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An Indian man, Chirag Tomar, pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy for stealing over $37 million in cryptocurrency through a phishing scam using a fake Coinbase website.
With the 19B-4 forms approved for 8 issuers, it could be weeks to months until the S-1s are approved and the ETFs start trading.
Vitalik Buterin proposed the first block in preparation of Taiko's mainnet and expressed his excitement around Ethereum L2s taking different rollup approaches.
At the Libertarian National Convention, presidential candidate Donald Trump said he would commute the sentence of Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht if elected.
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Though Biden's administration opposes the passage of FIT21, it says it is willing to work with Congress to create a balanced regulatory framework for digital assets. Its goal is to reinforce United States leadership in the global financial system. This statement comes at a time when crypto is becoming an increasingly politicized issue with the 2024 election looming.
The SEC has approved eight spot Ethereum ETFs from issuers, including BlackRock, Fidelity, and Grayscale, months after approving spot Bitcoin ETFs. While the approval of the 19b-4 forms marks a significant step, trading will only start after the S-1 statements have been registered, which may take weeks.
The Dfinity Foundation has released a new API that enables Internet Computer smart contracts to be compatible with any EVM (improves cross-chain interaction and app potential). This move is part of Dfinity's broader Chain Fusion initiative, which looks to increase blockchain interoperability.
Ethereum has been criticized for block builders' increasing dominance over their chain control, which is a consequence of how time-discrete systems create varied value in their storage slots. This author proposes a specification for native transaction bundling for onchain applications, which gives more control over sequencing.
FIT21 divides digital assets into three categories: digital commodities (regulated by the CFTC), restricted digital assets (regulated by the SEC), and permitted stablecoins. Classification depends on factors such as the level of decentralization and functionality of the blockchain, how the asset is acquired, and who holds the asset. While the bill is a thoughtful approach to bridging the gap between traditional finance and crypto, it could be improved by expressly discarding the Howey and Reves tests for digital asset categorization to prevent SEC jurisdiction backdoors.
Effective crypto marketing and community building should be approached as a complex system with various interconnected events and outputs, rather than one-off strategies. Projects should prioritize investing in their community, interacting with community content, emphasizing quality over quantity, and treating community members as real people with valuable feedback. These tips help give projects sustainable community flywheels to set them apart in the attention economy.
While layer 2s and execution sharding may seem like opposite strategies for blockchain scaling, they share the same underlying technologies, such as data sharding, fraud proofs, and cross-communication solutions. The primary difference is that L2s allow for greater creativity and independent innovation, with each L2 having its own rules, while shards are protocol-level. The L2-centric ecosystem does face coordination challenges, smart contract wallet support, and decentralized validation infrastructure.
This article discusses some of the use cases in web3, specifically the potential of Web3 publisher-exchanges. Web 3 publisher-exchanges combine the abilities of publishers and exchanges to streamline user interactions and financial transactions on content platforms. The combination improves UX/UI by removing friction from transactions and making transactions more immediate and integrated with content consumption.
The Banana Zone refers to 4-year crypto and tech market cycles.
Crypto asset manager Grayscale has launched two new investment trusts for Near Protocol (NEAR) and Stacks (STX) available to individual and institutional accredited investors.
Chainlink is 300-800ms behind in reporting CEX data, which is faster than competitors Pyth and RedStone.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Coinbase in a technical arbitration dispute concerning which legal agreement should apply when parties have entered into two different contracts, one of which involved a Dogecoin sweepstakes.
The United Kingdom's Financial Conduct Authority has given approval for WisdomTree to launch Bitcoin and Ethereum exchange-traded products (ETPs) on the London Stock Exchange. Though it will only be available to professional investors, it is the first in the UK after regulators banned crypto offerings in 2020.
The U.S. House of Representatives has passed the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (FIT21), marking a significant bipartisan effort to provide regulatory clarity for the cryptocurrency sector, enhance consumer protection, and foster American innovation. As the bill progresses to the Senate, advocates are encouraged to actively support responsible crypto regulation through social media engagement and outreach to senators.
NEAR Co-founder Illia Polosukhin announced that NEAR will now focus on making NEAR the home for “User-Owned AI.” The project invests in NEAR-based AI infrastructure projects, including compute, data curation, data marketplaces, agents, and more. The NEAR AI R&D Lab plans to build an AI developer to make end-to-end Web3 applications without code.
EigenDA is opening up rollup deployments through a whitelisting process, which includes a free tier. Over 230 operators and 3.4M ETH secure the actively validated service via restaking. It also introduced a dual quorum model, where EIGEN holders can stake and add more security, eventually evolving into intersubjective security.
To use Dexscreener effectively, set up token searches with specific filters, analyze coins by checking liquidity, volume, and social media presence, and use features like multiple chart monitoring, portfolio tracking, and token alerts for price fluctuations.
The US House is voting on the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (FIT21) today. A pivotal bill that aims to establish clear regulations for the cryptocurrency market in the US, this legislation delineates jurisdiction between the SEC and CFTC, introduces consumer protections, and sets out guidelines for when crypto networks are considered sufficiently decentralized, marking significant progress in defining and potentially stabilizing the crypto regulatory landscape.
A hacker exploited an admin account to mint 5 billion GALA tokens, quickly selling off a portion for $21.8 million in Ethereum, despite Gala Games' efforts to contain the breach using its blocklist feature. This incident adds to Gala Games' troubled history, which includes previous massive token thefts and legal issues, casting further doubt on the company's security measures and internal integrity.
A Solana developer suffered third-degree burns during a livestream stunt where he doused himself in isopropyl alcohol and was hit by fireworks to promote his meme coin, TruthOrDare (DARE). The incident, which highlights the extreme lengths to which some go for cryptocurrency clout, resulted in significant injuries and hospitalization, raising concerns about the dangerous trends in live streaming for financial gain.
The Degen Chain, an L3 that settles Base and is operated by Conduit, recently experienced a large reorg and 54 hours of downtime.
Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin believes the biggest user experience problem is that L2s don't have a “unified Ethereum” feeling.
Notcoin, a blockchain game on TON, has quickly gained popularity on Telegram, onboarding over 30 million users and setting up TON-based crypto wallets.
Hong Kong has ordered Worldcoin to pause all operations in the region because of violations of local privacy regulations.
SEC Chair Gary Gensler has criticized the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (FIT21), arguing that it would create regulatory gaps and reduce the oversight of crypto assets as securities, thus jeopardizing investor protection.
Donald Trump, aiming for a second term as U.S. President, has announced that his campaign will now accept cryptocurrency donations, marking a significant shift from traditional campaign financing. Supported by Coinbase, his platform now accepts a wide array of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and various meme coins, positioning him as the first major party Presidential nominee to embrace such a diverse range of digital assets for campaign contributions.
Uniswap Labs argues that the protocol fully complies with US law and that the decentralized exchange does not fall under the “securities exchange” or “broker” definition. It notes that over 90% of trading volume is on commodities pairs, stablecoins, or out of the country, expanding beyond the SEC's jurisdiction. Lawyers for the Ripple and Grayscale cases are providing outside counsel, and Uniswap is confident it will win if forced to litigate.
Rocketpool, the second-biggest Ethereum liquid staking protocol, is reinventing its tokenomics for better value capture and Ethereum alignment. It has introduced technical improvements to increase security and capital efficiency and will distribute surplus fees from ETH staking to RPL holders. The upgrades are planned to occur around the Pectra hard fork, currently slated for late 2024 or early 2025.
Coinbase is adding retail-sized gold and oil futures to its derivatives platform on June 3. It aims to increase trader retention amidst growing crypto exchange competition. Coinbase Derivatives launched in June 2023 and has grown to host fifteen perpetual futures products.
Researchers have identified key factors in airdrop design through a comprehensive analysis of over 2 million airdrop events across 40 protocols, such as the quantity of tokens distributed and the target recipients. Their findings suggest that airdrops targeted at core users with smaller token quantities tend to show higher price stability and engagement post-distribution, challenging the effectiveness of widespread, larger airdrops.
The quality of token launches has declined significantly due to new stringent exchange requirements demanding high user metrics prior to listing, which has led projects to focus on generating inflated user activities through point systems rather than organic growth. This shift has resulted in an airdrop farming culture where users engage not out of genuine interest but to earn rewards, leading to rapid sell-offs post-launch and damaging the overall market dynamics and the perceived value of new tokens.
The U.S. DOJ has arrested Rui-Siang Lin, the head of "Incognito Market", an illegal dark web marketplace that facilitated the sale of illegal drugs using mainly crypto (including bitcoin and Monero). The marketplace processed ~$80M in crypto transactions over three years and charged a 5% fee on drug purchases.
This article discusses the complex financial maneuvers used by major global economies, focusing on how the Federal Reserve, U.S. Treasury, and Bank of Japan manipulate the dollar-yen exchange rate to manage their economic and political challenges. It explains that by conducting dollar-yen swaps, these entities can artificially strengthen or weaken currencies to impact their economies, forestall fiscal issues, and influence global trade dynamics, particularly affecting the competitive balance between China and Japan in global markets.
Ethereum L2 ZkSync intends to host its highly-anticipated token generation event this week with an airdrop expected to follow within 30 days.
Yuga Labs announced it would "no longer touch" CryptoPunks after facing backlash for launching the "Super Punk World" collection.
This initiative aims to address scams through data sharing, public education, and collaboration with law enforcement.
Since crypto is now a bipartisan issue, there may be impending stablecoin legislation, of which Coinbase and Circle would be the biggest benefactors.
Bloomberg ETF analysts Eric Balchunas and James Seyffart announced that they are hearing that the ETH ETFs could be approved on May 23rd, and upped their odds from 25% to 75%. The approval of an ETH ETF is being seen as an increasingly political issue, especially after the move to overturn the SEC's SAB 121 ruling about crypto custody passed the House and Senate. Upon the news, ETH has increased by over 17%.
Any entity with over $100 million in assets must file a 13F each quarter with their holdings. The Q1 filings show that ~3% of the ETF market cap is held by investment advisors, ~10% by hedge funds, and ~85% by retail investors – the average ETF is 35% owned by investment advisors. The ETFs appeared to hurt Coinbase's retail volume, as its retail volume is 50% of what it was in 2021. This author, a macro investment researcher, sees the ETFs as “orange FOMO poker chips” and says that the goal of a decentralized financial system should not be pushing money into ETFs.
Succinct Labs' SP1 prover already achieves state-of-the-art performance in precompile-heavy proving, with the GPU bringing cost and latency down 10x. Its benchmarks demonstrate that GPU can accelerate proving by up to 20x. It is working with hardware teams to implement the GPU with its prover network and plans to add support in the coming weeks.
LayerZero's CEO, Brian Pellegrino, announced that the Sybil hunting phase of their airdrop program would pause for a couple of days to fix the design. The protocol's highly-anticipated airdrop tasked users with Sybil hunting, finding clusters of wallets owned by the same entity, and reporting them for 10% of their token rewards. Since the start of the program, LayerZero has received over 3,000 bounty reports and 30,000 appeals. Going forward, it may introduce a .02 ETH bond and other design changes to reduce spam reporting.
Incentives drive onchain activity. In 2020, Compound's liquidity mining program increased protocol TVL from $100M to $600M in a week, sparking DeFi summer. In 2021, Polygon's joint liquidity mining programs with DeFi protocols like Aave led to Polygon's TVL increasing from $100M to billions. In 2024, Layer 2 solutions like Mode seem to be imitating Blur/Blast's points incentive program. Mode's TVL jumped $100M in a day during a “3X points event”. Future incentives will follow a similar pattern, innovating and being widely adopted until exhausted.
Private markets and VCs have recently captured most of the upside of new tokens, primarily led by high FDVs and a poor regulatory environment. Though ICOs had downsides, they allowed for retail investors to get in early and for organic price discovery. Memecoins and investors' rejection of new projects is beginning to cause a rethinking of the proper launch strategy. If a project is valued at the top of its sector at launch, it would require a market-wide expansion to increase in value further.
Nina Chanel, in collaboration with CryptoPunks for the Punk in Residence program, has created a 500-piece collection titled "Super Punk World," featuring hybridized 3D sculptures that challenge and transcend race and gender norms. It integrates CryptoPunks' early-internet aesthetics with her distinctive abstract and colorful art style. This has been a controversial announcement for CryptoPunks - Crypto Twitter's reaction to this has been fairly negative so far.