09/12

Made For India, Made In India

Good Morning. Hope you all are chilling this weekend ( literally and figuratively, it's quite cold in Prayagraj, where the editor lives đŸ„¶). FIU is investigating more than 3000 crypto accounts for illegal activity, Alchemy is releasing a Dapp store, what is the difference between a hot wallet đŸ”„ and a cold wallet 🧊, Starbucks launches beta of Web3 'Odyssey'and more to read today!

What's Up India?

  • Starbucks Launches Beta of Web3 'Odyssey' Loyalty Program Backed By Polygon: In September, Starbucks announced it has partnered with Polygon to build its Starbucks Odyssey Web3-powered experience. The beta is now live. Starbucks Odyssey is an extension of the Starbucks Rewards loyalty program that unlocks access to exciting new benefits and experiences for members. The experience allows members to participate in a series of entertaining, interactive activities called ‘Journeys”. Once a Journey is complete, members will earn collectible ‘Journey Stamps’ (NFTs) and Odyssey Points that will open access to new benefits and immersive coffee experiences that they cannot get anywhere else. A limited number of waitlist members have been invited to participate in the beta experience, but it’s not too late to sign up.

  • As Per India's Financial Intelligence Unit, More Than 3,000 Crypto Accounts Are Being Investigated For 'illegal Activities' đŸ•”ïž: 3,300 cryptocurrency accounts that were suspected of being used for money laundering, drug trafficking, and other illegal activities, such as financing social unrest, were reportedly monitored by India's Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) over the course of the previous eight months. Other law enforcement organisations and cryptocurrency exchanges, both in India and abroad, have received the information from the agency. According to a report by The Economic Times, in addition to contacting global organisations, FIU has recommended closing these accounts. India is a part of the Egmont Group, a global association of 166 nations' financial intelligence agencies. "In the last few months (April to November) we have tracked about 3,300 accounts, associated with various illegal activities," a senior official was quoted as saying, adding that the list had been given to the Enforcement Directorate, the Income Tax Department, and the Central Bureau of Investigation.

  • FanTiger, India’s first music NFT platform, achieved a unique feat by registering record sales of over 50,000 NFT: India’s first music NFT platform, achieved a unique feat by registering record sales of over 50,000 NFT transactions in the last 30 days, making it to the Top 5 NFT projects in the world when compared to the Top NFT projects listed and ranked on OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace globally. FanTiger empowers Independent Artists to build their fan community on the platform and the fans support the artists to launch new music by buying their music NFTs. Music NFTs enable fans and investors to purchase partial ownership of songs, share royalty income, access an exclusive community and limited edition signed merchandise, along with an opportunity to personally interact with artists & more. FanTiger’s vision is to onboard 10 million fans into the community and educate and generate awareness around digital collectibles. Further, it aims at supercharging the careers of over 100,000 artists using NFTs.

Web3 Around The World.

  • Alchemy Releases Web3 App Store to Streamline Dapp Access: Web3 developer platform Alchemy is rolling out a decentralized application (dapp) store, the company said Tuesday. The marketplace aims to streamline access to decentralized applications for users and developers. Jason Shah, head of growth at Alchemy, told CoinDesk that while its app store is centralized it's not a monetized product, and aims to provide free access to Web3-curious users and developers eager to put their technologies to use for an audience. “We are all about getting free resources to the community that we think can grow with it,” said Shah. “Again, we’ve built ways into the system to have the community actually shape it.” Shah told CoinDesk that while other marketplaces may be motivated by earning royalties, Alchemy is motivated to onboard users new to Web3 by providing an organized, accessible marketplace.

  • November Month Alone Saw Record-Breaking $4.88 Billion Worth of Crypto Lost or Stolen: As much as $4.88bn worth of crypto was either lost or stolen in November, with one incident alone accounting for a whopping $2.8bn, a new report from DappRadar has revealed. According to the report, the single largest case to impact crypto users in November was the halting of withdrawals from Genesis. Genesis reportedly had $2.8bn in outstanding loans but was forced to halt all withdrawals after news broke that it had lost access to $175m held on a trading account on the now-bankrupt crypto exchange FTX. The second-largest case in November was FTX, which filed for bankruptcy on November 11. In this case, around $1bn in user funds were deemed to be lost in the bankruptcy, while FTX has also reported an exploit of $380m that happened after withdrawals were halted. Coming in third for the month was the popular crypto derivatives exchange Deribit, which lost $28m in a hack of one of its hot wallets. The exchange said on Twitter that the loss would not impact its operations or its users and that the loss will be “paid by company reserves.”

  • Dash 2 Trade Raises $8.78m as ICO Buying FOMO Takes Off, Only 33% of Tokens Left: Professional crypto trading platform Dash 2 Trade has raised an impressive $8,785,000 in less than two months as investors rush to buy. The performance is even more startling given that the fundraise is accelerating towards its hard cap target of $13,420,000 against the backdrop of a bear market. D2T, the native coin of the trading intelligence system, is now priced at $0.0533 after initially going on sale to investors in its first presale stage at $0.0476. The D2T presale is in its 4th and final stage, hence the accelerating rate of buying – $400,000 has been raised from investors in less than 24 hours. 175,000,000 D2T tokens have been purchased, with 87,500,000 remaining out of the total allocation of 262,500,00 – so only 33% of tokens are left, creating fear of missing out (FOMO) among prospective investors. D2T has a total supply of 1 billion tokens and 26.25% are available to the public in the presale and there is no lock or vesting period for those. There has been no private sale.

Web3 In Tweets

Career & Learning

Hot Wallet vs Cold Wallet: It’s quite easy to distinguish one type from another. In simple words, all wallets that are connected to the internet are considered hot wallets. Likewise, all wallets that are kept offline are cold wallets. As such, hot wallets are perfectly convenient for everyday use (e.g., buying goods and services, transferring small amounts of crypto to friends or family, etc.), and come in the form of easily accessible software. Contrary to hot wallets, cold storages are, in most cases, physical hardware wallet devices, designed for far more secure, long-term cryptocurrency storage for those that have significant amounts of digital assets that require strong security measures to protect.

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