US economy contracts for the second time in a row

Edition #28 - 29 JULY 2022

Gross domestic product fell at 0.9% annual rate during Q2, following 1.6% fall in Q1.

Two quarters of negative GDP growth are widely regarded as a signal that the economy has gone into recession. Fed chair Powell, however, insists US is not in a downturn, aims for another rate hike of as much as 100 basis points.

gaming developments

• Ronin, the blockchain behind Axie Infinity’s economy, sees its NFT sales plunge more than $120 million to 2022 low;

• Research report: GameFi industry to see $2.8 billion valuation in six years;

• The Sandbox primary land sales volumes fell by 80% in Q2;

• Axie Infinity CEO moved $3 million in AXS tokens to Binance before disclosing the Ronin bridge hack.

metaverses & Adoption

• Professional soccer club Crawley Town FC, an English League Two side, signs a player after a successful governance vote by NFT holders;

• Final candidates for next UK prime minister – Rishi Sunak and Liza Truss, have both made pro-crypto statements;

• Survey: 50% of gig workers prefer portion of salary payment in crypto;

• Facebook’s parent Meta loses $2.8 billion on its Metaverse division during Q2, revenue down by 35%;

• US antitrust watchdog sues to stop Facebook from monopolizing the metaverse.

defi

• Stablecoin supply drops almost 19% in Q2;

• Retail crypto lender Babel Finance has lost over $280 million in proprietary trading with customer funds;

• Terra is being investigated for insider trading and inflating trade volumes;

• DeFi giant Aave will now have its own native decentralized USD stablecoin GHO, following an approval vote by the community;

• Thailand-based crypto exchange giant Zipmex files for bankruptcy, following freezing of user withdrawals;

• Lido proposes new terms for treasury token sale to Dragonfly Capital;

• Tether reiterates that it holds no Chinese commercial paper in reserves.

funding rounds

• Space and Time, a decentralized data platform, completes $10 million Seed round, with Framework Ventures leading the funding;

• Unstoppable Domains, a blockchain naming system provider, successfully closed its $65 million Series A funding round, led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Mayfield, Gaingels, Alchemy Ventures, Redbeard Ventures amongst others. The round valued the business at $1 billion;

• Aptos Labs, an L1 blockchain, raises $150 million Series A, led by FTX and Jump Crypto, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, Multicoin Capital and Circle Ventures among other amongst others.

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