The planet Earth is expecting a deposit from space later today, as the robotic spacecraft OSIRIS-REx is due to drop a capsule of soil from the Bennu asteroid over the Utah desert. Despite sounding like an Egyptian dinosaur, the delivery is the culmination of a seven-year NASA mission which may even shine a light on the origins of life on our planet.
So where were the smartest deposits and who showed signs of life in the crypto world this week? Let’s look back through the past seven day's news and find out.
Kicking off, two cryptocurrency exchanges have certainly had better weeks. Despite repeated assurances that it wouldn't happen, Genesis has announced the cessation of all trading operations, adding another failure to parent DGC's current troubles. Meanwhile, Dubai-based JPEX raised withdrawal fees to $999 in order to counter a liquidity crisis following a warning from Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission.
Australian bank ANZ carried out a simulated cross-border cross-chain purchase of tokenized assets, building on the Swift payment network's recent experiments with Chainlink. Cosmos network has also been innovating this week, with the V12 release of its Cosmos Hub adding a liquid staking solution.
Justin Sun has been up to his usual tricks, borrowing from Peter to pay off Paul, and trying to make his many enterprises look more respectable than they perhaps should. But with so much of his empire tied to the success of the utterly opaque stUSDT, investors may decide that enough is enough.
Nigeria has struggled to achieve desired adoption for its CBDC, the e-Naira, as the removal of the central bank's governor in June led to a freefall in the value of the national currency backing it. Nigerians seem happy enough using crypto instead, so it remains to be seen whether the recent appointee for governor decides to resurrect the project.
And finally, Tether has expanded its interests beyond FinTech with a strategic investment in a German AI company. The exact details of the deal are in question, although Tether did claim that Forbes's prior reporting of the stablecoin issuer's stake was incorrect.
So the only thing left is to wait for that capsule of asteroid soil to land. Let's hope that the unboxing is a little bit more interesting than that of the West Point time capsule.
