Coinbase & Circle | Friend.tech & 100k users | Sei Mainnet & GoLive | Shiba Inu & Shibarium | Sell-off & $1b Liquidations | &more
18.08. - 22.08.2023
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1 | Coinbase takes stake in Circle
Crypto exchange Coinbase said Monday that it is increasing its support for stablecoins by "taking an equity stake" in Circle. As part of an agreement announced in a joint blog post, Circle will take full control over USDC issuance and governance. The stablecoin will be launching on six new blockchains, the statement also said. Exact terms of Coinbase's investment weren't disclosed. "The nature of the investment means that Coinbase and Circle will now have even greater strategic and economic alignment on the future of the financial system," Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said in the statement.
2 | Social Platform Friend.tech Gains 100K Users in Days Even in Depths of a Bear Market
Social platform Friend.tech, which lets holders buy "shares" of people who hold an account on X, formerly known as Twitter, and grants the buyers certain privileges, has surged to more than 100,000 addresses since its Aug. 10 launch according to a database created by Yearn Finance developer @Bantg. The database, listed briefly on GitHub and now withdrawn, apparently listed the crypto wallet addresses and linked X accounts. The growth correlates with the huge revenues made by the platform since its Aug. 10 launch, with over $25 million in fees generated, according to DefiLlama. A Dune Analytics dashboard corroborates the finding, pegging the number of unique users to at least 80,000, with 15,000 users added since Sunday.
3 | Sei Mainnet is Live After Testnet Sees More Than 7.5M Wallets Created
Sei Labs, the company behind layer 1 blockchain Sei, has announced that its mainnet is now live after a successful testnet phase. The blockchain's native token SEI also went live today on exchanges such as Binance, Kraken and Huobi, among others. The focus for Sei is to create a chain that offers users the ability to exchange assets easily, said the team behind the blockchain. Whether this means assets for social platforms, games or NFT’s, Sei is hoping to offer the smoothest experience.
4 | Shiba Inu’s Shibarium Ethereum L2 blockchain goes live on mainnet
Shiba Inu launched the Shibarium mainnet, an Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution, on Aug. 16 after months of testing that saw millions of users participate and 21 million wallets created. Shibarium is built on a new consensus mechanism called proof-of-participation (PoP), which works by selecting validators in proportion to their quantity of holdings in the associated cryptocurrency. This is done to avoid the computational cost of proof-of-work schemes. The new L2 blockchain solution is designed to interact with the primary Ethereum layer-1 blockchain, providing a more scalable and cost-effective transaction platform.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/shiba-inu-shibarium-ethereum-l2-blockchain-goes-live-mainnet
5 | Crypto Traders Suffer $1B in Liquidations in Sharp Sell-Off for Bitcoin, Ether
Cryptocurrency traders suffered $1 billion of losses in liquidations over the past 24 hours, according to Coinglass data, as digital-asset markets suffered one of their worst sell-offs of the year and bitcoin's price fell to a two-month low. Bitcoin, the largest and original cryptocurrency, tumbled 7% to about $26,900, after earlier in the day dropping close to $25,000, the lowest since June. Some $821 million of long positions – traders who bet on prices to rise – were wiped out during the rush to the exits, CoinGlass shows. Bitcoin (BTC) traders took the brunt of the losses, enduring $472 million of long liquidations, followed by ether (ETH) with $302 million.
6 | Checkout.com cuts ties with Binance
Credit cards payments processor Checkout.com is no longer servicing Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, a spokesperson from the exchange told TechCrunch. “There is no impact on our services and users can continue to use on-and off-ramps as usual,” the Binance spokesperson added. The London-based Checkout.com, which was valued at $40 billion in January 2022, terminated the relationship earlier this month through a pair of letters, according to a report from Forbes. “We can confirm that as of this summer we no longer process payments for Binance,” a Checkout.com spokesperson told TechCrunch after publication. “This was our proactive decision on the basis of what we thought was best for Checkout.com.”
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