THIS NEWSLETTER IS SPONSORED BY | Happy Saturday! Noise: OpenSea is having expensive UI issues, fintech SPACs are headed for trouble, and what's the story behind LooksRare? Signal: below. Mike Orcutt here. | | | El Salvador's Chivo wallet keeps breaking, and users are seeking answers. Kristin Majcher spent the past several weeks digging through Twitter complaints and speaking with users about El Salvador's state-provided bitcoin wallet software, called Chivo. In short, the platform, which launched in September to much hype and fanare, seems to be full of technical issues and problems from ID theft to lost funds. And yet, despite the ongoing barrage of complaints, there has been hardly a word from the government.
| How fintech SPACs lost their shine. SPAC deals have been hot for a couple years now, particularly in fintech and crypto. But Lucy Harley-Mckeown reports that trouble is ahead for many of these deals, which have been marred by delays and are now facing the possibility that stricter regulation might be on the horizon. | An interview with a spokesperson for the mysterious NFT project LooksRare. Almost overnight OpenSea has gained a new rival, called LooksRare. Launched by pseudonymous cofounders, the platform is aiming to draw big NFT traders away from established platforms by using its token, called LOOKS, as an incentive. Tim Copeland was recently able to catch up with a spokesperson for the project, who described the team's mission and explained how the site is dealing with the rampant wash trading that has characterized its early days. | How crypto and buy now, pay layer services may fit together. Venture capitalists will tell you that two of the hottest trends in fintech right now are crypto and so-called buy now, pay later (BNPL) services that essentially offer uncollateralized loans. But what happens when you mix the two? Several BNPL platforms have plans to add crypto trading features, and at least one is exploring a stablecoin payment method. Tom Matsuda reports. |  | | | The Mina Protocol. The promise of zero-knowledge proofs for digital money systems is profound. The Mina protocol uses zk proofs to scale its layer 1 blockchain, which in its entirety is only 22 kilobytes in size. Technically, it uses "recursive zk-SNARKs" to "(compress) the validity of all prior (blockchain) states into a succinct proof," explains Arnold Toh in his latest deep dive for The Block Research (membership to The Block Research required). That means network nodes don't need to host the entire history, as is typical with blockchains. Did you know that Mina also uses the proof of stake consensus process used by Cardano? Arnold's piece will tell you everything you need to know about this blockchain system.
Crypto lobbying. Kollen Post has been digging through crypto lobbying disclosures again. This quarter, he found that Coinbase spent a cool million while FTX US, Binance US and Gemini have all entered the lobbying game in recent months. Read Kollen's analysis.
OpenSea's expensive UI issue. OpenSea is scrambling to fix a UI problem that has led to the sales of many NFTs at far below market prices. But as Tim Copeland explains, one of its attempts has made the problem even worse. | | | THIS NEWSLETTER IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY |  | Join 5,000+ People in Real Vision Pro Crypto
Introducing: Pro Crypto, the new crypto research membership from Real Vision. Here's the TLDR: With a Pro Crypto membership, you get 70+ crypto and digital tech analysts bringing you in-depth bottom-up analysis and early market insights… A thriving online community of smart, thoughtful people… frequent video and flash updates… and a hell of a lot more. It's Raoul Pal's new go-to service…"I did it for me. If I feel overwhelmed by trying to keep up with what's going on, then I knew a lot of people do." Here's what it is: An elite membership with deep dive reports, regular video interviews, flash updates, Discord sessions, priority access to Real Vision events, and access to Real Vision's macro and educational content. Here's what it's not: It's not a service that holds your hand. Or a cheap service. And you'll never see a 'here's the top 10 coins of the week' report… Years in the making... Days to become a 5,000+ strong membership of digital assets aficionados. And through January 28, The Block readers can avail themselves of our special launch discount, (and yeah, we take crypto for annual memberships). | | | The plot to hand the crypto industry to the big banks. That's the darkly dramatic headline on a new article from Decrypt's Jeff John Roberts that describes an apparent effort by the Biden administration to pursue a "crafty strategy to tame an industry it views as a threat."
Roberts reports that "interviews with former regulators and executives at top crypto firms renewal a sophisticated plan not to crush crypto, but to co-opt it by handing a core part of the crypto industry — stablecoins — to the big banks." I suggest you read the whole story before deciding what you think. | | | You are receiving this e-mail because you are subscribed to The Block's free newsletter. If someone shared this newsletter with you, you can easily subscribe to receive it in your inbox here. If you're looking for even more content, we have a separate newsletter for The Block Research, which you can sign-up for here. | | | | |
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