Solana set to Release Mobile Phone
Market Movers
The largest coins by market cap were in the green for the week (feels good to write that)
Bitcoin jumped over 5%, XRP rose just north of 14%, and SOL skyrocketed over 23%
Compound (COMP) was our pump coin of the week, rising 68.71%
COMP is a DeFi lending platform launched in 2018 by two former high-profile Postmates employees
First Sip
If you’re already a crypto native, feel free to skip to “Table Talk.”
WHAT IS BNB?
We’ve discussed most of the top ten tokens by Market Cap in recent weeks. With Dogecoin’s recent rally, two are left: BNB and DOGE. We’re doing BNB this week, and stay tuned for DOGE next week.
BNB is the coin offered by Binance, the China-based cryptocurrency exchange. It was initially launched in 2017 during the Initial Coin Offering (ICO) mania, where they retained 40% of the total supply of 200M, gave 10% of the supply to angel investors, and offered the other 50% at a rate of $0.15 per coin. BNB was initially a token built on the Ethereum blockchain and was converted to a coin on Binance‘s blockchain in 2019.
Though BNB was initially used as a seed investment vehicle, BNB can now be used to pay for services on the Binance and offers a fee reduction of between 10-25% to users who hold BNB (via Binance). Many crypto apps built on the Binance blockchain also support BNB as a store of value.
BNB also features a “burn system,” which means that every quarter Binance buys some BNB coins and permanently destroys them. The idea behind this is that decreasing the overall supply of BNB should increase the value/price as it’s a deflationary practice.
Table Talk
GOLDMAN SACHS TO BUY CELSIUS?
Last week, we spoke about crypto loan company Celsius Network “freezing out” their network, and its customers, by not allowing their users to transfer and/or withdraw any funds from their protocol.
Fast forward to early this past week, where news was released that the distressed company hired restructuring consultants from Alvarez & Marsal to advise them on a potential bankruptcy filing. The WSJ also reported that the company has turned to investment bank Citigroup to seek any additional solutions (via WSJ).
Then this past Friday, CoinDesk reported that Goldman Sachs is asking for $2B from investors to purchase Celsius’s assets if the company does go bankrupt. As of May 2022, Celsius has loaned out $8B to clients and has another $12B in assets under management. Notice the disparity in value between Goldman’s reported buying price ($2B) and how much Celsius has lent out and currently has under management ($20B).
Discount, discount, discount.
It is yet to be determined whether a bankruptcy filing will come to fruition. For instance, Celsius could be loaned money by a larger crypto firm (FTX, Binance, etc.) to ensure they do not go under when they begin to allow withdrawals again. Time will tell.
NFT Buzz
SOLANA TO RELEASE MOBILE PHONE
New York City hosted its annual NFT convention this past week, officially known as NFT.NYC.
Although the conference featured 1,500 speakers, including an array of NFT project leaders, the guest who generated the most buzz may have been Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, who announced his company’s plan to release their own mobile phone: Saga, set to ship in the first quarter of 2023.
Saga will be priced at $1,000 and is available for pre-order now. It will allow its users to use the phone as their de facto hardware wallet to store digital assets while still offering software wallet capabilities, amongst other utilities.
The company’s goal is to make accessing and storing your cryptocurrencies and NFTs safe and easy for beginners while also providing exceptional functionality for more advanced users.
In an interview with Bloomberg following the conference, Yakovenko talked about how many non-crypto experts get confused, and rightfully so, with the array of different wallets and options available to store and send one’s digital assets.
Software wallets can be downloaded on phones or computers and offer a great user experience; however, they do not offer the same security that hardware wallets can. On the other hand, dedicated hardware wallets are very secure but lack the same overall functionality.Because of this, Yakovenko wants Saga to be the best of both the hardware wallet and software wallet worlds. In his own words, he wants Saga to be “delightful, easy, and simple… and have the user experience of Google Pay.”
DeFi Demographic
HARMONY $100M HACK
On June 24th, the Harmony protocol announced they’d discovered a hack for approximately $100M (via Twitter). They also shared the wallet address of the culprit using Etherscan to use the power of public ledgers to track the hacker’s moves and discourage them from converting the stolen assets using crypto exchanges. Harmony has paused operations of the compromised smart contract after the incident (via The Defiant).
Harmony provided a cross-chain bridge called the Horizon Bridge that supported the exchange of tokens and NFTs between Ethereum and the Binance Smart Chain (via investing.com). Cross-chain bridges work by allowing users to deposit some asset supported by one chain, for example, Ethereum, into the bridge’s smart contract. Then, the contract purchases or gives from a pool an equivalent amount of assets on the second chain, thereby allowing the user to execute their transactions on the second chain. The user then sends their remaining assets on the second chain to a wallet specified by the contract, and this amount is deducted from the original deposited amount and returned to the user minus the bridge’s transaction fee. The idea here is that this allows users of cross-chain bridges to minimize transaction fees of operating across chains.
To facilitate cross-chain interaction, the cross-chain bridge requires some sort of consensus mechanism. In this case, the Horizon Bridge used a multi-signature wallet method, the same method used by Axie Infinity’s Ronin Bridge in their $615M hack (via The Defiant). At least two of the four Horizon Bridge’s multi-signature wallets were compromised, which allowed the hacker to drain the bridge’s assets.
Final Cup
Goldman Sachs is reportedly looking into buying Celsius Networks’ distressed assets at a discounted price if the company goes bankrupt. When there’s blood in the water, the sharks will come.
Solana announced the 2023 release of their mobile phone Saga at NFT.NYC. Bullish.
Harmony protocol loses about $100M to a hacker because of their use of the same consensus mechanism as Axie Infinity's Ronin Bridge which lost $615M in the largest crypto hack in history earlier this year.
Meme of the Week (via Reddit)
Pat + Ari ✌️
Disclaimer: None of this is investment advice, financial advice, or trading advice. CRYPTOPONG does not endorse any of the cryptocurrencies, DeFi applications, or NFT collections mentioned in this article. Perform your own due diligence and/or consult a financial advisor before investing.