January Newsletter

Wilshire Phoenix Featured in the News

MarketWatch: Crypto Outlook for 2023 “Crypto has shown to be very resilient in 2022, and we lean toward a positive and exciting year as the space moves forward in 2023.” -Will Cai spoke with MarketWatch about expectations for crypto going forward. Read the article

Digital Asset News

The Wall Street Journal: Crypto Lender Genesis Files for Bankruptcy, Ensnared by FTX Collapse. Genesis Global Holdco LLC filed for bankruptcy as the latest victim in the aftermath of the FTX collapse. In its filing, Genesis had over 100,000 creditors with about $5.1 billion in total liability. Genesis’s derivatives and spot trading subsidiary, custody and brokerage arm Genesis Global Trading aren’t included in the filing and continue operations. Negotiations with creditors were ongoing, but it became clear that bankruptcy is the best chance of a global settlement.

Kitco: Digital Dollar Project Encourages the U.S. to Take a More Active Role in Developing Global CBDC Regulations. The Digital Dollar Project, a partnership between Accenture and the Digital Dollar Foundation with the goal of advancing a U.S. central bank digital currency (CBDC), has updated its white paper. The paper is critical of the U.S. government’s inaction in the space and offered suggestions on ways to improve. As of now, 114 countries are developing a CBDC, and the Digital Dollar Project is encouraging the U.S. to be a leader in the field.

TechCrunch: Deal Box’s Venture Arm to Invest $125M in Startups Using Web3 Technology. Deal Box is making substantial investments in several web3 sectors, including emerging growth, fintech, social impact, and more. For fintech specifically, AI and blockchain were identified as the “quickest path to enterprise value creation.” Total Network Services, Rypplzz and Forward-Edge AI are firms Deal Box has already invested in as part of its web3 investment thesis.

Cointelegraph: Rewind 2022: A Crypto Roundup of the Year and Stepping into 2023. Traditional and crypto markets struggled in 2022 as the all-time highs of 2021 disappeared from the rearview and investments saw large losses. Notably, the crypto community held strong and made key improvements to its base such as the Ethereum blockchain upgrade “Merge.” With more updates and legislation moving forward in many forms, 2023 could be a milestone year for cryptocurrency.

What We're Reading

MIT Technology Review:?I Just Watched Biggie Smalls Perform Live in the Metaverse.?Biggie Smalls took the stage on the Horizon Worlds metaverse platform in the form of a hyper realistic avatar. Through the use of metaverse technology, holograms have become more immersive. The realism of the avatar was thanks to the VFX studio Hyperreal which worked on this project with such depth that they “tracked the elasticity of sub-skin layers to understand how Smalls’ facial skin moved.”

Industrial Relations Journal:?What do Indebted Employees Do?? Financialization and the Decline of Industrial Action.?Over the last five decades, rates of aggregate industrial action such as worker strikes have been falling consistently. It is argued by researchers here that the normalization of household indebtedness is the main factor in this negative trend. Workers now face the fear of defaulting on their loans if they don’t have consistent income and because of this they are less likely to take action against their employer.

New Atlas:?First-ever Honeybee Vaccine Approved by U.S. Regulators.?The world’s first insect vaccine, meant for honeybees, has been approved in the U.S. Since insects don’t have an antibody-driven immune system response, this was believed by many experts to be impossible. Daniel Freitak and colleagues discovered the transport mechanism for immunity in insects. The team has dedicated their research to target American Foulbrood, a deadly disease that can destroy an entire bee population. Freitak’s team plans on targeting other commercially used pollinators going forward.

CNN:?The Federal Reserve is Testing How Climate Change Could Hurt Big Banks.?The six largest U.S. banks are required, by July, to show the Fed how they would be impacted during “disastrous climate change scenarios.” Climate stresses such as heat waves or floods could severely impact the finances of big banks. There are critiques on both sides with some climate activists saying the Fed did not go far enough as there are no financial penalties yet, while others note that the Fed may be overstepping as the door for financial penalties is now open.

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