🦹‍♂️ The biggest month ever for hacking activity.

Coinbase and Google Cloud, Berkshire Hathaway portfolio evolution and more.

October 16, 2022

Contents (4 min read):

  • 🦹‍♂️ The biggest month ever for hacking activity.

  • 📚 What Berkshire Hathaway portfolio tells us.

  • ☁️ A big move that will drive web3 growth.

  • 👨‍👩‍👧‍👧 Startupy - Community-curated search engine

  • 🏦 BNY Mellon Provides Crypto Custody Se

  • 📰 Top Reads

  • 🙏🏻 Grateful for…

🦹‍♂️ The biggest month ever for hacking activity.

Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis has labeled October 2022 as “the biggest month in the biggest year ever for hacking activity."

The largest hack occurred on Solana’s DeFi platform Mango Markets on Oct. 11, resulting in a loss of over $100 million worth of crypto. The hacker has now come out to demand $70 million in USD Coin stablecoin as a bounty to return the stolen crypto.

TempleDAO was exploited for $2 million on the same day as Mango Market’s exploit.

Above we can see how much crypto exploits have lost this year.

Despite not being more than halfway through the month, Chainalysis said 11 different hacks on DeFi protocols had seen hundreds of millions exploited.

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📚 What Berkshire Hathaway portfolio tells us

Warren Buffet is one of the world's wealthiest and most influential investors, he’s an important market player to keep track of. The 92-year-old maverick has been adapting the Berkshire Hathaway portfolio to fit the times and maximize profits. The first pie chart below shows Berkshire Hathaway's holdings in 1994 and the second shows their holdings in 2022.

According to the conglomerate’s website, it owns 62 different companies outright, including big names like GEICO, Dairy Queen, Kraft Heinz, and Duracell, and also has large investments in companies like Apple, Wells Fargo, and Coca-Cola.

Although they are known for being tech skeptics, Berkshire seems to start taking very seriously the power of technology companies and their data. They have 40% of their holdings in Apple, and although they really hate cryptocurrencies, there is a possibility that the behemoth starts allocating investments in web3 companies.

☁️ A big move that will drive web3 growth

Coinbase and Google Cloud have entered into a "long-term, strategic partnership" to benefit the Web3 ecosystem.

Coinbase, which has 100 million verified users and 14,500 institutional clients, it's planning to use Google Cloud to build "advanced exchange and data services" — enabling it to process blockchain data at scale. As part of the arrangement, Coinbase customers are set to benefit from "machine learning-driven crypto insights." Meanwhile, Google Cloud customers will be given the option to pay for services through certain cryptocurrencies — which could be a boon for adoption.

Back in January, Google Cloud confirmed that it was building a new, dedicated "Digital Asset Team to help underpin the blockchain ecosystems of tomorrow."

Why is this important? - Web3 is inevitable. We will have the next tech generation and the companies that enter the space sooner will benefit from these new technological efforts and advances first. In this case, google cloud will be able to swallow and analyze all the coinbase data that goes through their server and make better products and services. Google Cloud engineers will also be able to benefit from the learning experience of working with web3 protocols.

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🏦 BNY Mellon Provides Crypto Custody Services

America’s oldest bank, Bank of New York Mellon, has started to provide crypto custody services alongside traditional asset custody services. Now, traditional fund managers do not have to search for other firms in the crypto industry to perform tasks related to their crypto holdings.

BNY Mellon announced its plans to provide crypto custody services in February 2021. In February 2022, BNY Mellon announced that it is using Chainalysis compliance software. BNY received approval from financial regulators to provide crypto custody services earlier this fall and has joined Blackrock and Nasdaq in the crypto custody services business.

Why does it matter? - Gemini offers this service as well, their annual fee for storing your cryptocurrency in Custody is 40% (40bps) with an additional fee of $125 per withdrawal.

We are still not sure what pricing strategy is BNY using, but this new service opens the door for non-crypto institutions to enter this coveted space. As stated above, hacks are becoming more frequent and detrimental in the decentralized space. These centralized more established organizations offering custody may bring some comfort and confidence to old-school investors and large institutions.

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