Disclaimer: Everything we write in "The Crypto Insider Report" is an x-ray of the industry as we see it, through the lens of publicly available information. We are not financial advisors.
Solana Hot Wallets Hacked
Over the last few days, Solana has been the target of a large-scale hack that affected over 8000 wallets, leading to more than 5 million USD funds stolen. The root cause is not 100% clear at the time of writing, but it seems that mobile users of a hot wallet app are the affected ones.
While we don’t know how this happened, the main theory is that there was a supply chain attack. What does this mean? Well, most software today uses open source libraries written by someone else. They are usually battle tested and reviewed by lots of people. It can however happen that (1) someone uses a more obscure library or that (2) someone manages to hide a hack via an open source contribution to a popular library, and the exploit ends up shipped with e.g. an app that everybody is using, as people usually check the app’s code for issues, but not also its dependencies (and their dependencies and so on). Thus, the app itself becomes vulnerable.
As always, a cold wallet is the safer option as it is not connected to the network all the time and it requires explicit approvals for operations. Highly recommended. On that note, CoinTelegraph has a piece on the best [and worst] ways to store your seed phrase. Stay safe.
Mihnea
================
Michael Saylor to focus exclusively on BTC strategy as MSTR shifts from the “Two Jobs, One Person” model
On August 2nd, MicroStrategy (MSTR) announced the separation of its Chairman and CEO roles. Thus, Michael Saylor would assume the role of Executive Chairman (starting from August 8th) and Phong Le, the Company’s President, would also serve as CEO. As Executive Chairman, Michael Saylor would focus more on the Company’s long-term corporate strategy, bitcoin acquisition strategy and related bitcoin advocacy initiatives.
MicroStrategy announced its Q2 results on the same day, which include $918m impairment charges due to the accounting treatment related to its BTC holdings (vs. a figure of $425m in Q2-2021). Asked during his live interventions after the results whether the decision was made as a consequence to the string of net losses reported by MSTR (note: out of the 8 quarters since it started to acquire bitcoin, in 7 it has reported a loss), Saylor noted that the role split was in the works for 4 years (before BTC acquisitions). The catalyst was Andrew Kang’s appointment as CFO in May 2022, which led the way for Phong to become CEO.
Since August 2020, MSTR has developed into a Bitcoin holding company, with an attached software business acting as a cash cow. Its strategy up until now has been to buy and hold, issue debt and equity in order to increase its firepower, while not having a hedging strategy in place to weather the volatility. As Saylor puts it, his company would have remained stuck at the pre-bitcoin valuation levels and his new strategy increased shareholder value, with the stock outperforming BTC or NDX.
Even if the move to an Executive Chairman position was to instill some confidence that corporate operations will be run by a not-so-outspoken bitcoin advocate, Michael Saylor has retained a number of avenues of control over the firm, the most important being his 67.7% voting power control (as of July 26th, 2022).
As of June 2022, MSTR holds 129,699 Bitcoins, with the breakdown between pledged and unencumbered (“free” BTCs that can be used as collateral for loans, for example) below. Related to its margin call position on its $205m loan from Silvergate that was discussed in June, the report notes that MSTR added 10,585 additional bitcoins into the account securing the borrowing under the agreement (thus, reducing the risk of its position and the associated loan-to-value ratio). The LTV ratio under the agreement is 50% or less, with MSTR being able to return excess collateral if the LTV does not exceed 25% following such return.
Razvan
================
Ultimate Champions
When we're talking about Football NFTs, Sorare has stepped up big time in the last 3 years, creating a monopoly in this area.
Until now. As it seems, competition is here and is here to stay. Under the name of Ultimate Champions.
Still in the Beta version, Ultimate Champions was launched in Q3 of 2021 in Alpha, going public at the beginning of 2022, reaching week 20 at the time you read this article. The game's premise is pretty straightforward. As they perform in games, players earn points by collecting NFT cards of their favorite soccer players. You win if you score more points than your rivals. Be the coach, and put together the best team you can.
Players can select 11 men for their team and register 14 NFTs in their squad. Users receive incentives if their teams surpass a predetermined number of fantasy points. These could be a combination of new NFT athlete cards and Ultimate Champions tokens.
The cards come in different rarities and, as the whitepaper says, the Beta phase of the game has Common, Epic, Mythic and Unique rarities. Rare cards will be released at a later stage depending on the number of active players.
The common cards are not actually NFTs, have an infinite supply, and cannot be traded on the market. But if you want another rarity, the blockchain and NFTs are here for you. You can win cards as rewards from every week's score, buy packs or go on the market to buy them. You can buy the NFTs using fiat, crypto (Coinbase connect), or the Champ Token (that can be bought from Uniswap, paired with Matic).
The downside so far is that Sorare has more than 200 signed teams, a lot of the big names are already taken, but the guys at Ultimate Champions work hard on this part. For the Romanian football fans, the great part is that the Romanian 1st League, Liga1 is here, entirely.
The game is still early, and early bet to say the least, but it might turn out to be a good bet, especially when we know that the two founders were in charge of one of Ubisoft's Mobile Gaming Studios for 7+ years, one of them also being the son of Ubisoft's owner. Don't know if this is a good or a not-so-good thing :)
One last thing: the 2022-2023 season in the game starts today, but sadly, by the time you read this article, the possibility of joining this week's game has home.
But hey, there's always the next week
Cosmin
================
Mercedes Benz Launches Blockchain-Based Data Sharing Network
The Mercedes-Benz Group’s hub Daimler South East Asia has launched Acentrik, a blockchain-based data sharing network. Acentrik’s mission is to make it easier for enterprises to unlock the value of decentralized data and enable greater data sharing in the community with the principle of data sovereignty at the core. It’s focus will be on developing two strong use cases:
1. To enable companies to buy and sell data over the blockchain
2. To enable companies to monetize data in a privacy-preserving manner.
This pilot is the result of an initiative started two years ago when Daimler started working with Ocean Protocol, trailing blockchain data exchange. The success of the collaboration led to the development of Acentrik Version 1.0.
According to Ocean’s founder Bruce Pon, Acentrik is the result of two years of intense work to help launch an enterprise fata marketplace built on Ocean technology and the blockchain company continues to support Mercedes-Benz as they take ambitious steps to lead the pack and kickstart a Data Economy.
The choice of the Polygon network for executing transactions has been saluted by Polygos’s CEO, Sandeep Nailwal, who stated that the initiative once again highlights the widespread adoption of the Polygon network amongst top brands in the world and the reliance placed on the blockchain platform.
Evelyne
================
For more educational crypto content, check out the links below:
The Stakeborg DAO Talks on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOrFZZifNn4Nx4nSQL3WS52ALPXgrTSVG
Discord channel: https://discord.com/channels/901898461568442458/903006233584341052
StakeborgDAO Quarterly Reports: https://docs.stakeborgdao.com/reports/dao-quarterly-reports
Stakeborg Academy: https://academy.stakeborg.com/
🧑🏽💻thank you