AI is rapidly evolving and becoming a threat not only to the crypto market: what's going on in the Web3 world today?

This is a great follow-up to a great week. We hope you have an excellent week, too, friends. This is the buidlbee team, and from today's letter you will discover:

• Analysis of the crypto market's major events;

• What's wrong with artificial intelligence (and is it time to start being scared?);

• How to get a chance at a Starknet airdrop;

• Reasons to purchase Aptos (APT);

• And a simple drawing for a chance to win Ethereum tokens!

Let's first go over the main events of the day:

• The Walt Disney Co. closed its metaverse division and laid off a team of 50 people.

• One of DeFi-protocol’s Safemoon liquidity pools was hacked, resulting in approximately $8.9 million in losses.

• Sam Bankman-Fried was charged with conspiracy to violate the anti-corruption provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

• Binance has been hiding ties to China for years.

☝Crypto in the U.S. and Europe, what's important right now?

The U.S. banking crisis as a catalyst for crypto growth

In yesterday's newsletter, we cited metrics that show the U.S. banking crisis continues, although regulators have managed to camouflage its manifestations in public.

In this regard, Bloomberg Intelligence senior strategist Mike McGlone notes that Bitcoin was born after the 2008-2009 financial crisis precisely as an anti-crisis solution. In his opinion, BTC is becoming more and more similar to gold and U.S. Treasuries, but in a more advanced, digital version.

In his turn, Chris Berniske, partner at Place Holder and former head of Ark Invest cryptocurrency company, believes that although the U.S. pressure on the crypto industry will have short-term consequences, now is the ideal time to think about the future and buy Bitcoin and Ethereum, because cryptocurrency is designed for long-term protection against such financial crises and inflation.

Hashrate as a financial indicator

According to Glassnode, the current stage of Bitcoin's hashrate growth is the second most intense result in BTC's history; it only grew more aggressively after the end of the 2019 bear market.

We suggest looking at hashrate not as a technical indicator as usual but as a specific financial indicator.

Investing in mining is a reliable indicator of a bull market, as any long-term investment requires the business to have strong confidence in the payback. The current prolonged rise in the hash rate shows that players are confidently betting their money on the future growth of the Bitcoin market.

New restrictions on crypto in Europe

Unfortunately, yesterday, EU lawmakers voted to restrict large payments based on anonymous cryptocurrencies. This law may directly affect cold (or hardware) wallets, where identification is not provided in principle. It is not yet fully clear how technically these laws will be implemented; we need to wait for law enforcement practice.

Recall that Europe now ranks first in the world in terms of the number of crypto startups.

According to a new study by investment company Rockwaу, Europe ranks first in the world for the number of registered cryptocurrency projects — 3,977 crypto-firms are based here. The U.S., in second place, has 3,357 organizations, while Asia has about 1,590 digital asset companies.

In addition, here is a chart below of the most active Crypto VC jurisdictions by the end of 2022.

Once again, the insiders trail

A few hours before the CFTC's indictment of Binance, there was an abnormal jump in withdrawals of large amounts of stablecoins (by $1.5 billion in just 12 hours). As you can see on the chart below, no abnormal activity was recorded on other exchanges at that time, so it is quite difficult to explain such a jump except for on the inside. It is noteworthy that, based on this data from onchain analysts, Binance itself reports an outflow of $850 million, which is almost two times lower.

An hour after the CFTC charge was announced, another $240 million was withdrawn from Binance (crowd reaction to FUD).

How does mass adoption work in the real world?

👉 Opportunities

[1] 🔔 Beware of investing in AI tokens

A powerful coalition of over 1000 prominent scientists and technologists, including Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak, has been formed and has published an open letter demanding that AI systems more powerful than the GPT-4 be suspended. Such a strong rise in resistance by today's Luddites could painfully hit the now-popular AI tokens.

Crypto is strong enough now, but the war against individual sectors is still quite effective, so such initiatives are important for any investor to consider. As an example, we can mention the war against privacy coins launched by regulators in 2021, which led to the fact that such coins were delisted from known exchanges, which led to a record drop in their capitalization.

[2] 🔔 Get a drop from Starknet: 5 tips

StarkNet is Ethereum's Layer-2 scaling solution. STRK technology uses zero-knowledge proofs to aggregate multiple transactions into a single proof, reducing the load on the Ethereum blockchain. The blockchain has raised $260 million from Paradigm, Sequoia, Pantera, Multicoin Capital, Consensys, and Coinbase Ventures since 2018.

As you can see, StarkNet is an interesting project that has been on the market for quite a while and has gained the support of respected investors.

Now let's move on to the opportunity to make money on this network. Officially, StarkNet has not stated anything about dropping STRK tokens. However, there are many rumors on social media. First, on March 21, Starknet alpha v0.11.0 on Testnet was launched, and the first phase of Starknet Governance began. Also, a role such as a delegate appeared.

The actions below are designed to achieve delegate status and qualify for future awards. And given the solidity of the project, the rewards can be very juicy.

P.S. Beware of scams! The Starknet token (STRK) is not yet available for sale.

There are two wallets in the StarkNet ecosystem: Argent and Braavos. Using Braavos, you can also claim an airdrop from the wallet itself.

• You can install it at this link.

• You will need ETH on the Ethereum network on our Metamask to top up.

• Create a wallet by clicking on the Get Started button.

• Create an account on the main network by clicking StarkNet Mainnet Alpha.

• Then Deposit the account by clicking Deposit. Connect wallet L1 Metamask and L2 Braavos. Select the StarkGate bridge.

• Enter the amount of refill and click Transfer.

• Then the wallet must be activated by clicking on Setup Now, then Setup Account.

Myswap is the largest Automated Market Maker (AMM) on Starknet. Also, Jediswap and 10kSwap are good ones

• Click on this link, this, or this.

• Make some swaps in the Swap tab and provide liquidity in the POOLS tab.

Nostra is a liquidity protocol for lending and borrowing.

• Connect a wallet and make a deposit in various tokens.

• In the Assets section, click Manage.

• Go to the Borrow tab and borrow ETH.

• After a few days, we come back and close our debt through the Repay button in the Assets section and withdraw our ETH to the wallet through the Withdraw button.

NFT projects on Starknet

• Mintsquare is an NFT marketplace where we can buy, sell, and even create our own NFTs.

• We create our NFT by clicking Mint.

• Upload an image, come up with a name, specify the URL and description of our NFT, then click Mint and confirm the wallet transaction.

• Aspect is an NFT marketplace. You can buy or sell NFT in the Buy/Sell section.

• Starknet ID is a service for buying domain names on the Starknet network.

• In the search, we enter the name we want, select the minimum term of 1 year, and click REGISTER FROM L2, then confirm the transaction in the wallet.

• Briq allows you to create pixel-based NFTs.

Activity in test projects

• Test the ETH you need to get into the Goerli faucet, then transfer them through the Goerli Starkgate test bridge and activate the wallet.

• Hashstack is a lending protocol on the Starknet network. You can test it on the test network, and you can also join the waiting list on the main network. The guide is at this link.

• ZKX is a decentralized, leveraged exchange. You can participate in the Yakuza testnet and community programs. Information about the Yakuza is on Discord.

It is best to repeat these steps once or twice a month.

[3] 🔔 When is it best to buy Aptos (APT)?

Aptos is a Layer-1 proof-of-stake blockchain that supports smart contracts and decentralized applications. Aptos Labs was founded by core contributors of Diem (developed by Meta) in 2021.

Last October, P_S_trade published an idea to buy APT/USDT. At that time, the price of Aptos was $9.50, but it was advised to buy it in the $2-4 range. The bottom was reached a few months later, at about $3. Under current market conditions, experts suggest placing orders “by a grid” in the $7-9 range to buy APT. If all orders are triggered, the average price will be around $8.

In general, the growth of Aptos's price by +560% in January 2023 showed that there is interest in the project, which means that there is a very high probability that it will develop.

The main goal is to buy APT into your medium to long-term investment portfolio as profitably as possible.

March 31 closes the strong "green" Q1 2023, respectively, and there will be quarterly expirations on that day. Who knows how much they will try to lower the price to reduce contract settlement losses?

So set alerts for price declines or limit orders and wait for the right moment.

Answer a quick question and get a chance to win ETH tokens.

Is altcoin season here yet❓

Successes and full portfolios of assets! We'll see you tomorrow and bring you a bunch of useful information again!

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