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Hello and welcome back to the TechCrunch Crypto newsletter.
I hope all of you “Choose Rich” this week, which may be the newest slogan adopted by the crypto community, thanks to Nick O’Neill, co-founder and CEO of Nifty Portal, who said so in a parody video the manufacture. This is arguably a more empowering message, as opposed to the long-standing crypto phrase that tells people to “Have fun staying poor.”
Will this help get more people into space? Let’s do a rain check to answer this question.
It’s been an eventful week in the world of cryptocurrencies: bitcoin price hit a new all-time high, Solana surged to early 2022 levels as memecoins on its chain grew, Sei Labs created a new framework to help Ethereum, Nigeria is at odds with Binance and Worldcoin is facing heatwave in Spain.
More details below.
This week on web3
- Solana price rises to $160, highest level since January 2022 as memecoin craze grows
- Blockchain startup Sei Labs is creating an interesting solution to make Ethereum faster
- Nigeria demands Binance reveal top users, executives remain in custody
- Worldcoin fails to take action against Spain privacy suspension
- And…Worldcoin says it has stopped its services in Spain, after filing a legal challenge to the temporary ban
- Bitcoin hits new all-time high of $72,700, but one indicator warns we’re in ‘extreme greed’ territory
- The NFT Zora platform offers a new way for AI model builders to make money
Crisp numbers
As mentioned, this week the crypto space again saw all-time highs for bitcoin. It was up 8.5% on the week to $72,500 and 40.4% higher on the month at press time. The second-largest cryptocurrency, ether, rose 3.8% on the week to $3,900, according to CoinMarketCap data. The total crypto market cap rose 8.3% over the same time period to $2.75 trillion.
Memecoins across the Ethereum, Solana, and Avalanche blockchains have seen a massive rally as the crypto market continues to expand.
Mog coin, a self-proclaimed “civilization coin” on Ethereum, has a market cap of $435.3 million and is up 4% on the week. Solana-based dogwifhat, which is based on a Shiba Inu in a beanie, was up 79% over a seven-day period, and Coq Inu, Avalanche, was up 36% over the same period.
It is important to remember that while some memecoins will hold price support for a long time, some may plummet within days or hours. Well, DYOR.
The last pod
Chain Reaction does a monthly series that dives into different topics and issues in crypto. This month we focus on blockchain and AI integrations.
For this week episodeI interviewed Melody Hildebrandt, CTO of Fox Corporation, and Mike Blank, COO at Polygon Labs.
Why these two companies? Well, Polygon Labs, the layer-2 blockchain focused on scaling Ethereum, and Fox Corporation, the well-known media conglomerate, joined forces in January to tackle deepfakes as artificial intelligence becomes more widespread.
Fox launched Verify, an open source technical protocol for media companies to register content and grant usage rights to AI platforms, also allowing consumers to verify content through Polygon’s technology.
We discuss:
- The Fox and Polygon partnership
- Protecting content from misuse
- What role can blockchain technology play with news verification
- How deepfakes could affect the 2024 US election
Sign up to Chain reaction on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite pod platform to catch up on the latest episodes and leave us a review if you like what you hear!
Follow the money
- Former web3 gaming founders raise $2.5M for their NFT market to keep users even when ‘there’s no money to be made’
- Netherlands-based institutional exchange D2X raises $10 million in Series A led by Point72 Ventures
- Web3 Infrared Provider Polyhedra Network Raises $20M at $1B Valuation
- ClearToken raises $10 million from institutional investors to improve regulated clearing infrastructure
- UXLINK Raises $9M for Web3 Social Platform and Infrastructure to Help Grow dApps
This list was compiled with information from Messari as well as reports from TechCrunch itself.
What else are we writing?
Want to escape the web3 world? Here are some TechCrunch articles that caught our attention this week.
- OpenAI’s agreements with publishers could cause problems for adversaries
- Amazon now allows sellers to generate listings via URLs using AI
- SpaceX aims to launch the massive Starship for the third time early Thursday
- Creators are frustrated but energized as the TikTok ban gains momentum
- Fast trade is making rapid inroads in India
