The Friday Focus: Issue 36

Jun 03, 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

It has been an eventful week. A former executive at NFT platform OpenSea has been arrested and charged with NFT insider trading. Meanwhile, CFTC sues crypto exchange Gemini over a bitcoin futures case from 2017.

Bitcoin mining continues to be a hot topic among US lawmakers, with the White House reportedly preparing policies intending to lower the energy consumption of miners. In addition, the New York Senate passed a two-year moratorium on new mining operations powered by fossil fuels.

While regulators on the federal level and in certain states in the US are more critical of proof-of-work mining, other countries increasingly view bitcoin mining as an opportunity for the energy sector. Even though Africa possesses massive amounts of energy resources, electrification there is low, and the continent has attracted a limited amount of bitcoin mining operations. Now Kenya's largest power provider offers some of its excess geothermal energy to bitcoin miners, eyeing the potential for bitcoin miners to help finance power infrastructure.

We see similar developments in the Middle East. Crusoe Energy will cooperate with Oman's sovereign wealth fund to establish bitcoin mining operations powered by stranded natural gas. The Oman government signed a pledge with the World Bank to end routine natural gas flaring by 2030 and has decided to use bitcoin mining as part of its toolbox to reach this goal.

The weakening financial markets have put spokes in the wheels of many SPAC deals, and Binance's plan to help take Forbes public is the latest to be called off. Meanwhile, Binance continues securing operating licenses in Europe, winning approval in Italy. Binance's VC arm also raised $500 million, possibly inspired by a16z's new $4.5 billion crypto VC fund.

FTX has strong cash flows and is prepared to spend billions on acquisitions. The fast-moving company is also in talks with Goldman Sachs to supply them with crypto derivatives.

Terra gets a second life as Luna 2.0 goes live, even though its first collapse attracted the wrath of many governments around the globe, which now are looking to impose more stringent regulations on stablecoins. Solana suffers another network outage.