👾 Polygon Doubles Down on Gaming and NFTs with $100M Fund

Hello Defiers! Here’s what we are covering today,

News

• Polygon Doubles Down on Gaming and NFTs with $100M Fund
• FTX Breaks Crypto Funding Round Record with $900M Series B
• EU Regulators Propose Crypto Clampdown
• C.R.E.A.M. is Bringing Tether’s Euro-Pegged Stablecoin to DeFi

Podcast

🎙Listen to this week’s podcast with Raoul Pal here:

Video

• First Look: BasketDAO's brand new BMI stablecoin product aims to revolutionize treasury management

Links

• Elon Musk says SpaceX owns Bitcoin and he owns Ethereum in Jack Dorsey talk: The Block
• Damien Hirst's ‘Currency’ NFT drop more than 6X oversubscribed: Cointelegraph
• Paxos takes aim at Circle and Tether, says 96% of its stablecoin reserves are cash or cash equivalents: The Block

The open economy is taking over the old one. Subscribe to keep up with this revolution. Click here to pay with DAI (for $100/yr) or sub with fiat by clicking on the button below ($15/mo, $150/yr).

Subscribe now

🙌 Together with:

• Balancer, one of the leading DeFi automated market makers (AMM) for multiple tokens. Dive into their pools at https://balancer.finance/!
• Kraken, consistently rated the best and most secure cryptocurrency exchange, which can get you from fiat to DeFi
• Aave, an open-source and non-custodial liquidity protocol where users can earn interest on deposits and borrow assets.
• The DeFi Pulse Index, by Index Coop - DPI is the easiest way to capture the upside of DeFi with the benefit of diversification. Buy DPI today on your favorite DEX.

Regulation

🏛 EU Regulators Propose Crypto Clampdown

TLDR European Defiers better buckle up, because regulators in the EU are attempting to tighten the rules on crypto transfers. On July 20, the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, announced a package of legislative proposals to strengthen the EU’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML/CFT) rules.

KYC The legislative proposal moves to apply all of the EU’s AML/CFT rules to the crypto sector. This will require all crypto service providers operating in the EU to adhere to Know Your Customer (KYC) policies and be able to fully trace crypto-asset transfers to detect possible money-laundering or terrorism financing. Currently, these AML/CFT rules only apply to certain categories of crypto-asset providers.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO 👈

NFTs

👾 Polygon Doubles Down on Gaming and NFTs with $100M Fund

NEWS Polygon is raising a $100M fund to support blockchain game developers and NFT creators, and tapping the chops of Atari, the trailblazer that gave the world Pong, Space Invaders, and Asteroids.

WEB 3.0 Polygon has already attracted over 100 NFT and gaming projects, according to awesomepolygon.com. But now the scaling solution is pursuing a far more ambitious agenda with the new venture, called Polygon Studios, which aims “to serve as a bridge between Web 2.0 & Web 3.0,” according to its Twitter account.

PARTNERSHIPS Atari CEO Fred Chesnias has long expressed a deep interest in blockchain’s potential. Polygon Studios has also formed partnerships with Metaverse giant Decentraland and NFT marketplace OpenSea.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO 👈

Fundraising

📈 FTX Breaks Crypto Funding Round Record with $900M Series B

THE LEAD Bucking a bearish crypto market, FTX, the two-year-old cryptocurrency exchange, announced a $900M Series B funding round at a valuation of $18B, the company said in a statement released yesterday.

ANGST The deal is a clear sign that for all the angst in the markets, well-heeled investors are only too eager to play the long game with serious money. More than 60 entities participated in FTX’s funding round, including influential players such as Sequoia Capital, Paradigm and Coinbase’s venture arm.

RECORD This marks the highest ever VC deal for a cryptocurrency company, shattering the previous record set by Circle’s $440M round in May, according to The Block. Circle also invested in FTX.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO 👈

Stablecoins

💶 C.R.E.A.M. is Bringing Tether’s Euro-Pegged Stablecoin to DeFi

TLDR Lending protocol C.R.E.A.M. Finance said it will make EURt, Tether’s euro-pegged stablecoin, available in its money markets to borrow and lend.

BY THE NUMBERS At $62.28B according to its transparency page, Tether issues the largest supply of dollar-pegged stablecoins, USDT, and is looking to reproduce its success with a euro-pegged asset. The company has issued just over 40M EURt, worth roughly $47.18M at current conversion rates.

“We see a huge pent up demand for euro based stablecoins in the DeFi space,” said Paolo Ardoino, CTO at Tether Operations Limited in a press release Wednesday.

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO 👈

Video

📺 First Look: BasketDAO's brand new BMI stablecoin product aims to revolutionise treasury management

Correction

The Defiant’s newsletter on July 21 mistakenly featured a headline reporting that OpenSea’s $100M fundraising round this week made it the first NFT unicorn. In fact, it was just the latest NFT venture to achieve unicorn status. The Defiant regrets the error!

👉READ THE FULL STORY IN THE DEFIANT.IO 👈

Links

🔗 Elon Musk says SpaceX owns Bitcoin and he owns Ethereum in Jack Dorsey talk: The Block

Elon Musk confirmed both Tesla and SpaceX own Bitcoin during his discussion with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood today.

🔗 Damien Hirst's ‘Currency’ NFT drop more than 6X oversubscribed: Coin Telegraph

Leading contemporary artist Damien Hirst’s NFT drop dubbed “The Currency” has been oversubscribed by more than six times. The Currency drop consists of 10,000 unique colorful dot pattern artworks with a corresponding NFT for each piece.

🔗 Welcome to kutcher kitchen talks EP 1: @aplusk

ashton kutcher @apluskWelcome to kutcher kitchen talks EP 1 #KryptoWithKunis #StonerCats #nft #eth ⁦@stonercatstv⁩ ⁦@VitalikButerin⁩ stonercats.com

9:26 PM ∙ Jul 21, 202119,336Likes4,727Retweets

🔗 Paxos takes aim at Circle and Tether, says 96% of its stablecoin reserves are cash or cash equivalents: The Block

In a July 21 blog post, Paxos revealed that its duo of stablecoins, Paxos Standard and Binance USD, are backed by 96% cash or cash equivalents. This contrasts with recent reports coming out of the other leading U.S. dollar-centric stablecoin operators, Tether and Circle — a comparison that Paxos invited in its post.

This is a public version of the newsletter and both paid and free subscribers are receiving it.

Free subscribers get:

• Daily news briefings
• Weekly Recap

Paid subscribers get:

• Full transcript of the weekly podcast interview
• Early access to opinion columns and research pieces
• Exclusive access to Inbox Dump where we send all the press releases that didn’t make it to the newsletter (Saturday)
• Exclusive access to subscribers-only Discord chat

✊ Head to THEDEFIANT.IO for more DeFi news 📰

🧑‍💻 ✍️ Stories in this newsletter were written by Owen Fernau and Dan Kahan, and edited by Edward Robinson, Bailey Reutzel and Camila Russo. Videos were produced by Robin Schmidt and Alp Gasimov. Podcast was led by Camila, edited by Alp.

Subscribe now

The Defiant is a daily newsletter focusing on decentralized finance, a new financial system that’s being built on top of open blockchains. The space is evolving at breakneck speed and revolutionizing tech and money. Sign up to learn more and keep up on the latest, most interesting developments. Subscribers get full access, while free signups get only part of the content. Click here to pay with DAI (for $100/yr) or sub with fiat by clicking on the button above ($15/mo, $150/yr).