To the casual Observer, a large cohort of the crypto community might seem borderline obsessed with just one question, "Wen moon?"
Well this week was 'Wen', at least for the Japanese space agency, which managed to gently land its SLIM lunar lander on the surface of the moon and launch the craft's data gathering lunar rovers.
No such 'moon' achievement for the U.S. however, as Astrobotic Technology's aborted Peregrine landing craft burnt up in the Earth's atmosphere after a failed lunar mission. We cannot confirm rumors that the 'moon' mission was mistakenly hampered due to interference from the SEC.
But who is aiming for the moon in the crypto world this week?... and who is falling back to earth in a giant fireball? Read on to find out.
Developers have been the ones making the headlines this week, with public disagreements playing out between Bitcoin devs over Inscriptions and Ethereum devs over Vitalik Buterin's proposal to raise the block gas limit. Buterin also stepped into a debate on Ethereum Layer 2s, claiming that Celestia L2s were more technically 'validums' rather than 'true L2' rollups.
We took a long hard look at the stablecoin market, and tried to analyze exactly why Tether has taken such a commanding lead. Meanwhile, political upstart Donald Trump became the latest sign-up to the 'No CBDC in the U.S.A.' banner wavers. The likely Republican presidential nominee claimed that a CBDC would represent a threat to American's freedom.
Elsewhere, in our Banking and CBDC Roundup, we noted that four more U.S. states have filed bills excluding CBDCs from the definition of currency, Egypt plans a digital pound by 2030, Jamaica is improving its Jam-Dex CBDC, and Thailand had scrapped limits on ownership of tokenized real estate.
Binance has launched an exchange in Thailand in partnership with local energy giant, Gulf Innova. Meanwhile, despite having one of the fastest growing crypto markets in the world, the African continent is lacking in adequate regulation and awareness, according to some in the industry.
Blockchain-based music streaming service Tune.FM has raised $20 million to push its cryptocurrency and NFT-centric audio ecosystem. And, a mystery Inscription on the Bitcoin blockchain has created quite a buzz, with debate over whether it relates to a new digital art project or something else entirely. In contrast, video game retailer GameStop has stepped back from the crypto space by announcing the closure of its NFT marketplace, citing ongoing regulatory uncertainty in the sector.
Solana continues to make news, with the announcement and pre-sale of a V2.0 of its Saga phone, the original of which was all but destined to fail until a bunch of meme-token airdrops saw stocks completely sell out last month. Sticking with memes, a Solana MEV bot made a cool $1.8 million by backrunning an incredibly inefficient meme-token purchase which had artificially inflated the price.
And finally, we turn to the darker (and altogether less legal) side of the crypto-sphere. Terraform Labs head honcho Do Kwon may have found an unlikely ally in the SEC, as both parties were granted a requested delay to Kwon's U.S. trial in order that he might be present. Mulitchain's CEO, who has been missing since last summer, caused a stir when his Telegram status updated to 'last seen recently'. It's amazing what people will cling to when somebody owes them money.
An advance preview of Chainalysis' annual crypto crime report claimed that illicit crypto usage was down in 2023... although the figures were actually higher than those originally presented for 2022, which have since been revised upwards... as the 2023 figures are also likely to be. So crypto crime is either up or down, depending on which you prefer.
