Daily Digest - 6 March 2023

Headlines

▌Report: DeFi replaces CeFi and becomes VC's favorite

This week has been a quiet week in terms of financing in the encryption industry. Funding to cryptocurrency startups was just under $91 million, down sharply from $254 million the previous week. According to a recent report from CoinGecko, the majority of cash transactions this week went to decentralized finance (DeFi), blockchain infrastructure, and NFT companies, a trend that has remained consistent over the past year. The report highlights that by 2022, DeFi companies will receive more than three times the amount of funding they received in 2021, and 41 times the amount raised by the industry in 2020. Conversely, centralized financing (CeFi) funding has fallen to less than a third of its 2021 locked-in funds. Bear market conditions have not stopped DeFi money from entering DeFi.

Policies

▌Ripple sent a letter to the judge: U.S. SEC failed to give sufficient fair warning on the legality of XRP

The legal battle between Ripple and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is still ongoing, and both parties have filed applications that may affect summary judgments. In the latest update, U.S. Defense Attorney James Filan tweeted on March 3 that Ripple filed a letter to support its fair notice defense based on a recent Supreme Court decision in a case. The letter follows a recent ruling limiting the U.S. government's power to impose penalties on U.S. taxpayers who fail to disclose their offshore bank accounts. As such, Ripple emphasized the importance of federal law providing clear guidelines on prohibited content. Ripple is urging U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres to take the aforementioned court ruling into consideration when rendering her judgment. Ripple maintains that the ruling supports its contention that the US SEC failed to give sufficient "fair warning" about the legality of XRP and that the agency's actions negatively impacted investors and the broader cryptocurrency industry.

Cryptocurrency

▌WSJ: Binance tried to hire Gary Gensler as an advisor

According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the cryptocurrency trading giant Binance hopes to hire Gary Gensler as a consultant in the years before he becomes the chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Gensler declined, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing extensive information from Binance employees. In 2018 and 2019, when Gensler was a professor at MIT, efforts were made to get Gensler on board, the Wall Street Journal said. Those efforts included a meeting in October 2018 with Gensler, former Binance Ventures head Ella Zhang, and Harry Zhou. Zhou was working for a company funded by Binance at the time. “I observed that while Gensler declined to serve as an advisor, he was generous in sharing his licensing strategy,” Zhou wrote in a chat message at the time, according to the Wall Street Journal. Binance has previously hired other U.S. government officials as advisors, including Former Senator Max Baucus of Montana.

▌CoinDesk launches multi-year NFT access pass to Consensus conference

Consensus, one of the largest annual events in the cryptocurrency and Web3 space, is planned by CoinDesk, and it appears the event team is making major improvements for its 2023 iteration. Recently, CoinDesk announced a series of partnerships aimed at creating an NFT token-gated experience for the event. It is a collection of NFTs centered on Microcosms that will provide holders with three years of access to the Consensus conference pass, as well as a multi-level reward system that will unfold from 2023 to 2025.

▌PancakeSwap Version 3 Is Coming to BNB Smart Chain

Decentralized cryptocurrency exchange PancakeSwap announced that a new version of its application is rolling out to users next month on BNB Smart Chain. “The new features we're introducing will offer our users an even better experience and help make DeFi accessible to more people than ever before," said Mochi, the pseudonymous head chef of PancakeSwap. The launch of PancakeSwap V3 is slated for the first week of April and will be accompanied by a suite of upgrades to the service, such as more competitive trading fees and improved liquidity provisioning, according to a company press release.