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SO WHAT?

Why crypto’s most polarizing figure is worrying Bitcoiners

GM, Bitcoin is the front door to Web3, but this month it has been a major talking point after one of the industry’s most controversial figures became involved in a key asset that bridges Bitcoin to the rest of Web3: that’s wrapped BTC, aka WBTC. This week we

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North Korea has made over $3B from Web3 hacks—here’s how

GM, $3 billion. That’s an estimation of just how much money North Korea has made from cryptocurrency hacks between 2017 and 2023. There’s no sign that the regime is slowly down, however. Last month, North Korea was thought to be the attacker that stole $235 million from India-based

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Tokenized funds are on the rise—no wonder JPMorgan wants a piece of the action

GM, Earlier this month, 150-year-old bank Goldman Sachs said it plans to launch its first tokenized funds. The news generated plenty of attention—but why? The premise is that tokenized funds will knock down the walls and allow anyone to enjoy access to financial instruments that are currently only for

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Anonymous and accountable: how blockchain can change the game for polls

GM, Speaking your mind online can come at a price in some countries—even just indicating your preference can be costly in some, too. This week we are looking at how blockchain technology can have a tangible impact on free speech and opinion online. We’ve written about zero-knowledge proofs

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Farcaster, the billion dollar Web3 social project, has ambitious plans

It may not have huge user numbers but its goal to connect social networks and apps fulfills an ambition Twitter once held Web3 social media service Farcaster raised eyebrows in May when it announced that it had raised a massive $150 million round that valued its business at $1 billion.

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Telegram’s aborted blockchain project came back from the dead and is now the hottest platform in Web3

GM, Web3 is all about taking unfair advantages. Last week, we looked at how Coinbase used its position as an industry bellwether and public company to develop the second largest Ethereum layer-two platform in less than a year. On a related theme, today we are diving into TON, the blockchain

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Inside Base—the blockchain Coinbase launched to reach a billion users

GM, Coinbase is one of the leading names in Web3. When it makes a move, the industry sits up. In August 2023, it launched a layer-two (L2) blockchain—designed to help make transactions on Ethereum 10X cheaper and significantly faster.  The lofty goal is to onboard the next billion crypto

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A controversial trademark claim may sour this year’s most-anticipated Web3 launch

GM, Matter Labs is the story of the year. Its zkSync platform is used by millions who enjoy faster and cheaper transactions on Ethereum. Oh, and it is about to launch the year’s most-anticipated token. But it became talk-of-the-town for all the wrong reasons last week when it emerged

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Tornado Cash brings privacy to Web3—legal cases against it could dampen future innovation

GM, The trial of the developers behind a Web3 platform called Tornado Cash is dividing public opinion. Tornado Cash is a service that brings privacy to the transparent world of blockchain-based transactions. One developer has been sentenced to five years in jail in The Netherlands, while another faces trial in

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Decentralized identification could fix the broken mess of secure data storage, but it’s a long road with many hurdles

GM, It’s been an eventful few weeks for the concept of decentralized, blockchain-based identification.  Worldcoin, the project co-founded by Sam Altman, last month announced plans to introduce its own chain. That was quickly followed by MicroStrategy—yes, the firm synonymous with buying loads of Bitcoin—revealing it is working

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Here’s what we learned from the first Bitcoin Asia event

GM, Bitcoin continues to be the story of Web3 this year, so you know we had to attend the inaugural Bitcoin Asia event which took place on SO WHAT’s home turf in Hong Kong. We spent the week at side events, dinners, drink meetups, breakfasts and, of course, the

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DePIN is Web3’s buzziest topic—and it could be key to the AI revolution

Decentralized physical infrastructure network are offering new ways for cloud computing, mobile networks, EV charging and much more Decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) is one of the buzziest topics in Web3 right now. The concept is to build physical networks that can run without middlemen. File-storage, WiFi, mapping and artificial