USDC is the most stable stablecoin, right?

Robinhood allows USDC trades, Vogue Singapore launches a metaverse experience, and a GMX exploit

Author

Lili (QueenBao)
September 21, 2022

GM Baos. 

I'm really feeling the hump day. I've spent the last few days moving because of a certain (King) Bao 😉

But don't you worry – we have some 10/10 content for you, courtesy of 0xCass. 

Today we cover: 

  • USDC trading on Robinhood

  • Vogue Singapore's Metaverse Experience!

  • A beeg GMX exploit :c

You can now trade USDC on Robinhood 

USDC is now live on Robinhood!

It’s crazy to think about how far Robinhood has come. This time last year they only had BTC, ETH, BTC SV, BCH, ETC, LTC and DOGE.  Now, you can trade 17 cryptocurrencies..

With all the altcoins being listed on Robinhood this year, I forget they’re a stock brokerage. I mean
 all their tweets are about crypto, so how can we continue to call them a stock app?

The timing of this news is interesting! Popular Indian crypto exchange, WazirX, recently delisted USDC. They’re converting everyone’s USDC, USDP and TUSD holdings to BUSD at a 1:1 ratio.

This sounds too familiar 😬 Binance actually did it earlier in the month. Though it made sense to see Binance do it. After all, it’s their own stablecoin.

Seeing Robinhood list USDC as its first stablecoin makes me wonder if there will be some sort of stablecoin war in the near future.

What are your thoughts? Which is the superior stablecoin, USDC or BUSD? 🧐

Vogue Singapore's Metaverse experience — New World

I’m sorry I missed this one, Baos. But Vogue Singapore launched a Metaverse experience!

One year ago, Vogue Singapore unveiled two historic NFT covers. This year they're stepping it up and created an entire virtual world for the fashion community.

Vogue’s new world lets you explore various types of content that tie together their September issue featuring Lina Zhang.

Several fashion brands have created interactive digital experiences this year. What’s different about Vogue’s New World is the ability to customize your avatar— after signing up for an account on spatial.io. You can dress your avatar in two vogue-exclusive creations by fashion designer Yimeng Yu.

Yu told Cointelegraph, “Digital technologies and Intelligent production are innovating the fashion design paradigm, production process, display method, retailing path and user experience within the fashion industry. In both designer creativity and user experience perspective, the Metaverse brings the fashion industry endless possibilities.”

The first phase of this digital world was released September 4 and phase two is expected to drop with Vogue’s October anniversary issue.

I can't wait to see what October brings! It's incredible to see high-street fashion brands & publishers leveraging metaverse experiences to reach international audiences. Will I see you in Fashion’s New World?

The GMX exploit đŸ„¶

It wouldn’t truly be a bear market without a new exploit each month. GMX happens to be the latest protocol targeted. It was bad too
 it’s estimated someone ran off with over $500k 👀

GMX is a decentralized perpetual exchange (DEX) built on both Arbitrum and Avalanche. They’re known for low fees and zero price impact trades.

Let’s just say GMX is beeg. Their GMX token has been leading the real yield narrative. So with all the hype around this protocol, it’s not surprising someone had their eyes on it.

GMX responds to the exploit by capping open interest on the AVAX rather than completely shutting down the pair.

Joshua Lim, Head of derivatives at Genesis Trading, was one of the first people to comment on GMX’s exploit. In his thread he breaks down what happened and dives into ways GMX could improve going forward.

TLDR to Joshua’s thread

  • Profits were taken from the AVAX/USD market

  • The exploiter benefitted from opening large AVAX positions at 0 slippage

  • Then manipulated price by moving ~200,000 AVAX to various exchanges

  • They did this a total of five times

  • This was easy for them to do because of GMX’s zero price impact

  • GMX was just working as designed

This was the most interesting non-exploit type of exploit. I’m glad we have giga brains like Joshua to explain these more complex topics. It’s times like these where we realize how far DeFi has come.

Bao-Sized News

    Made us Kek

    Have an incredible rest of week, Baos.

    –Lili