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Weekly Wrap-Up: Vitalik Burned 90% $SHIB From His Wallet (May 17, 2021)

A new documentary released revealed a number of Filipinos earning a living by playing a blockchain game.

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Welcome to Monday Markets Wrap-up, part of our new series: BitPinas Daily. We will look back at all the major news and updates that happened this week. Crypto is global, but sometimes news that matters happens while we sleep. So we bring to you what’s happening in our space here and abroad. We highlight three to four important news of the past week and list down the rest.       

Market Price as of May 17, 2021:

BTC$46,585-0.42%
ETH$3,602.00-1.56%
BNB$563.88+0.07%
ADA$2.29+5.53%
DOGE$0.515315+3.06%
AXS$6.49-0.61%
SLP$0.21+0.17%


Bitcoin closed May 16, 2021, at $46,585 per BTC. We’re down 22% in the last 7 days and up 55% since the year began. This is also 28.11% below the all-time high of $64,804, which was hit on April 14, 2021.

Bitcoin’s market capitalization stands today at $841,620,069,751 which is 39% of the entire cryptocurrency market. The entire crypto market, by the way, now has a market cap of $2,157,613,612,826   (-7.1%).

On the table above, there’s the cryptocurrency SLP. If you wonder what that is, check out this article: Playing Axie Infinity vs Minimum Basic Salary in the Philippines.

Shib and Memes

Vitalik Donates Large Amounts of Meme Tokens He’s Been Gifted 

A common marketing tactic among meme tokens (and even many other token projects) is to “gift” a sizeable portion of their coins in circulation to Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum. There’s this perception that if Vitalik “owns” the tokens, you should own some too. If Vitalik doesn’t use the coins, it’s as if the coins have been “burned”. If he uses it, it’s like free marketing. (“Vitalik uses it so it has utility.”)

But the developers behind some of these meme tokens that were sent to Vitalik –, including Shiba Inu (SHIB), Akita Inu (AKITA), and Dogecoin Mars (ELON), were in for a surprise. Vitalik cashed out. As per The Block, Vitalik sold 660 billion SHIB, 140 billion Akita, and 43 billion ELON. He also removed some 13,291 wrapped ETH in liquidity on Uniswap. Vitalik sold them for 15,719 ETH which at that time was worth $63 million.

Vitalik was in the mood for giving so he sent some meme coins and even ETH to non-profits:

  • 13,292 ETH to Givewell, a non-profit charitable organization
  • 1,000 ETH and 430 billion ELON (worth $215,000) to the Methuselah Foundation
  • 1,050 ETH to Machine Intelligence Research Institute
  • 500 ETH and 50.6 trillion SHIB to Crypto Covid (a relief fund in India)
  • 49 trillion AKITA to Gitcoin’s community multisig
  • 500 ETH to Charter Cities

Update: Vitalik burned 90% of his remaining SHIB:

https://twitter.com/livelyrevenant/status/1394050695586791426

Tesla

Tesla’s Concerned About The Environment, Stops Accepting Bitcoin

Elon Musk’s tweet:

Many Bitcoin advocates disputed Musk’s arguments about Bitcoin damaging the environment. 

Photo for the Article - Weekly Wrap-Up: Vitalik Burned 90% $SHIB From His Wallet (May 17, 2021)
Photo for the Article - Weekly Wrap-Up: Vitalik Burned 90% $SHIB From His Wallet (May 17, 2021)

Still, Musk’s tweet Bitcoin and the entire cryptocurrency market in a downward spiral since May 13. Bitcoin is at $43,000, the lowest it has been since Feb. 8, when it jumped from $38,000 to $46,000 in just one day.

News on BitPinas

Here are some highlighted articles from BitPinas last week:

OKEx CEO Jay Hao Discusses P2P, DeFi and the Philippine Crypto Market

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OKEx had a head start, and it continued to stay relevant despite the aggressive local expansion last year of another leading crypto exchange Binance and P2P marketplace Paxful. However, specifically for P2P, OKEx played catch up in the country. With the launch of local P2P, does it mean the Philippines is back in OKEx’s priority list? BitPinas interviewed Jay Hao, CEO of OKEx, to learn more about the company’s plans for the Philippines and Southeast Asia, his thoughts on DeFi, and how the exchange was able to get through its problems in 2020. (Read the article here.)

SEC Issues Advisories Against 247 Cryptotrade Online, Wolves Options, Etc

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The SEC said that upon investigation, it has found that the public is being encouraged by numerous individuals to invest in the following entities: Learn and Earn Online, 247 Cryptotrading FX, 247 Cryptotrade Online, ExchangeStock, Binary Options Trading, and Wolves Options; all of which do not have licenses to solicit investments. The SEC advises the public to stop investing in these schemes. (Read the article here.)’’

April 2021 Paxful and LocalBitcoins P2P Bitcoin Transaction Volume Report

Photo for the Article - Weekly Wrap-Up: Vitalik Burned 90% $SHIB From His Wallet (May 17, 2021)

For the month of April, the combined volume of transactions for both Paxful and LocalBitcoins totaled $6,535,125 based on the data from usefultulips.org, which aggregates information from the Paxful and LocalBitcoins APIs. This is a 14% increase (or $814,826 more) when compared to March’s total volume of $5,720,299. Simply put, it was the single best month for P2P in the Philippines, whose previous record was just the month prior. Volume in the last two months are way higher than any previous volume recorded. (Read the article here.)

This Docu Perfectly Captures the Play-to-Earn Phenomenon in the Philippines

Photo for the Article - Weekly Wrap-Up: Vitalik Burned 90% $SHIB From His Wallet (May 17, 2021)

Leah Callon-Butler, columnist for major crypto news publication Coindesk and director of consultancy firm Emfarsis, together with Emfarsis’ principal consultant Nathan Smale travelled to Cabanatuan to meet the very people whose lives have changed because of playing Axie Infinity. Leah (who first reported about it in 2020) interviewed a number of people throughout the documentary. While all of their lives were made difficult by the pandemic, their backgrounds were all different. (Read the article here.)

This article is published on BitPinas: Weekly Wrap-Up: Vitalik Burned 90% $SHIB Remaining in His Wallet (May 17, 2021)

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