Christmas is coming, right? If you don’t feel the vibe “yet”, you can tune in by watching Falling for Christmas with Lindsay Lohan, which arrived on Netflix yesterday. It’s her first starring role in a film since 2013🎄

Now, let’s move on to the main dish. In today’s selection of web3 & marketing news, you will find:

1. What’s buzzin’ in marketing?

2. Binance walks away from the FTX bailout

3. Second-largest Bitcoin confiscation

4. JP Morgan’s monumental step for DeFi

5. Bitcoin ATMs number skyrocketing

Treat yourself to a good coffee and indulge yourself with the read ☕️

🛒 What’s buzzin’ in marketing?

1. Twitter has grown 20% in the number of monetizable daily active users (mDAU) after Musk’s dramatic takeover. The new Twitter CEO accused “activist groups pressuring advertisers” of a massive drop in revenue. Reports claiming an increase in racist and fake news are part of the trolling campaigns - the share of daily tweets, including hate speech, remains within historical norms (0.25%-0.45%) 🕊

2. Instagram will be rolling out new features in the coming weeks. The built-in content scheduling tool will allow creators (with a Professional account) to schedule a picture, carousel, or Reel up to 75 days in advance. When creating Reels, users will also be able to unlock Achievements by taking specific actions such as “keeping up their creative streak by making more than one Reel in a week” 🌟

3. Mark Zuckerberg will take accountability for a huge round of layoffs at Meta. Around 11,000 (13% of the total workforce) people will lose their jobs. The company offers each affected US-based employee 16 weeks of severance pay plus 2 extra weeks for each year of duty. Among other companies facing huge layoffs this year are Twitter (50% cut), Snap (20%), Coinbase (18%), Lyft (13%), Shopify (10%), Salesforce (3%), and Microsoft (<1%) 💼

4. ASICS offers its customers an ASICS Badge NFT upon purchase of the Asics GT-2000 11 shoe model designed for the Solana community. The NFT grants access to future loyalty bonuses and unique brand experiences. On top of this, GT-2000 owners will get a chance to win an airdrop of ASICS x STEPN GT-2000 NFTs, which will ensure some undisclosed utility in the move-to-earn game 👟

1️⃣ Binance walks away from the FTX bailout

Crypto billionaire and FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) is facing a 94% wealth wipeout ahead of an upcoming bankruptcy filing.

The drama started last week with Coindesk’s article analyzing Alameda’s financial condition, which proved that SBF’s crypto fund had $14,6 billion in assets and $8 billion in debt. What spiced things up, 40% of Alameda’s assets were in FTT - a volatile token created by.. FTX.

Binance, which holds a strong position in FTT tokens as an early FTX investor, sold $584 million worth of FTT which made its value drop by 80%. This move was considered contempt for SBF’s lobbying for a U.S. bill that would regulate DeFi and starve out his competition (including Binance).

After that, Binance’s CEO announced that it would fully acquire FTX to support its users. A couple of hours later, CZ changed its mind and walked away from the rescue operation, saying that FTX’s issues “are beyond our control or ability to help”.

2️⃣ Second-largest Bitcoin confiscation

Department of Justice announced that U.S. authorities had seized 50,676 Bitcoins during a search of James Zhong’s house on November 9th, 2021. Zhong pleaded guilty to wire fraud last week. The maximum sentence is 20 years in prison.

Zhong stole Bitcoins from Silk Road, an illegal dark net marketplace, by triggering over 140 back-to-back transactions, which released 50,000 coins into his multiple accounts.

The stolen Bitcoins were valued at $3.36 billion back then, which makes this the DOJ’s second-largest seizure following the $3.6 billion worth hack of Bitfinex in 2016.

3️⃣ JP Morgan’s monumental step for DeFi

The multinational banking company has executed its first cross-border transaction on a public blockchain.

There is a reason to celebrate, indeed. First of all, it looks like the CEO of JP Morgan, known for his negative attitude towards crypto, has changed his mind lately. Back in September, he called Bitcoin and all crypto tokens “decentralized Ponzi schemes”.

Secondly, this event was another milestone in proving that traditional financial institutions can successfully use DeFi and tokenized assets to execute transactions beyond private blockchains.

JP Morgan conducted the transaction on Ethereum layer-2 network Polygon using a modified version of the Aave protocol’s smart contract code.

4️⃣ Bitcoin ATMs number skyrocketing

The number of Bitcoin machines has been growing steadily for a long time. Since January 2021, it has grown by 270% worldwide to 38,798 at the time of writing this article. The most significant increase was seen in the USA - from 11,470 ATMs in 2021 to 33,868 in November 2022 (+195%).

Europe has been lagging behind USA and Canada with sluggish growth of +20%. In the United Kingdom, the number of Bitcoin ATMs fell to only 23 in November 2022. Spain (262) and Poland (212) lead the race in Europe.

The dynamic growth of Bitcoin machines has been influenced by the growing recognition of cryptocurrencies worldwide, as well as the appealing and hassle-free conversion process without needing to undergo (irritating) KYC procedures.

🔥 OTHER RELEVANT NEWS

• Volvo revealed its new $80,000 electric SUV called EX90 and plans to sell all-electric vehicles by 2030 exclusively ⚡️

• SEC won its lawsuit against LBRY. The blockchain-based company violated U.S. law by selling its LBRY Credits without registering them as securities.

• Student Coin has dropped a new white paper and announced it would shift its focus from academic collaboration to broad community education 📣

• El Salvador’s $105 million Bitcoin investment dropped 60% and is now worth $41.5 million 🇸🇻

• Tether froze $46 million of USDT held by FTX following a law-enforcement request.

• BlockFi notified customers about “limiting platform activity”, and California state regulators announced a probe due to FTX collapse 🆘

🏖 FUN FACTS & MEME SECTION

💡 Someone in Altadena (California) won $2.04 billion in the Powerball lottery jackpot on Tuesday 🎰 It is the biggest lottery prize ever! The lucky (and rich) ticket holder’s net worth is now bigger than the Gross Domestic Product of San Marino.

🥇 Meme of The Week