Here comes your weekly must-read blockchain news wrap before Christmas. What’s happening this week?
It’s all about Bitcoin, expensive NFTs and unexpected DeFi news. Read on!
Bid for the Lands!
The Sandbox’s latest land sale has exceeded $50K. Its transaction volume has reached $383.22K on 11th Dec.
What’s more, in the charity auction for UNICEF on 21st Dec, the 12x12 Estate of 144 LAND NFTs were sold for 700,000 $SAND, worth about $32,373. It’s lovely to act well during this Christmas season.
Overall, the NFT market is definitely showing great potential. What are the most expensive NFTs? Check them here: https://www.dapp.com/article/10-most-expensive-nft.
About DeFi
A CEO Was Hacked
On 14th Dec, the CEO of Nexus Mutual, Hugh Karp, was hacked for about $8M in NXM tokens. The attacker remote-controlled his computer and modified his MetaMask wallet extension.
Karp offered $300K to the hacker in exchange for the stolen funds. Instead, the hacker rejected Karp’s offer and asked for 4,500 ETH, worth about $2.8M.
The good news for users is that only Karp’s address has been compromised and so far Nexus Mutual and users have remained unaffected.
Nexus Mutual transactions and volume remain relatively stable, but the users dropped sharply after 15th Dec.
A New Blockchain Created by Compound?
On 17th Dec, Compound released a whitepaper explaining its plans on Compound Chain, an application-specific blockchain that can provide money market services across multiple networks.
The new Compound Chain aims to lower gas costs, serve digital assets on chains other than Ethereum and reduce the scaling risks.
But both the on-chain data (users/transactions/volume) and the $COMP price did not react positively as expected after this news announced.
Compound is not the only project that seeks to do that.
Matic Network has already made Ethereum Layer 2 real with Ethereum wallet compatible, close-to-zero gas fee, high speed, and seamless asset merging with Ethereum.
We’ve also introduced how to do the best DeFi arbitrage with a solid 6.3% gain: you can borrow the cheapest USDT in EasyFi on Matic, then lend it in DeFi protocols on Ethereum.
Old Money Shilling Bitcoin?
Bitcoin $24K, More Players Coming
Bitcoin must have given us all a Christmas surprise by breaking $24K.
According to Bank of America survey, the most crowded trades long bitcoin, short dollar. As part of the firm's Global Fund Manager Survey, which goes out every month, "long bitcoin" is considered the third-most crowded trade among those surveyed.
Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken just announced that it will be integrating Bitcoin Lightning Network to its platform. Bitcoin's popularity can cause network congestion and high transaction fees, particularly during bull markets. Lightning Network exactly solves this problem by using the bitcoin blockchain more efficiently. We’ve introduced a lot of projects on Lightning Network: 6 Products To Earn Free Bitcoin With A Whoosh - By Lightning Network; 2 Ways To Earn Free Bitcoin As Passive Income; Satoshi's Games: Earn Satoshi By Playing Every Day … You can discover more by search “Lightning Network” on dapp.com.
This has also attracted more mainstream companies into the crypto asset market. Ruffer is the latest billion-dollar firm to bet on bitcoin. It announced on 16th Dec that, it allocated 2.5% of one of its funds to bitcoin.
What about Elon Musk? Convert Tesla Shares into Bitcoin?
Elon Musk tweeted 3 tweets about Bitcoin on the same day last week.
In one of his tweets, Michael Saylor, CEO of MicroStrategy suggests Elon Musk to convert his Tesla balance sheet from USD to Bitcoin if he wants to do his shareholders a $100 billion favor. And he disclosed that he himself has purchased over $1.3 billion over the past months when Elon doubted whether it is possible to run such a big amount transaction in Bitcoin.
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