WuBlockchain Weekly：Slow Pace of Rate Hikes、Rally、The Merge Narrative and Top10 News

Top10 News

1、75bps rate hike, preliminary real GDP annualized quarterly rate recorded at -0.9%, the market rose instead of falling

The Federal Reserve announced in the early hours of the 28th that it would raise the target range for the federal funds rate by 75 basis points to a level of 2.25% to 2.5%, the second consecutive 75 basis point rate hike. The Fed will accelerate its “tapering” from September as planned, i.e. raising the monthly reduction cap on U.S. Treasuries to $60 billion. As Fed Chairman Powell discussed a possible slowdown in the pace of interest rate hikes, the Nasdaq rose 4% after the message was released, and ETH rose 15% in 24 hours.

On the night of the 28th, the U.S. announced that the preliminary annualized quarterly real GDP for the second quarter recorded -0.9%, the second consecutive quarter to record a negative value, entering a “technical recession”. Cryptocurrencies followed U.S. stock futures lower after the release of the second quarter GDP data, but then quickly recovered their losses and rose.

2、Goerli/Prater Merge Announcement link

Bellatrix, the Prater upgrade readying it for The Merge will happen at epoch 112260, expected at 12:24PM UTC on August 4, 2022.

After Bellatrix is activated, the Goerli/Prater merge will happen when Goerli hits a total difficulty of 10790000, expected between August 6–12, 2022.

3、Rate Hike at Fed’s July Meeting Provides a Credibility Test, With Cuts Already on Horizon link

As the U.S. Federal Reserve prepares to announce an expected steep interest rate hike this week, traders in traditional markets are already preparing for a rate cut coming as soon as next year.

4、Crypto Exchange Zipmex Files for Global Stay Relief Under Singapore’s Insolvency, Restructuring and Dissolution Act link

5、Meta Announces Second Quarter 2022 Results: $2.806 Billion Loss in Metaverse Core Strategy Division link

Meta reported second quarter 2022 results, with Reality Labs, the core division of Meta’s metaverse strategy, reporting a loss of $2,806 million on revenue of $452 million in the second quarter and a year-to-date loss of $5,766 million. In its CFO outlook comments, Meta expects third quarter Reality Labs revenue will also be lower than the second quarter. In addition, Meta reported total revenue of $28.822 billion for the quarter and expects total revenue for the third quarter to be in the range of $26–28.5 billion.

6、AntPool Supports Ethereum Classic Ecosystem With $10M Investment link

MIAMI — AntPool, the mining pool affiliated with mining rig giant Bitmain, has invested $10 million to support the Ethereum Classic ecosystem and plans to continue investing more, the pool’s CEO, Lv Lei, said at Bitmain’s World Digital Mining Summit

7、Tether: No China Commercial Paper, Total Commercial Paper Exposure Reduced to Only Approximately $3.7 Billion link

Tether released a statement that Tether’s portfolio does not hold Chinese commercial paper, reducing its total exposure to commercial paper again to just ~$3.7 billion as of today (from $30 billion in July 2021), with plans to further reduce it to ~$200 million by the end of August 2022 and to zero by the end of October/early November 2022.

8. Harmony Reimbursement Proposal link

Harmony has released a user compensation proposal that plans to hard fork Harmony to increase the supply of ONE tokens, all compensation will be in the form of ONE tokens for a period of 3 years and distribution will be done on a monthly basis. There are currently two options: Option 1 is a 100% reimbursement, minting 4.97billion ONE, which equates to a monthly release of 138 million over 3 years; Option 2 is a 50% reimbursement, minting 2.48billion ONE, which equates to a monthly release of 69 million over 3 years. In addition as part of the repayment plan, an additional 86 million ONE will be minted and allocated to certain affected DeFi agreements over the same 3 year period to mitigate losses from uncollectible loans. Snapshot voting will begin on August 1 and end on August 15.

9、Hoo Exchagne will officially launch a debt-to-currency conversion program on August 1, 2022 and will close all user transactions at that time

Hoo Exchagne announced that it will officially launch a debt-to-currency conversion program on August 1, 2022 and will close all user transactions at the time of the debt-to-currency conversion program. The main content of the program is to convert some of the existing assets of users in the platform through the debt currency conversion program, allowing users to trade freely in the innovative trading area, and the user cryptocurrencies in the platform will be converted to the same amount of debt currency. At the same time, IUSD, a stable coin, will be launched. 1 IUSD = 1 USD, and IUSD is also the unit of value for partner investment.

10、Babel Finance lost over $280 million in proprietary trading with customer funds link

Babel Finance lost 8,000 BTC and 56,000 ETH in proprietary trading with customer funds, according to a restructuring proposal deck obtained by The Block.

The troubled firm now seeks to convert hundreds of millions of dollars of debt into equity and raise more funds in a revolving credit facility, per the deck.

Fundraising

• Aptos Labs Raises $150M in Funding Round Led by FTX Ventures link
• Mighty Bear Games Secures $10M Round Led By Framework Ventures for Blockchain Unit link
• reNFT Announces New Funding Round to Accelerate Growth of GameFi in Web3 link
• Unstoppable Domains Reaches Unicorn Valuation With $65M Series A Round link
• Decentralized data platform Space and Time raises $10 million in seed round link
• Nomad Announces Strategic Investment from Coinbase Ventures, OpenSea, Crypto.com Capital, Polygon as Part of Seed Funding link
• Spartan Capital leads $13 million round for Sweatcoin developer Sweat Economy link

Learn more, check out DoveMetrics.

Insights

• Survival of the fittest: Which public bitcoin miners are the best prepared to survive the bear market? link
• A Road forward for Web3 Gaming link
• What the Merge Means for Ethereum Today link
• The Future of (Crypto) Gaming link
• Future of DeFi: Top 7 Trends Based on Analyzing 25 Protocols link
• What You Missed From EthCC link
• Mysten Labs & Sui: vs. Aptos, other L1s link

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