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The 2021 payment to Deltec International was originally approved by FTX’s Ryan Salame.

According to data from Dune Analytics, the Polygon-based NFT collection has 7.4 million unique holders.

CoinDesk reporters and editors chronicle the first-ever activation of withdrawals from the Ethereum staking mechanism, set for Wednesday at 6:27 p.m. ET ( Developers refer to the upgrade as “Shapella” since it includes the “Capella” changes to the blockchain’s consensus layer as well as “Shanghai” on the execution layer.

Trading volume for blue-chip non-fungible token collection CryptoPunks is surging after generating more than $211 million in sales volumes during the last 30 days, according to data from Dune Analytics.

That result has put CryptoPunks ahead of the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection, the long-standing leading NFT brand, which has about $75 million in trading volume over the same period, Dune data also shows.

The hot-selling CryptoPunks are technically a modified version of the original collection which first went on sale in 2017. These  CryptoPunks are considered “wrapped,” as they are each tied to an Ethereum token which makes it possible to sell the NFTs on top marketplaces like OpenSea and Blur. This has boosted the collection’s overall liquidity, said The Block research analyst Brad Kay.

CryptoPunks trading volume 

Previously, CryptoPunks holders could only sell through collection creator Larva Labs’ own website. Trading volume for the “wrapped” CryptoPunks hit $133 million in March, the best performance by any collection in ten months, according to Dune.

Although the wrapped CryptoPunks can be sold on both OpenSea and Blur, it is the latter of the two that is scooping up all the business. Blur recently overtook OpenSea as the top marketplace by volume when it introduced an incentive plan that combines not charging fees with rewarding traders for using its portal by handing out its native token as a bonus.

The higher the value of the transaction, the more tokens awarded.

“Recently a bunch of big CryptoPunks holders started wrapping their punks,” said Kay, adding that the new, modified way of selling CryptoPunks appears to be motivating many holders to unload their NFTs. On Tuesday at one point, 16 CryptoPunks had sold for more than $100,000 each on Blur within an hour’s time, according to Kay.

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Less than a month later after the decentralized crypto lending platform was exploited for roughly $200 million, Euler Finance has for the first time since the exploit allowed users to claim their capital.

The agency authorized the regulation of a futures contract based on a bitcoin index of Matba Rofex, an Argentinian stock exchange.

Berkshire Hathaway’s chairman and CEO said bitcoin “doesn’t have any intrinsic value … but that doesn’t stop people from wanting to play the roulette wheel.”

Bitcoin soared on the initial release of U.S. inflation data for March, but the price has since cooled off. 

The leading cryptocurrency by market cap was trading at $30,126 by 10:18 a.m. EDT, up about 0.3% since the inflation release, according to Binance data via TradingView. Bitcoin traded around $30,450 just minutes after the release — which SoFi’s Liz Young, head of investment strategy, called “soft-ish.”

Stock futures pumped shortly after the release, while U.S. stock indices were slightly more subdued after the open, although still in the green. The S&P 500 is up 0.37%, while the Nasdaq gained 0.07%.

The market’s initial reaction to the inflation data might be ill-conceived, according to some analysts. Michael Brown, a market analyst at TraderX, said it might be folly to ignore the re-acceleration in core inflation back up to 5.6% year-on-year. The rise in core inflation is a sign of price pressures getting embedded and growing stickier, he added. 

The Fed may well end hikes after May, Brown added, but any chance of cuts is unlikely given the central bank’s reluctance to let genie out of the bottle a second time, he concluded.

Michael Hewson, the chief market analyst at CMC markets, echoed this. “Markets drawing the wrong conclusions from today’s numbers, methinks, he said in response to Brown’s tweet.  

Fed Funds futures pricing now shows a 67% probability of a 25 basis point increase at next month’s meeting, down from 73% this morning. The probability of a cut by July is 47%, according to CME’s FedWatch. 

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Chiru Labs, the Web3 startup behind NFT projects Azuki and BEANZ, is partnering with IPX, the firm known for the colorful LINE FRIENDS characters that originally began as stickers for the LINE messaging app.