Rally Time: DeFi Week Jan. 8
Is it really happening? Is the rally we’ve been waiting for truly materializing? Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves but the value of the cryptocurrency market jumped 8% this week, to $832B, according to CoinMarketCap data. And as Owen Fernau reported, the Defiant Terminal shows Ethereum’s 11% surge outpaced Bitcoin’s 8% clip. Whew… We’ll take it.
The driver, of course, was the dampening of consumer prices in the U.S. and investors’ expectations this will encourage the Federal Reserve to ease interest rate hikes. Therein lies the fly in the ointment for crypto. Yes, a rally is great, but cryptocurrencies, including DeFi remain strongly correlated with equities as “risk-on” assets. In other words, digital assets have yet to carve out their own narrative in the eyes of most investors.
Going Sideways
Market rallies, naturally, make it easier to digest the less cheery news in crypto, and this week tension mounted that yet another stalwart was going sideways. As Aleks Gilbert reported, DCG, Barry Silbert’s umbrella company encompassing Grayscale and Genesis, took heavy fire from Cameron Winklevoss in a blistering new open letter. Winklevoss, the CEO of the Gemini exchange, accused Silbert of accounting fraud and refusing to negotiate the return of $900M in Gemini customer assets that’s stuck inside Genesis. Aleks also presented the news in a segment of The Daily Defiant on our YouTube channel.
Scrutiny is also bearing down on Binance… Tarang Khaitan reported on how the No. 1 global CEX admitted its BUSD stablecoin lacked sufficient collateral in the past. And CZ couldn’t resist trolling Winklevoss and Silbert. As Ed Robinson reported, CZ said Binance would never consign customer assets to a third party as he suggested Gemini had done with Genesis.
Deals
Meantime, there was a flurry of DeFi deals and offerings on offer: Owen Fernau reported on Ondo Finance’s tokenized bonds, Aleks Gilbert covered a deal between Avalanche, the Layer 2, and Amazon Web Services, and Sam Haig wrote about Optimism activity hit new highs.
And in this week’s podcast, the indomitable Tegan Kline interviewed Microsoft’s Yorke Rhodes to learn how the computer giant is leveraging Ethereum.
Good stuff! Enjoy!
Today’s Sponsors
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Podcast
Yorke Rhodes Explains How Microsoft Is Leveraging Ethereum
Yorke Rhodes is the Director of Digital Transformation, Blockchain, Cloud Supply Chain at Microsoft, and he is the cofounder of Blockchain at Microsoft. Microsoft is a large Web 2 company producing software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services.
We dive into what Microsoft is doing within the Blockchain Technology space, how Microsoft is using NFTs internally, the use case of Ethereum and IPFS inside of Microsoft, the differences and CEO leadership that Microsoft has seen over the years and we even get into the rumors of Google choosing their slogan “Don’t Be Evil” because of Microsoft.
That and so much more, but first, Yorke is going to tell us what his current focus is at Microsoft.
Defiant Video
Weekly Recap: DeFi Kept Dealing Amid Epic Crypto Brawl
Winklevoss Twins Takes Aim at Silbert
Will The Bank Run On Binance Continue?
Ethereum’s Shanghai Upgrade is coming
Best of the Week
Liquidity Staking
Rocket Pool Bets Coinbase Deal Will Help it Catch Lido
Liquidity Staking Race Ratchets Up as Rocket Pool Members Size Up Latest Move
Read the full story in The Defiant
Liquidity Staking
Lido Rides Liquid Staking Wave To Become Largest DeFi Protocol
LDO, RPL, FXS and SWISE Outperform Broader Markets
Lido Finance briefly topped Maker as the largest DeFi protocol this week amid surging interest in liquid staking protocols.
Read the full story in The Defiant
Crypto Conflicts
Winklevoss and Silbert Trade Blows as Fraud Accusations Fly
DCG Boss Rejects Gemini CEO’s Accusations of Accounting Fraud
Gemini CEO Cameron Winklevoss has called for the termination of Barry Silbert, the founder and CEO of crypto conglomerate Digital Currency Group, in a scathing open letter shared on Twitter Tuesday that accuses Silbert and DCG of accounting fraud.
Read the full story in The Defiant
Crypto Conflicts
CZ Zings Genesis-Gemini Fracas With Vow to Protect Customer Assets
CZ Addressed Concerns about Binance and the Market
Changpeng Zhao, the founder and CEO of Binance, said Wednesday that he would never let his exchange expose itself to the stress now engulfing two other major crypto players — Gemini and Genesis.
Read the full story in The Defiant
Crypto Privacy
Crypto Needs to Up Its Game on Privacy
Spirit of CypherPunks Lives on in Maturing Industry
By Sam Harrison
It’s no surprise that the crypto industry has a growing privacy problem. There needs to be an industry-wide wake-up call to re-orient privacy as the top priority for developers and consumers alike.
Read the full story in The Defiant
DeFi Explainers
What Are DeFi Derivatives?
A Primer on High-Risk Instruments Used in Decentralized Finance
As their name suggests, derivatives are financial instruments that enable investors to bet on the behavior of underlying assets, whether they are stocks, bonds, commodities, or cryptocurrencies.
Read the full explainer in The Defiant
Friday
News
- Rocket Pool Bets Coinbase Deal Will Help it Catch Lido The liquidity staking race just got a lot more heated.
- SEC Charges Gemini and Genesis With Selling Unregistered Securities The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday accused Genesis, the embattled digital assets broker, and Gemini, a centralized crypto exchange, with the sale of unregistered securities.
- Bulgarian Police Raid Nexo Office Bulgarian prosecutors have accused Nexo, a centralized crypto lender based in the country, of servicing a client who “financed terrorist acts,” according to a local news report.
Markets
- Markets Surge After Data Shows US Inflation Cooling Crypto prices rallied Thursday in tandem with the stock market after consumer prices dropped to 6.5% from 7.1% in November, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Thursday
News
- Avalanche and Amazon Ink Partnership to Boost Subnet Deployment Cloud computing giant Amazon Web Services has partnered with Ava Labs to encourage development on the Avalanche blockchain, the companies announced Wednesday.
- Gitcoin To Test Decentralized Funding Protocol Gitcoin, a crowdfunding platform for the Ethereum and crypto ecosystems, plans to retire its centralized grants platform and transition to a decentralized protocol.
- Binance Admits Lapse In Maintaining Stablecoin Reserves Binance, the leading crypto exchange by trading volume, has admitted that its Binance-peg BUSD stablecoin did not have sufficient collateral backing it in the past.
- Consensys Opens zkEVM Testnet to Whitelisted Users Consensys, the blockchain software company, is readying to launch an EVM-compatible rollup powered by zero-knowledge proofs, according to the firm.
- Ripple Holders Receive Flare Airdrop Two Years After Snapshot Holders of Ripple (XRP), a digital asset designed to serve to facilitate cross-border payments, have begun to receive a long-anticipated windfall.
Opinion
- Crypto Needs to Up Its Game on Privacy It’s no surprise that the crypto industry has a growing privacy problem. There needs to be an industry-wide wake-up call to re-orient privacy as the top priority for developers and consumers alike.
Wednesday
News
- Winklevoss and Silbert Trade Blows as Fraud Accusations Fly Gemini CEO Cameron Winklevoss has called for the termination of Barry Silbert, the founder and CEO of crypto conglomerate Digital Currency Group, in a scathing open letter shared on Twitter Tuesday that accuses Silbert and DCG of accounting fraud.
- CZ Zings Genesis-Gemini Fracas With Vow to Protect Customer Assets Changpeng Zhao, the founder and CEO of Binance, said Wednesday that he would never let his exchange expose itself to the stress now engulfing two other major crypto players — Gemini and Genesis.
- Ondo Finance Launches Tokenized US Treasuries and Corporate Bonds New DeFi offerings are emerging to adapt to the changing macroeconomic climate, after baseline yields on stablecoins have fallen below low-risk instruments available in traditional finance.
- US Court Hands Down 10-Month Sentence in Coinbase Insider Trading Case The brother of a former Coinbase employee was sentenced to 10 months in prison this week for profiting off the latter’s insider knowledge of soon-to-be-listed tokens.
- Binance.US Receives Initial Approval To Buy Voyager’s Assets For $1B
Layer 2s
- Optimism Activity Hits New Highs As Layer 2s Close In On Ethereum Layer 2 adoption is booming, with Optimism setting new records for activity and the combined transaction volume of optimistic rollups closing in on Ethereum’s mainnet.
NFT News
- PleasrDAO to Launch Game Show Featuring Snowden and Ellsberg PleasrDAO, an organization which spontaneously spawned to collectively buy a coveted NFT in 2021, is getting into show business.
Tuesday
News
- Lido Rides Liquid Staking Wave To Become Largest DeFi Protocol Lido Finance briefly topped Maker as the largest DeFi protocol this week amid surging interest in liquid staking protocols.
- Yearn Finance Releases Permissionless Vault Factory As DeFi winter grinds on, Yearn Finance, one of the space’s most venerable protocols and a pioneer of yield aggregation with $363M in total value locked, continues to push forward with its roadmap.
- Withdrawals and Layoffs at Huobi Spark Concern Alongside a slew of rumors, a spike in withdrawals from Huobi, a top-ten crypto exchange by volume, are raising doubts that yet another centralized exchange is on shaky financial footing.
- L2BEAT Report Takes Aim At LayerZero’s Security Model LayerZero, a protocol which enables messaging across blockchains and is used by applications entrusted with hundreds of millions of dollars, drew scrutiny on Jan. 5 for a purported security flaw.
Ethereum News
- Ethereum Devs Prime Beacon for ETH Withdrawal Stakers may soon be able to withdraw Ether from the Beacon chain, with Ethereum’s devs aiming to deliver the long-awaited upgrade this quarter.
- EIP-5988 Poised To Improve ZK-Rollups’ Compatibility With Ethereum In a development that may reduce the costs of scaling up Ethereum, momentum is gathering behind a new plan for improving the interoperability between the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and ZK-powered rollups.
Markets
- Crypto Kicks Off The Week With Broad-Based Rally Crypto markets are building on the momentum from last week, with most top-20 tokens by market capitalization posting gains over the past 24 hours.
DeFi Explainers
Community Love
Thanking all the amazing Defiers for the support and love this week (and always)!
ICYMI: ⍺ DeFi Alpha: Using Opyn’s ETH Zen Bull Strategy To Capitalize On Low Volatilityhttps://t.co/bYgUTL3zeG
— The Defiant (@DefiantNews) January 10, 2023
Let's start the year by playing around with @poapxyz and @__iyk cards.
Can't wait to use them to distribute @DefiantNews POAPs at @EthereumDenver!! pic.twitter.com/tdr9Tc2L8r
— DiegoCabral.eth/.lens (✊,🦇🔊) (@DiegoCabral__) January 10, 2023
⚔️Defi vs. Goliath – DeFi as a catalyst for real world adoption. Will new (DeFi) Goliaths emerge? Great discussion and sharing of ideas and upcoming projects by @StaniKulechov (@AaveAave), @DavidNewns2 (@SDX_global), @GArentoft (@1inch) & @EddieRob235 (@DefiantNews) #cfcstmoritz pic.twitter.com/nr9SOugwfl
— CfC St. Moritz (@CFCstmoritz) January 11, 2023
