📢 Your Monday industry catch-up is here! 📰

Crypto & Blockchain Update: August 12-18

📈Market Highlights
- By the end of last week, $BTC was at $59,573, $ETH at $2,651; Total crypto market cap $2.07 trillion and Fear & Greed index at Neutral
- 75% of all Bitcoin hasn’t been moved or sold in the last 6 months
- Last week’s top 3 altcoin gainers were AAVE (16%), RUNE (15%) and SATS (9%), while top 3 losers were WIF (23%), BRETT (19%), and PEPE (16%)
- $ETH median gas price hits 4 year low, with veteran traders betting on crash
- Tron network revenue surpasses Ethereum 90 day revenue, leading in stablecoin market share with 37.9% dominance
- Record $BTC hashrate of 627 exahashes per second (EH/s) as miner reserves hit 3-year low

🛜Blockchain Tech & Gaming
- BitMex co-founder Arthur Hayes is launching a Bitcoin Ordinals NFT collection named Airheads
- Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin registered a new ENS (Ethereum Name Service) domain “dacc.eth”, ahead of discussing defensive accelerationism (d/acc) August 22nd on X Spaces
- Swiss tech firm FinalSpark launches a program that allows cloud rental service with access to biocomputers made from human brain cells for $500 a month, organoids would live up to 100 days
- Pixelcraft Studios, company behind the crypto game Aavegotchi, announced plans to launch a “members only” Ethereum layer-3 gaming blockchain called Geist

📃Regulatory Updates
- U.S. Court of Appeals revisits HEX manipulation case against BinanceUS
- Google sued over a scam crypto app that stole $5 million, which took them 3 months to take down
- Norway’s sovereign wealth fund has been indirectly gaining $BTC exposure via MicroStrategy
- U.S. Senate proposes for crypto tax exemption for transactions under $200
- Australia’s financial markets regulator claims they’ve taken down more than 600 crypto scams in the last 12 months
- Malaysian authorities arrested 7 people for illegally mining Bitcoin, seizing 52 Bitcoin mining rigs

💰Investments & Partnerships
- MetaMask and Mastercard announced partnership to launch crypto-to-fiat debit card
- Crypto startup funding volume rises to $2.7B in Q2 while deal count decreases by 12.5%
- Greyscale introduces a fund for MakerDAO $MKR
- Laser Digital leads venture round for Lumia, a real world asset DeFi platform
- Offchain Labs launches an incubator division focused on infrastructure projects
- South Korea’s largest public pension fund invests $34M in MicroStrategy shares
- Coinbase hints at cbBTC

🛡️Cybersecurity
- Chainanalysis provides mid-year update with signals of increasing hacks (up by 2.76%) and ransomware attacks (up by 2%), with stolen funds inflows up 84% compared to previous year ($857M to $1.58B)
- Unicoin hacker locked out employees from their Google accounts for days
- Holograph hackers responsible for the $14.4M hack have been arrested and will be extradited to France
- Check Point Research uncovers new malware called Styx Stealer, which steals data and reroutes crypto transactions coming from an infected Windows computer

🗞️Miscellaneous
- Canadian crypto exchange ezBtc gambled away $9.5M worth of users’ Bitcoin and Ether funds
- Morgan Stanley discloses $187M spot Bitcoin ETF holding, becoming top 5 holder of Blackrock’s ETF
- Former Yuga Labs’ BAYC creative director Jeff Nicholas joins Meta Reality Labs as executive mixed reality producer for entertainment experiences

***
Have a successful new week ahead, X community! 🤝