Mic Drop
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Bored Ape Yacht Club creator Yuga Labs raised $320 million in crypto when it sold off land parcels in its virtual world Saturday night—and demand was so wild that it caused disruptions across the Ethereum blockchain. Transaction fees to mint an Otherdeed NFT soared to about 2 ether, or $6,000, after the launch.
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The 91-year-old investing legend pushed his “buy and hold” investing strategy before thousands of finance nerds at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholders meeting this weekend.
It’s worked out pretty well this year. Berkshire Hathaway, a conglomerate with investments across corporate America, is up 10% so far in 2022, compared to the S&P’s 13% drop-off.
And Buffett’s buying the dip
Berkshire scooped up $51.1 billion of US stocks during the market sell-off in Q1. Of course, Buffett would never call it “buying the dip” because he doesn’t believe in timing the market. Speaking of timing, Buffett said he and his BFF Charlie Munger “haven’t the faintest idea what the stock market is gonna do when it opens on Monday.”
So what did he buy?
- He’s certainly bullish on the energy sector. In Q1, Berkshire acquired a big stake in Occidental Petroleum and juiced its stake in Chevron (which is now the company’s fourth-largest holding).
- And…video games? It’s unlikely that Buffett has ever touched an Xbox controller, but Berkshire Hathaway is now the largest shareholder of Activision Blizzard after amassing a 9.5% stake. Activision stock has jumped more than 15% after Microsoft agreed to acquire it in January.
Buffett said the influx of new traders buying and selling stocks during the pandemic has turned the market into “almost totally a casino” in which large American companies have become “poker chips.” Munger lashed out at the trading app Robinhood specifically for promoting the gambling dynamic. Citing Robinhood stock’s 86% plunge from its peak, the 98 year old said, “God is getting just.”
Buffett also chimed in on the state of the US economy, most notably the inflation that’s soared to 40-year highs. Buffett said that inflation “swindles almost everybody” and was a result of the Fed’s gargantuan stimulus measures to prop up the economy during the pandemic. But he still thinks the Fed did the right thing: “In my book, Jay Powell is a hero. It’s very simple. He did what he had to do.”
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With a 13.3% drop so far in 2022, the S&P is having its worst start to a year since 1939.
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On Saturday, Solana faced its seventh outage thus far in 2022. The outage lasted for seven hours overnight between Saturday and Sunday and is being attributed to a swarm of bots that overwhelmed the Candy Machine, a tool for minting non-fungible tokens
Metaplex, the NFT platform powering Candy Machine, identified the bots inside the dApp as the primary cause of Solana's downtime and revealed a plan to address the issue and prevent it from happening again.
Metaplex elaborated on their plan stating,
“To combat this, we have merged and will soon deploy a botting penalty to the program as part of a broader effort to stabilise the network. Candy Machine is used by a majority of new SolanaNFT projects to launch their collections. In this change, a 0.01 SOL penalty will be collected when a wallet attempts to complete an invalid transaction, which is typically done by bots that are blindly trying to mint.”
https://www.coinbureau.com/news/solana-faces-seven-hour-outage-after-bots-overwhelm-nft-minting-app/
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Charlie Munger wants the US to ban Bitcoin like China did and Warren Buffett agreed.
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PSA: if you use fidelity, ask your employer to enable bitcoin as a 401k option
If people in your company complain bitcoin is bad for the environment, respectfully point out that they are free not to invest in bitcoin, and that a respectful work environment can't have employees trying to control other employees' choices and beliefs. Then share a link to the human fight's foundation's video which says opposition to bitcoin comes from a place of enormous financial privilege.
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Deutscher Sparkassen- und Giroverband "Kryptowährungen sind keine Geldanlagen, die ihre Kunden anbieten wollen. Die Volksbank Raiffeisenbank Bayern Mitte eG bietet ihren 174.000 Kunden Bitcoins zum Kauf an. "Wir wollen Kunden nicht dem Risiko aussetzen."
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For the second time in April, the Bitcoin network reached a new all-time high (ATH) in network difficulty, increasing from the previous ATH of 28.587 trillion to 29.794 trillion. This is positive as a greater network difficulty demands greater computational power to successfully mine a Bitcoin (BTC) block, leading to increased security and decreased vulnerability to network takeovers by malicious actors.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-network-difficulty-breaks-into-a-new-all-time-high-of-29-794t
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In an effort to boost throughput and Dapps performance on the Cardano network, IOHK developers have locked in a proposal to raise the network’s block size by 8kb, from 80kb to 88kb. The upgrade kicked into effect on 25th April at UTC 20:20:00.
IOHK confirmed that the upgrade was part of a series of planned network optimisations to scale Cardano that will be executed throughout this year.
Cardano infamous for its long development time now hosts hundreds of different Dapps, including decentralised exchanges (DEXs), wallets, metaverses, social platforms, games, NFT services, payment systems, and more.
Founder Charles Hoskinson in a tweet last month stated,
“Remember when I predicted thousands of assets and DApps on Cardano? Well I was wrong, there are now millions of native assets issued and DApps are now in the hundreds.”
https://www.coinbureau.com/news/cardano-increases-block-size-to-enhance-dapp-performance/
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Fidelity Investments, a U.S. financial services firm, will allow investors to put Bitcoin (BTC) in their 401(k) retirement savings accounts later this year.
401(k) accounts are company-sponsored retirement accounts in the U.S. to which employees can contribute income, while employers may match contributions. As per Fidelity’s plan, a maximum of 20% of contributions can be allocated to investments in Bitcoin. However, this limit may be lowered by employers. This move is expected to allow several first-time investors to gain exposure to bitcoin and other digital assets that may potentially be included by Fidelity in the future.
According to Dave Gray, Head of workplace retirement offerings and platforms.
“There is a need for a diverse set of products and investment solutions for our investors. We fully expect that cryptocurrency is going to shape the way future generations think about investing for the near term and long term.”
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Warren Buffett says he wouldn't pay $25 for all the bitcoin in the world — and Charlie Munger blasts the crypto as 'stupid' and 'evil'
"Whether it goes up or down in the next year, or five or 10 years, I don't know. But the one thing I'm pretty sure of is that it doesn't produce anything," Buffett said. "It's got a magic to it and people have attached magics to lots of things."
It’s funny they call Bitcoin evil in relation to the US financial system, but they say nothing of the evil of the US debasing the currency and draining the value from our money and all of the ills that come with it
Warren Buffet called Bitcoin Rat Poison when Bitcoin was 3k He was wrong.
Why are we still listening to people's bitcoin opinions when these people don't even know how to open Facebook?
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Via Guy from Coin Bureau:
https://twitter.com/optimismPBC/status/1519001562345005057
This is essentially their attempt at a DAO structure but with several twists. These include taking the revenue created from Optimism's transaction fees and transforming it into grants for "public goods."
Moreover, they are addressing some of DeFi centralisation concerns by introducing "quadratic voting". This basically increases the cost of voting the more tokens you hold and reduces the voting power of those who hold large stakes in the network.
This is particularly relevant today given some concerns that there are about VC control of Web3 protocols. It’s a voting mechanism that Vitalik Buterin is quite optimistic about – no pun intended.
https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1519012381581463552
The DAO structure is really interesting, and I hope to cover it in more detail in the next few days.
But what is perhaps most exciting about this launch is that it will of course include a governance token - OP.
If you will recall from my Airdrops video last year, I speculated that the ETH Layer 2 rollup solutions were likely to do an airdrop at some point:
https://youtu.be/H5n8-2iVJNM?t=1151
OP will be airdropped in the near future to over 250,000 ETH addresses. It was based on several different criteria which they outlined in their original tweet thread.
Even if you are not eligible for the airdrop, Optimism has stated that a full 14% of the allocation will be held in reserve for future airdrops. How these airdrops will function is hard to tell - and that's by design. They don't want people to try and game it.
One more point that I will add is that if you viewed my airdrop video, you would have seen that I also speculated that Arbitrum could consider something as well. Now that Optimism has laid out their plans, many are wondering whether Arbitrum could follow suit. Between Polygon, Loopring, Optimism & Arbitrum, the latter is the only one that won't have a native token.
It's of course complete speculation on my part and you shouldn't just be using any protocol because of hopes of an airdrop. I would discourage anyone from trying to game these.
But the point here is that there are additional benefits that come from using ETH layer 2s. Not only do you save gas fees and help with the growth of these Layer 2s, but you could also get awarded tokens that would allow you to be a part of the governance of said protocol.
If you are looking for a guide on how to use ETH Layer 2s then I also have you covered:
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DeFi project Teller has officially made the "first unsecured DeFi mortgage;" possible via USDC.homes, a company that partners with mortgage lenders and brokers to facilitate crypto home loans.
The new owner purchased an apartment valued at $680,000 in Austin, Texas, using a $500,000 USDC stablecoin mortgage issued by Teller via the Polygon network. The platform allows cryptocurrency holders to obtain regular uncollateralised mortgages based on their credit scores.
According to Ryan Berkun, Founder and CEO of Teller, it blends the best of both worlds,
"This innovative mortgage loan market, built on the Teller protocol, integrates a mainstream user experience with the digital asset backend infrastructure of DeFi."
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Fort Worth, Texas is getting into the bitcoin mining business, and will officially be the first city in the U.S. to do so. On Tuesday, council members voted unanimously to accept a donation of three Bitmain Antminer S9 bitcoin mining equipment valued at $2,100 from the Texas Blockchain Council.
The mining equipment will be kept in a climate-controlled area of Fort Worth City Hall and will be connected to a private network to reduce security risks. The city’s mining program will be experimental and will be reviewed and evaluated in 6 months.
According to Mayor Mattie Parker,
“These small but powerful machines mark Fort Worth’s larger commitment to becoming a leading hub for technology and innovation.”
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/04/26/fort-worth-to-become-first-us-city-to-mine-bitcoin/
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The much-awaited debut of crypto ETFs in the Australian market seems to have been pushed off for later this week. According to the Australian Financial Review, the delay is being blamed on a "prime" or "executing" broker who has failed to approve the products due to a delay in appointing a market maker for the product's launch.
According to a spokesperson from 21shares,
“The delay is no fault whatsoever of 21Shares, the funds or the exchange. As crypto ETFs are completely new to Australia and the infrastructure is being built from the ground up, a service provider downstream needs more time to support the launch. The issue affects all fund managers equally and has caught everyone by surprise.”
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According to a new report from Bitstamp, the vast majority of large investment firms are bullish on the future of crypto markets.
According to Bitstamp’s survey, eight out of ten institutional investors predict that cryptocurrencies and blockchain will dominate traditional financial products within the next decade, however, only 54% of retail investors concur. The survey also notes that 88% of institutional investors and 75% of retail investors expect crypto will become mainstream in the same time frame.
Interestingly, it appears that institutions are more trusting of cryptocurrency and related technology than retail investors.
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The Bill for a two-year moratorium on crypto mining has been passed by the New York State Assembly. According to the bill, new crypto mining facilities that wish to be set up and depend on carbon-based or fossil fuels for mining activities will be denied permits to operate.
Existing mining facilities and those that run on renewable energy will remain unaffected by the bill. However, existing sites that want to raise their energy consumption will not be allowed to renew their permits. The bill aims to effectively freeze existing levels of crypto mining carbon emissions until the state can act on the findings of a comprehensive impact study.
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Digital asset custody platform Fireblocks has added support for the Terra blockchain as institutional demand for decentralised finance (DeFi) rises. This means institutional clients of Fireblocks will now have access to all the Dapps on the Terra ecosystem, such as Anchor Protocol and Lido.
According to Michael Shaulov, CEO of Fireblocks
“As their[institutions] appetite expands, so will their desire to be able to access all of the latest and greatest innovations across different blockchain ecosystems."
https://cointelegraph.com/news/fireblocks-expands-institutional-access-to-terra-s-defi-ecosystem
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According to a Twitter announcement from Otherside, KYC verification is a must for those who wish to bid in the auction of the metaverse’s land NFTs. However, BAYC and MAYC holders can claim land NFTs for a period of 21 days after the auction without KYC verification. The KYC requirements are only for those wishing to mint the Land NFT at the auction.
The auction which is scheduled for 12 pm ET on Saturday will follow the Dutch-style auction format, a bidding war where the asking price starts high and then falls toward a minimum reserve price. Auction participants are required to exclusively bid in APE coins for the auction.
Text Prediction Feature In Smartphones Expose Users Wallet Recovery Phrase
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According to a recent reddit post on the r/CryptoCurrency subreddit, hackers could potentially use the text prediction feature of smartphones to drain a user’s funds. Reddit user Andre, a 33-year-old IT professional from Germany, made the post after discovering his mobile phone’s ability to predict the entire recovery seed phrase as soon as he typed down the first word out of the BIP 39 list.
According to the report, Andre had experimented with different keyboard software in order to find out the degree to which each software was able to predict the seed phrase correctly.
His tests revealed that Google's GBoard was the least vulnerable, as the software did not correctly guess every phrase. Microsoft's Swiftkey keyboard, on the other hand, was able to guess the seed phrase right away. The Samsung keyboard could also predict the words if “Auto replace” and “Suggest text corrections” have been manually turned on.
Andre suggested that users can protect themselves from this vulnerability by regularly clearing the predictive type cache from their devices.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/warning-smartphone-text-prediction-guesses-crypto-hodler-s-seed-phrase