The Friday Focus: Issue 19

Feb 04, 2022

Welcome to our Friday newsletter. Here you find the most exciting crypto content from the previous week - curated for you by us.

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Weekly happenings

Considering all the action the crypto industry has served us so far in 2022, the previous seven days were relatively calm. Bored Ape creator Yuga Labs are in funding talks with A16z at a $5B valuation. Data firm Dune Analytics hits unicorn status with a $69,420,000 raise, and Castle Island Ventures raises several hundred million. FTX raises $400M at a $32B valuation, and uses some of the proceeds to purchase Japanese fintech firm Liquid Group, expanding its presence in Asia.

On the mining side, Sphere 3D signed a $1.7B deal to buy 60,000 of the new and highly efficient NuMiner machines. The bitcoin miner Greenidge meet bureaucratic resistance in New York, as the local government delays their power plant permit. The bitcoin mining landscape looks brighter in Texas, with miners voluntarily shutting down operations, letting power flow to households ahead of an approaching winter storm.

Things seem to be moving in the right regulatory direction in Russia as they advance efforts to regulate crypto, and approve Atomyze to issue metal-backed tokens. The crypto ETF trend continues in the US with Grayscale launching ETF of bitcoin-exposed companies.

Meta's stablecoin project Diem confirms shutdown as Silvergate acquires the project's assets. Just like their stablecoin project failed, Meta's metaverse has not been an immediate success, reporting a loss of $10.2B in 2021.

Jump Crypto has replaced $325M in stolen crypto one day after Solana’s biggest hack ever.