Welcome to another edition of The Scoop. We’re like that feeling of winning the World Cup on penalty kicks after a bad handball call by the refs in overtime gave the other team a penalty shot to tie the game. 

The Big Scoop

ConsenSys is a New York-based blockchain development firm with its hands all over crypto and Web3. Some of the biggest Layer 1 and Layer 2 solutions have received funding and development services from the company. That’s because one of the co-founders of Ethereum, Joseph Lubin, is the founder of ConsenSys.

ConsenSys is the lead development company behind everyone’s favourite Web3 wallet, MetaMask. The company and its stalwart brand are teaming up with PayPal to provide seamless payments of Ethereum from PayPal to MetaMask.

Unlocking this capability would undoubtedly be a huge win for crypto adoption!

PayPal is making some strides after first introducing the ability to buy crypto on its platform in 2020.

While crypto prices keep dropping and inflation keeps burning hot, people keep building, and adoption keeps advancing. Remember, continuing to #BUIDL is what matters most, and the biggest companies in the world aren’t stopping until Web3 is a seamless part of our lives.

In other news, Donald Trump has his own NFTs three years after publishing on Twitter that he doesn’t believe in crypto…. That’s a bit of a 180, isn’t it?

Lastly, we wanted to stay away from SBF and FTX news this week, but there has also been an update. SBF is being extradited to the United States, and he’s seeking bail.

Extradition will give SBF a better quality of life in jail, so extradition is what he should want. But it likely won’t change the fact that he will have to agree to some plea deal to keep his stay in jail as short as possible, which most lawyers would probably agree is what he should be aiming for at the moment.

We’ll keep you updated with the significant milestones in the case as time goes on, but for this week, we want to keep the news more Web3-specific.

Here it is…

The News

MetaMask and Paypal Teaming Up to Making Buying Crypto Easier

Thanks to the help of ConsenSys, PayPal plans to integrate its buy, sell and hold crypto services with MetaMask Wallet. 

The move is part of PayPal's plan to broaden users' options when transferring digital assets from their platforms.

The partnership between MetaMask developer ConsenSys and the payment giant is focused on allowing users to select their PayPal accounts as a payment option to buy Ethereum from within the MetaMask app. The new offering will also provide seamless purchases and transfers of Ethereum from PayPal to MetaMask.

The partnership will benefit both companies, improving MetaMask's conversion rate with existing on-ramp solutions and simplifying KYC processes, making them less intimidating. For PayPal, it will bring in more crypto users as MetaMAsk is one of the largest crypto wallets.

Lorenzo Santos, ConsenSys' product manager, spoke on the goal of the partnership in a press release: 

"This integration with PayPal will allow our U.S. users to not just buy crypto seamlessly through MetaMask, but also to easily explore the Web3 ecosystem," 

Some U.S. customers already have access to the new offerings, while PayPal works towards rolling out the service to all its U.S. customers within the next few weeks.

MetaMask is one of the most popular non-custodial crypto wallets, so this new offering will benefit many users. The offering will also help bring more users into the Web3 ecosystem. Something is needed more than ever due to the numerous crypto winters this year. 

With Bitcoin currently sitting at about the $20,000 mark, it seems the news hasn’t had a big effect on the space, so far.  

Donald Trump-Themed Trump Cards Sell out within 24 Hours, Raise over $4 Million and Disappoint A Lot Of People

In a surprising move, former President Donald Trump launches his own NFT collection. 

The news is shocking as the collection dropped only a year after Trump criticized cryptocurrency, which, like NFTs, is run on blockchain technology.

Even still, the collection, which is a set of digital trading cards, reportedly sold out in less than a day.

As expected, the collection was the subject of much ridicule from crypto and non-crypto users alike. 

The collection, which was released last Thursday, included 45,000 cards featuring illustrations of the former president in different outfits and professions, including an astronaut, a golf player, and a race car driver.

Only 44,000 of the NFTs were sold, which many believe indicates that Trump kept 1,000 for himself. 

The collection of NFTs cost $99 each and brought in around $4.5 million within 12 hours of being on sale. Now, some are trading for as much as $44,000, with the cheapest selling for hundreds more than their initial price. 

According to the promotional website advertising the collection, the NFTs are not associated with Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign and are “not political.”

Like many NFT collections before it, there is a standard template with attributes rarity, including 179 one-of-ones, which represent 0.4% of the images–those being the “Trump Force One” cards, named after his jet, which depicts the former president with his hands outstretched with the jet flying overhead. 

While we doubt that the launch of this collection means that Trump now respects the Web3, crypto, and blockchain spaces, the widespread attention these collectibles have attracted will naturally put NFTs in front of many new eyes. 

Chart.

Rumours are swirling that Binance might be in trouble. The company just announced today that they are acquiring Voyager Digital Assets for $1 billion (although another story says the deal will only cost $20 million in real terms because Voyager is bankrupt, after all). If the company makes a slew of acquisitions the way SBF did leading up to the demise of FTX, it will probably trigger many people's anxiety.

One news website points out that Binance’s BNB token follows a similar chart pattern to that of the Luna token that collapsed earlier this year thanks to genius Do Kwon.

Read the story and look at the charts below, and we will let you be the judge.

The Chart section of The Scoop is for everyone who prefers to listen to audiobooks or fill-in colouring books over text-based reading. Feast your eyes🍗👀

Fundraising In Web3.

 Here’s a breakdown of the estimated $103 million worth of gwei-focused fiat being poured into Web3 this week 🧀🐁🤑💸💰:

• Aztec is raising $100 million in a series B funding round to build a zk-rollup-friendly Ethereum that will give Web3 a nice privacy layer.

• Liquid Access is raising $3 million to turn memberships and monthly subscriptions into NFTs.

• Nametag is getting $2 million to give you a social ID that works with both web to web three platforms concurrently.

Education.

Welcome to the Study Space, where we make you feel like a Web3 genius just in time for the holidays so that you can give your entire circle of family and friends a hefty dose of FOMO. Here’s a Study Space topic that’s going to rock their 🌎

• What Is A Zk-Rollup, And How Does It Improve Privacy In Web3?

Scoop Meme

The Final Scoop

Whether we’re talking about Web3, Web2, #DeFi or #TradFi, the focus always goes where the money flows. Donald Trump is pulling a 180 for the money. SBF is getting in trouble because of money, and PayPal and MetaMask are driving forward with a partnership to expand mass crypto adoption because of money.

If you’re lucky enough to live in a democratic society, you have the opportunity to vote for freely elected officials, but the best thing you can ever do is vote with your money. That’s what Web3 allows you to do.

Even during this crypto bear market triggered by a broader economic recession, the smart money is still paying attention to whichever direction the satoshis and gweis happen to be flowing in. (PS Web3 makes YOU the SMART MONEY)🧠💵

What’s happening now is still good news for crypto and Web3 in the long run, and if you’ve been reading The Scoop regularly, you’re smart enough to know that you’re early in the revolution, and we’re glad you’re staying along for the ride.

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See you next week!