Takeoff or Touchdown? What happened on Weekends

Buckle Up Readers!📪 It's BitDegree Insider, and we're about to take you on a speedrun through crypto.

⭐️Today's selection:

🔭Weekend Scoop
💰Venture Mondays
⌛Time is Money
👌Selected Meme of The Day

WEEKEND WRAP

Over the weekend, the crypto world made some surprising moves. Let's explore some of them.

Daily Ethereum Transaction Fees Drop to an 8-Month Low

As of yesterday, the Ethereum network recorded a daily transaction fee volume of just 1719 ETH, equivalent to $2.8 million. This marks the lowest point since January 7 and represents a staggering 89% drop from this year's peak on May 5, 2023, when fees totaled $32.3 million.

In line with this, the average transaction fee has also neared its January 2023 low— yet remains prohibitively high for simple tasks like token swaps.

Significantly, this fee downturn appears closely tied to the lift-off and landing of another trendy platform:

Trade and Fee Volumes of FriendTech Dropped by More Than 90%

On August 21, 2023, the daily fee volume exceeded $1.68 million. On August 27, it barely surpassed the $160,000 mark.

Accordingly, the number of daily new addresses dropped from 20,359 to 2,392.

The excitement is slowly fading away.

Nevertheless, there are those in the crypto community who still believe that the platform is innovative and that it will be upgraded, thereby attracting even more people than before. Time will tell!

Continuing Friday's Storyit turns out that three members of the Pepecoin team have stolen funds from a multi-signature wallet. They then abandoned the project, leaving it under the full control of the only remaining 'project' participant.

An anonymous team member added that the account in X and the other 10 trillion PEPE tokens are now "in safe hands." The funds will be transferred to a new wallet where "they will be safely kept until the need arises to use or burn them." Worth noting is that this last participant still remains anonymous.

Last week, Balancer developers identified a critical bug in the V2 pool.

The team took measures to protect the locked assets within the protocol but recommended that clients withdraw their funds or transfer them to other pools. Despite warnings and safety measures, the pool's defenses failed to hold up, and $900,000 went up in smoke

Balancer has been in the market for quite some time, but remember, no one is bulletproof. Always be aware of the risks!

TL;DR: Ethereum's transaction fees plummet to an 8-month low, FriendTech's popularity wanes, Pepecoin suffers from internal theft, and Balancer loses $900,000 due to a bug. A stark reminder: no one in crypto is bulletproof.

VENTURE MONDAYS

Blockchain-based credit marketplace Maple raised $5M in a Strategic funding round led by BlockTower Capital and Tioga Capital Partners, with participation from Cherry Ventures, The Spartan Group, GSR Ventures, Veris Ventures, Maven 11 Capital, Framework Ventures.Initially, Maple mainly dealt with borrowers who were market makers in crypto exchanges, but now it's expanding its services. It's offering financial products like tokenized treasury bills for startups and other companies. Maple is also planning to help traditional businesses with trade finance by helping them secure loans to fund things like overseas shipments, all of which will be secured on the blockchain.

Lumina DEX has attracted strategic financing from investors, including the Mina Foundation, Jump Crypto, Big Brain Holdings, and O(1) Labs. The company plans to use the funds to create a decentralized exchange on the Mina protocol (considered the lightest blockchain in terms of storage space required) with built-in KYC.

THE POWER OF NOW

Let's make time to talk about time. Time management, to be more precise.

There are 1,440 minutes in a day. From day to day, that's all you get to make your life count. Seems terribly little, doesn't it?

Well, it's enough for someone like Vitalik Buterin. Or Beyoncé. Or Elon Musk. Y'know?

The secret is, of course, consistency. Consistency is about making every minute count. Think about what you can do in 1 minute. What about 2 minutes?

Yeah, you could water your plant. Make a cup of instant coffee. Brush your teeth.

Or… You could try and easily make 15€. How? Glad you asked!

Heard of Bit2Me? The crypto platform that specializes in simplifying the process of buying and selling crypto? They've got something for you.

Open a free account (it literally takes only 2 minutes), and with your first purchase of 100€ or more, 15€ in BTC will be waiting for you.

Here you go. One way of thinking about what's to be done with those 2 minutes of yours.

SELECTED MEME OF THE DAY

Keep our newsletters on top of your feed by following this GIF's guide

Aaron S. , Editor-In-Chief

Having completed a Master’s degree in Economics, Politics, and Cultures of the East Asia region, Aaron has written scientific papers analyzing the differences between Western and Collective forms of capitalism in the post-World War II era.
With close to a decade of experience in the FinTech industry, Aaron understands all of the biggest issues and struggles that crypto enthusiasts face. He’s a passionate analyst who is concerned with data-driven and fact-based content, as well as that which speaks to both Web3 natives and industry newcomers.
Aaron is the go-to person for everything and anything related to digital currencies. With a huge passion for blockchain & Web3 education, Aaron strives to transform the space as we know it, and make it more approachable to complete beginners.
Aaron has been quoted by multiple established outlets, and is a published author himself. Even during his free time, he enjoys researching the market trends, and looking for the next supernova.

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