Blur Airdrop + SEC Likes Staking

GM Readers!📪 It's BitDegree Insider, and it's time to farm that XP.

⭐️Today's selection:

• 💭Wednesday's Bubbles
• 🎁BLUR Airdrop Results
• ⛓Blockchain Association & SEC
• 👌Selected Meme of The Day
• 📰Bite-Sized News

WEDNESDAY'S BUBBLES

Okay, today we start the other way around. Usually, Wednesday's Bubbles is the finish line. Today it's the starter gun.

You'll see the winners and the losers. And then we'll explain what the hell has happened.

So, such tokens as LDO or RPL have shown gains. What's up?

Independent, decentralised staking platforms such as Lido (LDO) and Rocket Pool (RPL) will benefit (and already have) from the SEC pressures.

The reason for that is that they are transparent as opposed to centralised providers such as exchanges.

This is the official explanation behind why we're seeing their tokens grow. It's widely discussed in the media. Well, that automatically makes it a bit suspicious.

So that's a way of explaining why their tokens are green. But we have to remain vigilant, as there has to be more to the picture.

Mina, the Mina blockchain's native token is the biggest winner. The reason behind its success is the fact that the developers just launched their largest-to-date grants program.

$500K USDC and 500K MINA have been made available in funding for top projects. That definitely sounds like the beginning of something promising. Thus, the green color.

This 3-month program aims to support the most ambitious developers and entrepreneurs building zkApps and tooling on Mina Protocol.

Blur. The absolute winner when it comes to having the biggest losses. What is going on?

The first thing is the fact that the Blur token was officially listed on crypto exchanges... yesterday. Yes, it's the bear market. And yes... some complications were not avoided.

Let's take a closer look by analysing how did their airdrop go.

BLURRY BLUR AIRDROP RESULTS

Valentine's day was the day when Blur, the NFT marketplace, tried to get as many Valentines as possible by organizing their airdrop. Here are the results.

While waiting for the drop, the trading volume on the platform exceeded the performance of the leading marketplace OpenSea.

Of course, it is thanks to the airdrop, since becoming eligible for the airdrop required people to increase their activity stats. So, the trading volume went to the moon.

Nevertheless, as everything ended, new millionaires were created. Here are some numbers:

• The main contender received over 3.2m BLUR tokens (~$2.4m).
• The second-highest claimant received 2.97 million BLUR tokens, (~$2.2 million).
• The third highest receiver got richer by 2.5m BLUR (~$1.9m).
• From the top 20 claimants, 7 individuals sold all their $BLUR immediately after receiving the airdrop.
• More than 90% of the BLUR airdrop (360M tokens) have been claimed so far.
• The launch was not flawless, the whole thing got delayed for over 90 minutes.
• The initial listing price was 4$. It jumped only to 5$ and... dropped to 0.4$, reaching an ATH.
• At the moment, the price fluctuates around $0.8. You can check the stats right here.

Another mild problem was the fact that the tokens were not really airdropped. Users had to go and claim their tokens themselves.

This created traffic jams on the Ethereum blockchain, thus overworking the Ethereum smart contract. Which led to... Record-breaking commissions on the network!

Nevertheless, yesterday was a joyous day for many, and not only because it was Valentine's day.

Blur has called this opportunity "Season1", as only 12% of the Total Blur supply was allocated. This means we'll see 'Season2' sooner than later.

Promising, million-dollar projects don't want problems with regulation and SEC, so they choose to reward users for their activity rather than launch IDOs.

By doing so companies avoid SEC's allegations that their coin was not recognised as a security.

Because the SEC are the bad guys... right? Well, read on to see what else has been going on.

TL;DR: Blur's Airdrop #2 happened. It didn't happen without complications, as technical problems occurred. Nevertheless, new millionaires were made, and the company hints at organising new airdrops in the future.

BLOCKCHAIN ASSOCIATION & THE SEC

The Blockchain Association has reassured the cryptocurrency community over fears of reprisals from the SEC.

The company's CPO (legal director) Jake Czerwinski gave his extensive commentary. He stated that the US Congress will eventually pass laws regulating the cryptocurrency industry.

And congressional decisions are not up to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Neither the SEC nor the CFTC "has the authority to comprehensively regulate crypto," Czerwinski said on Twitter.

He called 2022 "the worst year in cryptocurrency history" because of the FTX collapse.

He said it caused "enormous damage" to the industry's reputation and caused sceptics to rush to regulate.

But what is the SEC truly after?

It seemed to many that the SEC was against staking, and that they wanted to get rid of cryptocurrencies running on POS asap…. is it true?

Apparently, not really. It looks like the SEC has a problem with the transparency of particular platforms, not with the staking as such.

To make sense of the situation, let's take a look at the official press release from the SEC. Here are the key takeaways: 

• Kraken wasn't just staking users' cryptocurrency, but using it in its active investment strategies to give its investors additional returns.
• Kraken advertised the staking with annual returns of up to 21%, but didn't explain where the returns were coming from.
• Kraken promised investors huge returns that do not match the actual profits from staking.
• Kraken reserved the right not to pay investors any staking returns at all.

As you can see, the SEC's main complaint is not about the staking technology itself, but about the fact that the staking on the Kraken's customers did not have enough information to assess their risks.

The SEC even released a video about staking.

Its message is the same: staking is OK, but staking platforms are a risk for investors because some of them are not transparent enough.

The SEC makes a simple point: if you want to stake, do it yourself with a decentralised wallet, and avoid using centralised platforms. They even say this:

Well... It definitely doesn't look anymore that the SEC is against staking as such. On the other hand, it's a great advertisement for decentralisation, wallets, and self-staking.

What do you think?

SELECTED MEME OF THE DAY

BITE-SIZED NEWS

• Technology Giant Siemens Launches First Digital Bond on a Public Blockchain. The name's Bond, Digital Bond.
• Stablecoin Issuer Circle Denies Rumors It Received SEC Wells Notice. Word on the street has it...
• Interactive Brokers to Offer Crypto Trading Services to Hong Kong's Investors. Bitcoin and Ethereum are the ones in question.