The Friday Focus: Issue 33

May 13, 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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Important update: Next week the Weekly Update will be sent out on Monday and not the usual Tuesday. Tuesday is Norway’s national day and we will be busy celebrating.

Weekly happenings

This week we witnessed one of the fastest and arguably largest financial collapses in history as Terra and its stablecoin UST imploded. Even though more than $40B of value disappeared over a couple of days, Janet Yellen stated that crypto poses no systemic risk to the traditional financial system.

Grayscale had a ‘productive’ meeting with the SEC, arguing for approval of converting their bitcoin trust to a spot bitcoin ETF. In Australia, both a bitcoin spot ETF and a bitcoin futures ETF were listed, but with lower trading volumes than expected.

In Norway, the government voted to not ban bitcoin mining. Meanwhile, environmental groups backed by Ripple’s co-founder’s $5M “Change the Code” initiative sent a letter to the US Government arguing for more stringent bitcoin mining regulations.

Microstrategy’s bitcoin bet has turned negative, but Michael Saylor assured us that the company can handle a much larger drawdown and will never sell voluntarily. El Salvador seems never to miss an opportunity to buy the dip, acquiring 500 bitcoin. Further south in America, Brazil’s largest bank launches bitcoin and ether trading.

After some quiet weeks, the big crypto capital raises are back. We see massive valuations, as crypto exchange KuCoin raises $150M at a $10B valuation, and crypto analytics firm Chainalysis raises $170M at an $8.6B valuation. Crypto trading firm Talos raises $105M, and Sam Bankman-Fried takes a 7.6% stake in Robinhood.

We also see some interesting capital raises in Africa. Congolese web3 startup Jambo raises $30M, and crypto exchange Mara raises $23M with a goal of spreading crypto adoption in Africa.