TLDR Crypto 2022-11-03

Alameda Research's balance sheet is largely made up of FTX's FTT token. The company's assets amounted to $14.6 billion at the end of June. Its single biggest asset is $3.66 billion worth of unlocked FTT. There are about 197 million FTT worth $5.1 billion in circulation. While FTX and Alameda are officially separate companies, Alameda's balance sheet shows that the companies are unusually close.

Binance is considering buying a bank. It is open to minority investments or a full acquisition. Every time Binance works with a bank, the bank's valuation goes up exponentially. Binance aims to capitalize on the expected increase in share price after the acquisition.

Instagram creators will soon be able to make and sell NFTs directly to fans both on and off Instagram. Meta has developed a toolkit for creators to create, showcase, and sell NFTs. Buyers will be able to purchase NFTs directly within the Instagram app through in-app purchases. Instagram will not take a cut of creator revenue for now. The feature is currently being tested with a small group in the US.

JPMorgan's Onyx unit recently executed live foreign exchange swaps of tokenized Japanese Yen and Singapore Dollars. The swaps were made as part of Project Guardian, an initiative backed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore that aims to explore DeFi applications in wholesale funding markets. Project Guardian is currently deployed on Polygon, but it will eventually be rolled out to other blockchain networks. It uses a modified version of Aave Arc.

Lens Protocol is a novel social graph protocol for web3 social applications. It allows users to own their profile and interpersonal relations. This means users' online identities can no longer be destroyed by a centralized entity. This Twitter thread explains Lens' architecture and how it solves the problems with web2 social networks.

This article teaches readers how to build an on- and off-chain resumé with web3 credentials. It covers what web3 credentials are and why they are important, the problems with web2 credential issuance, the current web3 credential landscape, and how to use web3 credentials. web3 credentials can be used to certify knowledge and prove experience through token ownership.

This article discusses why a centralized web is inevitable and how processes generally move from being decentralized to centralized. A decentralized web is unlikely as consolidation tends to sneak into systems. Many industries are currently highly consolidated. Networks are not distributed evenly around the world and people will move to whatever system is most efficient and easy to use.

Ethereum's Shanghai update will make it possible to withdraw staked ETH. It will also introduce a handful of minor developer-oriented tweaks. There is no release date or full feature set available yet for the update. Proto-Danksharding, a highly anticipated method of increasing network capacity and lowering fees, may not be included in the update. The developers plan to finalize the feature set in the next month or so.

The InterPlanetary File System project is an implementation of a distributed file store that aims to support the decentralized web.

Surojit Chatterjee, Coinbase's former chief product officer, will continue to serve in an advisory role until at least February 3.

Central Bank Digital Currencies are not a threat to cryptocurrencies as they validate blockchain technology and build trust among skeptics.

The business model Bitcoin miners use where they borrow against freshly minted Bitcoins and their rigs only works if Bitcoin's price goes up forever, which it doesn't.

Robinhood plans to continue to invest in the crypto space to make sure it is well positioned for when the market turns around.