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The crypto market is moving with gingerly steps. In the past 7 days, BTC has grown by only 0.19%, and ETH by 4.10%.

Yesterday, BTC failed at $23,500 and dropped by almost $1,000 in the following hours to mark its lowest price point in about a week. The fall pulled most altcoins into the red zone. 

Following the Fed’s decision to raise the interest rates by 25 BP, the coin enjoyed a few days of respite and painted a 5-month high well above $24,000.

The asset has since retraced its step. It dropped to $22,600, its lowest price tag since January 30.

Listing

Delisting

Huobi delisted 9 tokens in one day. Read More

Ongoing

Upcoming

An Initial Farm Offering (IFO) is a fundraising model that helps new DeFi projects raise capital by participating in pre-sales events hosted after stern project vetting by decentralized exchanges.

IFO is a successor of the initial coin offering (ICO).

Stay tuned, we will bring you some noteworthy IFOs next week.

The crypto community is rallying support for victims of the devastating earthquake in Turkey. Early on Monday morning, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit Turkey's Kahramanmaras Province. It was followed by another at noon with a measured magnitude of 7.5, and dozens of smaller tremors were felt across the two neighbouring countries.

Gate.io stated that the platform had “started to prepare aid packages to help those in the earthquake area in Turkey,” and “will deliver them in coordination with the authorities,” while Binance’s CZ expressed support and promised help.

Other crypto platforms that have pledged assistance include Bitfinex, Bitget, Bybit, Bitget, and BitMEX.

In other news,

• Binance has announced a temporary suspension of USD deposits and transfers starting from February 8. It is working to restart the feature soon. Read more.
• Crypto firms in the UK could be jailed for up to 2 years for violating advertising laws. Read more.

A glow at the end of the tunnel? Gemini and Genesis have reached a $100M agreement over the Earn program. Read more.

PLEASE DONATE TO THE EARTHQUAKE RELIEF FUND.

If you’re hooked on Crypto, help is on the way. A pricey rehab facility has begun treatment for crypto addiction. Regardless of the size of your portfolio, this treatment may cost you north of $75,000.

Aptly named ‘The Balance’, the facility is Swiss owned and is located on the Spanish island of Mallorca with subsidiaries in London and Zurich.

The treatment requires a stay of four weeks and consists of various therapies, massages, and yoga sessions.

If you’re struggling with striking a balance between your life and your digital assets, then maybe it's time to check-in.

In other news,

• SBF will be allowed to have supervised contact with some FTX employees. Read more.
• BBHMM: Mark your calendars, FTX is calling on all politicians across the divide to return the donations from Sam by February 28.
• Sam puts up his $3.2M Washington DC house up for sale. Read more.

TL: DR

• The Interpol is figuring out how to police the Metaverse
• The Agency plans to respond to criminals targeting similar platforms
• There are ongoing debates about what defines a crime in the metaverse

Interpol is looking to make the metaverse a relatively crime-free zone. The agency is currently investigating how it could police crimes in the metaverse, although it’s still not sure what would define a ‘metaverse crime’.

In admitting to that dilemma, Madan Oberoi, the Executive Director of Technology and Innovation said “There are crimes where I don’t know whether it can still be called a crime or not. If you look at the definitions of these crimes in physical space, and you try to apply it in the metaverse, there is a difficulty.”

Last October, Interpol pulled up into the web3 space with its own Metaverse with a unit dedicated to fighting crypto crimes.

Our take

It won’t be long before red alert notices are issued for people in the universe and in the metaverse.

In other news.

• Chasing the metaverse dreams set Meta back by only $13.7B in 2022, but Mark shrugs it off and expects even more losses in 2023. Read more

Yuga Labs, the creators of BAYC, have settled with developer Thomas Lehman over his role in selling a copycat collection of BAYC NFTs. Read more.

Europe's most influential blockchain event is taking place on 15-17 February at the 5-star hotel Hyatt Regency Barcelona. The event will welcome more than 3,000 attendees - making it the largest edition since the event launched in 2018.

Since its inception, the European Blockchain Convention has been the annual meeting point for the crypto and Web3 industry in Europe. It brings together hundreds of startups, investors, developers, industry experts, and global media. 

Use our code RBL-LAB25 to get a discount on your tickets.

Buy Tickets

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Similar to how it converts foreign currencies, Visa, the payment giant, is experimenting with converting digital assets to fiat.

The company revealed this during the StarkWare Sessions 2023 event in Tel Aviv, saying “We’ve been testing how to actually accept settlement payments from issuers in USDC starting on Ethereum and paying out in USDC on Ethereum,”

Our take

If successful, this could offer a huge boost to the mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies. Visa is a household name in TradFi with the potential to onboard millions of new crypto users.

In other news,

• It’s been a wild ride since the last Super Bowl, will there be Crypto ads during this year’s events? Read more.