Chain Reaction - 10th April 2023
Australian DeFi Association
We're here to help you get a better understanding of DeFi and it's potential impact on your future.
Another week and we were back to kicking things off with Twitter Spaces, this time talking Privacy and Web3 (and much more it seems). If you missed it, don’t fear because we have it recorded here
Well worth a listen.
Additionally, we had an Aus DeFi event on Wednesday, this was with our partners Stone & Chalk and whilst it’s early in the month for it, we’ll be doing something online at the end of the month to get us back on our end of month events for Sydney (with end of May being the next one). Highlights from that are here
and?
There was also the Google NFTs event on the same night and something you can watch on demand here (after registering) https://cloudonair.withgoogle.com/events/web3-connect-au?
News
Data from CBA shows that customers had increased interest in crypto despite the various hiccups we saw in 2022. https://www.smh.com.au/business/banking-and-finance/the-crypto-winter-didn-t-force-aussies-into-hibernation-cba-wants-to-remove-any-traps-20230405-p5cyak.html?
Also this week, we saw one of the major DeFi platforms with a hack the day after making a major update. The update https://u.today/sushiswap-releases-new-major-update-details and the hack https://www.theblock.co/post/225473/sushiswap-hack. Be careful out there?
We saw locally that one of the first (of 15) experiments using the RBA CBDC pilot project was able to complete a transaction that saw CBDCs minted and transacted upon. See more in this announcement on the ANZ website https://media.anz.com/posts/2023/april-/anz-and-grollo-partner-to-trade-tokenised--australian-carbon-cre?
In the news this week we saw BRICs countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) looking at creating their own currencies to move off the USD. Whether this is a digital currency they all share or something they do each individually, the move away from the US will hurt that economy.
US Government dumping BTC? Apparently so in this latest CoinBureau video. The US government is selling Bitcoin that it confiscated from Silk Road, a darknet marketplace that was busted in 2013. Around 144,000 BTC worth around $28.5 million was auctioned off in various batches by the US Marshals service in 2014. The sale will happen over the course of this year and many are worried about what this means for the price of BTC.
More on that sale here from local web3 rag, The Chainsaw https://thechainsaw.com/defi/bitcoin/bitcoin-price-billion-dollar-dump/?
There was also this piece from Professor Galloway discussing the potential of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) beyond the current hype and scams. He shows how NFTs offer digital commerce (and something we currently lack online, scarcity and authenticity) and how they have the potential to become central to the economy as private property and ownership increasingly move online and what brands can get from this - see here https://marker.medium.com/the-real-potential-of-nfts-b1bf88b24a1c?
Later in the week we saw ETH move higher with the Shanghai hard fork on the way which means withdrawals from staked positions (and also possibly opens up access to future stakers). More from CoinDesk here?https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2023/04/05/ether-circles-above-19k-as-shanghai-hard-fork-nears/?
There’s more insights here from The Defiant on this topic too
Further on pricing and it seems we still have people and algos react to symbolic gestures and in this case it's DOGE pumping after Elon changed the Twitter logo to the DOGE one https://thechainsaw.com/defi/crypto/doge-twitter-icon-elon-musk-dogecoin-price/
Let’s head on over to Germany for some forward-thinking from them with the German Ministry of Finance with a new act that will give the option for companies to either list traditional share certificates or to do it as crypto securities on the blockchain. What a time to be alive!
Shall leave you with this one from finfluencer/YouTube Andrei Jikh on CBDCs. He presents a short but interesting argument looking at the pros and cons so it’s worth checking out
ABOUT AUS DEFI ASSOCIATION
The Australian DeFi Association (Aus DeFi) is a non-profit community organization dedicated to increasing education and awareness of blockchain technology, specifically decentralized finance (DeFi) and web3-based projects. Their goal is to empower the Australian community with the knowledge and tools to participate in the decentralized economy, and to promote the adoption and growth of blockchain technology in Australia. They strive to provide a more grassroots approach to promoting blockchain technology compared to other industry-focused organizations in Australia, and to provide a platform for community members to learn about and engage with this emerging technology.
You can watch our recorded meetups and interviews here on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ausdefiassociation3956/videos