Daily Crypto NewsEDITION #326, 13 October 2021

The 21st Century Circus Apes

🦍 Hey Moni Maker

Today, in 1534, Pope Paul III ascended the throne. You'd think, what the f@ck do you need this information for? There's no way to even play around with it, no way to lead you to some clever idea about crypto or something like that. That's the problem... there's a lot of garbage, unnecessary junk, spam and scam in the info field.

Digest pulls out only the best news for you, polishes it up, and handles it. Let's go!

Bored Ape Yacht Club has been a big winner of this year’s NFT market explosion, with hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of trading volume in a matter of months. Now the creators aim to expand into other media endeavors with the help of a veteran music industry executive.

Yuga Labs announced that it has signed with longtime music manager and tech investor Guy Oseary to explore media opportunities across various potential formats, including film, television, music, and video games.

The deal comes following August’s news that Larva Labs, the creators of the influential CryptoPunks NFTs, signed with United Talent Agency (UTA) for similar aims. Over the weekend, Creative Artists Agency (CAA) announced that it signed pseudonymous NFT collector 0xb1—who owns Bored Ape NFTs, among others—to monetize their collection through licensing and partnership deals.

So what?

Let's make a long story short: they're going to torture apes like circus monkeys. They'll put them into movies, music, and other things, as long as they work.

It's a good thing that progress is making people less cruel. Today's children don't give a shit about monkeys in the zoo, but the apes are fascinating.

“I personally think Bitcoin is worthless,” said Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan, during the annual meeting for the Institute of International Finance. It's the latest in a succession of bearish statements from Dimon over the years.

Dimon began his streak back in 2014 when he told CNBC that Bitcoin was “a terrible store of value” and that the cryptocurrency “can be replicated over and over.”

Over the years, he has called the leading cryptocurrency a “fraud” and “fool’s gold,” earning the position of proverbial punching bag among crypto evangelicals.

“Our clients are adults, they disagree, that’s what makes markets, so if they want to have access to buy yourself Bitcoin, we can’t custody it but we can give them legitimate, as-clean-as-possible access,” said Dimon.

Take a loot at the FUD pic. Thank you!

Crypto exchange operator Binance announced Tuesday that it has launched a $1 billion fund for growing the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) ecosystem.

The massive fund is divided into four categories: Talent development, liquidity incentive program, builder program, and investment and incubation program.

The talent development program is worth $100 million and is aimed at mentoring developer communities, providing academic scholarships to institutions, and supporting research and development activities around crypto and blockchain.

The liquidity incentive program is also worth $100 million and will reward liquidity providers supporting decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols built on BSC.

The builder program is worth higher at $300 million and is further divided into two sub-categories — $100 million for conducting hackathons, bug bounty and development programs, and $200 million for incubating 100 decentralized apps building on top of BSC.

The last program, the investment and incubation program, forms the larger chunk of the fund at $500 million. It aims to invest in startups across areas, including decentralized computing, gaming, metaverse, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and blockchain-based financial services.

What? You missed your NFT Digest? So good he didn’t miss you! Check here.

Press: What's been buying more? DappRadar giving hope? What are Warena and Illuvium going to do? Digest is making some jpeg!

Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, a founding member of the organization behind Facebook's Diem cryptocurrency project, is making sure something good comes of an investment that has thus far failed to bear fruit. Riyaz Faizullabhoy and Nassim Eddequiouaq, who transitioned from roles at crypto custody firm Anchorage two years ago to begin working on Facebook's wallet, have been named chief technology officer and chief information security officer, respectively, of the outfit.

Long Story Short:

- Andreessen Horowitz has a $2.2 billion fund to use for crypto investments.

- It's tapped two Novi wallet engineers as a16z Crypto's CTO and CISO.

WAGMI is an acronym for "we all gonna make it". It is usually used in situations when there's hope for the market or coins to rise, or when there's a lot of good news coming about the market.

And more you can find in our Glossary!

And you...buy Bitcoin! (it's a good time!)