This Week in Crypto
Grayscale Launches Bitcoin Mining Investment Vehicle
Grayscale announced a private investment vehicle alongside Foundry that will invest in the struggling bitcoin mining sector1. Given that the price of Bitcoin has fallen precipitously from all time highs while energy prices have skyrocketed, many Bitcoin mining companies have experienced reduced operating income and been forced to sell balance sheet assets. The new investment vehicle plans on buying mining assets from distressed firms in order to capitalize on current opportunities the current crypto market downturn2.
GoldenTree Announces $5.2M Investment in Sushiswap
Earlier this week asset manager GoldenTree announced that they had bought $5.2M in Sushiswap tokens3, the governance tokens of the protocol that currently offers a decentralized exchange(DEX), lending markets and NFT marketplace. This comes very shortly after users of the protocol voted for Jared Grey to become CEO after months of turmoil within the protocol regarding leadership and organization. This could lead to a resurgence of the Sushi protocol as it was one of the first community run protocols in crypto managed by a DAO.
Chainlink Partners with Two Sigma to Provide Blockchain Data
Chainlink announced that they will be partnering with quantitative hedge fund Two Sigma to offer derivatives market data such as swaps and options on-chain4. This comes a few weeks after Two Sigma announced that they raised $400M for 2 venture funds planning to allocate 15% to crypto investments. The new types of data offered by Chainlink should allow for new innovations in decentralized finance as there was no way of getting that data securely on the blockchain.
BNB Chain Hacked5
Binance disclosed their blockchain - known as BNB Chain - suffered an exploit of approximately $100-110 million on a cross-chain bridge named BSC Token Hub. The hacker was able to compromise assets by manipulating cross-chain bridges into minting new $BNB. As a result of the action, Binance moved quickly to shut down the BNB Chain through communication with key validators and freeze roughly $7 million of assets in transit. While the move may reduce the total hacking exposure, it calls into question the decentralization of governance for BNB Chain.
Not financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Do your own research.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/grayscale-announces-new-arm-to-invest-in-bitcoin-mining-hardware
Learn more about Bitcoin mining here: https://www.coinbase.com/learn/crypto-basics/what-is-mining
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/10/06/asset-management-giant-goldentree-discloses-52m-investment-in-sushiswap/
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/10/05/hedge-fund-two-sigma-to-provide-data-to-blockchain-information-network-chainlink/
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/10/06/binance-linked-bnb-price-falls-close-to-4-on-hack-rumors/