ICODROPS WEEKLY NEWS DIGEST

Last week's Hot Altcoin events

⚡️Telegram CEO Durov plans to build crypto wallets, decentralized exchange.

⚡️NFTs are officially live on Uniswap. It is also airdropping ~$5M USDC to historical Genie users.

⚡️BNB Chain is officially live on OpenSea.

⚡️Binance has acquired 100% of Sakura Exchange BitCoin (SEBC), the Japanese-registered crypto exchange service provider.

⚡️BlockFi will file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. BlockFi sues Sam Bankman-Fried to seize his $575 million stake in Robinhood, Financial Times reports.

⚡️Silvergate announced a business update, citing that its deposit relationship with BlockFi is limited to less than $20 million of its total deposits from all digital asset customers as of November 28, 2022.

⚡️Bahamas Attorney General says there is an active criminal investigation into FTX.

⚡️Serum, a decentralized crypto exchange backed by FTX, stated on Twitter it was now “defunct.” It pointed that it was now replaced by a community fork called OpenBook.

⚡️Genesis Global is working with restructuring lawyers to prevent bankruptcy in the wake of FTX's collapse.

⚡️BlackRock invested $24 million in FTX, BlackRock Chief Executive Larry Fink said.

⚡️FTX Japan plans to restart local customer withdrawals.

⚡️Apple blocks Coinbase Wallet app release, requesting 30% of all NFT transfer gas fees. Users can't send NFTs on Coinbase Wallet iOS anymore.

⚡️Huobi has established a strategic partnership with Poloniex.

⚡️The Ropsten network has been deprecated and will be shut down in the coming weeks. The vast majority of remaining validator nodes will be shut down during the December 15-31, 2022 period.

⚡️Brazil lawmakers vote in favor of recognizing Bitcoin as a means of payment.

⚡️Stripe has launched a fiat-to-cryptocurrency payment product for Web3, which can be directly embedded in DEX, NFT platforms, wallets or dapps, allowing customers to instantly purchase crypto in applications, and handle all KYC, payment, and compliance.

⚡️BitMEX has announced that the Proof of Liability (PoL) system is now fully live and operational. All BitMEX depositors can now verify their individual liability is included in the total exchange liability balance.

⚡️Galaxy Digital acquires custodian GK8 from bankrupt Celsius. GK8 was originally acquired by Celsius for $115 million in late 2021.

⚡️Web3 DAO Game7 has launched a $100 million grant program to accelerate developers who are making Web3 games.

⚡️Alibaba Cloud, a cloud service provider in Asia Pacific, has expanded their line of infrastructure technology and intelligence tools to the Avalanche public blockchain.

⚡️Animoca Brands plans to launch a fund of up to $2 billion to invest in metaverse businesses, according to company co-founder and Executive Chairman Yat Siu.

⚡️The BNB Chain-based decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Ankr has confirmed it has been hit by a multi-million dollar exploit. An additional 10 trillion aBNBc was minted. Ankr Exploiter has transferred 900 BNB into Tornado Cash. According to Binance CEO, initial analysis is developer private key was hacked, and the hacker updated the smart contract to a more malicious one.

⚡️Ankr will purchase 5m worth of BNB and use this to compensate in totality the liquidity providers that have been affected by the exploit due to the drainage of the liquidity pool.

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🚀ICOs/IEOs news

📈Binance has listed Hooked Protocol.

HOOK is now trading at ~23x from the IEO price ($0.1).

💰Binance Labs has made a strategic investment to commit up to $4.5 million to Ambit Finance, a DApp using novel structured financial products to enhance the utility of BUSD and other select crypto assets.

💰Web3 game publisher Fenix Games raised $150 million in funding to acquire, invest and distribute blockchain games. Fenix Games’ latest funding round saw participation from investors, including Phoenix Group and Dubai-based venture capital firm Cypher Capital.

💰Kiln, a startup that allows customers to receive rewards for helping secure the Ethereum blockchain, raised 17 million euros ($17.6 million) in a Series A funding round from a group of investors including Consensys, GSR Ventures and Kraken's venture capital arm.

💰Burn Ghost, a startup focused on casual games that reward NFT prizes to players, has raised $3.1 million in funding. Drive by DraftKings and Bitkraft Ventures co-led the seed round for the firm, which was founded by game industry veterans.

🤝Binance has introduced its partnership with Injective, which allows Binance Custody clients to stake their INJ tokens directly from their Qualified Wallet.

🤝MultiversX has joined forces with OneMint to offer no-code solutions for artists, brands and companies expressing their creativity on its carbon-negative blockchain to generate, mint and manage NFT collections in a drag and drop environment.

🤝Polygon and Flipkart, one of India’s leading digital commerce entities, have announced a strategic partnership.

📌Phantom is adding support for Ethereum and Polygon.

📌Coinbase has added Aavegotchi (GHST) and Litentry (LIT) to its roadmap.

📌To celebrate the Mainnet Anniversary, Injective initiated the largest token burn yet, burning 5 million INJ ($8.5M).

📌Lithium Finance mainnet beta is going live on 12 December 2022 10:00 UTC.

📈Coinbase and Coinbase Pro have listed Vulcan Forged PYR (PYR).

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