Weekly Web3 Workout — 15th September 22

6 min readSep 15, 2022

Intro

Lots to get your teeth into this week with The Merge 🎉 finally happening, trips to Barcelona, sanctions news, more sanctions news, some regulation for good measure, and events and podcasts. So without further ado, let’s get into it!

Market Highlights

$BTC $19,798 +3.17%

$ETH $1,502 -7.71%

$YOP $0.0576 -5.85%

$USDT Market Cap $67.88Bn

$USDC Market Cap $50.68Bn

The Good…

Web3 yellow pages

This is quite amazing from @brazenburrit0 (Twitter)! Welcome to the Yellow Pages for Crypto. If you struggle to fund a specific crypto project in a specific crypto vertical, worry no more, introducing the Long List of Crypto (LLC) which aims to be the ‘Web3 Yellow Pages’ cataloging a (long) list of projects in every category. Last count was 1,500+ projects captured and it is still growing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wQ6Rsop9JYp8FmZfJmINFU5IbMHeYp3Zb0YLoi7HE8Q/edit#gid=1117916895

Books

This is one of those books that is so well written it is hard to put down. American Kingpin by Nick Bilton. What a book! Gripping, bonkers, a real page turner. If I didn’t know this was a true story I would expect it to be a master class of Hollywood! Thank you to Ari Redbord at TRM Labs for giving me the book!

Advertising

Thailand has tightened rules on advertising by crypto companies but not put in place a complete ban. Forcing crypto ads to have consumer protection warnings about the risks is a good thing! This is much better than the binary blanket ban some countries and companies have imposed. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-01/thailand-tightens-crypto-advertisement-rules-after-zipmex-freeze

Sanctions

Not a great surprise to see the UK pushing more on crypto sanctions in support of Ukraine. UK crypto firms must now report sanctions breaches. In addition, the U.S. and European Union have also extended sanctions rules to crypto since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine gave way to heightened concerns over the use of digital assets to circumvent restrictions. https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/09/05/uk-crypto-firms-must-now-report-sanctions-breaches-freeze-accounts/

Also in the sanctions space, it is interesting that Coinbase is taking steps to back a Tornado Cash sanctions lawsuit against the US Treasury, and paying the legal fees for 6 people challenging OFAC. Could be a watershed moment for crypto and OFAC sanctions! They claim the Treasury has overstepped its authority and they have a legitimate point, but will it be seen the same way in court? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-08/coinbase-backs-lawsuit-against-us-treasury-for-tornado-sanctions

Crypto use cases

It looks like it’s finally happening! The original use case I came across, replacing SWIFT with blockchain, in 2013 is finally getting looked into with some serious effort! Legacy TradFi systems like SWIFT need to be updated and DLT is perfect for it. SWIFT financial-messaging system is piloting a blockchain project with fintech Symbiont aimed at curbing inefficiency. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-13/swift-messenger-for-the-financial-world-to-pilot-blockchain

Events

Recently I attended a CryptoUK event where they were debating “Will Crypto Replace or Complement the Existing Financial System?”. In conjunction with CDR Consultancy & CUK a great panel discussion including Keld van Schreven, Co-Founder and MD at KR1 plc, James Butterfill, Head of Research at CoinShares, and Marcus Sotiriou, an analyst at Global Block News, debated whether crypto and DeFi would take over TradFi… I mean we all know it will.

An interesting point raised by Marcus, was that with Ethereum now having a yield with its move to Proof of Stake, it could act as a benchmark yield for other DeFi platforms allowing institutions to better price risk for DeFi products.

Conferences

I recently attended the Fireblocks Spark 22 conference in Barcelona where I got to speak on a panel about Treasury Management in web3. This was a spectacular event and superbly executed! The evening events were extremely entertaining and the range and knowledge of the guests blew me away! The innovation and comprehensive feature set offered in Fireblocks’ Treasury Management solution is quite amazing. They have every angle covered! While I was there did a video testimonial for YOP Finance and Pluto Digital and thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it!

The Merge

In the words of Peter Venkman, We Came, We Saw, We Kicked Its Ass!

The Merge is done, Ethereum has moved from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake. This has brought amazing things like energy reduction and a deflationary token economy and there is still lots more on the roadmap. However that said, it’s important to always be on high alert for scams, especially now. We recommend you don’t send your ETH to anyone in an attempt to “upgrade to ETH2” as there is no ETH2 token. Your assets are safe and secure and no action is required to upgrade on your part. There is talk of an Ethereum fork to create a new PoW version, ETHPoW. A word of warning on ETHPoW. If the ETHPoW ChainID remains as 1, as it is now (the same as ETHPoS) do not attempt to interact with the fork at any point. Doing so would expose you to replay attacks on the PoS chain that could be executed without your permission.

The Bad…

Celsius

A generous 1.1% of funds MIGHT be returned to Celsius customers. Celsius consumer protection obviously depends on what the lawyers can get away with, crazy! They only plan to return $50 million of the billions locked up in their platform. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-01/bankrupt-celsius-seeks-to-return-50-million-of-locked-crypto

Regulation

Coinbase have been busy recently, and in a landmark event in crypto we see the first ever crypto insider trading case. However the fact the defence is crypto assets are not securities and insider trading laws do not apply, is really poor! Insider trading is wrong on any level. Ethics before profits https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2022/09/12/brother-of-ex-coinbase-manager-pleads-guilty-in-first-ever-crypto-insider-trading-case/

The Ugly…

Mistakes

Now that is an impressive fat finger! Crypto.com mistakenly transfers $7 Million to a woman owed a $70 refund. And the best part is her and her friends have already started spending… can you blame her! https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-01/crypto-com-pays-millions-to-woman-by-accident-and-wants-it-back

Bugs

Quick everyone get to Georgia! Coinbase mispricing allows users in Georgia to cash out for 100 times rate. A Coinbase bug saw Georgia’s national currency, the lari (GEL), priced at $290 rather than $2.90. A great opportunity if you can find it. https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/09/02/coinbase-mispricing-allows-users-in-georgia-to-cash-out-for-100-times-rate/

And Finally…

Last week I recorded a podcast with Fabian Bock from the Beyond Technology podcast. You can check out his YouTube channel here https://youtube.com/c/FabianB%C3%B6ck…. We discussed my background, the world, and web3 and had great fun at the same time. This podcast will be available soon and I’m really looking forward to sharing it with you.

OK, that’s your lot. Thanks for reading the Weekly Web3 Workout and I look forward to sharing my thoughts and learnings with you next week. Please share this with all the web3 and crypto curioso out there.

Have a great weekend! 🚀🚀🚀