By James Davis
Most of the leading coins posted losses last week as the new inflation report caused fear among investors that the Fed will continue to raise interest rates this year, similar to last year.
Meanwhile, California-based singer M Shadows informed his followers that he had blocked his Death Bat Club NFT collection from trading on OpenSea and other marketplaces that did not fully honor creator royalty fees. The singer said Coinbase NFT marketplace would be the preferred platform to buy and sell his NFTs.
On the same day, the Financial Times reported that crypto hedge fund Galois Capital had ended its operations after its $100 million in crypto got trapped in the now-bankrupt exchange FTX.
Did Friendsies Rug Pull Investors?
On Tuesday, an NFT news account (@NFTnow) broke the news that FriendsWithYou’s Friendsies NFT project had deleted its Twitter account after announcing that its creators would no longer continue working on the project despite collecting $5 million from investors through last June’s mint.
Further, a pseudonymous Twitter user (@oxKofi) expressed concerns that only a small group of traders dominated the fast-rising NFT marketplace, Blur. OxKofi claimed that 50% of Blur’s trading volume came from less than 250 wallets.
On Wednesday, crypto-friendly Republican House Representative Tom Emmer presented a bill proposing to restrict the Fed from issuing CBDC directly to individuals, arguing that the move would violate Americans’ right to financial privacy.
SEC Commissioner Hester Pierce Attacks Agency’s Chair
On that day, the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s Hester Pierce fired a Subliminal shot at the agency’s chair Gary Gensler. On her Twitter account, Pierce accused Gensler of suing crypto firms while providing no guidance on how they are to be compliant.
On Thursday, the founder of crypto market intelligence firm Messari, Rayan Selkis, announced laying off 15% of the firm’s workforce. Selkis said the move was necessary to keep the business operations running.
Moreover, Polygon Labs also announced layoffs, with over 100 employees affected. Immediately after the news broke, Polygon (MATIC) started a downward movement. As of this writing, the token is changing hands for $1.19, having dropped by 21% in the past seven days, according to data from CoinGecko.