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Robinhood has finalized the buyback of a 7.6% stake in the company, valued at $606 million, in seized shares from FTX founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, as confirmed in an SEC filing. The shares were confiscated by the US Justice Department as a part of the fraud charges being levied against SBF.
YouTube star MrBeast has announced the Creator League, an esports competition featuring top influencers and their fans. The league garnered some negative press soon after launch, as one of the streamers that was going to be involved in the launch backed out after learning the league would be leveraging NFTs as part of its tech stack.
When Sam Trabucco left Alameda, he mentioned he would be spending time on his new boat. Filings discovered as part of FTX’s bankruptcy have now revealed that his $2.5m boat was purchased by FTX/Alameda.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin sold all his MakerDAO MKR tokens for $581,000 after Rune Christensen mentioned using Solana’s tech stack to create an appchain for MakerDAO.
A dormant FTX wallet bridged $10m in crypto from Solana to Ethereum, igniting fears that the liquidation of FTX’s holdings will soon begin.
JPMorgan predicts the SEC will likely approve multiple spot bitcoin ETFs following Grayscale's legal victory against the SEC.
The SEC has postponed its decision on the approval of bitcoin ETF applications from firms like BlackRock and WisdomTree until October. The delay will allow for extended comment periods and broader public feedback on the applications. This came as somewhat of a disappointment as the markets seemed to have been anticipating a quick approval after the SEC’s loss in the Grayscale case.
Swift announced successful tests showing its infrastructure can facilitate tokenized asset transfers across several blockchains. The project used existing security frameworks to provide multiple network access points, decreasing requisite outlay for institutions' tokenized asset endeavors. Swift collaborated with major financial institutions and web3 service platform Chainlink to make this happen.
Beam, a crypto-to-fiat on/off ramp, introduced a feature for developers that will allow them to easily include one-click conversion from crypto to fiat in their apps. This new feature is aimed at simplifying, scaling, and expanding access to the crypto ecosystem. The service includes handling compliance, liquidity management, and traditional rail connectivity, allowing developers to focus on building their apps rather than the underlying infrastructure.
Arbitrum announced the launch of Stylus, expanding Arbitrum's interoperability with additional languages like Rust, C, and C++. The announcement includes the launch of a live testnet and availability of the open-source SDK. The new tech brings enhanced speed, cost-efficiency, and expanded use cases. As part of its launch, Arbitrum is holding a Stylus Hackathon with $20,000 in bounties.
This article suggests that stablecoins should simply be digital versions of the assets they are linked to without additional utilities which could dilute the benefits of the base stablecoin. It goes on to propose five key utilities for stablecoins: Medium of Exchange, Store of Value/Peg Stability, Capital Efficiency, Fiat On-Ramp/Off-Ramp, and Censorship Resistance.
In under two months, the market cap of Rollbit has surged tenfold from $63 million to $622 million, and the platform's on-chain metrics have been showing an increasing adoption rate. This thread dives into Rollbit and some other projects that look like promising alternatives within the GambleFi narrative.
Coinbase has announced the listing of PayPal's stablecoin, PYUSD-USD, on its platform. However, the listing carries an "Experimental" label, a tag used by Coinbase for newly listed assets or those with low trading volume to caution users about potential risks. Despite mixed opinions on PayPal's stablecoin, it has been listed across various exchanges steadily and could pose competition to the leading stablecoins, USDC and USDT.
Adidas' digital arm, Three Stripes Studio, is launching a global digital artist residency program, Residency by Adidas, to support and showcase digital artists. The program debuts this month during Korea Blockchain Week and will feature works from artists MonkeeMoto and Adra Kandil as Ethereum NFTs. Additionally, the program will offer limited edition NFT drops and future collaborations on physical items.
Entheos and Plural Energy are partnering to enable blockchain-based financing of smart battery assets, aiming to make renewable energy solutions more effective and attractive.
ERC-6551 introduces Token Bound Accounts, equipping NFTs with Smart Wallets for asset management. This post from Coinbase explains the standard and its potential use cases.
SolLinked is a Solana-based email and calendar platform that prioritizes messages based on the amount of $USDC sent. This dev spun this app up after Toly, Solana’s founder, mentioned he’d like to see a product like this in the space.
Crypto Leaks accused Nansen of favorably reviewing Avalanche due to a potential business relationship between the two entities.
Binance Japan announced plans to substantially increase its token offerings from 34 to about 100 in the near future. In conjunction with this, the international exchange aims to collaborate with other local exchanges to boost liquidity on traded assets. This rollout follows its recent acquisition of Sakura Exchange BitCoin, which precipitated Binance’s re-entry into the Japanese market after regulatory issues with its own entity in 2021.
A lawsuit against Uniswap accusing it of "rampant fraud" was dismissed yesterday, signifying a big win for the decentralized exchange and DeFi as a whole. Judge Katherine Polk Failla argued that despite plaintiffs' losses, due to Uniswap's decentralized nature, there was no identifiable defendant. The claim also accused Uniswap of selling unregistered securities. However, the judge stated that a definitive determination on whether certain crypto assets are commodities or securities has not been established. The judge's ruling emphasized that concerns about federal securities laws should be directed to Congress, not the court.
OpenSea is developing a standard for redeemable NFTs and has launched four proposals for improvement. The company’s self-serve tool gives creators an option to add redeemability to their NFTs. Other features include trait redemption and offering off-chain redeemable NFTs. Although trading hasn't started, OpenSea provided a free redeemable NFT prototype for users to try until year-end.
OpenZeppelin has launched Defender version 2.0, an upgraded security platform for blockchain developers. The system helps developers monitor smart contracts, manage upgrades, and automate scripts for these projects. The new version includes a machine learning tool to detect potential vulnerabilities and an auditing module to track and correct them. Despite being in beta, Defender 2.0 is fully operational with the aim of becoming the "standard for security" in the crypto sector.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has proposed ten ideas that he believes entrepreneurs in the crypto space should be working on. The ideas include flatcoins, on-chain reputation and advertisements, an on-chain capital formation process, a marketplace for crypto-related tasks, privacy for layer-2 solutions, an on-chain peer-to-peer exchange, on-chain games, tokenization of real-world assets, and software for managing network states. Coinbase Ventures plans to host a summit in LA to discuss these ideas and support startups or teams pursuing them.
This article discusses the complexities of integrating derivatives, specifically perpetual futures, into DeFi applications. As a potential solution to this problem, a synthetic derivatives protocol, which uses Compound's lend-borrow mechanism as a foundation, is proposed. This alternative attempts to resolve issues that have hindered previous efforts, particularly the challenge of the two-oracle requirement, by using a single oracle for the underlying asset. Despite its advantages, there are risks associated with this mechanism, particularly on the maker side, which need to be addressed.
The SEC has experienced a myriad of setbacks in its crypto-related enforcement actions recently. It suffered a defeat in court over Grayscale's bitcoin trust conversion and lost a lawsuit against Ripple concerning its XRP token. These losses have exposed potential weaknesses in the SEC's arguments against crypto as a whole. Upcoming cases against big crypto exchanges Binance and Coinbase offer further challenges for the agency to overcome.
This in-depth article from WSJ explains how Fidelity Investments, having entered the crypto scene in 2014, has become a major talent source for the digital asset industry. Key figures in the crypto world, known informally as the "Fidelity mafia," (a play-off of the notorious “Paypal mafia”) have risen to prominence in the industry. Despite facing criticism and regulatory scrutiny, Fidelity itself has remained committed to digital assets, offering bitcoin trading to a majority of its 43 million customers and applying to be one of the first spot Bitcoin ETF providers.
Binance is officially winding down BUSD support, aiming to be finished with the wind down by early 2024.
Amazon is rumored to be developing an NFT marketplace - it currently offers free NFTs and in-game currency to Prime subscribers via its Prime Gaming portal.
This article explores the evolution of Ethereum's DEXs, introducing ideas such as a new smart contract, "Dealer 3", and "Integral DEX applications" (IDEX) to optimize transactions.
The Uniswap community has voted to expand Uniswap v2 to other blockchains outside of Ethereum to protect users from unsafe forks and capture market share from copycats.
A US federal court ruled yesterday that the SEC acted unfairly in denying Grayscale’s request to turn its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust product into an ETF. The long-awaited decision gave a big boost to prices across the board in the crypto market and even to crypto-related public equities like Coinbase. While the ruling was favorable, it still doesn't guarantee immediate ETF approvals. Not only does this help Grayscale’s case as it tries to launch an ETF, but it also likely increases the chances that the spot BTF applications from TradFi giants like Blackrock and Fidelity will go through as well.
Yesterday, the SEC submitted a sealed motion containing classified information in its case against cryptocurrency exchange Binance. The unusual move has sparked speculation about potential new allegations against the company, which is already facing charges of offering unregistered securities to the public. Experts suggest the SEC could be trying to avoid interfering with a separate criminal investigation - potentially by the DOJ - or protect a witness or company at risk.
Polygon has unveiled its Chain Development Kit, a software suite that allows developers to launch their own L2 solutions using zk technology. The CDK offers infinite scalability and unified liquidity, while enabling easy settlement to Ethereum and is already being used in numerous projects. The CDK is expected to usher in an era of open-source progress and innovative L2 solutions.
Fintech firm Circle has teamed up with Latin American e-commerce giant Mercado Libre to introduce the stablecoin USDC on Mercado Pago, its online payment platform, in Chile. This move aims to increase the utilization of cryptocurrencies and the US dollar in a country where the currency isn't often accepted. It also marks another step into crypto for Mercado Libre, which started accepting cryptocurrencies as payments in 2021.
This article simplifies the concept of a Zero-Knowledge Virtual Machine, software that validates that a program has been executed correctly, with a lighthearted example, “Proof of Meow.” It outlines the process of program compilation to bytecode, execution inside the VM generating an execution trace, and the role of the prover and verifier. The piece also shows how these principles apply to the Ethereum Virtual Machine in ZK-Rollups.
A recent blockchain user activity survey revealed some surprising findings. Despite Ethereum's popularity, 17% of participants in the survey had never used it. Similarly, 34% never transacted in Bitcoin. The Cardano community showed up in surprisingly large numbers with 6,300+ respondents, a bigger group of participants than any other chain in the survey. Surprisingly, participants of the survey had hardly used Litecoin at all, despite its high ranking in daily active users on DeFiLlama. The BNB chain had more users and a higher share of participants who had used the chain than Solana and Avalanche, while Ethereum remains in pole position amongst all the chains.
Private bank Britannia Bank & Trust has reportedly recently started working with stablecoin issuer Tether. This relationship allows Tether to make dollar transfers, strengthening its access to traditional banking systems. Tether's banking relations have largely remained undisclosed, which has sparked industry speculation over the years. Despite facing regulatory hurdles and allegations of misleading investors about its reserves, Tether has been gaining significant share of the stablecoin market this year.
The SEC is treating NFTs as a security for the first time in its recent enforcement action against Impact Theory, a Tom Bilyeu company. This article explains how NFTs in their basic form are not necessarily a security. However, it goes on to explain that it could be logical to conclude an NFT is a security when issuers begin to make promises about what they will do to increase the value of the NFT over time.
X has been granted a currency transmission license (the type that would be required to process crypto transactions). However, it’s not clear whether this is for crypto or not as the same type of license would be required for fiat transmission.
MoonPay has launched MoonPay Ventures, an investment arm to support early-stage web3 and fintech firms through providing mentorship and support from crypto industry partners.
This blog explains how Zero Knowledge Proofs could be leveraged for both decentralized science in scientific research and in the medical field for data privacy.
Solana is gaining momentum in liquid staking despite some initial hiccups. This article provides an update on the liquid staking ecosystem on Solana.
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Proto-danksharding, or EIP-4844, is coming to Ethereum soon to address scalability issues. It introduces a concept called blobspace, which can reduce transaction costs by simplifying the data commitment process. Blobspace helps to verify that all transaction information is available for block validation without every node needing to download all data, making the process more efficient. This upgrade will particularly benefit L2 solutions like rollups.