Every Monday we’ll drop a roundup of Web3 news, tweets and vibes from the last 7 days.
Your Web3 briefing 📝
Kick-start your week with a roundup of the biggest Web3 headlines over the last 7 days
Tweets of the week 🐦
We spend time on CT, so you don’t have to
Web3 101: Wallets 💡
Essential Web3 concepts, simply explained
Roundup of the biggest Web3 headlines over the last 7 days
Were you one of the estimated 117 million people who watched the 2022 “Crypto Bowl” last night? Be honest, did you tune in for the ads or the game 👀
Crypto.com continued to remind us that fortune favors the brave. Let’s hope that’s the only lesson from history here - and not what happened last time internet companies went all-in on Super Bowl advertising.
Crypto.com@cryptocom
In his moment of truth, @KingJames called it. Fortune Favors the Brave #FFTB
1:26 AM · Feb 14, 2022
4.11K Reposts · 14.8K Likes
Coinbase were also feeling brave with their commercial:
Brian Armstrong - barmstrong.eth@brian_armstrong
Excited to see the crypto bowl today. (sounds like a lot of ads planned for crypto companies at the super bowl) And Coinbase is no exception. Going to try something…a bit different. 😀
10:14 PM · Feb 13, 2022
507 Reposts · 6.58K Likes
Their bouncing QR code ad was so popular it crashed their app. We think that counts as a success?
In other news over the last week…
Web3 money is now flowing into traditional media as the crypto exchange Binance announced it would take a $200M stake in the century-old legacy media company, Forbes.
CZ 🔶 Binance@cz_binance
Invest in both new and old, and bridge them with crypto. Binance taking a $200 million stake in Forbes
cnbc.com
Binance, led by the world’s richest crypto billionaire, is taking a $200 million stake in Forbes
1:21 PM · Feb 10, 2022
1.59K Reposts · 8.91K Likes
You might have heard of the Binance CEO Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao. He’s the world’s richest crypto-billionaire, with a net worth of $86bn. His company is now set to become the second largest stakeholder in Forbes
Why is this happening? Well, according to CZ - this is all about influence with mainstream consumers. Here’s what he had to say:
“As Web3 and blockchain technologies move forward and the crypto market comes of age we know that media is an essential element to build widespread consumer understanding and education”
As for Forbes? They say that for them this investment is about drawing on Binance’s
“experience, network and resources” so that they can become a “true leader in the field [of digital assets]”
Fun fact - Binance previously sued Forbes for defamation, after a 2020 Forbes investigation claimed their complex corporate structure helped them avoid US regulation. The lawsuit has since been dropped. Asked for comment on this, the Binance Chief Communications Officer said:
“It’s totally water under the bridge”
Binance is a beast - valued around $300bn - and it’s very possible we’ll see them go out and acquire other mainstream companies.
Where to start with this one! Just when you thought crypto couldn’t get any weirder, a wild case involving a crypto-heist, failed money laundering and a strange young couple has captivated the internet...
This all started back in 2016, when anonymous hackers stole 120,000 Bitcoin from crypto exchange Bitfinex - worth around $70M dollars at the time
Here’s the thing though - because Bitcoin runs on a public ledger, the hackers couldn’t exactly just cash out - because, well - anyone could see those funds moving - AND - no exchange would ever cash-out those blacklisted BTC for USD without telling the authorities
This must have been pretty infuriating for the hackers. Especially when you fast forward to today and the value of their bounty has ballooned to $4 billion!
Sorta like having your getaway car parked outside the bank, full of gold that keeps getting more valuable, and being unable to drive off without getting busted.
Well that all changed earlier this week when those funds started to move in a big way. Were the mysterious hackers going to get away with it?!
Nope. Turns out the US government had traced the funds back to a young couple Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan, seized stolen Bitcoin and have charged them with conspiracy to launder billions of dollars worth of the cryptocurrency.
The story gets weirder when you look at the couple - who’re both super active online. Especially Heather - better known by her online persona, Razzlekhan.
Yeah - that’s our criminal mastermind. You can read about her here
Ridiculousness aside - there’s a pretty important message here. It’s a major turning point for the mainstream narrative that Bitcoin and Crypto in general is for criminals: as the Deputy Attorney General put it:
“Today’s arrests show that cryptocurrency is not a safe haven for criminals”
We’ll leave you with this:
bill spacman 🐿@BillSPACman
All the government had to do was look on TikTok 🤦♂️
7:25 PM · Feb 8, 2022
1.1K Reposts · 7.82K Likes
Even car companies are getting into NFTs now
A house in Florida was auctioned as an NFT
OpenSea launches venture arm
Uber will accept crypto (at some point)
We spend time on CT, so you don’t have to. Some of our favourite recent tweets:
Expect we’ll be seeing a lot more of this
goon.sol@marygooneratne
just got airdropped a resume as an NFT, AMA
8:39 PM · Feb 9, 2022
46 Reposts · 1.33K Likes
Wait, but, when you die in the metaverse, you die IRL - right?
Molly Alter@molly_alter
The bear case for the metaverse is the fact that in the Sims everyone just took the ladders out of the pools and watched their Sims wave their hands in the air until they died
4:53 PM · Feb 9, 2022
1 Repost · 29 Likes
Stay safe out there people
thomasg.eth@thomasg_eth
For the past two weeks, I've been targeted in an extremely thorough social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH. I'm super lucky to have made it through unscathed. Here's the story 👇
12:53 AM · Feb 13, 2022
7.57K Reposts · 26.2K Likes
Before they spent tens of millions on the ad that crashed their website
David Griner@griner
Coinbase marketing team right now
12:13 AM · Feb 14, 2022
1.36K Reposts · 7.63K Likes
Each week we’ll cover an essential Web3 concept in simple terms - this week we’re looking at Wallets ✨
To dive into the world of Web3 you’ll need a wallet!
Crypto or Web3 wallets are software (or hardware) that let you:
Store your crypto / NFTs
Make crypto transactions
These wallets store two keys:
Your public key which links to your ‘address’ (sort of like your real world email address, you can share with others).
If you want a more ‘human readable’ ETH address, services like ENS (Ethereum Name Service) let you turn your address into something more like a Web3 username.
Your private key (which proves you own your stuff and lets you move it around) - never share this with others.
Your wallet will also have a seed phrase (aka recovery phrase), which is 12-14 words that lets you access your private key. It’s used as a backup in case you ever lose access to your wallet. Again - never share this with others.
There are broadly two types of wallet:
Hot wallets, which are connected to the internet and more convenient to use:
We like Rainbow for this
Cold wallets (hardware) are offline by default and more secure. For any high-value assets or coins/tokens you want to hold long term - you should move them to a cold wallet.
We’re fans of Ledger
Check out this thread from Layer3 co-founder Dariya on Soulbound on-chain credentials:
Dariya Khojasteh@dariyaxyz
Off-chain work ➡️ Soulbound on-chain credentials I’m incredibly excited by the work we’re doing @layer3xyz for the future of web3 work. 🧵 1/8
6:51 AM · Jan 29, 2022
11 Reposts · 91 Likes
The future of work is coming 👀
That’s all for today! We’ll be building and improving this weekly newsletter in public, so let us know what you thought of the new format!
- Yahya - at Layer3
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