Ukrainian Airdrop Canceled
Ukrainian Airdrop Canceled
Crypto has been thrust into the spotlight as a life-saving asset in Ukraine. As the world’s collective heart has been hurting for all those affected by this outbreak of war, thousands of people have been able to show and give support through crypto donation. For some, the use of cryptocurrency has been the only form of accessible money, as banks and ATMs have been inaccessible, and sanctions have either limited or frozen many people’s bank accounts (including those in Russia who are not allowed to leave the country with more than $10,000 in foreign assets).
Indeed, the case for crypto as more than just a speculative asset is finally being realized by new supporters. In response to the influx of crypto donations, the Ukrainian government announced there would be an airdrop of an unspecified digital asset to reward crypto donors.
Donations spiked after the announcement, as people who wanted to participate in this airdrop piled in.
The airdrop plan was short-lived and quickly rescinded, with Ukraine deciding instead that they will release an NFT to support the Ukraine Armed Forces.
The cancellation did not stop a spoof token from being disseminated. Reported airdrops of “The Peaceful World” token, have been marked by Etherscan as a fake address.
What a brave new world of digital assets and tools we live in.
Airbnb To Provide Refugee Housing
Airbnb has announced it is making arrangements to temporarily house Ukrainian refugees, free of charge. The move is an inspired call to action to provide relief for newly displaced Ukrainian families, the number of which is expected to rise to a staggering 4 million people. CEO of Airbnb, Brian Chesky, said in an interview:
“We’ve been reaching out to our hosts. We’ve secured funding and so we’re prepared to house up to 100,000 refugees. Frankly, we can house as many refugees as we have hosts”.
Chesky was also asked about his plans to accept crypto as a form of payment, given increased interest in crypto in Ukraine. He replied:
“We are absolutely looking into this and specific to this crisis.”
The concept of accepting crypto as payment is not new for Airbnb, and was a top request in a Twitter poll earlier this year:
He further clarified:
“I am personally supportive of the idea of crypto, of course. I think it’s a really interesting technology.”
Don’t Brace Yourselves - Winter Is NOT Coming
A new report from Bank of America suggests that we are not headed for a “Crypto Winter”, despite the recent downturn in markets.
The term “Crypto Winter” has been used to refer to market downturns that have spanned prolonged periods, for example when the bitcoin price spiked past $1000 in 2013 and then proceeded to fall for many years down to $200, not turning around until the end of 2015.
Crypto has been trending downward since the end of last year, losing approximately $1.2 trillion over the course of the past three months. That does not necessarily indicate that permafrost is going to set in anytime soon, though. Bank of America argues that given current user adoption and developer activity growth, a prolonged downturn is unlikely, but does predict that crypto market upside will likely be limited for the next six months due to the Fed raising interest rates and potentially tightening monetary policy.
Despite the spotlight of late being on sell-offs, the amount of crypto held continues to impress, and the amount of people entering the market is increasing with an estimated 22% of Americans now reportedly owning at least some Bitcoin.
With recent geopolitical events running the gamut of inflation, asset seizure, account freezing, war, refugees fleeing their homes, and entire countries being cut off from participating in the financial rails of the world, the value proposition of crypto has never been more clear.
We dive into why this downturn isn’t like previous ones on The Hash.
LUNA Eclipses Ethereum
The popular LUNA Stablecoin now has more stakeholders than the behemoth that is ethereum 2.0. According to data from Staking Rewards, LUNA has amassed almost $30 billion worth of staked value, surpassing ETH 2.0’s mere $26 billion. Currently Solana has the most staked value at $35 billion.
Staked Value and TVL (Total Value Locked) metrics are different, so while DefiLlama shows that ethereum still towers above all other coins with a TVL of 111.4 billion, that includes collateral locked across different DeFi protocols rather than just ETH staked on the Beacon Chain.
The price of LUNA has increased by 78.4% over the past 30 days and is valued at roughly $92.84 with a market cap of about $34.5 billion.
Infura Infuriates Venezuela
Infrastructure provider, Infura, blocked access to users in certain jurisdictions this week, resulting in large swaths of people unable to use certain ethereum-based products. Users from Venezuela began receiving error messages when using their MetaMask wallets, and were notified that their country was “blocked”.
Infura is one of the most popular infrastructure providers for interacting with the ethereum blockchain, and they run nodes on behalf of their users. They informed people via Twitter that the Venezuelan block was a mistake, and that they had applied their geoblock too broadly when attempting to comply with sanctions requests for a different region.
The event caused crypto Twitter to ask whether ethereum was too centralized, if one of the two main infrastructure providers could be so easily censored. Others were quick to point to point out that ethereum itself is not what’s centralized, and that anyone is free to spin up their own ethereum node instead of relying on something like Infura. We took a deep dive into the topic with former ShapeShift Chief Information Security Officer, Michael Perklin, who suggests that better incentives are needed in order to further decentralize server infrastructure. Check out our conversation in the latest CryptoBeat LIVE video!
Money Alotta, See you on the Moon
Our good friend, and well-loved artist in the crypto community, passed away this week. He designed NBTV’s original banner, as well as so much of the art in the crypto space that you likely would have come to know and love.
He was a wonderful person, and will be missed terribly. Thank you for everything, Alotta.
See you on the moon 💛
By Will Sandoval, NBTV Associate Producer, and Naomi Brockwell.