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Hey Waivly Crew! 🌊 Sorare has partnered with MLB to launch an NFT-based fantasy baseball game this summer. Yesterday Coinbase users were unable to withdraw funds, heightening fears amid a crash in cryptocurrency prices.

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Sorare teams up with MLB to create NFT fantasy game

Sorare has partnered with Major League Baseball (MLB) and MLB Players Inc. to launch an NFT-based fantasy baseball game later this season.

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Sorare will become the official NFT baseball game partner of MLB to provide fans with a platform to play fantasy games while purchasing, selling, and collecting digital baseball cards. It will resemble the company’s fantasy football game, which has 1.8 million players worldwide.

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These baseball cards will be represented as NFTs, which can be used to assemble a fantasy team that’s ranked based on the athletes’ performance during the season. Players will start with free, common NFTs but have the option to win or purchase more on an integrated marketplace.

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"The connections we build with our fans are vital, and Sorare understands the importance of that bond," MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement. "The company's focus on transforming fandom through an innovative combination of sports, technology and gaming to let fans truly own a piece of the game they love is unique and goes beyond borders -- allowing us to bring the love of baseball to more fans across the globe."

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This isn’t the first NFT deal for MBL. In April, the league partnered with digital collectible company Candyrare to give fans a new way to showcase their love for the sport with various NFT baseball cards and other memorabilia.

The Waves

📉 Terra blockchain halted

🔥 Ex-Meta fintech chief David Marcus unveils Bitcoin startup

🖼️ 5 NFT projects with endless potential

📜 U.S. SEC's Peirce shares update on stablecoin regulation

Crypto Special

Yellen says crypto market is too small to pose systemic risk

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Thursday that the crypto market has yet to reach a size that poses a systemic risk to the US financial system.

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Yellen's comments came during an appearance before the House Committee on Financial Services, where Rep. Jim Himes questioned how big the market would need to become to trigger systemic risk.

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“Although I can't say that they've reached the scale right now where they're a financial stability concern, we're seeing Terra having broken the buck and Tether under some pressure as well...I wouldn't characterize it at this scale as a real threat to financial stability, but they're growing very rapidly and they present the same kinds of risks that we have known for centuries in connection with bank runs," she said.

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Yellen was referring to the TerraUSD (UST) crash, the algorithmic stablecoin that lost its peg to the dollar last weekend and again on Monday, causing it to collapse throughout the week. At the time of writing, UST is sitting far below its peg at $0.45.

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Yellen declined to give Himes a number at which the market would pose a systemic risk and instead noted while crypto and stablecoins don't currently meet the systemic threshold, this will likely change in the near future:

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"I wouldn’t characterize it as a real threat to financial stability, but they're growing very rapidly and present the same kind of risks we’ve known for centuries from bank runs."

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FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried buys 7.6% stake in Robinhood

Sam Bankman-Fried, co-founder and CEO of crypto exchange FTX has taken a 7.6% stake in Robinhood, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

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Bankman-Fried purchased 56 million shares of HOOD through an Antiguan firm called Emergent Fidelity Technologies Ltd, of which he is the sole director and majority owner. Based on the closing price of $HOOD, his position is worth slightly over $479 million.

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SBF paid $684M for the shares in the belief that they “represent an attractive investment,” the filing noted. “The Reporting Persons intend to hold the Shares as an investment and do not currently have any intention of taking any action toward changing or influencing the control of the Issuer.”

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According to data from Bloomberg, Bankman-Fried is now the third-largest Robinhood shareholder.

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Coinbase experiences major outage

Many Coinbase users experienced difficulty accessing accounts and trading on Thursday. Users reported on Reddit that they were experiencing delays in the withdrawal of funds as well as not being able to access the Coinbase app or website.

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Coinbase confirms on Twitter that they were having issues with their platform, stating that “We are aware that some customers are having issues trading and accessing accounts on Coinbase and Coinbase Pro.” The company assured its customers that the funds in their accounts are safe and that its team is actively working to resolve the issue.

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Following their confirmation of having issues, Coinbase updated their users that the situation was slowly being resolved and that their team would continue to monitor the situation. At 12:21 PM PST, Coinbase announced on Twitter that the outage had been resolved and that the full service of their platform got restored. Users were able to trade and access their accounts without any issue.

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The difficulty of withdrawing funds from the platform caused many users to be frightened due to the outage happening amid crypto prices crashing. The crash of crypto prices added urgency to crypto investors to trade and withdraw their funds.

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Amid the crash, Bitcoin has lost more than 25% of its value over the course of a month. With Coinbase being one of the leading crypto exchanges, the crypto crash greatly affected it by its revenue dropping earlier this week.

Own and secure your crypto with Ledger

If you’re into cryptocurrency and own crypto assets, you need a secure place to store your coins and tokens. You probably already know that you shouldn’t store your crypto on an exchange due to potential hacks, not being solely in control of your crypto’s private keys, and for other reasons, and so a hardware wallet is the way to go and the best option to protect your private keys, therefore, you should make the move to a Ledger wallet.

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Ledger wallets are an extremely secure and premium way to secure, manage, and grow your crypto assets with their Bluetooth-enabled hardware wallets, and easy-to-use app which lets you manage your portfolio on the go. They let you manage multiple assets, buy, sell, grow, and exchange crypto, gain financial freedom by you being in full control and ownership of your private keys, and so much more.

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The wallets are really simple to setup, and to move your crypto over to, so there’s no reason not to secure your assets and take control of your cryptocurrency now and get yourself a Ledger device. You can manage 1800+ coins and tokens directly in the Ledger Live app once you’ve got your device up and running, so you’ll always have your entire portfolio covered.

Share The Wave

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