My friends, there's this exchange in Brazil called Nox Bitcoin, right? There were some investors on the exchange who held UST before the crash. According to reports, Nox Bitcoin has committed to allocate 620,000 Brazilian reais to refund customers who incurred losses after UST lost its peg. The exchange is expected to make up the difference between the current value of UST and a dollar.

Now that's huge. I read this report, looked at my dwindling UST and LUNA funds on Binance and honestly, I was like, hey, Nox Bitcoin, lemme go google see where I can sign up, right? I mean if this is true, then that's putting your money where your mouth is, and after all the money the exchanges make in fees, etc., what a way to win over trader and investor confidence.  So that's a bit of good news for those investors at least. 

The fallout from Terra's implosion continues. While sleuths continue to speculate about whether Do Kwon and Terraform Labs did or did not anticipate the black swan event that crashed UST and rocked the crypto world, some major regulators are finding common ground.

From recent reports, it appears as though South Korea is moving to introduce further regulations to protect investors from pump and dump schemes as well as crypto wash and insider trading.

In the US, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler this week projected that many more projects will fall and that this could negatively impact traditional markets as well. These comments come after Terra's catastrophic implosion followed by Deus Finance's algorithmic stablecoin, DEI, also losing its dollar peg in the past week. 

And G7 finance ministers and central bank governors, representing seven of the world's most advanced economies including the US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Japan, met in Germany on May 19th and 20th and, according to Reuters, collectively called for swift and comprehensive regulation of cryptocurrencies.

And so, friends, there you have it. Incidentally, stepping away from the ongoing UST/DEI stablecoin saga for a bit, I've got a question. Given all that's occurred recently, how do you feel about trading or investing in the crypto market right now? Are you still excited, ultra cautious or literally suffering from burnout? Are there any projects you're excited to support? Or are you just quietly observing things?

I mean it's understandable that trading volumes are somewhat lower these days, right? After all, it's really easy to get into things when everyone's all hyped and raking in all the coins on the table, right? When there are ads everywhere and people are going on and on about becoming millionaires overnight, think about it, you'd want in on the action too. But when things are down and everyone's glum and complaining about the money they lost, money that evaporated faster than you can snap your finger, when you hear people bemoaning the fact that they lost their life savings on what they thought would be a sure bet, you're not so likely to dip into your pocket and throw anything on the table, right? Because no one wants to lose.

And so, yeah, there's the saying that you make money in a bull season, but a bear season makes you rich, but you have to be really into trading and investing to buy into that concept.

I mean if you're a novice, and someone says this to you, and then you go to CoinMarketCap or CoinGecko and all you see is tons of red, you'd be biting your nails right now thinking, nuh uh, I don't have any money to lose, right? You're not necessarily going to take a long view of things, and particularly not when the president of the European Central Bank Christine Lagarde says cryptos are worth nothing.

According to Politico, Lagarde told Dutch television show College Tour on Sunday, "My humble assessment is that it is worth nothing. It is based on nothing, there is no underlying asset to act as an anchor of safety." Lagarde went on to say that while she had never invested in cryptocurrency, her son had with little luck.  Now see? Like I said, no one wants to lose and you're not gonna be confident in a thing that went poof just at the time you put your coins on the table. I wonder what coin her son invested in. That would be something, huh?

Still, I don't know friends, I'm a believer. I have faith. And so, I've been looking at some coins and tokens and trying to determine which ones are really feasible to support. Personally, after the LUNA/UST debacle, I'm a bit sceptical about the layer one protocols, I'll be honest. And I mean there are so many contenders in this arena, right? There's Solana, Avalanche, Cardano, Hedera Hashgraph, Algorand, Zilliqa, Fantom, Harmony One, Rose, Vechain, so many!  And they've each got tons of supporters shilling their worth. And I know that yeah, some are really good projects, but forgive me, I'm catching my breath. I'm still evaluating things a bit. Cuz when it comes to losing, I'm just like the other man, I don't like it. And so, I want that loss to be measured, and I want to have some expectation that as prices rise and fall, things won't just go plunk on me one day. Now Do Kwon, see what UST went and did?

I have been monitoring Ethereum though. I'm kinda interested to see what happens after the Merge. In case you haven't heard of it before, the Merge represents the blockchain's shift from a proof of work model, where miners complete complex puzzles to validate transactions, to a proof-of-stake mechanism where transactions will be validated by those who stake to the network.

This is a huge change and there's a lot of money behind it and according to reports, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has confirmed that the Merge should be executed in August. That, of course, is if there are no problems or delays. 

"September is possible and October is possible as well," Vitalik reportedly said while speaking at the ETH Shanghai Web 3.0 Developer Summit last Thursday. And so, friends, with ETH trending below $2,000, have you copped any coins? To be clear though, this is not investment advice. I'm just asking.

Anyways, friends, I've got my eye on a bit of ETH and I'm also looking at some gaming and metaverse coins. I don't know, I think there's a lot of room for this market to grow as well, and so, I've just been stacking coins in these areas though I understand that they're likely to be extremely volatile. What do you think?