The Friday Focus: Issue 11

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Weekly happenings

Money continues flowing around in the crypto industry. Polygon acquires Ethereum scaling startup Mir for $400M, the bitcoin miner TeraWulf raises $200M, and FTX plans to raise $1.5B at a $32B valuation. FTSE Russell are developing a crypto index. Crypto infrastructure shows fragility as hackers steal $196M from the exchange Bitmart, while an AWS outage hits the DeFi protocol dYdX. On the regulatory side, several prominent crypto CEOs testified in congress. Much is happening in the bitcoin mining sector, as hashrate approaches all-time highs, while the industry shows its vulnerability to political risk as Iceland limits miners’ electricity consumption. Bill Gates is bullish on the metaverse as Microsoft enters the sector. Ubisoft becomes the first major gaming company to launch in-game NFTs.

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Weekend reading

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Weekend listening

• Bitcoin and the fall of Davos man; Bitcoin Magazine. Tom Luongo discusses his theory of Davos man and what Bitcoin means geopolitically at this time of great change.

• Epicenter - The Hosts Looks Back at 2021. 2021 was an exciting year for the crypto space. We've seen all time market highs, dramatic regulatory shifts, and some use cases hit the main stream.

• The Pomp Podcast: #748 Building Ethernity Into A Massive NFT Platform w/ Nick Rose. NFTs, Intellectual Property, Signing superstars like Messi, Culture, and what it would cost to play in an NBA game.

• Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy. Guests are Philip Rosedale and Bill Gurley. If you’re curious about what the metaverse might become, these two experts have seen much of this already and are kind to share their lessons with us.

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Arcane’s weekend material