WhiteboardCrypto Newsletter - Dec 21

Welcome back to this week's edition of our WhiteboardCrypto Newsletter!

FTX payouts set to begin soon

If you were affected by the FTX collapse and have followed the claims process, you can now select which exchange you want them to distribute your returns through. Returns will begin on January 3, 2025.

Learn more here.

Chainalysis released their year-end report

Every year, the on-chain analysis company releases a report that showcases the crime that occurred in crypto. It’s a good metric for what type of scams criminals are using and how to avoid them. While the numbers of stolen assets are staggering - $2.2 billion in 2024 - it’s an important reminder that no one is perfect and everyone can fall victim to this. Knowing the threats and best practices to avoid them is absolutely important.

Learn more here.

Polygon drama

The Polygon L2 struggled this week. A popular liquid staking platform on Ethereum and a variety of L2s, Lido is ending support for Polygon, largely due to Polygon’s move away from proof-of-stake and into zkEVM. Users that have staked on Polygon through Lido will have until June 16, 2025 to remove their funds. At the same time, Aave DAO threatened to move away from Polygon, if one of Polygon’s governance proposals went through. We now know that it is unlikely to be approved. Polygon’s governance proposal suggested taking funds currently stored on Polygon’s native bridge and putting them in yield-generating defi platforms to bring around $70M per year into Polygon’s ecosystem. But having funds that are necessary for an ecosystem in defi is really risky because if the defi is hacked, all that liquidity would evaporate from the Polygon ecosystem. Aave DAO is not comfortable with this risk and a proposal was made to remove any liquidity Aave V2 and V3 have from Polygon if this decision is approved.

EU’s MiCA guidelines coming into effect

The European Union's Markets in Crypto Asset (MiCA) rules are supposed to come into effect December 30. But a variety of countries this would affect haven’t actually began to implement them yet. So, the EU released guidelines for the transition to help everyone get on board. Here’s a primer on the MiCA rules and what they will mean for crypto consumers.

Learn more here.

Thanks for reading and I hope you learned something!

- Theodore