Edition #45 - 18 DEC 2022
The Federal Reserve on Wednesday raised its benchmark interest rate to the highest level in 15 years, indicating the fight against inflation is not over despite some promising signs lately.
Keeping with expectations, the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee voted to boost the overnight borrowing rate half a percentage point, taking it to a targeted range between 4.25% and 4.5%. The increase broke a string of four straight three-quarter point hikes, the most aggressive policy moves since the early 1980s.
gaming developments
The Shiba Racing Team is set to release the genesis collection of Racing NFTs supported by a P2E racing game in the SHIB metaverse;
Illuvium releases Overworld as it attempts to bring AAA quality to web3 gaming;
The Sandbox plans for 2023 season's greetings event with 250k SAND in prizes and more;
Epic Games launches Verse, the Metaverse programming language.
metaverses & Adoption
The metaverse will influence travel decisions in 2023, BookingCom predicts;
Japan plans to ease corporate tax rates for cryptocurrency issuers;
Active ETH addresses reach all-time high of 1.4 million;
Donald Trump launches an NFT collection, sells out with secondary prices surging on OpenSea;
92% of high-net-worth investors seek access to crypto;
Sam Bankman-Fried expected to not fight US extradition;
Auditing giant Mazars aims to distance itself from crypto by stopping all work for sector’s clients;
FTX, Nexo auditor Armanino to quit crypto after 8 years;
Shiba Inu now accepted where Visa is via Guarda wallet;
OKX customer withdrawals suffer an outage.
defi
Analysis of on-chain stablecoin data reveals decline in USDT dominance;
TVL in DeFi slides under $40 billion, tapping a low not seen since February 2021;
Chainlink opens NFT price feed oracle to expand DeFi usage;
DeFi’s central bank MakerDAO relaunches 1% fixed yield for DAI holders;
Stablecoins worth $4 billion exited exchanges in last 7 days;
Curve Finance to deploy on zkSync's mainnet next year;
The United Nations believes stablecoins can revolutionize foreign aid;
Solana-based Raydium exchange victim of seven-figure exploit, attacker manages to steal over $2 million;
DeFi industry in a ‘very positive light’, HashKey Capital report reveals.
funding rounds
Web3 privacy firm Aztec Network raises a $100 million Series B in a round led by a16z crypto, with A Capital, King River, Variant, SV Angel, Hash Key, Fenbushi and AVG in participation;
​​Web3 infrastructure company Blocknative raised $15 million in a Series A-1 funding round led by Blockchain Capital, Foundry Group, Rho, IOSG Ventures, Robot Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, HackVC, Industry Ventures and others.
Сryptocurrency insurance firm Evertas raised $14 million in a Series A funding round led by Polychain Capital, with participation from SinoGlobal Capital, CMT Digital Ventures, Foundation Capital, Morgan Creek, Bloccelerate, network0, Matrixport, and HashKey.
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