Developers are building out the blockchain ecosystem in Barcelona

Image credit: Pol Albarrán/Getty Images

Welcome back to Chain reaction.

This week I am writing the newsletter from the sunny and always beautiful city of Barcelona, ​​Spain. I’m here for the Avalanche Summit II, hosted by Ava Labs, creator of the layer-1 blockchain Avalanche.

So far, there have been many discussions around blockchain gaming, decentralized finance and regulation.

Avalanche also announced a partnership with Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence division of Alibaba Group, to deploy metaverse for the online marketplace’s customers. The news was covered exclusively by TechCrunch – more on that below.

I moderated two panels titled “Expert Insights on the State of Crypto Markets” and “Stablecoins: The Internet Payment Layer.” The TL;DR the takeaway right now is that market players are bullish on the long term and expect the cryptocurrency market cap to grow significantly in the near future (we’ll see) and the stablecoin industry has a lot of room to grow and the opportunity to shake up the internet payment space.

There are still more interviews to be done, content to be rolled out and panels to be attended, so stay tuned for more of that here in the coming days and weeks.

This week in web3

Alibaba Cloud teams up with Avalanche to deploy metaverses on the blockchain

Alibaba Cloud has partnered with tier-1 blockchain Avalanche to provide Alibaba’s customers with a launch pad, Cloudverse, which aims to help businesses customize, launch and maintain their own metaverse spaces on Avalanche’s blockchain. “You and I can create a metaverse right now. Within 15 minutes the chain is up; within hours the wallet is up and turnkey,” said Emin Gün Sirer, founder and CEO of Ava Labs. The technology is made “very simple” and all the tools are open source, he added.

As the U.S. cracks down on crypto, Hong Kong extends a warm welcome

To create a favorable environment for web3 businesses, the city facilitates communication between banks and crypto startups, many of which are struggling to find alternatives after the collapse of Silvergate Bank. Tightening crypto regulations in the US could give Hong Kong a chance to step up and become the next crypto hub.

How Jack Dorsey’s Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund is Fighting for the Future of Open Source Software

A crypto wallet theft lawsuit filed by a man claiming to be Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto could jeopardize the future of open source development. That’s according to the Jack Dorsey-backed Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund, which is taking on a case to defend 11 Bitcoin developers named in a lawsuit filed by Craig Wright, an Australian computer scientist who came into the spotlight back in 2016 with a hotly contested claim . to be Bitcoin’s founder.

Brett Harrison ‘never lost faith in the business’ while at the now closed FTX (TC+)

It’s been nearly six months since FTX collapsed, and a lot has happened since then, from executives being charged to industrial companies facing fallout from the demise. At Consensus 2023, Anthony Scaramucci, former White House communications director and founder and managing partner of SkyBridge Capital, which invested in the exchange, and Brett Harrison, founder and CEO of Architect and former FTX.US president, shared their experiences during FTX’s downfall and how life has been since.

The last pod

For this week episode, Jacquelyn the interview Jake Chervinsky, Chief Policy Officer of the Blockchain Association, a non-profit organization focused on promoting “pro-innovation” policies for the digital asset world. He is also a board member of the DeFi education fund and an advisor to the web3 seed-stage fund Variant.

Prior to working with the Blockchain Association, Chervinsky began his legal career in private practice focusing on anti-money laundering and anti-corruption compliance and investigations, financial services litigation and government enforcement defense. He spends a lot of time in DC, testifying at hearings to help bring clarity to the crypto industry in hopes of leading it in the right direction.

We dive deep into conversations about all things regulation, from how Chervinsky views the current regulatory landscape to whether or not we’re in a “crackdown” era as people call it.

We also discussed:

• Regulators’ views are changing
• US crypto companies
• Are cryptocurrencies commodities or securities
• Stablecoin Legislation
• Future legal framework and guidelines

Subscribe to Chain reaction on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite pod platform to catch up on the latest episodes, and leave us a review if you like what you hear!

Follow the money

1. Crypto wallet hardware provider Tangem AG raised $8 million
2. FARE Protocol raised $6.2 million in a seed round led by Goat Capital
3. Entender Finance raised $4 million to support accounting and bookkeeping for blockchain activity
4. Nolus raised $2.5 million to build cross-chain DeFi leases
5. OKX Ventures invested an undisclosed amount in Cetus Protocol

This list was compiled using information from Messari as well as TechCrunch’s own reporting.

To get an overview of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important crypto stories delivered to your inbox every Thursday at 12.00 PT, subscribe here.

Follow me on Twitter @Jacqmelinek for the latest crypto news, memes and more.