Blockworks Newsletter: The Best Crypto Newsletter for Investors

This issue was brought to you by Aave Arc:

Weekly Recap

Is this a crypto cold war, or are things just heating up?

Russia and China committed to crypto, and with billions pouring into the space each week, the pressure is on US regulators to make decisions.

This is the last time you’ll see Permissionless tickets under $1k, if you’re thinking of going, get yours now. (Students can get 90% off by the way!)

Now for your weekly updates:

Number of the Week

$1.19B

Crypto funding skyrocketed 50% WoW, with mega-rounds and private deals from Alchemy to Polygon to XYO totaling over $1.19 billion.

Top Insights

What Is Solana? Everything You Need To Know About the Ethereum Rival — Blockworks
Assessing Risk in Decentralized Finance — Moody's Analytics
Crypto’s Aspiring Washington Kingmaker — Politico
JPMorgan Says Bitcoin is 13% Overvalued — Blockworks
Maybe There’s a Use for Crypto After All (Helium) — NYT
How to get a $1.25 million loan by using NFTs as collateral — Fortune
The Top 3 Trends in Private Funds That Deal in Digital Assets [Sponsored] — Blockworks

Top News

Russia Moves to Recognize Crypto as a Form of Currency — Blockworks
Treasury Official Says Stablecoin Issuers Must be Banks to Ensure Security — Blockworks
NFT Home Sale Has 1,500 Bidders Lining Up — Blockworks
Wells Fargo: Cryptos Like Internet in Late ’90s, Nearing ‘Hyper Adoption Phase’ — Blockworks
Couple Arrested as Government Recovers $3.6B in Stolen Bitcoin — Blockworks
Market Recap: JPMorgan Analysts Predict $150K Bitcoin, Investors Ignore Coming Rate Hikes — Blockworks
Crypto Investors Low on Funds Might Have To Cash Out To Pay 2021 Tax Bill — Blockworks
Former JPMorgan Exec Named Algorand Foundation CEO — Blockworks
Crypto Startup That Trades Virtual Versions of Real World Assets Aims to Subvert Banks — Blockworks
Stablecoins Are Not the ‘Future of Payments’, Say NY Fed Economists — Blockworks
Wealthy NFT Owners Are Taking Out Loans Backed by Bored Apes, CryptoPunks — Blockworks
YouTube Doubles Down on NFT Integration, Exec Says — Blockworks
Crypto Exchanges Compete to Grab Super Bowl Spotlight — Blockworks
The Latest in Crypto Hiring: PayPal, Crypto.com Add to Digital Assets Headcount — Blockworks
Funding Roundup: $1.19 Billion Invested in Crypto Companies This Week — Blockworks

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Events of the Week

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Featured Webinar

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Tuesday, February 15, 2022

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What's Trending

Twitter:

1/ The future of crypto is multi-chain. Not convinced? Alternatives to Ethereum took off in 2021: (Thread) (Charts) — Michiel Van Tilborg
I can't tell you how much I love this (Excerpt) — Jake Chervinsky
1/ So many truth bombs in this terrific blog post. Must read for US customers of crypto exchanges/custodians (Continues) (Thread) — Caitlin Long
Companies hiring for crypto jobs: - NFL - Nike - Hulu - VISA . . . (Continues) — Blockworks
Explanation of Perpetual Swaps: Open Interest, Premiums/Discounts, Funding rates, Liquidations (Thread) (Charts) — Will Clemente
Bitcoin in a prolonged regime of both aggregated spot premium over perps and Coinbase spot premium over Bybit perps. Might be too much alpha for Twitter tbh (Chart) — Will Clemente
This "Era 4" period over the past few years involved the rollout and normalization of institutional-grade custodians, and various large pools of capital gaining exposure to bitcoin through them. (Chart) — Lyn Alden
There was $4bn more crypto VC funding in Q4-21 than in all of 2019 & 2020 combined and people will still swear to you we're going into a deep bear market bc muh Fed tightening. (Chart) — Travis Kling
The crypto bounce feels big but BTC is really just making up for prior weakness. BTC has recovered 29% of the drop from 69k to 33k. (Continues) (Chart) — Brent Donnely
Did gold miss the memo? . . . (Continues) (Chart) — Jurrien Timmer

LinkedIn:

Five groups of technologies could attract $2T of capital per year by 2025 (Table) — McKinsey & Company
NFTs have utility beyond digital art (Continues) (Picture) — Chris Sarandos
While 2021 was the year of the Ethereum challengers (Solana, Avalanche Terra), where they took 30% TVL market share, this year could be setting up as . . . (Continues) (Chart) — Jamie Coutts
Will 2022 Be That Easy? Nasdaq 15,000 vs. Bitcoin, Risk Assets (Chart) — Mike McGlone
This graph shows ARK Innovation 2016-2022 (red) versus the “dot-com bubble” 1995-2001 (blue). . . (Continues) (Graph) — Lars Tvede
Went on cnbc this morning in dubai and chatted a little crypto and nft concepts (Video) — Gary Vaynerchuk
Has Bitcoin Bottomed? It Looks Unlikely If Stock Market Hasn't (Continues) (Chart) — Mike McGlone

We're Watching

Jack Farley and Joseph Wang join On the Margin for a deep dive into the forces behind the record 7.5% CPI print.

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Written by @aaronhasapen.

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