tl;dr
• Popular Ethereum sidechain, Ronin Bridge, breached for over $600M• On the heels of its FIFA deal, Crypto.com teams with UK-based esports company Fnatic to create a new membership program• The Shiba Inu team has teased an announcement coming tomorrow• Mastercard is making a big move into crypto par...
• Popular Ethereum sidechain, Ronin Bridge, breached for over $600M
• On the heels of its FIFA deal, Crypto.com teams with UK-based esports company Fnatic to create a new membership program
• The Shiba Inu team has teased an announcement coming tomorrow
• Mastercard is making a big move into crypto partnering with Australian centralized (CEX) BTC Markets
• Curious about crypto and looking to make Vietnam a crypto hub, the country is developing a regulatory framework
I am seeing a lot of deals happening that lead to a positive future for crypto. Here is what's on my mind today.
1. Popular Ethereum sidechain, Ronin Bridge, breached for over $600M. Announced on the developer's Twitter account, Sky Mavis stated the hack happened March 23rd but was only discovered today. The attacker was able to steal 173K WETH (Wrapped Ethereum) valued at $597M and about $26M worth of USDC, with a total value of approximately $622M. It takes 5 validator signatures for deposits and withdrawals. As per their report, the “attacker managed to get control over Sky Mavis’s four Ronin Validators and a third-party validator run by Axie DAO.” The team is working to increase the number of validators from 5 to 8. Still, this is a larger problem in my eyes. It will take the team some time to get to the core issue of how the attacker got control in the first place. As you can imagine, the value of Axie Infinity's coin, AXS, has dropped.
2. On the heels of its FIFA deal, Crypto.com teams with UK-based esports company Fnatic to create a new membership program powered by blockchain technology. With three tiers (Citizen, Core and Pioneer) the program will offer fans full ownership of the digital asset along with members-only benefits across digital and physical products, exclusive events, services, etc. This new program further extends the original 5-year, $15M deal signed in September 2021.
3. The Shiba Inu team has teased an announcement coming tomorrow. They have pulled back from the day's highs, but I suspect tomorrow's announcement will be about their metaverse. In their Twitter post today, there was a map emoji used. If that is the case, I would expect another pop in the value of the coin. The question is, will the pop stick?
4. Mastercard is making a big move into crypto partnering with Australian centralized (CEX) BTC Markets. The partnership will enable exchange customers to purchase digital assets via their fiat onramp. This means customers would be able to directly use debit cards, credit cards or prepaid cards. Even though this is a smaller exchange, this is still a strong move by Mastercard and a very strategic one by BTC Markets.
5. Curious about crypto and looking to make Vietnam a crypto hub, the country is developing a regulatory framework. With over 6% of its population holding crypto, Vietnam is ranked tenth in the world by highest percentage of population. The country is seeing a fast surge in gaming startups. Even Axie Infinity has origins in the country.