2/7/24: Janet Yellen's Word Soup 📜🪶⛩️

Author

Valko
February 07, 2024

Top News

  • 📜 Janet Yellen asks Congress to pass crypto legislation

  • 🪶 Metamask integrates with Robinhood to make buying crypto easier

  • ⛩️ Azuki announces partnership with Magic Eden, like Pudgy Penguins

Specs’ Insights

⌐◪-◪ → Congratulations Janet, this is the most comically vague and bland word-soup I’ve heard in my entire life. You have to listen.

Usually headlines like, “US Treasury Secretary….regulate crypto” have me worried, but if this is what we’re up against then I’m not worried at all.

Honestly, we should probably push for age limits in Congress because this was super painful to listen to.

With that said, it does sound like the current administration is pissed about all the success crypto exchanges, stablecoins, and spot BTC ETFs are seeing.

Consensys's MetaMask incorporates features Robinhood to facilitate easier crypto purchases

The integration aims to reduce friction for users purchasing cryptocurrency using Robinhood's order engine.

⌐◪-◪ → Boom, another killer crypto integration that will drive mainstream adoption. Yesterday we had ENS ↔ GoDaddy, today we have MetaMask ↔ Robinhood.

This aligns closely with my long-term thesis that TradFi providers will eventually be nothing more than mere interfaces to a blockchain-based global economy.

In other words, their role will simply be to onboard users, make the blockchain easy to use, provide custody solutions that help users stay/feel safe, and help comply with local regulations/taxes.

It’s a matter of IF not WHEN the entire stock market moves on-chain and your local wealth advisor is fulfilling orders using a DEX. It’ll take time, but we’ll get there.

⌐◪-◪ → Azuki just announced a partnership with Magic Eden, who announced the same with Pudgy Penguins yesterday, and Yuga Labs late last year.

The projects have all endorsed Magic Eden as their preferred marketplace over Blur and OpenSea and will advise Magic Eden on the development of their new ETH marketplace.

Seems like a great deal for Magic Eden, more volume + strategic advisory, but it leaves me wondering — what’s in it for the NFT projects?

Are they getting paid more, do they get lower rates, stronger royalty enforcement, enhanced marketplace discoverability — or is it simply another “hype” partnership announcement?

Whatever the case, this is definitely bad news for OpenSea’s acquisition aspirations.

Everything Else

⛓️ Crypto & DeFi

  • Ethereum devs deploy Dencun upgrade on Holesky testnet

  • Rollup platform Dymension’s DYM hits $5.2B valuation

  • Hacker claims to have accessed law enforcement system, Kodex

  • Citrea launches first ZK Rollup on Bitcoin, enhancing blockspace

  • Whales buy $50M of Chainlink’s LINK token, up 40% in 30D

  • Solana network restarts after 5-hour outage, yikes

🏦 Wallstreet & VC

  • MicroStrategy acquired 850 Bitcoin for $37.2M in Jan

  • Ondo Finance's US Treasury-backed stablecoin expands to Sui

  • Anchorage Digital partners with FusionIQ to expand institutional users

  • LightLink secures $4.5M seed round for “multiverse project”

  • Gilf raises $4.5M from Multicoin Capital for Filecoin protocol

🏛️ Legal & Regulatory

🌎 Rest of the World

  • OKX faces probe in South Korea for soliciting Jumpstart on Telegram

  • Thailand waives 7% value-added tax on crypto gains

  • South Korea to enforce crypto laws with potential life sentence

  • Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce calls for CBDC issuance budget

  • B2C2 expands to Luxembourg with local VASP registration

  • Crypto carbon credits exchange is created in Germany

🖼️ NFTs & Metaverse

  • Taproot Wizards Qunatumn Cats collection already trading at 3x

  • Bluesky opens to the public amid Farcaster’s absolute dominance

  • DeGods partner with Wormhole, y00ts up 40%

  • RSIC crosses 500 BTC in volume, was airdropped for free 15D ago

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