Tether had ‘record-breaking’ web earnings in This fall, Polygon Labs does layoffs and hackers steal $112M of XRP

Welcome to starcrypto Crypto, previously often known as Chain Response.

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Whats up and welcome again to the third version of the brand new and improved starcrypto Crypto e-newsletter. As beforehand talked about, alongside our recurrently scheduled information bits, I’ll be including some contemporary recurring segments and options — so should you like what you see (or don’t), let me know at jacquelyn@techcrunch.com.

Glad February, associates! We’ve made it by means of one-twelfth of the 12 months; that wasn’t so laborious was it? Solely need to do it 11 extra occasions to make it to 2025.

As January got here to an finish, hackers bought busy and stole rather a lot of XRP tokens, Polygon did layoffs, new stories present demand for AI and blockchain to work collectively, Ethereum developer curiosity hit new highs final 12 months and Tether reported report revenue from the fourth quarter of 2023. Extra particulars under.

This week in web3

1. Polygon Labs lays off 60 workers, about 19% of its employees, CEO says
2. AI and blockchains may want each other to evolve, in accordance with new report (TC+)
3. Hackers steal $112 million of XRP Ripple cryptocurrency
4. Ethereum developer curiosity hit new all-time highs in 2023 regardless of a bear market (TC+)
5. Solana Cell nonetheless has an extended method to go till it hits breakeven (TC+)

Crunching numbers

This week the crypto market was fairly bullish as the 2 greatest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, bitcoin and ether, rose 7% and 4.4%, respectively, on the week, in accordance with CoinMarketCap knowledge. The worldwide crypto market cap elevated 5.2% over a seven-day interval to $1.62 trillion.

Individually, Tether reported that within the fourth quarter of 2023 it introduced in a “record-breaking” web revenue of $2.85 billion, making up 46% of the whole $6.2 billion in web earnings final 12 months. Tether is the world’s largest stablecoin by market capitalization and quantity and third largest cryptocurrency behind bitcoin and ethereum. Its whole property (which again its stablecoins) are at $97 billion, as of December 31, 2023. Its liabilities have been about $91.6 billion and it has about $5.4 billion of extra reserves, that are “absolutely overlaying” its excellent $4.8 billion in secured loans, the report added.

When you’re considering, “these are huge numbers,” you’re proper. See under.

Our favourite ‘Crypto Twitter’ publish

Following all of the discuss Tether…

This publish on X by Bitwise Asset Administration’s CIO Matt Hougan speaks for itself. Sorry Goldman Sachs, higher luck subsequent quarter:

Tether made extra money final quarter than Goldman Sachs. Tether: $2.85 billion Goldman: $2.01 billion

The newest pod

For this week’s episode, I interviewed Chris Dixon, basic associate at enterprise capital agency Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).

Chris has been on the agency since 2012 and based and leads a16z’s crypto group, which invests within the web3 world by means of 4 mega-funds with over $7 billion below administration. He’s additionally the creator of the just lately launched e-book “Learn Write Personal: Constructing the Subsequent Period of the Web.”

Previous to a16z, Chris co-founded two startups, SiteAdvisor and Hunch, acquired by McAfee in 2006 and eBay in 2011, respectively. He additionally attended Columbia College for his bachelor of arts diploma and masters in philosophy and has an MBA from Harvard College.

On this episode, we focus on the brand new e-book, how crypto’s notion has modified and what objective blockchains can finally deliver to the world.

We additionally dove into:

• Massive Tech vs. crypto
• Significance of decentralization
• a16z web3 investments
• Blockchain gaming
• Embracing the long run

Subscribe to Chain Response on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite pod platform to maintain up with the most recent episodes, and please depart us a overview should you like what you hear!

Comply with the cash

1. Squid raised $4 million in a strategic spherical to assist assist cross-chain interoperability
2. Velar raised $3.5 million to construct a perpetual decentralized change on Bitcoin
3. Web3 gaming startup Yooldo raised $1.5 million, elevating its valuation to $13 million
4. Choices-focused protocol Ithaca Finance raised $2.5 million in pre-seed funding
5. Portal raised $34 million in a seed spherical to develop its decentralized bitcoin ecosystem

This record was compiled with info from Messari in addition to starcrypto’s personal reporting.

What else we’re writing

Need to department out from the world of web3? Listed below are some articles on starcrypto that caught our consideration this week.

1. Why there’s no clear successful pricing technique in B2B SaaS (TC+)
2. Three San Francisco supervisors obtain threats following YC President Garry Tan’s tweet
3. Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional to launch with over 600 apps and video games optimized for the brand new headset
4. Senate listening to with 5 social media CEOs was a missed alternative
5. Tech layoffs scale to three-quarter excessive (TC+)