WhiteboardCrypto Newsletter - Jan 11

Happy 2024 everyone! Welcome back to this week's edition of our WhiteboardCrypto Newsletter! The year is off to an interesting start, so let’s dive into it.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs Approved

Much drama ensued the past two weeks regarding the possible—and now confirmed—approval of 11 Spot Bitcoin ETFs in the US. First, the SEC’s X account was apparently hacked on Tuesday and tweeted that the ETFs would be approved, which excited the markets (and no, they didn’t have 2FA enabled). Despite Gensler claiming that the ETFs were in fact not approved, on Wednesday afternoon it was announced that all 11 of the pending applications have been approved to trade on CBOE, NYSE, and Nasdaq. You can read Gary’s personal note about the approval here. The US approval doesn’t necessarily mean other countries will follow suit, though.

It’s speculated that ETH ETFs will be approved soon too.

Learn more here.

X removed NFT profile photo feature

Despite X being bullish on peer-to-peer payments, high-yield money market accounts, and more, they’ve quietly removed the ability to have Ethereum NFTs as profile photos. In 2022, Twitter Blue subscribers were able to set NFTs as profile photos and users could click or tap on the photo to know more about NFTs, including the collections and other details. Just after announcing the company’s vision for 2024—in which the NFT issue was not mentioned—the option was removed.

Learn more here.

CoinGecko’s X account hacked

We didn’t intend to have most of this newsletter be about X, but X accounts are being hacked left, right, and center, it seems. CoinGecko’s was hacked too when an employee accidentally clicked a phishing link. So, even though they had 2FA enabled, the hacker was able to approve that anyway. This is a friendly reminder that if any post on X seems out of the blue, includes free mints, or otherwise “unexpected” and/or “too good to be true”, it is probably best to ignore it. It’s better to miss out on an opportunity than to have all your assets stolen.

Learn more here.

AAVE to onboard PayPal’s stablecoin

PYUSD, the popular payment platform PayPal’s stablecoin, has already been listed on the defi app Curve. Now, it seems Aave is fallowing along. As the third-largest DeFi platform, the move would possibly make DeFi onboarding for PayPal users more possible, or at least provide the stablecoin with more liquidity so more people could use it.

Learn more here.

Thanks for reading and I hope you learned something!

- Theodore