Weekly Update: 30 Sep 2022

1) Bankrupt crypto lender Celsius Network appears to be considering a plan to turn its debt into crypto “IOU” (“I Owe You”) tokens [Coindesk]

– Customers could either redeem the wrapped “IOU tokens” (though a timeline for these redemptions remains unclear), trade them on the open market or hold them to speculate on Celsius’ potential recovery in the long term.

2) Chiru Labs, the Los Angeles-based creator of the much-hyped Azuki NFT collection, plans to raise at least $30 million in an upcoming Series A funding round [The Block]

– Around six months ago, a rare item sold for 420 ETH, more than a million U.S. dollars at the time. The cheapest Azukis are today worth 11.2 ETH (roughly $14,000)

3) Circle expands USDC to five new chains, unveils cross-chain transfer protocol [Coindesk]

– USDC will begin to circulate on the Arbitrum One, NEAR, Optimism and Polkadot chains by the end of this year, with plans to enter the Cosmos ecosystem sometime in early 2023.

4) Crypto-mixing service Tornado Cash code is back on GitHub [Coindesk]

– The move by GitHub comes as Ethereum developers have called for platforms that host the mixer service to not ban Tornado Cash code. GitHub removed Tornado Cash from its sites to comply with the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets (OFAC) regulation last month.

5) FTX wants another $1B to buy more crypto companies [Blockworks]

– FTX’s fresh capital would go towards further dealmaking if the round closes and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has said his crypto company bailouts have led to mixed results.

6) Meta opens NFT sharing on Instagram and Facebook to all US users [Coindesk]

– Users in the U.S. can now connect their crypto wallets to Instagram as part of the app’s new digital collectible feature

7) Multi-jurisdictional CBDC pilot has been marked “successful” by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) after a month-long test phase that facilitated $22 million worth of real-value cross-border transactions. [Cointelegraph]

– The central banks of Hong Kong, Thailand, China and the United Arab Emirates took part in the pilot program along with 20 commercial banks from those regions.

8) NFT trading volume plunges 98% from January despite rise in adoption [Cointelegraph]

– Weekly trading volume of nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, across the blockchain realm has plunged to $114.4 million (Dune Analytics).

9) UK Introduces Law to Seize, Freeze and Recover Crypto [Coindesk]

– The U.K. introduced a bill to make it easier for law enforcement agencies to seize, freeze and recover crypto assets when used for criminal activities such as money laundering, drugs and cybercrime.