the demand for digital land outpaced all other items, art and collections. Digital land is in high demand in what is already a highly lucrative market as the past week’s NFT and Metaverse sales figures revealed. It indicates that there has been more than $300 million in NFT sales over the past week. Of that total, almost a quarter has been for digital land in The Sandbox metaverse.
13. Binance’s CEO says it plans to expand to the U.K. in the next six to 18 months despite being ordered by the country’s regulator to cease trading in June. To become a registered crypto-asset firm in the U.K., the platform must abide by money laundering and terrorist financing controls. To meet these requirements, Zhao indicated the company was considering setting up a specific company to run in the U.K. — similar to its Binance.US subsidiary.
