El Salvador Passes Law for 'Volcano Bonds'

MARKET MOVERS

• El Salvador passes law paving the way for 'Volcano Bond'. The Legislative Assembly of El Salvador approved a legislation including the legal framework for the issuance of a bitcoin-backed bond, also known as the Volcano Bond. It would help El Salvador to raise capital to pay down its sovereign debt, direct funds towards the creation of Bitcoin mining infrastructure, and fund the construction of 'Bitcoin City'.

• Yuga Labs announces skill-based NFT mint. The unique drop, which involves multiple steps, begins on Jan. 17 with a free mint for existing Bored Ape Yacht Club/Mutant Ape Yacht Club holders called Sewer Passes. These tokens are the key to unlocking a skill-based game called Dookey Dash, which opens for gameplay on Jan. 18. The team also hinted that whatever is revealed will evolve throughout 2023 and will be used in future "battles.

• Ex-Goldman duo debut crypto fund for Treasuries, Bonds. Ondo Finance, a decentralized investment platform set up by a pair of former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. associates, has launched a new fund through which holders of stablecoins can invest in bonds and US Treasuries.* The fund will be split between three tokenized share classes, each of which invests in a single exchange-traded fund from either BlackRock Inc. or Pacific Investment Management Co.

• Voyager cleared to sell crypto customer accounts to Binance. Under terms of the deal, about $1 billion worth of assets* that Voyager holds on behalf of customers would be taken over by Binance, which will then give account holders the option to cash out. The deal cannot close until US Bankruptcy Judge Michael E. Wiles approves the related bankruptcy liquidation plan.

• Bitcoin jumps above $18,000 to the highest level in a month. We’ve had many negative events transpire over the past year, and if one looks at the price reaction to those events, in general, it’s been declining less and less — an indication that the market is accepting the news quite well, sell pressure is being absorbed, and hence we’re moving to an accumulation stage.

WHAT TO WATCH

• Binance plans 15%-30% hiring spree in 2023 even as rivals slash jobs. In 2023, Binance plans to increase the number of staff by between 15% and 30%, Zhao said at the Crypto Finance Conference in St. Moritz, Switzerland. Zhao said Binance needs to get the company “well-organized” ahead of the next crypto bull run and admitted the exchange is not super efficient.

• FTX says it has located more than $5 billion in cash and liquid assets. Those assets are valued as of FTX’s bankruptcy filing in November and don’t include $425 million held by authorities in the Bahamas, company lawyers said on Wednesday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del. FTX is also hoping to sell hundreds of additional holdings* with a book value of more than $4.6 billion.

• CFTC calls for default judgement against Ooki DAO in ongoing lawsuit. The CFTC, which sued Ooki DAO last year on charges of running an unregistered crypto futures trading facility and failing to conduct proper know-your-customer checks, argued in a filing Wednesday that the date for the DAO to respond – Jan. 10, 2023 – had come and gone, and said the court should enter a default judgment against the group.

• SingularityNET’s AGIX leads surge in tokens related to artificial intelligence. AGIX’s price jump started around Tuesday, following the news that Microsoft plans to invest $10 billion in OpenAI, the startup behind the popular artificial-intelligence tool ChatGPT. Other AI- and big data-related tokens have been on the rise lately, as well. The Graph’s native token, GRT, has risen 15% over the past seven days among others.

• Number of staked ETH passes 16M. The 16 million ETH figure constitutes more than 13.28% of the total ether supply and represents nearly $22.38 billion at current prices. While the growing number of staked ETH can be interpreted as a promising sign for Ethereum security and adoption, it will no doubt ramp up pressure on the network’s core developers to expedite work to enable withdrawals.