#Web3 Weekly: March 28-April 3, 2021

A busy week of headlines on crypto payments, NFTs, new price records for bitcoin and ether, and more

Photo by Nathan Dumlao via Unsplash

Re-sharing below the latest edition of #Web3 Weekly, my regular newsletter about decentralization. If you’d like to get it in your inbox every Sunday, subscribe here.

The latest headlines on decentralization:

• Crypto payments got a boost from two major companies. PayPal enabled a feature called Checkout with Crypto that enables users to sell cryptocurrencies through PayPal to fund select online purchases in U.S. dollars as part of the PayPal app’s regular checkout flow. Meanwhile, Visa said it will begin allowing the use of USD Coin, a stablecoin pegged to the greenback, to settle transactions on its network.
• Venture money is flooding into non-fungible token startups. CoinDesk reports that basketball legend Michael Jordan was among the investors in a $305 million funding round recently completed by Dapper Labs, which has built the sports collectible platform NBA Top Shot. Separately, Enjin raised nearly $19 million to build a Polkadot-based blockchain for NFTs. SuperRare, a marketplace for NFTs, raised $9 million in Series A funding. And its rival Zora Labs raised $8 million.
• Crypto markets hit set new round-number milestones, with one big one yet to go. Bitcoin topped $60,000 for the first time, and Ethereum rose above $2,000. But the $2 trillion mark for global market capitalization in crypto remained just out of reach for now, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
• Tether confirmed its stablecoin was fully backed by asset reserves as of late February. The company published a reassurance report by its accounting firm, Moore Cayman, to assuage a frequent criticism of its USDT token pegged to the U.S. dollar. Moore Cayman said Tether does indeed have over $35 billion in assets on hand, in line with the market cap of USDT as of Feb. 28.
• Brave got some welcome mainstream media love. New York Times consumer tech columnist Brian X. Chen recommended that raeders try Brave’s privacy-focused web browser as an alternative to Big Tech offerings like Chrome, Edge, and Safari.
• Regulators took action against LBRY. The Securities and Exchange Commission sued the blockchain-based publishing platform, claiming it should have registered tokens it sold as a securities offering.
• Coinbase’s direct listing of its shares on Nasdaq is now scheduled for April 14.
• Microsoft made some big moves into emerging technologies. The giant won a $21 billion government contract to build augmented reality headsets for the U.S. military. It also launched a new decentralized identity platform, dubbed ION, on the Bitcoin network.
• Telcom lobbying has taken some weird and/or evil turns lately. AT&T has been making the case to government officials in the U.S. against nationwide fiberoptic internet service, and Ericsson is going to bat for its rival Huawei. You know, like you do when you’re tooootally not an oligopoly.
• Saturday Night Live skewered NFTs. The skit was not only hilarious but also a surprisingly accurate explainer. Just listen to Guy With Mop.

That’s it for now. Thanks for spending some time with the newsletter today! A full revision history of it, including earlier drafts, is available here if you’re interested. If you’d like to get updates like this in your inbox every Sunday, please join our email list here.