macro market

  • The minutes of the latest U.S. Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting made it clear that the Fed's "restrictive policy stance needs to be maintained" until there is "more evidence of progress" to curb inflation. Traders now expect the Fed to raise interest rates by 0.25% at its next meeting in February, with the possibility of a rate cut before the end of 2023.

 

cryptocurrency market

DeFi

  • Avalanche ecosystem trading protocol Trader Joe is expanding its DEX and NFT marketplace to BNB Chain, with deployment scheduled for March 2023. BNB Chain users will be able to participate in the launch of new NFT series using the Joepegs NFT Marketplace, as well as trade tokens using the Liquidity Book.

  • SushiSwap is in a tough time. After news that SushiSwap was in deficit, SushiSwap CTO Matthew Lilley said on Twitter that SushiSwap will abandon the lending platform Kashi and the multi-chain token launch platform MISO. The reasons for the elimination of the products include design process, operational losses and lack of resources.

  • Security audit firm Dedaub discovered a bug in Uniswap’s Universal Router smart contract.Critical Vulnerabilities, which allowed funds to be stolen during token transfers. Uniswap fixed the issue and redeployed the Universal Router smart contract on all of its chains, and no funds were stolen.
     

NFT

  • A bug on NFT marketplace Magic Eden caused fake NFTs to be listed on collection pages and subsequently sold for several fake NFTs. Magic Eden has addressed the issue by adding more layers of verification for NFT collections and will refund affected users. The impact was reportedly contained in 25 unverified NFTs sold across 4 series.

  • Web 2 x NFT integration has taken another step forward - blockchain tech startup Venly announced expanded support for Avalanche through its Shopify NFT minting application. The platform was previously only available to select Shopify users, who could design, mint and sell NFTs directly on the platform. Now it is available to any merchant on the platform.

  • DNP3, the founder of the NFT project Goobers, admitted to embezzling user funds for gambling. He is "completely broke now." It is not clear how much money was lost. For context, Goobers NFT was launched in September 2021 as a collection of 15,000 collectibles, and sales on OpenSea have reached 969 ETH (about $1.2 million) so far.

  • Yosuke Matsuda, president of Japanese gaming giant Square Enix, said in his annual letter that according to its mid-term business plan, the company remains “most focused on blockchain entertainment,” a positive sign that the company has multiple blockchain games based on original IP in development, including games announced last year, with more to come this year. Despite a volatile year in the field, he reiterated the company’s commitment to blockchain games, mentioning that Square Enix is ​​developing “multiple blockchain games.”

  • Blockchain game studio Illuvium will kick off 2023 with the launch of its Private Alpha test on January 6. Access to its third blockchain game will be limited to players who hold any tier of land.

other

  • Wyre, a crypto payment infrastructure company, is reportedly shutting down and plans to terminate its services this month. Founded in 2013, Wyre was originally supposed to be acquired by Bolt for $1.5 billion, but the deal was canceled in September.

  • Happy 14th anniversary Bitcoin! Satoshi Nakamoto mined the first Bitcoin block on January 3, 2009. BTC has come a long way since then, reaching a market cap of $324B at the time of writing.

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