This past week has seen a myriad of developments taking place within the crypto space that have drawn considerable attention. The Ethereum blockchain saw its mainnet, also known as the Beacon Chain, successfully implement its Shapella hard fork that enabled fund withdrawals for those who staked Ether (ETH). Following the fork, the ETH asset went on to surpass the $2,000 price point, with FTX’s token (FTT) surging over 112% after news broke of the platform’s potential reboot. In Tokyo, Japan has expressed interest in OpenAI’s technology while Twitter is planning to introduce a new feature that lets users trade cryptocurrencies and stocks. Additionally, Mastercard’s new artist accelerator program is NFT-gated and available to holders of its Music Pass NFT, free of cost until the end of April.
FTX is a crypto exchange platform based in the Cayman Islands and they were forced to bankrupt after the 2020 market crash. However, their legal team believes that the platform may be able to make a comeback, potentially as early as April 2024, after recovering $7.3 billion in liquid assets.
OpenAI is an artificial intelligence company based in San Francisco that has created a variety of AI-related technologies, including the chatbot ChatGPT. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman hopes to use their technologies to create and build new solutions for Japan, although the company has seen a fair share of opposition from different countries.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is looking to the future with a plan to make the platform a ‘super-app’ by introducing a new feature that will let users trade crypto and other stocks. Meanwhile, Micorsoft-owned Mastercard has entered the Web3 arena, introducing their new artist accelerator program managed through the use of a limited-edition NFT.
During this week, BTC prices managed to push past $31,000 and some traders are expecting more positive action in the near future. Similarly, ETH prices managed to garner some considerable momentum, which could enable the beginning of an altseason. On the other side of the spectrum, Yearn Finance’s old contract was exploited by a hacker, resulting in $11.6 million worth of the stablecoin yUSDT being stolen. Bitrue centralized crypto exchange also fell victim to an exploit, with the hacker managing to get away with almost $23 million.
In the court of law, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has issued a summons to Justin Sun, founder of the Tron network, for allegedly orchestrating the “unregistered offer and sale, manipulative trading, and unlawful touting” of Tron’s TRX token. Seemingly undeterred by the SEC’s actions, John Deaton, a pro-XRP lawyer, has gone so far as to predict that XRP could surge past its all-time high following a win in the suit.
Finally, Miden, a ZK project of Polygon, is now under the leadership of a former aspiring rapper who originally started ZK-rollups, after it was noticed by Vitalik Buterin. If users are looking to join a gaming guild and contribute to the blockchain game landscape, now is certainly the time to do so.
