Mexican senators were presented supposed evidence of extra-terrestrial visitation this week, in the form of two shrunken 'alien' mummies. Sports journalist turned UFO enthusiast, Jaime Maussan addressed the senate in a bid to have Mexico be the first country to acknowledge the presence of aliens on Earth.
Other studies claim that the mummies, supposedly found in Peru in 2017, are fake.
The truth may be out there, but you can't believe everything you see. So, what truths can we believe from the world of crypto this week?
"And pigs might fly," is a popular saying to express skepticism, but would you believe that pigs might become NFTs? That is exactly what has happened in Croatia, and not in an adorable cartoon avatar collection kind of way. Real people can invest real money in real pigs, and get real meat once those pigs mature. Talk about bringing home the bacon.
Sticking with NFTs, the Stoner Cats are in trouble with the SEC for smoking unlicensed securities. Apparently the regulator has decreed the cats as securities because they... checks notes... were created by an all-star team and can be resold. We dread to think what Gensler will be coming after next week. Also Wombat-maker Spielworks has bought up the insolvent WAX NFT marketplace AtomicHub with plans to turn it into a sustainable product.
After Vitalik Buterin's Twitter/X account was compromised, causing followers to lose $691K trying to claim non-existent free NFTs, we asked whether the crypto market was too reliant on social media. And while the Russian and North Korean leaders cosied up at a cosmodrome in Vladivostok, North Korean hackers were laundering stolen funds through Russian crypto exchanges... and have been since 2021 according to Chainalysis.
Chainalysis also published its annual Global Crypto Adoption Index this week, showing that the countries of South and South East Asia are ahead of the game when it comes to the uptake of blockchain-based currencies. The only 'Western' nation in the top ten was the United States at number four, which rather suggests that the SEC's vendetta is not achieving its desired goals.
Speaking of not achieving goals, Telegram trading bot Banana Gun had a bit of a misfire when it tried to launch a native token. Despite allegedly being subject to two prior audits, the token contract launched with a bug allowing zero-tax sales and the whole project was pulled, at least for now.
Zodia Custody teamed up with Parity to bring its services to the Polkadot blockchain in a bid to encourage institutional interest, and also continued its Asia-Pacific expansion by launching an entity in Singapore. Meanwhile, Deutsche Bank teamed up with Taurus to provide custody services to institutional clients, although not everybody was excited about the prospect.
Metamask unveiled some useful new features, although its fiat off-ramp provoked some distress amid the current bearish market. The upcoming ability to add cross-chain functionality was better received, and may mean users no longer need multiple wallets to hold all of their portfolio.
Finally, we looked at why Tether may be the undeniable king of stablecoins on centralized exchanges, but on DEX and DeFi it is a different story, with USDC being the stablecoin of choice.
Until next week, we will continue to uncover the truth as we Observe it.
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