Midweek Update: Fir Tree Sues Grayscale & Tim Ferriss Launches ‘The Legend Of Cockpunch’
Although the repercussions of the FTX collapse continue to ripple through the industry, the crypto sector is gradually recovering - with a unique NFT series from investor and entrepreneur Tim Ferriss pumping new life into the NFT space.
The price of both Bitcoin (BTC), and Ethereum (ETH), have slid this week as bearish news stories continue to rock the industry. BTC and ETH are down ~1.63% and ~3.69% this week.
In a letter sent to customers on Wednesday, the interim CEO of institutional crypto brokerage firm Genesis, Derar Islim, said that the company’s withdrawal freeze on its lending arm will likely continue for a few “weeks” and not a few days.
The lending arm of Genesis has been down since the collapse of FTX. It is being reported that Genesis is looking at options including — raising new capital, support from creditors, and even bankruptcy.
It was reported this week that hedge fund Fir Tree is suing crypto investment firm Grayscale and seeking to obtain details about its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) product so that it may investigate mismanagement and conflicts of interest.
GBTC allows investors in regions like the US to gain exposure to Bitcoin price movements without needing to hold physical BTC. Investors are currently not able to withdraw their deposits. GBTC is the largest publicly traded crypto fund in the world.
FirTree wants Grayscale to resume redemptions and cut fees for the trust. GBTC is selling at close to a 43% discount against the spot price of Bitcoin and it is down 75% since the start of the year. Investors are now frustrated with their inability to withdraw investments from the trust.
On Wednesday, US Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman Gary Gensler said he isn’t waiting for more powers from Congress to enforce securities law against crypto companies.
Gensler said in an interview that the SEC has disclosure and governance requirements in place to hold digital assets firms accountable. He iterated that crypto firms can’t do everything from trading services, lending, and hedge-funds, and public policy will step in to regulate firms that look like FTX.
Altcoin Watch
Altcoins have generally had a bearish week although some have bucked this trend including UNI – the native token of the decentralized exchange Uniswap.
UNI is up ~2.78% this week. On November 30th, the trading of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) became available on Uniswap. Uniswap users became able to trade collectibles across OpenSea, X2Y2, Lookswap, Sudoswap, LarvaLabs, and other NFT marketplaces.
Uniswap says users can save on gas fees for NFT trades by using the platform’s open-sourced Universal Router contract and save up to ~15% on gas fees compared to other NFT marketplaces.
Alongside the release of the NFT exchange, it was announced that there will be a US$5 million airdrop to former users of Genie. This was the NFT marketplace Uniswap acquired in June.
Hot take of the week
You should be looking at: ‘The Legend of Cockpunch’ by Tim Ferris takes over the NFT ecosystem
The ‘Legend of Cockpunch’ is an Ethereum project co-created by noted author and podcast host Tim Ferriss is currently the hottest NFT project in the space. Ferriss is an entrepreneur who gained fame for his ‘4-hour workweek’ lifestyle concept and his interview podcast. The Legend of Cockpunch is a notable deviation from his usual non-fiction-based content. ‘Cockpunch’ is a surreal, fantasy project that is described as “emergent long fiction”.
Emergent story narratives tend to be without pre-planned structures where situations and AI decisions determine what happens to characters next. There has been 2,835ETH worth of ‘Cockpunch’ NFTs traded in the last 24 hours on Opensea. The volume of the next most popular NFT project on OpenSea, Valhalla, has traded 969 ETH in the last 24 hours. From an initial listing price of 0.3ETH, the floor price of Cockpunch NFTs has risen to 1.372ETH.
The sudden growth and success of the Tim Ferriss NFT project indicate there is still juice in crypto despite the bear market. Other big names in the entertainment industry are also launching NFT collections for fans. Tomorrow ‘The Immortal Pass’ , a collection based on the Interview with a Vampire series by Anne Rice, is set to be released with each item costing 0.07ETH. The NFT collection is being dropped to promote the new Interview with the Vampire TV show on AMC.
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