Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of essential decentralized finance (DeFi) insights — a newsletter crafted to bring you significant developments over the last week. Traditional finance, or TradFi, continues to explore the world of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, with the World Economic Forum holding more workshops and sessions for the sector in 2023. Layer-1 blockchain protocol, Injective, has launched a $150 million ecosystem fund to support developers building on the Cosmos network. The Mango Markets saga took another turn this past week, as the company filed a lawsuit against the exploiter Avraham Eisenberg for $47 million in damages …

Entrepreneurs are betting on the future of the metaverse and cannabis industries. In the last decade, developments in government legislation have led to the legalization or decriminalization of cannabis in a number of countries, municipalities and U.S. states, allowing users to fully appreciate the sacred plant in both recreational and medicinal settings. While cannabis remains classified as a Schedule 1 drug by the United States federal government, decades of protests, scientific research and political lobbying have significantly reduced its stigma and opened the cannabis market for commercialization efforts. Technologically, the rise of the metaverse has reinvigorated the impact of having …

About two months after the FTX collapse, the Solana network is stronger than ever, according to Austin Federa, the head of strategy and communications at the Solana Foundation. Federa defines the recent SOL token price crash as a short-term market reaction to the perceived connection between Solana and the defunct crypto exchange FTX. While FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was invested in many Solana-based projects, Federa pointed out he didn't have any influence on the network’s operations and fundamentals. “The external perception was that there was a very close relationship between the Solana network and FTX, which wasn't the case," Federa …

Web3 and the metaverse were handed a seat at the table of the World Economic Forum in 2023 as the ecosystem continues to drive innovation across industries. As Cointelegraph continues to explore, the presence of the cryptocurrency and blockchain ecosystem was mainly found outside the walls of the WEF. Blockchain Hub Davos and GBBC’s Blockchain Central were two central events in town that brought together the wider crypto community that has been somewhat left out of the WEF’s discourse on the sector. The metaverse is a notable exception to this trend. Although some metaverse applications do not operate on decentralized …

On this week’s episode of NFT Steez, hosts Alyssa Exposito and Ray Salmond meet with Web3 content writer Julie Plavnik to discuss the importance of self-sovereignty while building a digital identity in Web3. Plavnik referenced author Gavin Wood when describing Web3 and said that “communication” is a core tenant in the subsequent iteration of the internet. “Web3 is the communication of encrypted channels between decentralized identities,” Plavnik affirmed. According to Plavnik, the emerging concept of Web3 has placed a magnifying glass over user data and ownership, especially concerning the creator economy, which Plavnik described as a place with “no entry …

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has been probing traditional Wall Street investment advisors that may be offering digital asset custody to its clients without the proper qualifications. A Jan. 26 Reuters report citing “three sources with knowledge of the inquiry” said the SEC’s investigation has been going on for several months already but accelerated after the collapse of crypto exchange FTX. The investigations by the SEC have not been known previously before as the agency’s inquiries are not public, said the sources. As per the Reuters report, much of the SEC’s efforts in this inquiry are looking …

Despite the plans to turn the region into a bustling crypto hub, the United Kingdom’s financial watchdog says it has given the all-clear to only41 out of 300 crypto firm applications seeking regulatory approval to date. The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) implemented the new cryptocurrency-focused regulations on Jan. 10, 2020, to supervise businesses operating in the sector and to ensure that they’re subject to the same anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorism financing (CTF) regulations as firms in traditional financial markets. A statement from the FCA has revealed that of the 265 applications that were "determined" a mere 15% of …

Stablecoins in the cryptocurrency market help provide USD pegged tokens within the volatile industry. In bull markets, the market capitalization of stablecoins tends to decrease as investors flock to more volatile assets and in bear markets, investors seek shelter in low volatility stablecoins thus increasing their market caps. On Jan. 26, the total market capitalization for stablecoins like Tether (USDT), USD Coin (USDC), Binance USD (BUSD) and Dai (DAI) is over $131 billion. Stablecoins are so crucial to the future of crypto, that Moody’s, a well-respected analytics agency, is planning to develop a scoring system. The scoring system may help …

German luxury car manufacturer Porsche's nonfungible token (NFT) collection reached 2,839 Ether (ETH) ($4.5 million) in total sales volume, according to data from NFTScan at the time of writing on Jan. 26. The collection had a floor price of 2.74 ETH and a high price of 9.18 ETH, with over 1,705 total sales. Originally meant to have a total supply of 7,500 NFTs, Porsche abruptly halted the minting process on Jan. 25 after some users complained of high minting prices and lack of utility for NFT holders. The supply has since been reduced to 2,363. The NFTs originally had a …

According to a new post on Jan. 26, Marc Zeller integrations lead at decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocol Aave stated that the firm purchased 2.7 million Curve (CRV) tokens which would clear "excessive remaining bad debt" within the next 15 hours over a dozen transactions. The move follows the community approval of Aave Improvement Protocol (AIP) 144, which deployed a swap contract that acquires 2,700,000 units of CRV, with a USDC spend limit of $3,105,000 and max unit value of $1.15 per CRV token. The bad debt on the Aave protocol resulted from a sophisticated exploit that took place on …

According to sources from the U.S. Department of Justice on Jan. 26, international law enforcement groups have dismantled the infamous Hive cryptocurrency ransomware gang and recovered over 300+ decryption keys to victims since July 2022. Officials raise the example of one incident where a Hive ransomware attack on a Louisiana hospital was thwarted by law enforcement, saving the victim from a $3 million ransom payment. Ghost servers were reportedly seized Wednesday night in an international law enforcement effort to track ransom payments, seize them back to victims, and dismantle the network's infrastructure. The organization had been infiltrated by undercover agents …

Key figures from the wider cryptocurrency space painted a picture of increased dialogue and collaboration at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos. Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology remained but a small part of the projects and initiatives discussed and workshopped at the annual WEF conference high in the Swiss Alps. However, an increased number of sessions focused on the sector suggests that the wider world is looking for synergies between traditional finance and decentralized finance. This theme emerged from a number of interviews conducted by Cointelegraph during January’s conference in Davos. Senior executives from XRP issuer Ripple and USD …