48th Edition

This week in The Flippening, TL;DR

• A promising news emerges amidst the crypto winter woes as the world’s biggest NFT party signals confidence in the long-term prospects of NFT.
• The Wall Street firm is looking for $2 billion in commitments from investors to purchase distressed assets at significant discounts if the crypto lender fails.
• Members of the Lido DAO are debating on whether Lido should lessen its control over the ETH2.0 staking pool.

Top Highlights of the Week

The world’s biggest NFT party signals confidence amid crypto winter woes

Despite widespread recognition that crypto winter is having a chilling effect on everything, last week’s NFT NYC conference turned Times Square into a hotbed of crypto enthusiasm as 15,000 artists, fans, creators, and collectors gathered to celebrate the long-term prospects of NFT tech despite the sector’s nearly 40% drop in market cap since April.

While big-name NFT collections like Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and celebrity crypto boosters like Snoop Dogg produced some of the buzziest headlines of the week, plenty of promising NFT news emerged from different corners of the market as well.

Goldman Sachs Leading Investor Group to Buy Celsius Assets

Goldman Sachs is supposedly seeking to raise $2 billion from investors to potentially purchase assets from troubled crypto lender Celsius.

In the event of a bankruptcy filing, the investors would be able to purchase Celsius assets at a reduced price. Goldman appears to be requesting commitments from traditional financial institutions, web3 crypto funds, and funds that specialize in distressed assets.

Lido DAO Begins Vote On Whether To Limit Its Ethereum Staking Dominance

Lido DAO members are voting on whether Lido should reduce its dominance of the ETH2.0 staking pool. The popular service, called liquid staking, allows users to effectively unlock the value of their staked crypto.

Lido currently makes up approximately 31% of all stakes on the Ethereum Beacon chain. Critics contend that Lido's governance structure and staking dominance are potentially risky from the point of centralization.

The voting process will end on July 1 at 5 AM ET. If the majority chooses yes, another governance vote will be held to determine how the self-limiting process should operate.

Other Highlights:

• Catalonia's innovation minister is building its own metaverse called the Cataverse. Talk about innovation and proactiveness!
  
• Ethereum developers announced today that they successfully conducted the Gray Glacier hard fork upgrade on the Sepolia testnet. It brings the transition to the 'Merge' a step closer.
  
• Polkadot Announces New Blockchain Governance Model. This new model aims to significantly decentralize the governance structure.
  
• Facebook Begins Testing Ethereum and Polygon NFTs on Profiles. 

Disclaimer: All price movements are recorded up to 10:00 AM UTC

Yet another week of the crypto ecosystem being under pressure from bears! However, with the successful deployment of the upgrade in the Ethereum, the transition to a Proof of Stake mechanism is a step closer. It seems to have brought a shift in sentiments on a daily timeframe. The coming few days are likely to be a bit volatile! Gear up!

Disclaimer: All price movements are recorded up to 10:00 AM UTC

Most of the top sectors in crypto remained in the red this week. However, the blood bath from the past couple of weeks seems to have subsided now. Web3.0 remained the most beaten down sector of the week.

Coin of the week

Ether: $ETH

Our coin of the week is the largest altcoin and the time tested crypto, Ether. There are a couple of reasons why ETH is our pick this time:

• The successful and stable deployment of the hard fork on the Sepolia testnet. With this upgrade, the developers have until mid-October to complete the long-awaited Merge.
• ETH is currently available around $1000, which is a bargain.
• The time to accumulate the ETH is before the 'Merge' and after the 'Merge'!

Crypto simplified

Grayscale Investments, the firm managing the world's largest Bitcoin fund, sued the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Thursday after they turned down the request to turn its Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), worth $13.5 billion, into a spot Exchange Traded Fund (ETF).

What is a spot ETF?

A spot Bitcoin ETF enables you to trade in Bitcoin at its current value. At the same time, the futures ETF is a contract between a buyer and a seller where the Bitcoin holder promises to sell their Bitcoin after it reaches a specific price point in the future, and the buyer agrees to buy it.

Okay, But why was the spot ETF turned down?

Well, the SEC says that it denied Grayscale's proposal because their investment manager couldn't answer concerns about market manipulation.

Didn't they recently green lit Bitcoin-based ETFs, including those based on futures markets and those allowing investors to short the cryptocurrency, which are far riskier than a spot ETF? It seems they did, and that is why Grayscale thinks that the SEC has been inconsistent with their judgement on ETFs.

Greyscale's senior legal strategist, Verrilli, said the SEC is "failing to apply consistent treatment to similar investment vehicles, and is therefore acting arbitrarily and capriciously in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act and Securities Exchange Act of 1934."

Grayscale filed to make its Bitcoin Trust an ETF in October 2021, but the ruling faced multiple delays. Eventually, Grayscale put pressure on the regulators by giving people a way of quickly emailing in to express their support for the ETF but nothing worked :/

The fight for a spot Bitcoin ETF has been on since 2013, for how long do you think it will last?

 Featured - Mudrex Coin Sets

Smart Contract Platforms:- This Coin Set invests in tokens of platforms to build the smart contract infrastructure. Adding such potential tokens to your portfolio can offer stable investment opportunities for long term investors.

Metaverse:- With massive corporations entering into the metaverse space, this Coin Set invests in platforms building the infra which can potentially impact the metaverse space.‍

DeFi 10:- This Coin Set is created with the belief that DeFi will make finance more efficient and more accessible to everyone. DeFi revolves around decentralized applications (DApps) built on blockchains.

 Here we are, at the end of our 48th edition. We hope you liked reading it. On this note we leave you with a take on the current state of the long awaited Ethereum "Merge"

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