The world's oldest dog of all time was sensationally stripped of his title on Thursday when Guinness World of Records officials announced that they 'no longer [had] the evidence' that the animal was as old as its owners had claimed when it died in October last year.
Dogs almost never lie about their age, although humans have been known to lie about theirs, so when Bobi the Portuguese mastiff died at a reported age of 31 years and five months (about 220 dog years), it was his owners' assertions that were called into question. Many veterinary experts claimed that such longevity was impossible for a canine, and online photos of the pet from 1999 seemingly had different coloured paws from the dog that died.
But which (dog-based?) tokens have taken the top spot in the crypto world this week?... and which have sadly passed and been secretly replaced by a doppelganger to avoid upsetting the kids?
Binance's U.S. troubles may soon come to an end, as prosecutors have asked the courts to accept the previously revealed plea deal, including that $4.3 billion fine, to bring the matter to an end. Well, the troubles would come to an end if not for that perennially yappy dog, the SEC, which is still hounding the exchange for... not bowing before its desperate overreach, we assume. In an attempt to finally stymie that notorious overreach, the Crypto Freedom Alliance of Texas has taken on a case against the regulator, on behalf of start-up crypto exchange Lejilex. The case hopes to finally ascertain through legal means, that secondary sales of tokens are not subject to securities regulators, and that the exchange will not be an unregulated securities platform.
Meanwhile, the Nigerian government has compelled telecoms providers to block access to cryptocurrency exchanges and trading platforms... because of course, crypto is to blame for the woeful state of Nigeria's economy, and not a succession of poorly thought-out fiscal policies.
We compared the results of two airdrops with very different ethos. While Pixels user-facing airdrop saw increased engagement and market activity around the Web3 game, Starknet's intention to unlock tokens earmarked for early investors after only two months saw widespread dissatisfaction among the community. Starknet did eventually bow to community pressure and reverse its decision, while developer StarkWare unveiled a partnership with competing L2 network Polygon to improve Ethereum scaling, and hopefully consign the airdrop misstep to the dustbin of history.
Sticking with Ethereum, we looked at the recent re-staking boom, which has seen TVL explode from $250 million in December to over $7.5 billion today. Liquid re-staking protocol Puffer even managed to lock $1 billion in the first three weeks after launch. And decentralized exchange Uniswap saw its token price pump after unveiling a revised governance protocol, with rewards for those who stake and delegate their tokens.
Stablecoin issuer Circle discontinued support for USDC on the Tron network "to ensure that USDC remains trusted, transparent and safe." No specific reasons for the withdrawal were cited, although Circle was at pains to distance itself from Tron supremo Justin Sun at the end of last year, in a correspondence to U.S. senators regarding terrorist financing.
As Sun assured investors that Tron was still a functioning and decentralized network, the ECB was trying to calm the fears of commercial banks in the region, which are still concerned that the introduction of a digital euro will decimate their profits through lost customer deposits. The central bank insisted that holding limits and lack of remuneration will prevent such losses, although designing a CBDC with features purely to pacify commercial banks seems to be somewhat missing the potential benefits of digital currency.
The ECB also called Bitcoin a "bouncing dead cat" with "zero fair value", which we covered in this week's Banking and CBDC Roundup, along with updates on CBDC development in The Netherlands and Turkey.
We also Observed the return of BAYC creator Yuga Labs' co-founder, Greg Solano, who took over as CEO in an attempt to turn around the NFT maker's recent fortunes. And finally, we covered New Here, a documentary and metaverse project designed to welcome newcomers into the Cryptoart scene. The feature-length film that sits as the focus of the project has an Oscar-winning producer, a Sundance Award-winning director, and funding from Arbitrum. So, maybe you can teach an old dog new tricks after all.
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