Weekly Market Chummary: August 22nd, 2022

This is not financial advice. This is for informational purposes only. Remember to do your own research!

SEC Sues Dragonchain

The SEC sued Dragonchain Inc, Dragon Foundation and The Dragon Company, all controlled by John Joseph Roets, last week for raising $16.5MM in alleged crypto asset securities offerings. The presale and initial coin offering (ICO) took place back in 2017. Participants are facing permanent injunctions, disgorgement with prejudgment interest, civil penalties, etc. Sounds painful.

Binance to Kazakhstan

The famous crypto exchange, Binance, has secured preliminary regulatory approval needed to operate in Kazahkstan. There is a full application process still pending for Binance in order to receive the official greenlight, however the first step is behind them. This also comes in the wake of teaming up with MasterCard to pursue a crypto prepaid card venture in Argentina.

Eqonex Closes Its Crypto Doors

Equonex decided to close its crypto exchange (officially today) to reduce costs and focus primarily on its asset-management and custody business. The shut down of the exchange is mainly due to increasing market competition, low margins and declining trade volumes. “Closing the exchange will significantly simplify our business, narrow our focus, free up resources, and allow us to operate as a more efficient organization with capacity to aggressively go after market segments that offer the most potential,” said Eqonex CEO Jonathan Farnell.

ETH Futures

CME Group has set forth plants to launch options on Ether futures by September 12th. Contracts will be denominated in one ETH Future, which is 50 ETH per contract. “As we approach the highly anticipated Ethereum Merge next month, we continue to see market participants turn to CME Group to manage ether price risk,” stated Global Head of Equity and FX Products, Tim McCourt.

Acala Tanks

Another algorithmically functioning “stablecoin”, Acala, suffered a ~99% drop last week. The primary cause was a hacking incident allowing thieves to mint nearly 1.3B of the tokens on the Acala Network.

NFT Corner:

9dcc

https://twitter.com/9dccxyz – This seems to be the work of GMoney as this project is token-gated by Admit One. 9dcc is creating a luxury line of NFT-based goods, namely merchandise and apparel, the sales of which also comes with an NFT. The only way to participate in the mints is to be an owner of an Admit One NFT.

Term of the Week: Gas wars

A Gas War takes place when there’s a surge in minting costs due to significantly more buyers than available NFTs in a collection.