We hope that your Black Friday&Cyber Monday hunt ended up with a dreamy thing. If you are curious about this season's spending figures, make sure to read it all through!

In today’s selection of web3 & marketing news, you will find:

1. What’s buzzin’ in marketing?

2. Another one bites the dust - BlockFi this time

3. Binance: “Hi Japan, it’s me again”

4. Is Twitter in danger? Or danger itself?

5. Telegram stands for decentralization

Enjoy the read ☕️

🛒 What’s buzzin’ in marketing?

1. Apple has just announced the 2022 App Store Award Winners. I bet you would guess the iPhone category winner! Yes, BeReal was picked as the iPhone App of the Year. In July, the number of daily active users (DAUs) surpassed 10 million, and the app was downloaded 14.7 million times just in September. When it comes to the iPhone Game of The Year, shout-outs to Apex Legends Mobile, which took first place!

2. Boom! This season’s shopping trends are finally here. In terms of revenue, Cyber Monday has knocked down the competition with $11.3B globally, following Black Friday ($9.12B) and Thanksgiving Day ($5.3B). This year's overall spending was “only” $5B higher than in 2021, and the growth slowed down from +32% in 2020 to “only” +2.5% in 2022. The conversion rate on Cyber Monday was 1.92 times higher on desktops than on mobile devices. People also tended to buy more (3.68 items per order) on bigger screens than on smartphones (2.98) or tablets (2.81).

3. Disney opened its data clean room to VideoAmp under an integration agreement that will let advertisers served by both companies make privacy-compliant audience matches using Disney’s and VideoAmp's first-party data. The deal allows for custom integrations between Disney’s Audience Graph, ad exposure log files, and VideoAmp’s proprietary TV viewership footprint. This gives Disney insights into how audiences were reached and enables it to optimize reach and frequency across Disney’s addressable TV, connected TV, and digital properties.

4. Youtube wants to launch new shopping features to Shorts, allowing users to make purchases as they scroll through creators’ feeds. A model similar to that of Tiktok and Instagram is currently being tested and is expected to roll out sometime next year in the USA, Canada, Australia, Brazil, and India. YouTube also plans to implement an affiliate marketing program to pay select content creators a commission on sales generated by product promotion.

1️⃣ Another one bites the dust - BlockFi this time

BlockFi becomes the latest casualty claimed by FTX contagion. The crypto lender filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Cyber Monday, less than three weeks after having paused client withdrawals - on exactly the same day FTX filed for bankruptcy.

The company secured a $250 million revolving credit from FTX in July, right after it cut staff by roughly 20%. BlockFi tried to move its assets to FTX for custody, but the majority had not been moved yet. It gave FTX and Alameda Research loans, which were collateralized with Robinhood shares.

Now, BlockFi is suing the infamous FTX founder Emergent Fidelity Technologies and ED&F for failing to carry out their obligations of the pledge agreement. According to Financial Times, SBF was still trying to raise money before FTX’s collapse by selling his (collateralized) Robinhood shares.

2️⃣ Binance: “Hi Japan, it’s me again”

Binance expands its territory onto East Asia in a blast move. Few days ago, Binance officially confirmed it had acquired the Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Sakura Exchange BitCoin (SEBC).

This is a bold step by Binance, involving the company's re-entry to the Japanese market in compliance with local regulations. The biggest crypto exchange is licensed in many countries; however, the acquisition of SEBC marks the beginning of operations in East Asia.

As Takeshi Chino, CEO of Binance Japan, stressed, Japan will “play a key role” in the crypto adoption given the country’s huge potential in web3. The acquisition comes in an attempt to avoid fines for operating without a license like the one Binance received from the Dutch central bank earlier this summer. It cost the CZ’s empire $3.3 million.

3️⃣ Is Twitter in danger? Or danger itself?

Right before announcing its 2022 Award Winners, App Store reportedly threatened Elon Musk to withhold Twitter from its marketplace.

The Musk - Apple saga started with Twitter CEO criticizing App Store’s 30% in-app purchase fee, calling it a “hidden 30% tax on the Internet”. Apple’s senior VP of marketing, Phill Shiller, spiced things up by having deleted his Twitter account to manifest his disapproval of new Twitter management. This happened right after the self-described “free speech absolutist” had reinstated Trump’s Twitter account. Ultimately, Tim Cook and Elon Musk had a conversation and cleared things up - Apple never considered removing Twitter from App Store.

Twitter has already suffered from a “massive drop in revenue” with influential advertisers such as Audi, GM, and McDonald’s withdrawing their marketing budgets from the platform. Omnicom Media Group recommended that its clients “pause activity on Twitter short term”, citing “continued brand safety concerns”. Being removed from AppStore would cut off the platform from potential customers and make things much worse.

4️⃣ Telegram stands for decentralization

Changes are coming... Telegram, a popular instant messaging service with more than 550 million users, plans to build a decentralized cryptocurrency exchange platform. The platform, created in 2013 by brothers Nikolai Durov and Pavel Durov, is looking to create decentralized alternatives for users after the high-profile collapse of FTX.

As one of the founders announced, the company will start building "deposit-free wallets" and "decentralized exchanges". Durov brothers want to encourage developers to move away from having to trust third parties in the industry. The first try was successful indeed - their decentralized auction platform Fragment, which runs on The Open Network (TON), raked in $50 million worth of Toncoin from selling tokenized Telegram usernames.

🔥 OTHER RELEVANT NEWS

• Bitcoin and Ethereum are not classified as securities, according to the Belgian government 🇧🇪

• Fidelity Investments has launched retail crypto trading accounts.

• Coinpaper interviewed Akord, the blockchain-based permanent storage, and publishing protocol 💡

• Italy follows Portugal in rolling out a 28% crypto gain tax 💰

• Binance halts withdrawals following a $5 million Ankr hack ⛔️

• Elon Musk was warned that Twitter might not comply with the EU’s moderation regulations 🇪🇺

• Uniswap enables NFT trading across major marketplaces, airdrops ~$ 5 million USDC to historical Genie users, and offers gas rebates to the first 22,000 users 🆕

• Brazil legalized cryptocurrencies as the payment method 🇧🇷

• Kraken cuts 1,100 jobs (30% of its workforce) following DoorDash's decision to lay off 1,250 employees.

🏖 FUN FACTS & MEME SECTION

💡 It’s not an April Fool’s joke - back in May 2009 announced that it had rented 200 goats to help them mow some fields at Google’s Mountain View headquarters. It was a more low-carbon approach, and goats were a lot cuter to watch than lawnmowers 🐐

🥇 Meme of The Week