Web3 on Fire: ETH wallet count hits an ATH

Greetings, frends. Ambire here with your weekly crypto newsletter. In this issue, we will take a look at Ripple CEO's view on crypto regulation, Vitalik selling the coins that users airdropped him, Kraken planning to launch its own bank, US govt moving $1bn worth of crypto and finally NFT market activity being at record heights & ETH wallet count hitting an ATH.

Let's get down to it:

Excessive crypto regulation could scare away innovation, Ripple CEO warns

Brad Garlinghouse, Chief Executive Officer of Ripple (XRP), likened the Securities and Exchange Commission's regulations to using a sledgehammer in order to crack an egg: grossly excessive for such a delicate task. In a March 3 Bloomberg interview, he stated that the SEC's heavy-handed regulatory approach may scare crypto businesses away from the US, preventing it from becoming an attractive hub for blockchain and crypto innovation, and the process appears to have already begun.

The CEO reminisced on the time in the late 1990s when there were efforts to ban the internet too because of scammers but rather than shutting everything down, we came up with proper regulations. He believes we should be taking a similar approach towards digital assets, with the SEC creating a framework that provides clear protections for consumers. Of course, some of his critics might argue that such an approach may leave us open to more scams and illicit activity, but if you think about it, the same argument could be made about any new technology.

The crypto community is sure the SEC is waging an all out war against crypto now, and that this is only the beginning. The SEC's actions have sparked a lot of heated debates across social media, but we can only hope that in the end, things will eventually work out for the better.

Vitalik sells $700k worth of airdropped DeFi coins

Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum's co-founder is selling the coins that the people used to send him for free. Lookonchain first noticed this on Etherescan:

Vitalik's wallet sold about 50 billion MOPS tokens, worth 1.25 ETH or $2,000, 10 billion CULT tokens worth 58 ETH or around $91,000 and 500 trillion SHIK tokens for 380 ETH or approximately $600,000.

This sell-off has had an impact on the prices of these coins according to real-time data from CoinGecko. MOPS even won somewhat because of this, being up over 1500% in the 24 hours after Vitalik dumped the coins. Vitalik gets these memecoin drops very frequently, and it became kind of a thing memecoin devs do in order to get some extra publicity.

Though it seems like Vitalik's decision to offload these coins raised a few questions on Twitter, as the community is now busy arguing about whether it was ethical to sell these airdrops, or to have devs drop their coins in Vitalik's wallet in the first place. Why did he do this exactly is not yet clear.

Kraken exchange is planning to start its own bank

Kraken recently confirmed that it was in the progress of starting its own bank, which could be a potential game changer for the crypto exchange industry.

Kraken is probably doing this because of the challenging regulatory environment that is currently in place, previously it announced that it will no longer be using the Signature Bank and that the end dates for deposits or withdrawals of US dollars have been set to end on March 15th and 30th respectively, so now it seems that rather than relying on third-party banking services, Kraken is taking matters into its own hands.

Kraken currently stands as the third largest crypto exchange by volume on CoinMarketCap, and its bank could very well be a major step forward in terms of crypto exchange services. With its own banking system, Kraken will have more control over the funds that customers have deposited. This could help to improve trust and reliability, while also providing a secure platform for customers to make deposits and withdrawals, but it remains to be seen how will this initiative fare under these political conditions.

US govt transferred $1 billion worth of crypto to Coinbase

The US government sent a massive heap of BTC to trading platform Coinbase, totaling around $1 billion. The 49,000 BTC came from the ancient Silkroad-related busts, with 9,826 BTC sent to Coinbase directly and the remaining 39,175 BTC was transferred to two new addresses. Coinbase's own wallets show the influx of new BTC, and analysis from PeckShield confirms the transfers.

The crypto community panicked for a bit, fearing the the government would crash the market by dumping their BTC holdings. However, it appears that the government has no such plans, at least for now. Even though it is actually unknown what the government plans to do with the coins.

Research corner: NFT market activity at record heights, ETH wallet count hits an ATH

The NFT market saw a major pump in activity during February this year, with total trading volume breaking the $2 billion mark for the first time since May 2022, that's according to DappRadar's data. 

This pump in activity was primarily attributed to BLUR, which saw a 117% increase in monthly trading volume, totaling $1.2 billion in February alone. BLUR and OpenSea are still fighting over their share of the market. DappRadar also discovered that NFT trading volume on Polygon grew by 147% within the 28-day period, $109 million worth of Polygon NFTs were traded on OpenSea in particular. All in all, NFT market is still alive and well, with no signs of dying off in the near future.

This only further solidifies the idea that NFTs aren't just a flash in the pan, but rather an emerging asset class that is here to stay. In the meantime, Ethereum keeps growing. As of now, the number of non-zero addresses for ETH just reached a record high, with over 95 million wallets, according to stats from Glassnode.

This is evidence that Ethereum is becoming ever more popular and it is unlikely that this trend will reverse any time soon. The data also shows that ETH keeps flowing off-exchanges, with around $20 million worth of ETH leaving the exchanges over the last 24 hours, indicating more organic growth in the Ethereum network. The amount of ETH supply that has not moved for seven to ten years also reached a new all-time high of 3,643,722 ETH. This shows that $6 billion worth of ETH has not been ever moved from the very infancy of its protocol.

This demonstrates that long-term holders of Ethereum are not selling and remain confident in the underlying technology and potential of the chain. This is good news for the health of the entire Ethereum ecosystem, as long-term holders often provide stability in a volatile market. As more and more people continue to adopt Ethereum as their preferred crypto, these metrics will likely continue to increase. This could signal a bright future for the world’s second-largest crypto asset.

The fun page: our weekly meme collection

That's all for now, frens.

We'll see you next week. And remember, the market conditions are temporary, but our commitment to building a better DeFi is here to stay. Thanks for joining us and we look forward to seeing you back next week. Cheers!

Yours, The 🔥 Team

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