The Hollywood actors union SAG-AFTRA has officially called off its strike after 148 days. In a three-year deal said to be worth $1 billion, actors will receive benefits including more money and protection from the growing threat of AI.
Actors can once again grace the red carpet at glitzy movie premieres, which we're sure will be a huge relief to everyone. But who has been treading the red carpet in the crypto world this week? Read on to find out...
Coinmetrics revealed its latest centralized exchange rankings, with Kraken and Crypto.com gaining a coveted 'A' rating to come top. Kraken was also rumored to be launching its own Layer 2 solution, although nobody from the exchange was prepared to confirm this. Meanwhile Binance, which didn't even make the top ten CEXs, launched its first Web3 wallet, supporting 30 blockchains and enabling DeFi functionality.
TON token did briefly make it into the top ten cryptocurrencies by market cap, supported by the launch of Telegram 'Giveaways' and the integration of the 'TON Space' wallet into the app. Also on the rise this week was Solana's token price, as developers revealed a slew of new innovations at its annual Breakpoint conference in Amsterdam.
In the United Kingdom, the FCA and the Bank of England started fleshing out the country's proposed stablecoin regulations. The U.K. authorities have been on quite the crypto-regs spree of late, and Gemini imposed strict new deposit and withdrawal limitations on customers in the country to abide by the recently implemented Travel Rule. This may lead U.K. crypto investors to use exchanges in other countries, which is exactly what has happened in India since it brought in controversial crypto taxes in 2022.
Gary Gensler was in the news again this week, being called "ineffective and incompetent" by a U.S. congressman, as anticipation builds over whether the SEC will imminently approve spot bitcoin ETFs. BlackRock meanwhile, threw a bit of a curveball by filing a spot ether ETF application, causing the price of ETH to break $2000 for the first time since April.
Ripple updated its Payments platform to make it simple enough for small businesses to use, and partnered with an African service provider to enhance its remittances solution on the continent.
Nil Foundation promised to launch a new Ethereum rollup combining zero-knowledge proofs and sharding technology, which looks likely to beat Ethereum's own sharding implementation to the punch. Another Layer 2 solution causing a buzz was Avail, which took the novel approach of gamifying its testnet launch. Users can take part in challenges such as who can author the most blocks and who can best follow the protocol... sounds like fun.
What actually does sound like fun, is Illuvium, which is set to launch later this month on the Epic Games Store, home to over 230 million gamers. Sticking with gaming, legendary developer Ubisoft has plans to make fully-fledged AAA Web3 games, and has teamed up with Immutable to make it happen. Right next door in the NFT space, Magic Eden and Yuga Labs are launching an NFT marketplace that enforces creator royalty payments across all Ethereum-based NFT collections. It seems Yuga is sick of missing out on all its loot from 'royalty optional' marketplaces.
The Proof of Stake Alliance updated its industry best practice guidelines, to protect consumers and encourage responsible innovation in the staking field. Meanwhile, the Arbitrum DAO isn't sure whether it wants to spend $2 million a year for an 'Arbitrum Coalition' to implement best practices for the DAO's decision-making.
A fake 'Ledger Live' app on the Microsoft Store led to over $750,000 of stolen assets and serious questions regarding the store's approval processes in letting such a thing happen. And finally, literally hundreds of GROK-inspired meme-coins popped into existence after Elon Musk revealed that to be the name of his new AI chatbot. We still aren't sure if the name is better or worse than the ones he gives his children.
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