Forum
OPRR
Finance
Specials
On-chain Eco
Entry
Podcasts
Data
This week's popular review | Azuki's new NFT series sparks community dissatisfaction; Bitcoin spot ETF application fails to be approved.
Summarized by AI
BlockBeats will summarize the industry's key news content for the week (6.26-7.01) in this article, and recommend in-depth articles to help readers better understand the market and industry trends.
This Week's Important News Review
SEC: BlackRock, Fidelity and other companies' applications for spot Bitcoin ETFs are insufficient
On June 30th, according to sources cited by the Wall Street Journal, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) told Nasdaq and the Chicago Options Exchange that the recent spot Bitcoin ETF applications submitted by BlackRock, Fidelity and other companies were not clear and comprehensive. Subsequently, Cboe's BZX trading platform resubmitted spot Bitcoin ETF applications for several potential issuers, designating cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase as the partner platform for its supervisory sharing agreement.
Maverick Protocol announces airdrop rules, 30 million MAV tokens available for application
On June 28th, DeFi infrastructure Maverick Protocol announced the airdrop rules, which will airdrop 30 million MAV tokens to users during the Pre-Season ecosystem incentive plan, accounting for 1.5% of the total token supply. The snapshot for this round was completed at 4:00 on June 23rd Beijing time. A total of 26,155 Ethereum mainnet wallet addresses and 96,075 zkSync Era network wallet addresses are eligible to claim MAV in this first airdrop. Eligible users can claim the airdrop after 16:00 on June 28th Beijing time.
Azuki's new NFT series is heavily criticized by the community for "raising money" and doing nothing
This week, Azuki announced the sales schedule for the Azuki Elementals NFT series. Azuki and BEANZ holders can mint the corresponding new series of NFTs. However, the sales window was very short, which caused many users to fail to complete the minting process. Later, it was found that the new series of NFTs were almost the same as the OG Azuki series, and even some NFTs appeared to be "duplicates". On June 28th, location tba, co-founder of the NFT project Azuki, posted on social media that "there are indeed major flaws in the Azuki Elementals NFT minting process, which severely underestimated the time required for Azuki and BEANZ holders in the first and second stages of the presale. The duration should be extended to more than 10 minutes so that there is enough buffer in case of any problems (which do exist)."
Later, Azuki's major shareholder, NDV Fund founder, and ManesLAB co-founder Christian expressed interest in acquiring the team. He had a phone call with Azuki founder Zaga, who had no intention of selling and responded to some community dissatisfaction issues. However, Zaga's explanation was not accepted by the community, and they are still dissatisfied with the team's inaction.
Related Reading:
《Azuki 引发众怒，昨夜新系列发售到底发生了什么?》 Translation:
"What happened with the release of the new Azuki series that caused public outrage?"
《Azuki 发售的 Elementals 为什么会撞图？》 Translation:
"Why did Azuki's Elementals collide with each other?"
Interview with He Yi by Bloomberg: Regulatory Compliance is the Trend, and the Close Relationship with CZ is Based on Shared Beliefs and Transcends Gender
On June 28th, Binance co-founder He Yi recently gave an interview with Bloomberg in Dubai, responding to issues such as regulation, changes in Binance's internal management, and its relationship with CZ. In He Yi's view, regulatory compliance is the trend, and the transparency provided by Binance is higher than what critics claim. Binance did not use user funds for its own purposes, nor did it use its native BNB token as collateral for loans. When asked if he and CZ had considered a Binance without them, He Yi said, "Both CZ and I have reserve executives undergoing training, and we are currently refusing to disclose their names. I think we will be fine." Related reading: "Bloomberg Interview with He Yi: I am the one who brought CZ into crypto trading"
MicroStrategy buys 12,333 bitcoins for approximately $347 million in cash
On June 28th, Michael Saylor, the founder of MicroStrategy, announced that the company had once again purchased 12,333 bitcoins at an average price of $28,136 between April 29th and June 27th, spending approximately $347 million. As of June 27th, 2023, MicroStrategy has purchased a total of 152,333 bitcoins at a price of approximately $4.52 billion, with an average price of $29,668 per bitcoin.
FTX Bankruptcy Report: Platform has recovered approximately 7 billion USD in liquid assets, executives deliberately concealed financial deficits as early as August 2022
On June 27th, according to the latest report submitted on Monday, FTX has recovered about $7 billion in liquid assets so far, and is expected to recover more. In addition, John J. Ray III, the new CEO of FTX, conducted further investigations into FTX's situation in 2022 in the report, stating that FTX owes customers $8.7 billion after mixing and misusing customer deposits, and executives had been concealing this issue since August 2022. At that time, FTX created a false customer account on the platform for the first time, and executives referred to this false account as the "Korean friend's account", which showed that the executives' "Korean friend" owed FTX $8.9 billion. As a result, executives lied to banks and auditors, executed false documents, and moved FTX Group out of the jurisdiction of the jurisdictional area, flying from the United States to Hong Kong and then to the Bahamas, constantly trying to avoid being discovered for their misconduct.
Juwhale and KOL question Sui Foundation's distortion of SUI release volume; Foundation responds and publishes unlocking schedule
On June 27th, @DefiSquared, one of the top 10 whale wallet traders according to DeBank, questioned the Sui Foundation for intentionally distorting the SUI release amount. There is evidence that the Sui team is transferring "locked" and "non-circulating" SUI staking rewards to Binance for sale. @DefiSquared stated that the actual SUI supply is increasing every day, including emissions from "locked" SUI allocations (such as VC shares), which are freely unlocked without restrictions. In addition, according to on-chain data, the SUI Foundation, which holds nearly 3 billion non-circulating and locked staked SUI (6 times the entire circulating supply), is openly selling unlocked rewards on the market. The foundation address (holding 2.7 billion SUI) has sent 27,000,000 SUI to the Binance platform.
On June 28th, the Sui Foundation officially responded that "locked" and "non-circulating" SUI staking rewards or any other tokens have not yet been sold on Binance or through other means. All token allocations are still subject to their lock-up period and other transfer restrictions. The Sui Foundation will soon release a detailed plan for the token release schedule.
This Week's Popular Articles
《TUSD，是时候重新认识这位 Binance 新贵了》
Translation:
"It's time to re-examine this Binance newcomer, TUSD"
In June 2023, with another round of issuance, the circulation of TUSD (TrueUSD) has exceeded 3 billion, approaching the market value of BUSD, becoming the 5th largest stablecoin. In 2023, the issuance of TUSD increased by more than 200%, making it the only stablecoin with rapid growth in circulation during the bear market of cryptocurrency. What is the background of TUSD? Why did Binance choose it?
"Prospects Optimistic? A Review of Projects Adopting OP Stack"
opBNB is one of the recent members to join the OP Super Chain, but not the only one. In fact, we have seen several well-known projects join the OP Chain camp, including the OP Mainnet developed in-house, the Base Chain developed by Coinbase, the World App ecosystem wallet under Worldcoin, the NFT trading market Zora invested by Paradigm, and the client Magi written in Rust launched by top venture capital firm a16z, all working together to create the grand narrative of the Super Chain. It can be said that Optimism's previous narrative has gradually landed and begun to collapse into reality. Although the ultimate vision has not yet been realized, the summer of this application chain has truly arrived.
"zkSync launches OP Stack competitor, can it win the L2 scaling battle?"
On the evening of June 26th, zkSync announced the launch of a modular open-source framework called ZK Stack for building custom zkRollups. The framework aims to give developers complete autonomy, from choosing data availability models to using their own project's token for decentralized sequencer. Before the mainnet token was even launched, ZK Stack was seen by many as a killer move by the zkSync team to compete with OP Stack and Arbitrum Orbit. So what are the features of ZK Stack? And how does it compare to OP Stack in terms of advantages and disadvantages?
"MakerDAO's Business Reshaping: From Crypto Collateralized Loans to RWA"
Maker is transitioning from a classical DeFi protocol to the direction of RWA (Real World Assets). After raising the DSR (DAI savings rate) to 3.49%, Maker finally allows ordinary users to earn profits from US Treasury bonds through top DeFi protocols. Recently, MakerDAO has shown excellent performance in various data. According to makerburn.com, as of June 29th, Maker's estimated annual profit is $73.67 million, the highest in over a year. The current P/E ratio is 8.43, also the lowest in history, making it highly competitive among DeFi projects.
"How much did Li Ning and Greenland lose on the monkey picture they bought last year?"
As the NFT market enters a bear market, even the market leader "Bored Ape Yacht Club" (BAYC) has not been able to escape, and its floor price has plummeted. Against this backdrop, let's take a look back at the prominent individuals and companies who previously invested in BAYC. Without considering the value of airdrops and other potential value, how much did they actually lose on their investment in BAYC?
"Azuki also fell, is the narrative of picture NFT over?"
During such a bear market, the Azuki new series "Azuki Elementals" sold out in less than 20 minutes at a price of 2 ETH, with a total of 20,000 ETH (approximately $37.406 million) raised, earning over $2 million per minute. Everyone is "amazed" and saying that it's so easy to make money in a bear market... But after the release of Azuki Elementals, everyone exclaimed "WTF". It's not because the new series looks so good, but because they were dumbfounded - is this an increase in issuance?
The disaster sales issue of Azuki has not been resolved yet, and the price fluctuations of all series are still severe. In the early morning of June 30th, Christian, the major holder of the Azuki series and also the founder of NDV Fund and ManesLAB, had a long conversation with Zaga, the founder of Azuki, in a phone conference. The major holder, who had intended to offer $40 million to acquire Azuki, shared the content of the conversation with BlockBeats. In summary, the Azuki team underestimated the emotions of the community and overestimated their own abilities. They do not want to do fundraising and will not sell the company.
BlockBeats interviewed Christian, the founder of NDV Fund and ManesLAB, who is also a major holder of the Azuki series. Currently, he holds 40 Azuki, 700 Beanz, and 400 Azuki Elementals. After the "thunderstorm" incident, Christian once expressed his willingness to offer $40 million to acquire Azuki on social media. This may be a joke, but it also reflects the emotions of the Azuki community, which is angry and helpless.
"Why did Azuki's Elementals have a collision picture?"
On June 28th, A zuki's Elements series NFT was released, causing a frenzy in the community. However, due to the short ten-minute whitelist minting window, the website was overloaded and crashed. After the sale ended, the project team transferred 20,000 ETH directly. The most discussed topic in the community is the high degree of similarity between Elements and Azuki's first generation, which may directly dilute the value of Azuki's first generation. However, as more and more Elements are released, many holders have found that their Elements look exactly the same as those of other holders.
"Azuki falls Milady stands firm, does the project party really need a profile NFT?"
A large number of low-quality and speculative NFT projects flood the market, not only depleting the liquidity of the market, but also making the already sluggish NFT market even more lifeless. After PFP, what is the next new narrative in the NFT market? Perhaps "utility value" is the antidote to the NFT market.
"Network City Cabin: Digital Nomads, Log Cabins, Silicon Valley"
Digital Nomad, although not widely discussed in the cryptocurrency industry, many people have already practiced it for a long time. Ideally, they can earn first-tier city or even super-first-tier income, enjoy exotic cultures or low prices, human touch, and natural resources, and achieve geographical arbitrage. The network city Cabin, relying on the initial small cabin, extends infinitely in both the real and virtual dimensions, seemingly giving the possibility for "Silicon Valley" to scatter around the world. As for what Cabin is? How to become a citizen of Cabin? What is the governance method? Bypeerbase answers all these questions you want to know.
"Full Text of Bloomberg's Interview with He Yi: I am the One Who Brought CZ into Crypto Trading"
Over the past six years, a female executive at Binance has successfully avoided global attention, even in the current climate where governments around the world are cracking down on cryptocurrencies - her name is He Yi. As a heavyweight co-founder trapped in the cryptocurrency empire, He Yi is one of the most powerful players in this $1.2 trillion industry and one of the most influential women in the cryptocurrency industry.
"What coins did the whales buy during the Bitcoin rally?"
During the period when the price of Bitcoin surged from $25,000 to $31,000, the market was quiet. It seems that no one had anticipated the sudden surge of Bitcoin. Apart from Bitcoin, what other operations did whales have on altcoins? With the help of data from 0xScope, we found the buying and selling trends of whales holding positions with single swap transaction amounts exceeding $300,000 on the Ethereum chain between June 15th and June 27th (the period when Bitcoin was between $25,000 and $31,000), based on the number of transactions. Let's take a look at which tokens whales have been buying/selling recently.
Welcome to join the official community of BlockBeats by LuDong
Telegram subscription group: https://t.me/theblockbeats
Telegram communication group: https://t.me/theblockbeatsApp
Discord：https://discord.gg/Q8wuCmzKNk
Welcome to join the official BlockBeats community:
Telegram Subscription Group: https://t.me/theblockbeats
Telegram Discussion Group: https://t.me/BlockBeats_App
Official Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia
