Latest In Crypto, NFTs, and Web3

Hello, again, and welcome to the fourth edition of my Latest in Crypto, NFTs & Web3 newsletter.?

As usual, it’s been a busy week in this space that moves at a breakneck speed, especially with the shattering crypto market crash we’ve experienced in the last week, so without further ado, let’s jump right in to break it down for an easier digest!

First Thing’s First - Market Crash

Whatever the asset class, all markets have been in a tight spot during these last few weeks, but the crypto market specifically shattered spectacularly this past week. Bitcoin’s price plunged to its lowest point in a long time at $25,000. Incredible! For investors in the space, like myself, it might be difficult to stay positive amid the turmoil. Many of the people that have always voiced their thoughts against cryptocurrencies have taken advantage of this opportunity to claim the death of crypto.

Terra UST & LUNA

Terra UST, the decentralized stable coin running on Ethereum that attempted to maintain a value of US$1.00 lost its dollar peg to under 0.30 cents. This decrease in value happened after the withdrawal of large amounts of UST from liquidity pools on decentralized exchange Curve and other platforms.

Terra said it would burn 1 billion UST (worth something around $690 million) from the community of holders while simultaneously raising the circulation of LUNA, (UST’s sister token that supports UST, to 100 million tokens in order to try to restore UST’s dollar peg. Validators in the network are allowed to vote on this decision. Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, has halted the trading of Terraform Labs' Terra (Luna) and TerraUSD (UST) tokens on its platform following one of the industry's biggest meltdowns

Azuki’s downward spiral

Following the crypto market crash, many of the most popular NFT collections also saw their prices decline this past week. But, following the decline, many recovered days later… all, except Azuki. The NFT project has been under constant fire for the last few days due to controversies related to one of its founders, who have been accused (and has apologized for) of having abandoned three previous NFT projects.

The collection’s price dropped around 45% to under 10 ETH, and according to Twitter, this is the death of Azuki. Although, as of this writing on Friday 13th of May, the floor price for Azuki has risen again to to15ETH.?

Central Banks and Digital Assets

• According to a survey conducted by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), many Central Banks around the world are experimenting with setting up central bank digital currencies (CBDC).?
• The Central Bank of Argentina has prohibited banks from offering clients any services for digital assets that are not regulated by them (the Central Bank)
• The U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) added a North Korean crypto mixing company, Blender.io, to their sanctions lists.
• Estonia is working on laws and strict regulations regarding cryptocurrencies and digital assets.

The JUNO Typo Mistake & Hacks

• It seems that a simple copy-paste mistake has moved about $36M in JUNO tokens to the wrong address! Miners, developers and validators alike are all baffled by the incident, but still haven't been able to access the owner of the wrongly benefited wallet.
• OpenSea’s Discord channel was apparently hacked last week in order to promote an NFT scam! The company was able to handle the hack well enough, removing the links and alerting their users, and according to them, only about 10 wallets were affected by the issue.