Parse notes
Swift is launching live digital asset and currency transaction trials on its network in 2025. The trials aim to demonstrate how financial institutions can make transactions across different asset types using their existing Swift connections. With its global reach, Swift is uniquely positioned to interlink digital and traditional finance, potentially broadening crypto adoption.
Franklin Templeton has filed for a new ETF with the SEC that would offer exposure to both Bitcoin and Ethereum, allowing investors to track the performance of these top cryptocurrencies without directly owning them. If approved, the ETF will be traded on the CBOE, with Bank of New York Mellon managing cash and Coinbase handling the cryptocurrency custody.
More Fortune 500 companies are using Coinbase for B2B crypto payments, relying on the platform's long-standing expertise in crypto custody. Companies like PayPal, Google Cloud, and EY are executing and settling payments instantly using stablecoins, improving the efficiency of cross-border transactions and treasury management.
This new framework for assessing defensibility in crypto markets proposes evaluating based on the question: “If I fork this app, with $50M in token subsidies, can I steal and maintain market share?” Traditional moats like liquidity and TVL may be insufficient for long-term defensibility, as they can be subsidized by well-funded competitors. True defensibility may stem from intangibles like brand, superior UX, and a team's innovation ability. Value capture is moving towards front-ends and their wallets, given their proximity to end users and access to order flow.
Though total value secured is typically used as an oracle metric, each DeFi sector has varied price demand requiring more or less updates. Two protocols with identical TVS can have different pricing needs. With Chainlink, for example, Synthetix is a larger contributor to TVS, but dYdX does over 4x more trading volume. Total Transaction Value, calculating but summing the volume of derivative DEXs using an oracle, is a better metric. This metric shows that market leaders are losing.
Celestia and EigenDA offer distinct approaches to blockchain data availability: Celestia focuses on data availability and consensus for developers to build independent rollups, while EigenDA uses a minimalist, scalable architecture that forgoes traditional blockchain elements like consensus and P2P networking, catering to systems requiring high throughput and low latency.
DeFi pioneer Andre Cronje accused Base DEX Aerodrome of taking his open-source code base, removing his credit, and placing a business license on it. If true, this could be both an ethical and legal issue. The truth of the claims is pending. The founder of Aerodrome mentioned that he and Cronje discussed the matter privately, and “all is good.”
There has been an increasing trend of violent, real-world crimes targeting digital asset holders.
The top 5 L2 chains, post-Dencun, have a 95% collective profit margin, showing that only $0.05 of every $1 earned returns to Ethereum as transaction posting costs.
Mark Cuban says there is no reason for memecoins to subsist and that they're a “game of musical chairs” and nothing more.
Over 75% of cbETH's circulating supply is unused, highlighting the importance of monitoring the underlying staked ETH instead of just the liquid staking token supply.