Where are they? 🔎
Crypto devs playing hide and seek? Where y'all at? Friend.tech, hacker's new BFF? Who won Taiwan's tax lottery? A secret door in FTX? And Elon plays 4D chess with the SEC.
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Active open-source crypto developers are at a three-year low.
Are they packing up and leaving?
First, let's look at the numbers. Active open-source crypto developers have decreased significantly since last year.
We're talking about a dip from 36,500 in January 2022 to a slightly worrying 19,630 by September 2023.
The last time we saw numbers like this was back in December 2020, during the dawn of a crypto bull run.
Eddy Lazzarin, CTO of a16z notes that while these figures come from tracking popular crypto-focused repositories, there's a chunk of the development iceberg that might be below the waterline.
We're talking about crypto development happening outside the usual, transparent open-source hubs.
These repositories are harder to monitor on a per-developer basis, potentially hiding a hive of activity.
What's open-source development? 🌐
For the newbies, open-source means the code for a project is freely available for anyone to peek at, use, or distribute.
Many crypto enthusiasts love this approach, as it builds trust and decentralisation.
It's like the exact opposite of proprietary or "this is mine, you can't see it" code.
Where did all the developers go? 👩💻
a16z thinks they didn’t just vanish. Instead, they might have shifted their focus to the application layer of crypto, where things are heating up.
Here, the coding action is a tad more secretive and, thus, harder to monitor.
Moreover, a16z presents a silver lining – crypto developer library downloads. These hit a record high recently. It might not be about the sheer number of developers but the volume of work they're doing.
Like, one coder might just make a tiny tweak while another might be burning the midnight oil.
Why do people invest in crypto?
To boost living standards.
What?
A Bitget survey shows that nearly half of crypto users globally are turning to digital assets to enhance their standard of living. A survey featured more than 1,500 respondents across 20 countries.
The findings
50% of total respondents invest in crypto to enhance their living standards.
Specific country data
South Korea: 46%
Canada: 44%
Turkey: 41%
Malaysia & Taiwan: 36% (for family quality of life improvement)
Investment for education
US & Turkey: 27% of female investors aim to fund their children’s education.
South Korea & Japan: Only 5% invest with the same intent.
Chinese investors' engagement
18% have invested between $50,000 and $100,000.
19% have invested between $100,000 and $500,000.
Cryptocurrency popularity fluctuations
Canada: 3% decrease in crypto ownership between 2021 and 2022.
Nigeria: 99% are aware of digital assets and 90% plan to invest in the next year
Who leads the crypto investment race?
Female investors.
In the US, women investors are putting a significant emphasis on education.
South Korean and Japanese female investors, on the other hand, are using crypto to enhance their personal financial situations.
Specifically, 49% of female users in South Korea and 41% in Japan are investing with this financial objective, whereas the numbers are slightly lower for their male counterparts at 45% and 30% respectively.
Gender and Crypto
The dynamics between gender and cryptocurrency investment are increasingly being spotlighted.
WazirX Survey 📊
By the end of 2021, women made up only 15% of the trading volume on WazirX.
This percentage rose by 3.30% within a year, reaching 18.57% by the end of 2022.
On average, women on the platform held assets worth Rs 9,650.
This is more than 30% higher than men, who on average held crypto assets valued at Rs 6,676.
KuCoin Study 📉
52% of female crypto investors believe in holding onto their investments for the long term, compared to 38% of men.
58% of women claimed they invest in crypto only after conducting their own research.
40% of female crypto investors are interested in introducing more women to crypto.
37% believe that increased female participation in crypto discussions can make the industry more female-friendly.
TTD Numbers 🔢
$310K
When it comes to crypto, the talk of the town is often about clever trades and soaring token prices.
But for one Taiwanese trader, a 6-cent fee led to a windfall of $310K, all thanks to being tax-compliant.
What happened?
In the fascinating world of crypto, where fortunes are made (and sometimes lost) on sharp trades, one trader on the MaiCoin Max exchange in Taiwan stumbled upon a jackpot.
Not by investing in the next big token, but by merely getting a receipt.
Taiwan's got an innovative way of ensuring tax compliance with its "Uniform Invoice Lottery."
Here's how it works
Retailers with a certain revenue threshold issue official receipts to customers.
These aren’t just receipts; they double as lottery tickets.
An electronic copy goes to tax authorities, ensuring the transaction is recorded.
Every month, the authorities run a draw, with a grand prize of 10 million NTD, which is roughly $310,000.
MaiCoin Max, like a diligent citizen, ensures it pays its taxes.
This means that every time a trade happens on their platform, the service fees and profit they make become taxable events.
This, in turn, means frequent traders get a heap of these virtual lottery tickets.
Taiwan introduced this scheme way back in the 1950s.
The genius idea was to turn every citizen into a mini tax inspector, ensuring compliance.
Buy a newspaper, a snack, or make a massive trade, and you get a chance to strike gold.
TTD SocialFi 🫂
Friend.tech users lose big
Four Friend.tech users found their wallets lighter by $385,000 in Ethereum, thanks to a sequence of SIM swap attacks.
This isn't the platform's first run-in with this issue—ZachXBT, a crypto investigator, tracked the theft and found the same hacker had targeted Friend.tech users earlier, draining their accounts in less than a day.
Friend.tech users immediately took to the platform to share their plight.
Sumfattytuna narrated how the hacker managed to execute the swap from an Apple store and transitioned to an iPhone SE.
Warning other users, he said his wallet was compromised. Another user, KingMgugga, shared his horror of witnessing the theft happen in real time.
In the wake of these attacks, Friend.tech unveiled a new feature allowing users to access their accounts without depending on their phone numbers.
Render (RNDR) rises
Render (RNDR) token stands out in the CryptoAI space as it continues to achieve triple-digit price growth in 2023, while competitors see a decline.
A combination of on-chain data and recent order book records suggest a potentially bullish future for RNDR.
Despite other CryptoAI tokens facing a downturn in H2 2023, RNDR has solidly held onto its impressive 2023 price gains.
What is RNDR? RNDR is the principal token for Render, a GPU rendering network built on the Ethereum blockchain. By connecting GPU demand from artists and studios to miners, it's benefiting significantly from the rising SocialFi trend.
On-chain Data: Data from Santiment showcases RNDR's growing adoption. New users on Render's network surged from 121 on September 5 to 230 by October 2. Typically, an increase in users equates to a rise in demand for the native token. The growth in user base has seen RNDR's price increase by 25% between September 5 and October 5.
Stars Arena almost hacked
SocialFi platform Stars Arena, built on the Avalanche blockchain, experienced an attempted exploit that could have resulted in a loss of $1 million from its smart contract.
Hackers were able to sell zero shares and receive free Avalanche (AVAX) tokens by exploiting a broken getPrice() function. However, the platform quickly fixed the issue and claimed that it was a coordinated fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) attack.
The Total Value Locked (TVL) on the platform fell from $1 million to $915,590, indicating that the exploiters were not entirely successful. The incident has raised concerns within the community about the platform's security and its similarities to the popular SocialFi platform Friend.tech.
The FTX Saga🚨
FTX employees found a backdoor for Alameda Research that allowed a negative balance of up to $65 billion, months before the exchange collapsed, according to the Wall Street Journal.👇🏻
TTD WTF 🙄
Blockticity has utilised Avalanche's blockchain to mint certifications of authenticity for hemp, psychedelic mushrooms, and kratom.
Read it on Token Dispatch.
This move brings an innovative solution to supply chain transparency issues faced by the cannabis industry.
What's going on? 🤔
Blockticity, a blockchain startup, has announced that they've minted certifications worth $275 million on the Avalanche blockchain.
The first batch of minting includes hemp, psychedelic mushrooms, and kratom products, with the intended purpose of providing a Certificate of Analysis (COA) as a non-fungible token (NFT).
The COAs are linked to QR codes printed directly on the products. Scanning the QR code takes users to the certificate, giving them access to the product's test results and original lab details.
This process aims to enhance the transparency of supply chains and counter potential fraudulent activities like QR code tampering or altering of data.
Why is this important? 🌿
The hemp, cannabis, mushroom, and kratom industries often grapple with the challenge of ensuring transparency throughout their supply chains. By introducing blockchain-backed certifications, consumers can have confidence in the authenticity and safety of the products they buy.
Blockticity has already assisted ACS Laboratory in minting over 35,000 COAs, which equates to a product value of around $275 million. The next phase is set to include certifications for cannabis, with 120,000 COAs in the pipeline.
Previous Collaborations 🤝
This isn't the first time Blockticity and ACS Laboratory have teamed up.
In November 2021, they collaborated to release the first national hemp COA as an NFT on the Moonwalk NFT platform.
TTD X 🐦
The Tesla and SpaceX mogul has never been one to keep his opinions to himself.
This time, his crosshairs are on the US SEC and the Department of Justice.
A throwback to a massive purchase
Let's rewind to last October, when Elon Musk stunned the world with a whopping $44-billion acquisition of Twitter, which has now been rebranded to X.
All seemed well until the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) began to wonder if this mega-purchase might have triggered securities laws.
Earlier this month, the SEC filed a suit against Musk, alleging that he declined to testify in their ongoing probe related to the X acquisition.
The California District Court filing from the regulator on Oct 5 sought to push Musk into complying with a previous SEC subpoena.
Not one to back down, Musk took to X the same day, hinting that maybe it's the SEC and the US Department of Justice that should be under scrutiny.
He urged for a complete overhaul of these agencies and the establishment of a commission to penalise individuals using their regulatory powers for personal and political motives.
In a mood of rebellion, Musk confidently responded to an X user's question about the possibility of such an investigation.
"I estimate the probability at 100%."
Diving into the nitty-gritty of the dispute, the SEC shared that they had subpoenaed Musk in May 2023 and expected him to provide testimony at their San Francisco office by September 15.
Musk had given his initial nod, but two days before the scheduled date, he informed the SEC that he wouldn't be showing up.
The SEC expressed its dissatisfaction, citing Musk's objections as baseless and lacking any legal validity.
TTD Surfer 🏄
Crypto hardware wallet manufacturer Ledger has reduced its employee workforce by 12%.
The Sui Foundation has announced a $51.3 million ecosystem fund to support its DeFi ecosystem and on-chain central limit order book-based platform, DeepBook.
The Hong Kong police force and the SFC have formed a joint task force to monitor suspicious activity on crypto exchanges.
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