Sat 03/1

Good Morning. India has finally launched e-rupee in 4 cities, Flipkart is setting up blockchain e-commerce, SBF said that he didn't commit fraud at a recent live interview 🕵🏾‍♂️ and much more to read today! Happy Reading!

• 👀 How Will The E-Rupee Work?: India launched its e-Rupee on Thursday (December 1). The Reserve Bank of India’s Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) is an electronic version of cash and will be primarily meant for retail transactions. The pilot will initially cover the four cities of Mumbai, New Delhi, Bengaluru, and Bhubaneswar. Four banks will be involved in the controlled launch of digital currency in these four cities: State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, Yes Bank, and IDFC First Bank. Users can transact with the e-Rupee through a digital wallet offered by the participating banks. According to the central bank, the pilot will test the robustness of the entire process of digital rupee creation, distribution, and retail usage in real time “Different features and applications of the e-R token and architecture will be tested in future pilots, based on the learnings from this pilot,” it said.

• Flipkart Partners With Polygon To Set Up A Blockchain-eCommerce Centre Of Excellence: Walmart-owned Flipkart on December 2 announced a strategic partnership with Polygon to set up a Blockchain-eCommerce Centre of Excellence (CoE) that will work on research and development of Web3 and metaverse commerce use-cases in India to accelerate the adoption of Web3. Jeyandran Venugopal, Chief Product and Technology Officer, Flipkart, said, “With the COE, we look forward to working with Polygon and leveraging their expertise and technical know-how to successfully onboard users not just to the value proposition of Web3 or Metaverse commerce but also Web3 in general.” Through Flipkart Labs, the e-commerce major has been piloting Web3 initiatives over the past year. Earlier this year, it launched FireDrops, an NFT platform for brands. During the festive sale, Flipkart started its metaverse - called Flipverse.

• President Of India Launches Haryana’s 1st Blockchain-secured Graduation Certificates At Nit Kurukshetra: President of India, Droupadi Murmu launched blockchain-secured graduation degrees for the 1st time in Haryana at the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Kurukshetra, on November 29, 2022. The technology for awarding blockchain-secured certificates for the students has been provided by CertOnce, a global leader in offering blockchain-based solutions and responsible for implementing India’s 1st ever blockchain secured degree solution at MIT WPU, Pune. At the launch, the digital copies of the certificates were sent to all the students via email, published on the blockchain, and instantly verifiable on the NIT Kurukshetra website.“The entire process is implemented using the same open standards platform that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Boston uses

• NFT Investor Animoca Brands To Start $2b Metaverse Fund: Non-fungible token (NFT) and gaming investor Animoca Brands plans to set up a fund worth as much as $2 billion to invest in metaverse businesses, the firm's co-founder, Yat Siu, said in an interview, Nikkei Asia reported on Wednesday. Siu said that Animoca Brands will unveil the fund, called Animoca Capital with plans to make its first investment next year. The fund's focus "will be everything on digital property rights," he added. Animoca Brands has been one of the leading investors in NFTs, blockchain gaming and metaverse-related companies and has been backed by the likes of Singapore's state investment fund Temasek. Possibly most prominent among Animoca's metaverse investments is The Sandbox, an online multiplayer game in which users build, own, trade or earn assets in the form of NFTs. Animoca is a majority shareholder in the platform.

• Auros Misses $3.1M Loan Payment on Maple Finance: Auros, a crypto trading firm that claims on its LinkedIn profile to account for a “significant proportion of global cryptocurrency volume,” has missed a loan payment of 2,400 wrapped Ether (wETH), worth $3.1M as of Nov. 30. The news comes via M11 Credit, the counterparty which made the loan. The missed payment has triggered a five-day grace period within which Auros will need to pay back the loan. M11 cited a “short-term liquidity issue as a result of the FTX insolvency,” as the reason for Auros’ missed payment. Interestingly, Auros borrowed 2,000 ETH ($2.6M) just three days ago through the M11-managed ETH pool, according to Maple’s interface. Unsecured DeFi lenders have escaped relatively unscathed so far in the wake of FTX’s collapse. As of Nov. 14, Alameda Research, the now-bankrupt sister firm of FTX, owed $13M across all lending platforms. Notably, Alameda Research owed $180M in loans via Maple as recently as May 12, according to a dashboard on Dune Analytics. And M11 in particular had made loans to Alameda earlier in the year before the trading firm closed out all exposure on Sep. 4, according to M11’s Twitter account.

• SBF Says He ‘Did Not Commit Fraud’ in Latest Public Comments: The swift collapse of FTX was a “massive failure of oversight, of risk management,” disgraced founder Sam Bankman-Fried said in a live interview at The NewYork Times Dealbook Summit Wednesday evening. The interviewer, Sorkin read a letter from an FTX customer that said, “Can you please ask SBF why he decided to steal my life savings?” SBF’s response was, “Yeah. Um, I mean, I’m deeply sorry about what happened.” He also started the interview by stating that “he didn’t try to commit fraud”, despite all of the early signs leading towards rampant fraud and mismanagement of customer funds. When asked about his own personal funds, SBF said he has around $100,000 and a single credit card. He said that he invested everything into the company. The truthfulness of that statement is up to speculation, but so is the rest of this interview. So our guess is just as good as yours.

Web3 Developer At MetaWork Labs

What is DeFi?: DeFi (or “decentralized finance”) is an umbrella term for financial services on public blockchains, primarily Ethereum. With DeFi, you can do most of the things that banks support — earn interest, borrow, lend, buy insurance, trade derivatives, trade assets, and more — but it’s faster and doesn’t require paperwork or a third party. As with crypto generally, DeFi is global, peer-to-peer (meaning directly between two people, not routed through a centralized system), pseudonymous, and open to all.

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