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Hello and welcome back to the TechCrunch Crypto newsletter.
To start, here’s a cheeky plug: I went to Yahoo Finance last week for a panel discussion alongside Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein, CoinDesk Indices CEO Andy Baehr, and Matt Kohrs, host of the Matt Kohrs show focused on cryptography.
We discuss bitcoin spot ETFs, digital asset regulation, and what the next era of crypto might look like. Look here.
It was an eventful week in the world of cryptocurrencies: the price of bitcoin hit a new all-time high on Tuesday, Spain’s data protection authority temporarily banned Worldcoin, and Binance raised eyebrows after making a crypto perfume to celebrate the International Day. of the woman.
Curious? See more below.
This week on web3
- Bitcoin hits a new all-time high, surpassing $69,000 for the first time since November 2021
- Binance created a crypto perfume in a disconcerting attempt to woo women
- Worldcoin suffers a temporary ban in Spain for privacy reasons
- OpenSea’s partnership with Coachella is a sign that NFTs can be more than profile pictures
- Binance to halt naira services amid ongoing regulatory investigation in Nigeria
Analyzing the numbers
As mentioned, this week the crypto space recorded all-time highs for bitcoin. But since then, the granddaddy of cryptocurrencies has fallen about 3%, from around $69,000 to $67,000, at the time of this publication. Still, bitcoin is up 6.5% weekly and 56% monthly. The second largest crypto, ether, is up 9.7% on the week to $3,800, according to data from CoinMarketCap. The total crypto market capitalization increased by 7.7% during the same time period to $2.53 trillion.
Smaller tokens also gained a lot of traction last week. Dog-themed memecoins based on Solana saw renewed interest after excitement increased in December. Bonk and dogwifhat rose 15% and 115%, respectively, during the week. Separately, Dogecoin and Shiba Inu rose 19% and 125%, respectively, during the same period.
Which begs the question…who let the dogs out?
Our Favorite ‘Crypto Twitter’ Post
Excuse the language, but if you didn’t realize how big some memecoins get… maybe you do now. At the time this post was written, dogwifhat (WIF) had a market cap three times that of Spirit Airlines.
For what it’s worth, it has declined since then, but dogwifhat (WIF) has a market cap of $1.8 billion, which is still 213% higher than Spirit Airlines.
Image credits: X-shaped ice knife (Opens in a new window)
The last pod
Chain Reaction is running a monthly series that delves into different topics and topics in crypto. This month we will focus on blockchain and AI integrations.
For this week’s episode, I interviewed Dee Goens, co-founder of Zora.
Zora is a platform and protocol that helps developers and creators bring their ideas to the chain and Ethereum through an open and shared environment. The platform has minted more than one million NFTs and has more than $300 million in secondary sales and around 1 million unique collectors, according to its website.
Goens previously worked at Coinbase for two and a half years in risk management, operations and brand partnerships. Prior to that, he analyzed the risk of emerging technologies with a focus on blockchains at KPMG.
As we just wrapped up our February NFT series, Goens is the perfect guest to transition that topic to AI and blockchains, given Zora’s focus on bringing AI to the chain.
For the first time at Chain Reaction, we also created this podcast on the Zora platform, which you can check out here.
Jacquelyn and Goens discuss how Zora envisions blockchains and AI working together, the roles they can play for NFT creators, and what platform developers and community members want most.
Subscribe to Chain reaction in apple podcasts, Spotify or your favorite pod platform to keep up to date with the latest episodes and leave us a review if you like what you hear!
follow the money
- Zama’s hom*omorphic encryption technology nets it $73 million on a valuation of nearly $400 million.
- Taiko raises $37 million to build web3 infrastructure for a censorship-free Internet
- Karma3 Labs raises $4.5 million to improve web3 trust with ratings and recommendations
- Utila raised $11.5 million in seed round for its enterprise-grade crypto trading platform
- Security infrastructure startup Firewall raised $3.7 million to make smart contracts mainstream
This list was compiled with information from Messari as well as TechCrunch’s own reporting.
What else are we writing?
Do you want to leave the world of web3? Here are some articles on TechCrunch that caught our attention this week.
- Elon Musk sues OpenAI and Sam Altman for ‘betrayal’ of nonprofit AI mission
- And… Former Twitter CEO sues Elon Musk
- Roku disables TVs and streaming devices until users agree to new terms
- Leaked database revealed 2FA codes for the world’s tech giants
- When Your Cap Table Makes Your Startup Uninvestable
- Target to launch its own version of Amazon Prime, starting at $49 a year
