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TD Bank has agreed to pay over $3B in fines and accept growth limitations in the U.S., settling allegations of inadequate money laundering monitoring involving over $1B in transactions linked to unnamed crypto firms in the UK and Colombia. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) highlighted that these transactions predominantly involved crypto trading in high-risk jurisdictions.
Deutsche Bank is set to provide multi-currency accounts and foreign exchange services to Brussels-based crypto market-making firm Keyrock. This would improve Keyrock's ability to manage and expand its market-making and OTC trading services. The partnership is part of Deutsche Bank's broader engagement with the digital asset sector and will enable Keyrock to reduce risks associated with counterparty dealings and settlements.
Ethereum's Merge transitioned the protocol from proof of work to proof of stake, significantly improving stability and performance while minimizing centralization risks. In this post, Vitalik Buterin discusses ongoing improvements in this post around economic finality, increasing accessibility for smaller validators, and addressing economic centralization. The roadmap post-Merge includes categories like technical improvements and economic adjustments aimed at preserving Ethereum's decentralization. This involves balancing scalability and security and striving to streamline the transaction verification process while broadening participation among validators.
Hyperliquid, one of the most popular perp DEX L1s, has launched the Hyper Foundation as the first step in decentralizing its governance. The HYPE token will launch in the coming months and play a pivotal role in consensus and the launch of the HyperEVM. Users can now register to claim HYPE based on their Hyperliquid points and collect a genesis NFT.
Ethena's USDe has emerged as the fastest-growing stablecoin in history, offering high yields from simplifying trades like arbitraging Bitcoin perp funding rates. Two key catalysts - declining interest rates and the USTb coin backed by BlackRock's reserves - could drive further adoption. The ENA token is promising with its reduced inflation in the coming months.
EigenDA, the primary Actively Validated Service on the EigenLayer restaking platform, offers a high-throughput data availability solution for Ethereum. It boasts 15MB/s bandwidth by separating consensus from DA and direct communication from an operator instead of peer-to-peer. The dual staking model, which requires operators to stake both EIGEN and ETH, enables a more efficient and unique form of penalization through intersubjective forking for events that are not logically malicious but are apparent to the restakers.
Scroll's partnership with Binance is strategic and aims to mimic Tron's success in dominating the stablecoin P2P trading market in developing countries by capturing market activity through similar partnerships.
Polkadot, once hailed as an “ETH Killer” and the fifth most valuable crypto, has lost mindshare and developers over the past few years. However, the protocol has continued iterating, and has recently introduced upgrades to enhance scalability. It boasts strong decentralization metrics and active development. While it has struggled to meet early hype, and has received criticism for spending nearly $100 million on marketing, legitimate projects building Parachains could keep its vision alive.
Just five days after its release, “Off the Grid” has 5.5M wallet addresses, becoming a top web3 shooter game on Twitch and reaching an audience of over 800M people.
Google Search has seemingly removed Bitcoin and Ethereum price charts from its search results, though Dogecoin's price still appears.
The Avalanche Foundation will repurchase the 1.97 million AVAX tokens it sold to Terra's Luna Foundation Guard before Terra's collapse for $45.5M — lower than its current market value.
Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, sees Bitcoin as an “alternative to other commodities” and believes digital assets will become more prevalent.