The Week in Web3
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Every Monday we’ll drop a roundup of Web3 news, tweets and vibes from the last 7 days.
In this issue:
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: Stablecoins 💡
Essential Web3 concepts, simply explained
Your Web3 Briefing 📝
Roundup of the biggest Web3 headlines over the last 7 days
Ukraine gets millions in Crypto donations to help fight Russia
The Ukrainian government has been fundraising in crypto. After tweeting their Bitcoin and Ethereum wallet addresses - they’ve raised around $20m
This actually makes a lot of sense.
Consider how these sorts of donations would have traditionally happened, through banks. And banks in Ukraine, according to the NYT - “require an exasperating obstacle course of paperwork receiving even small amounts of money from another country”
But receiving crypto is allowing Ukraine to bypass financial institutions and receive quick, cross-border donations.
This also makes sense when you consider how tech-savvy (and crypto-savvy, for that matter) Ukraine is. They rank #1 in Europe and #4 globally for crypto adoption - and even had previously stated ambitions to become the crypto capital of the world.
In an interview with The Verge - Yev Muchnik, a Ukrainian-born lawyer said:
"It really restores your faith in how people and community and technology can do so much.”
But noted that:
“the missing link is trying to figure out what people on the ground need”.
And remember - Ukrainians will only be able to use this Crypto if their internet access holds out.
On a related note - Ukranian officials have also asked crypto exchanges to block payments to Russian users - which raises an interesting question:
Should cryptocurrencies be part of future sanctions?
Ukraine’s Vice PM tweeted this - essentially asking for crypto sanctions, along with the crippling financial sanctions on Russia already that’ve already been enacted:
But, wait - crypto and sanctions? What about the whole, y'know, freedom from financial censorship thing?
There’s already been a response from Kraken - a major crypto exchange - who have essentially said, no - sorry.
No doubt there will be more developments over the coming days.
All this is certainly taking sanctions policy into uncharted territory - as the WSJ reports - even if major centralised crypto exchanges (like Coinbase) were forced to freeze accounts of Russian clients - this wouldn’t be so easy with DeFi and true peer-to-peer crypto transactions, which by design, exist largely outside government-regulated financial system.
What else you should know
Ebay is considering taking Crypto payments
A Goldman Sachs partner leaves to join Coinbase
Block (formerly Square) reports $1.96 billion in Bitcoin revenue
Bitcoin hasn’t exactly been behaving like digital gold
Tweets of the Week
We spend time on CT, so you don’t have to. Some of our favourite recent tweets:
Crypto journalist Laura Shin reveals the identity of the 2016 DAO hacker
It’s more than just joining Discords
A new way to think about crypto - we like this
BAYC Lead Artist @allseeingseneca sells 1/1 NFT for 39.69Ξ
Finally - anything to do with @cobie's beef with Upwork 💀
Web3 101: Stablecoins
Each week we’ll cover an essential Web3 concept in simple terms - this week we’re looking at Stablecoins ✨
Crypto is pretty much synonymous with price swings and volatility. Just look at the charts over the last few weeks! But there's a class of cryptocurrencies that are purpose built to avoid this - they're called Stablecoins.
What are they? Stablecoins are crypto without the volatility - designed to remain steady in value (more like a traditional currency)
How do they work? Some (such as USDC and USDT) are 'pegged' to a stable reserve asset (such as the US Dollar or Gold). Others (like DAI and UST) use collateralised cypto loans or algorithms to keep their value stable.
But why? Stablecoins can allow you to earn interest / yield without worrying about big price swings. They're also a fast and cheap way to transfer money (especially internationally) - as Ukraine's recent fundraising with USDT (a stablecoin) has shown.
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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