THIS NEWSLETTER IS SPONSORED BY |  |  | - Bitmain says it will no longer ship bitcoin miners in mainland China. China's ever-escalating crypto crackdown is now impacting the country's most famous bitcoin company. The Beijing-based firm announced the news on Sunday, saying that it will follow local regulations and suspend domestic delivery starting from Monday, but overseas business remains as usual. Some Chinese miners have also been recently sharing anecdotes of them receiving calls from local energy and telecommunication bureaus, who questioned them over mining suspicion and sent staff for on-site inspection because of their abnormal energy consumption, based on group chat messages seen by The Block.
| - Bored Ape Yacht Club plans to launch its own token in Q1 of 2022. The NFT major-cum-social-society is getting its own crypto token. "It's stupid easy to launch an ERC-20 token; it takes minutes," BAYC wrote on Twitter. "It's much more complicated to construct a legally compliant token and set it up in a responsible, sustainable way." The BAYC team notes that it is these legal parameters, as well as other concerns like utility, governance, owner benefits and audience reach, that make the token launch tricky. However, they are working with the tech-focused legal team Fenwick West and blockchain-based tech firm Horizen Labs to handle such complexities. Stay tuned.
| - German art forger Wolfgang Beltracchi, who has served prison time, has entered the world of NFTs. Wolfgang Beltracchi, one of the most infamous art forgers of all time, has entered the unforgeable world of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Beltracchi has set up a new project, dubbed "The Greats," a collection of 4,608 NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain. The artworks are re-creations of Salvator Mundi, the world's most expensive painting and one of the most controversial ones. The painting, believed to have been made by Leonardo da Vinci (circa 1490–1500), was sold for a record price of $450 million at Christie's 2017 auction. It was sold to a proxy for Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince.
| - Ether whale Andrew Keys on building products in an uncertain regulatory environment. DARMA Capital's Andrew Keys is a believer in the disruptive power of Ethereum, but he's also concerned that regulators may stand in the way of it. Keys talked about the firm's journey since launching with just $100 million under management in 2019. He also looked forward, saying that despite the potential use cases of Ethereum and decentralized finance, regulatory headwinds might make it difficult for institutions to engage directly with the market.
| | | - The BTC-denominated capacity on the Lightning network, a second-layer protocol aimed at making it cheaper to send smaller transactions, passed 3,000 for the first time. In dollar terms, the network's capacity was worth north of $160 million as of October 8.
| - The bitcoin hash rate decline seen this summer -- triggered by the exodus of miners from China amid a crackdown -- has largely recovered, as shown via data collected by The Block Research. While still well below the network's hashrate all-time high, the network rose above 150 EH/s this week for the first time since June.
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| | | - Chingari, an Indian short-form video sharing platform, announced Friday that it raised $19 million via a token sale. In addition, the startup plans to launch its own social token, $GARI, on the Solana blockchain.
| - Stader Labs, an India-based crypto staking project, has raised $4 million in a seed funding round. The round was led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, True Ventures, Jump Capital, Huobi Ventures, TerraForm Labs, Solana Foundation, Near Foundation, and others.
| - The Dubai-based crypto exchange BitOasis has closed a $30 million funding round. The Series B round was co-led by Jump Capital and Wamda. A mix of new and old investors also participated, including newcomers Alameda Research and existing stakeholders Digital Currency Group, NXMH and Pantera Capital.
| - Sky Mavis, the creator of blockchain-enabled, play-to-earn game Axie Infinity, raised a $152 million Series B round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). With fresh capital at hand, Sky Mavis plans to expand its team, scale infrastructure, and build its own distribution platform to support game developers to create blockchain-enabled games.
| - Venture firm NFX has assembled a new $450 million fund aimed at expanding its efforts at investing in pre-seed and seed-stage companies, including those in the crypto space. Back in September 2020, the firm hired Morgan Beller, co-creator of the Facebook-led stablecoin project Libra (now Diem), as a general partner.
| - Warsaw-based crypto startup Ramp has closed a $30 million Series A fundraise led by British venture capital firm Balderton Capital, according to three people close to the deal. The crypto on-ramp specialist, which styles itself as the "PayPal for crypto," is now valued by investors at $300 million.
| | | The Block Research - Weekly Insights | - Mapping out the Cardano ecosystem. The Block Research's Melanie Goldsmith casts a wide net and breaks down the ins and outs of the Cardano ecosystem. As Goldsmith notes, Cardano team is split across three independent Cardano-centric entities, including the Cardano Foundation, IOHK, and Emurgo. Cardano was funded by the ICO (initial coin offering) of its native ADA token, with a debuted market cap of $600 million which now exceeds $69 billion.
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