One Billion Dollars of Liquidations 📉

GM. This is Degen Scoop. It’s Monday, here’s the scoop from the weekend:

• One Billion Dollars of Liquidations 📉

• OpenSea Enacts Royalty Changes 👑

• North Korea: Over $2B of Hacks 💰

• Whale Moves 🐋

• Threads You CAN’T Miss 🧵

On Friday, Over $1B of Liquidations Occurred

This past Friday, the market finally experience the volatility that everyone was hoping for. However, in this case the market saw over $1B of liquidations happen on centralized exchanges according to CoinGlass. Needless to say, if you took a look at your portfolio sometime this weekend this is the reason why there is blood everywhere in the market.

Friday saw the most liquidations of the entire year and is the most in a single day since the FTX blowup in November 2022. Most liquidations happened on centralized exchanges with only some $75M (7.5%) happening on DeFi. Those who are using lending on-chain should check on their positions to be sure that they are not near liquidation.

Backlash Over OpenSea’s New Royalty Changes

On Thursday, OpenSea announced that they would be ending the enforcement of creator royalties. It makes sense why they would do this from a business perspective, but it doesn’t help the artists that it was made for in the first place. Yuga Labs, creator of Bored Ape Yacht Club, was the most notable entity to voice their discontent with this change.

Mark Cuban also voiced his opinion on the change.

Ever since Blur came out, OpenSea has continued to bleed market share. More and more figures are coming out to speak against this change which will likely leave a hole that other exchanges can fill. One major utility of NFTs is creator royalties which is meant to reward artists in a way that they aren’t in traditional art settings. The fact that OpenSea is trying to kill this goes to show they’ve lost the plot.

Over $2B of Hacks Have Come Directly From North Korea

It’s no secret that crypto is risky and that major hacks have happened many times in crypto’s history. It has been estimated that North Korea is behind at least $2B of hacks since 2018. It’s clear that North Korea has found a fruitful ground to extract funds that can be used to pursue state endeavors.

The biggest hack executed by North Korea was the Axie Infinity hack of the Ronin bridge which was some ~$650M. According to TRM Labs, a blockchain intelligence company, North Korea also accounts for 20% of the hacks that have happened in 2023. The Lazarus Group appears to become more creative as time passes which poses significant issues to DeFi teams across the ecosystem.

Notable NFT Sales Over the Weekend:

Notable Threads You May Have Missed:

Meme of the Day

Conclusion

Touch grass, hit the gym, and don’t forget about what’s really important outside of magical internet coins.

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DISCLAIMER: This newsletter does not constitute financial advice. This is strictly educational and should not be used to make any financial decisions. Be responsible and do proper due diligence before aping.