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On-chain data — The missing link in Web3 advertising | On-chain wallet data promises to be a game-changer for companies looking to target Web3 users, developers and traders — but this hinges on infrastructure connecting wallets to social media profiles.
Cointelegraph spoke to Addressable chief technology officer Asaf Nadler during Paris Blockchain Week, who unpacked details of a new partnership with mobile analytics platform AppsFlyer to improve marketing campaigns for Web3 applications.
Nadler said the company is looking to solve user acquisition challenges in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Conversations with more than 300 marketers over the past two years have centered around reaching a target audience based on on-chain activity.
Related: TON continues to attract Web3 firms as Telegram Ad Platform goes live
“They’re looking for traders, for developers that deploy smart contracts on blockchains, for NFT collectors, for gamers playing blockchain games,” Nadler explained.
Addressable’s platform allows advertisers to target specific Web3 wallets from different EVM chains. Source: Addressable
Nadler gave Cointelegraph a first-hand demo of the Addressable platform, showing how users could filter and target wallets from different Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM chains to build a targeted advertising campaign. The process is similar to adding filters like gender, age and geographic location in conventional advertising platforms.
Addressable’s data visualization includes a geographical breakdown of Web3 wallets in a global format. Source: Addressable
Considering that most Web3 wallets are alphanumeric and anonymous, many advertising platforms cannot target wallet owners. Addressable’s infrastructure combines conventional Web2 information with blockchain data to target a niche but growing sector of the internet:
“We’re connecting wallet owners to social profiles so companies can run targeted advertisement campaigns on Twitter [now X] and display ads to a group of wallets.”
The platform is specifically aimed at serving Web3 companies and clients. Conventional advertising platforms provide customizable targeting, but Nadler said that cryptocurrency-related products and services are typically not relevant to a broad audience on social media platforms like X or Facebook:
“The thing about crypto is most products aren’t a commodity. My mother wouldn’t understand most crypto products. So a tweet on X just flies by anybody who is not native and doesn’t understand that.”
Addressable currently supports seven different Ethereum EVM chains, including BNB, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism and Avalanche.
“The key is that we’re able to collect the data to build wallet profiles and associate them to real-world data so that they’re targetable,” Nadler said.
Related: Telegram channels eligible for 50% ad revenue, but there’s a catch
Addressable’s integration with AppsFlyer provides more utility for the targeted advertising platform. Clients can tap into data from Web3 mobile platforms and target users of these mobile applications.
Nadler said the integration includes data sharing from their platform so that mobile advertisers can get more utility than just an increase in application downloads:
“They can optimize for what drives the wheels into their protocol, what drives people that are spending more crypto on their wallets, on their apps, on their games. It’s an industry milestone.”
AppsFlyer is a specialist mobile marketing tool used by TikTok, Disney, Binance and Crypto.com. It aims to optimize mobile app marketing campaigns with granular attribution data. The partnership is touted to allow Addressable to reach a significant percentage of Web3 mobile applications.
Magazine: 1 in 6 new Base meme coins are scams, 91% have vulnerabilities |
Top five BTC miners not selling despite Bitcoin halving | The five largest Bitcoin mining firms are not selling Bitcoin (BTC), despite the 50% supply issuance reduction of the upcoming Bitcoin halving.
Bitcoin selling by the top five mining firms slowed to a two-year low in the first quarter of 2024, when the five largest miners sold a total of approximately 2,000 BTC, according to an April 10 report by Bitwise.
The last time the top five mining firms sold less than 2,000 BTC was in the first quarter of 2022. In comparison, the five largest mining firms sold over 7,000 BTC in the fourth quarter of 2023.
The report comes days before the 2024 Bitcoin halving, which is set to reduce Bitcoin block issuance rewards from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC per mined block.
Paired with a continually increasing Bitcoin hash rate, the profitability of mining firms could take a hit after the halving.
Bitcoin Mined vs. Bitcoin sold by Top Five Miners. Source: Bitwise
Despite a gloomy outlook for some miners, Bitcoin miner revenue saw a 30% increase quarter-over-quarter, tripling the recent lows form the fourth quarter of 2022. Bitcoin miner revenue rose above $4.5 billion according to Bitwise.
Bitcoin Miner Revenue by Type. Source: Bitwise
Despite the upcoming block reward halving, Bitcoin mining revenue won’t necessarily fall in U.S. dollar terms, according to Laurent Benayoun, the CEO of Acheron Trading:
“In dollar terms, it’s not obvious that miners would be worse off after the halving, quite the opposite […] The decrease in mining rewards is going to be compensated by an increase in network fees.”
Yet, Bitcoin miner revenue has historically declined in the months after Bitcoin halvings. Post-halving Bitcoin mining revenue declined 40% in the month after the 2020 halving, while monthly revenue declined over 51% after the 2016 Bitcoin halving.
Bitcoin Halving: Total Miner Revenue. Source: Bitwise
Related: Is the Bitcoin halving the right time to invest in BTC?
Out of the top five mining firms, Marathon Digital mined the most Bitcoin, with over 2,500 BTC generated in the first quarter of 2024, down from over 4,000 BTC in the fourth quarter of 2023.
Bitcoin Production by Top Five Miners. Source: Bitwise
Yet, Marathon Digital also averaged the highest mining cost of $22,249 per BTC, compared to Cipher Mining’s average cost of only $8,626 per BTC during the first quarter of the year. In comparison, Bitcoin’s average price stood at $53,534 during the first quarter of 2024.
Bitcoin miners worldwide currently hold over 700,000 BTC, which accounts for 3.4% of the total Bitcoin supply. The majority, or 57% (12 million) of Bitcoin supply, is held by individuals, according to Bitwise.
Related: Bitcoin supply to run out on exchanges in 9 months — Bybit |
Web3 wellness ring lets users own their health data — and wear it too | Is the future of wellness technology here? A new Solana-based wellness wearable is taking health data on-chain, allowing users to own and monetize their data.
The Cudis ring, developed by BeatBit Wellness Lab, is being touted as a Web3 alternative to the popular Oura ring that has recently taken the health and wellness industry by storm.
It uses decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) technology and allows users to monetize their anonymized health data and feed it back into the ecosystem for more informed personalized health insights.
Wellness data is encrypted and anonymously stored on the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) after indexing on the Solana blockchain. This anonymized data fuels the development of customizable artificial intelligence (AI) modules that generate personalized insights into users’ mental and physical well-being.
Cudis CEO Edison Chen told Cointelegraph that the goal of the Web3 wearable is to focus on users first.
“Traditional smart ring companies operate on a centralized model where they collect and store users’ health data on their servers and analyze it to provide personal health insights through an app,” he explained. “Potentially, they monetize the data without sharing financial benefits with the users.”
“We’re empowering individuals to take control of their own health data.”
Related: How DePINs are connecting farmers and businesses via blockchain
He said the ring tracks users’ heart rate, sleep, stress, strain and burned calories. In the beginning, points will be given as rewards for data, which will later become monetizable tokens.
Chen said that users seeking more advanced insights and personalized programs are often forced to pay extra fees for wellness applications. However, “blockchain technology offers the perfect solution” to revolutionize that model.
According to the official announcement for the wearable, it has already had 200 participants at an event at the Solana Hacker House and anticipates the first 10,000 rings to roll out in the second quarter of 2024.
DePINs continue gaining traction in the Web3 space, with new use cases rapidly emerging.
Earlier in 2024, decentralized finance executives were predicting that DePINs and AI together would be a “power duo” that would take the space by storm.
DePINs are already being used to revolutionize internet access in India, weather data collection worldwide and farmers’ connection with consumers.
Magazine: Memecoins make millionaires, Terraform and Do Kwon liable for fraud, and more: Hodler’s Digest, March 31 – April 6 |
TikTok parent company explores on-chain possibilities for Web3 gaming | BytePlus — the enterprise technology arm of ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company — has announced a move into Web3 through a strategic partnership with Mysten Labs, the developers behind the Sui layer-1 blockchain.
In a statement on April 17, BytePlus explained how it plans to use its existing knowledge and experience in data warehousing to empower the Sui ecosystem, with a particular focus on Web3 gaming and SocialFi projects.
The partnership will see BytePlus integrate its cutting-edge solutions, including ByteHouse — a cloud-native data warehouse — with Sui’s full-node data.
According to the announcement, a BytePlus integration could potentially boost Sui’s analytics capabilities by enabling infinite scalability and real-time data processing.
Mysten Labs will benefit from the high-performance, low-maintenance nature of ByteHouse, which could ultimately accelerate data delivery for users on the Sui network.
Evan Cheng, the co-founder and CEO of Mysten Labs, said the partnership could “revolutionize” data analytics in the Web3 sphere.
"Integrating cutting-edge content recommendation and generation solutions into Sui signifies a leap toward enhancing user experience within Web3 game platforms and SocialFi projects.”
Li Long, the general manager MEA of BytePlusAs, told Cointelegraph that the move comes after observing trends of the rise of new social and gaming platforms built on blockchain and web3. He said their aim is to "elevate the web3 social experience, build close knit communities and more immersive engagements."
Related: Can blockchain revolutionize digital securities management for stock exchanges?
This is not the first instance of ByteDance exploring Web3 technology. In 2019, it was reported that the company launched a joint venture with a state-owned Chinese media group to develop business arms directed at blockchain and AI.
In June 2020, ByteDance sought out a virtual banking license in Singapore in an effort to enter the digital finance scene.
Sui, on the other hand, is a newer layer-1 network introduced by Mysten Labs in March 2022. However, development in the ecosystem has greatly accelerated over the last few months with new partnerships.
In February, the Sui Foundation partnered with a university in the United Arab Emirates to launch a blockchain academy. A month later, it was revealed that the Greek stock exchange, ATHEX, would deploy its new fundraising mechanism via the Sui blockchain ecosystem.
Magazine: Is measuring blockchain transactions per second (TPS) stupid in 2024? Big Questions |
Token2049 Dubai preview — tuxedos optional, lifejackets obligatory | Token2049, the annual Web3 conference, opens its doors on Thursday, April 18, but those doors may well be barricaded with sandbags as the desert city has been inundated with a wall of water.
The city, which typically gets just 9.5 centimeters (about 4 inches) of rain in a year, has seen close to 15cm (about 6 inches) fall in just 24 hours between Monday and Tuesday evening, throwing the tinder-dry metropolis into chaos.
Social media is awash with videos and clips of the unlikely situation, with streets turned to rivers, cars submerged, planes spraying water on flooded runways, and tales of diverted flights and visitors to the conference trapped in their hotels.
The city’s international airport, the second busiest in the world with 87 million passengers, told travelers this morning not to come — a first for the desert nation.
Source: Dubai International Airport
The event itself is still scheduled to go ahead despite the inconveniences visitors are experiencing. The hope is that the return of the kind of weather the Emirates expects for this time of year — blue skies and temperatures around 30 degrees Celsius — will be sufficient to get the city back on its feet and wheels again.
Cointelegraph's reporter Ezra Reguerra is in Dubai to report on the event and has sent some eye-popping videos of the city after the storms.
TOKEN2049 will run from April 18-19, 2024, at the Madinat Jumeirah Hotel in Dubai. Considered by some as one of tthe leading global Web3 and crypto community events of the year, 2024 marks the first time the event is taking place in Dubai.
Tickets sold out well in advance, and 10,000 attendees are expected over the two days. It will bring together founders, executives, and decision-makers from over 4,000 companies and 100 countries.
The agenda will cover a range of topics, including decentralized AI, Web3 gaming, DeFi, and blockchain scalability. And, as one would expect from the city of Dubai, the event will be accompanied by exhibitions, live DJ sets, and high-class hospitality.
TOKEN2049 actually began on April 15, with a week-long series of meetups, workshops, and parties. The second TOKEN2049 event of the year will take place in Singapore in September. |
Memecoins are making millionaires, but are they actually good for crypto? | The crypto bull market is back, and with it comes everyone’s favorite — or least favorite — symbol that euphoria is returning: memecoins.
Headlines have been abuzz with wild stories of traders turning relatively modest sums of money into multimillion-dollar jackpots by getting in early on a token that ends up exploding. But for everyone who hits a major payday, there is inventively someone else who loses tons of money by betting too much on the wrong coin.
It seems like everyone has a strong opinion on memecoins, whether they think they bring a sense of joy and fun to crypto that is often missing or think they distract from the real-world issues blockchain seeks to solve.
On episode 14 of The Agenda podcast, hosts Jonathan DeYoung and Ray Salmond speak with Andreas Brekken, founder of no-sign-up crypto exchange SideShift.ai, about the positives and negatives associated with the memecoin frenzy, as well as what it all means for crypto as a whole.
The benefits of memecoin hype
Brekken believes that memecoins are overall “a super easy and friendly way for normal people to get involved in crypto just using your phone” and “a completely harmless way to use crypto” with one’s friends.
He argued that memecoins are a net positive for the crypto ecosystem, as they help people engage with blockchain technology and learn more about how cryptocurrencies work. They also function as a real-world testing ground for the technology:
“We’re testing real stuff because the same technology we can use to trade memecoins is literally the same technology we use to trade any other assets on-chain or cross-chain.”
The chain-congesting frenzy on Solana, for example, will force the network to improve its speed and reliability, which will ultimately benefit the blockchain in the long term, said Brekken.
When asked what more serious crypto projects can learn from meme tokens, Brekken said he admires the speed at which memecoins are able to build strong communities. He also pointed out that many memecoin developers burn their liquidity provider tokens so that their initial liquidity cannot be removed, demonstrating their commitment to a project — something other developers might imitate in the future.
Memecoin gambling
Most memecoins admittedly have no intrinsic or real-world value. As such, many people approach them as a gambling opportunity, one where there is the hope of making life-changing money. However, a large number of memecoin projects end up being outright scams and rug pulls, meaning that investors face the very real possibility that their funds will go to zero.
Brekken compared gambling on memecoins to gambling at Vegas or on sports: Some people go to casinos with a small amount of money and have fun with their friends no matter the outcome, while others cash out their life savings, lose it all on black and are left with nothing but regrets.
He added, however, that one must zoom out to get the bigger picture rather than being upset at memecoins themselves:
“Maybe the bigger question is, why are people gambling so much? I think one way to look at this is it may be that people are gambling because they don’t trust the system to give them a fair chance, and they’re looking at the inflation, and your money is becoming worthless all the time, and your salary is not going up. So it could be that it’s just a symptom of a financial system that people don’t trust.”
To hear more from Brekken’s conversation with The Agenda — including his thoughts on token names and free speech, the future of memecoins, and how memecoin seasons influence the broader crypto ecosystem — listen to the full episode on Cointelegraph’s Podcasts page, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And don’t forget to check out Cointelegraph’s full lineup of other shows!
Magazine: 5 dangers to beware when apeing into Solana memecoins
This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph. |
‘Real opportunity’ for Bitcoin Runes will come after first wave of investor hype | Bitcoin Runes, a new protocol for issuing fungible tokens on the Bitcoin network, is set to go live with the Bitcoin halving later this week.
Yet, the real market opportunity for Runes may only come months after the first wave of investor hype subsides, according to the pseudonymous decentralized finance (DeFi) researcher Ignas, who wrote in an April 17 X post:
“Runestone, RSIC, and PUPS are already pumping, promising holders shiny new Rune token airdrops. And FOMO threads keep coming. But, like the NFT frenzy post-JPEG reveal, the market could soon cool off.”
Rune floor prices could see a significant drop, mainly because they don’t immediately improve the trading experience of BRC-20 tokens and because small traders may be priced out of the increasing Bitcoin transaction fees, according to the pseudonymous researcher.
Daily inscription fees and BRC-20 hype wave. Source: Ignas
Runes and BRC-20 tokens are both new fungible token standards aiming to create more utility for Bitcoin in a new paradigm known as Bitcoin decentralized finance (DeFi), or BTCFi for short.
Asset management giant Franklin Templeton also recognized the emergence of Runes. The asset manager also noted the success of other Bitcoin-native fungible token standards, like Ordinals, in an April 3 research report:
“Bitcoin Ordinals have seen a surge in trading volume over the past several months. This is reflected in an increase in dominance starting in December of 2023 when it surpassed ETH in trading volume.”
Bitcoin surpassed 65 million Ordinals inscriptions on April 11, less than one year and three months since the launch in January 2023.
Ignas expects hundreds of Runes to launch on the market, diluting trader attention and inflows into particular tokens.
Paired with the lack of initial utility around Runes, these aspects will make them akin to memecoin trading, according to the pseudonymous researcher, who wrote:
“Finally, utility-wise runes will trade as memecoins like BRC20s. At least at first, so the excitement of ‘new’ will fade away. Especially if no rune token manages to sustain the pump and degens lose money.”
Despite the bearish short-term outlook, Ignas noted that he is bullish on Runes in the long term:
“If I’m right the real opportunity comes after the hype cools down post the Rune protocol launch.”
Related: BTCFi is an ‘enormous opportunity’ to make Bitcoin a productive asset — Stacks
Bitcoin Runes will drive more activity to BTC layer 2s
Runes could be a net positive for the development of Bitcoin layer-2 networks. Along with Ordinal inscriptions, they could drive more activity to Bitcoin L2 networks, as increasing Bitcoin network fees will price out smaller transactions, according to Andre Serrano, product and partnership manager at Stacks, who told Cointelegraph:
“There’s going to be a lot of asset issuance on [Bitcoin] L1, which will drive up the transaction fees […] This prices out a lot of users and activity […] Ultimately, pushing more of this activity to L2s will become a necessity.”
Bitcoin L2 network Stacks is also preparing to launch a trading solution for Runes, BRC-20s and Ordinals inscriptions.
Related: Bitcoin supply to run out on exchanges in 9 months — Bybit |
New Zealand tests the water on ‘digital cash’ issuance | The Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) opened a 101-day public consultation on the principles and design options it created for the country’s digital dollar. However, the central bank plans to discuss the issuance of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in future consultations.
The RBNZ has taken a four-stage approach to CBDC issuance and aims to issue an in-house digital dollar by 2023. New Zealand’s central bank is in the second stage of its digital cash initiative, which involves exploring high-level design options for digital cash and related consulting and budgeting.
New Zealand’s four-stage approach to CBDC issuance. Source: consultations.rbnz.govt.nz
On April 17, the central bank released a consultation paper to help determine “future work on whether digital cash is right for New Zealand.” The consultation closes on July 26.
The consultation paper promotes CBDC adoption while highlighting the need to align with other central banks and the declining cash usage.
“Cash is no longer a core payment medium for many people. The frequency of cash use by New Zealanders continues to fall.”
The consultation paper asks 12 questions about four broad topics: personal opinion on New Zealand’s CBDC, the benefits of digital cash, strategic design and managed issuance. According to the RBNZ, launching a CBDC along with a robust supporting infrastructure can spur innovation in the local payments sector.
Concurrently, the RBNZ is developing alternate formats for its digital cash consultation paper, which will be available in late May.
Related: Printing money for fools is a ‘great business to be in’ — NZ central bank head
Andrew Bayly, the minister of commerce and consumer affairs of New Zealand, recently warned against the country’s sluggish approach toward experimenting and adopting innovations on digital assets and blockchain technology.
In response to the inquiries by the parliamentary Finance and Expenditure Committee into cryptocurrencies, Bayly’s office said:
“The current ‘wait and see’ approach could risk New Zealand missing out on the benefits of development in the digital asset industry.”
The ministry’s advisers made eight key recommendations for New Zealand to get back on the global crypto wave, which includes adopting policies and regulations to encourage developments in digital assets and blockchain and facilitate greater collaboration between government and industry players, among others.
Magazine: 6 Questions for Kieren James-Lubin, who wants us to ‘get on the same page’ about grandma |
Grayscale spot Bitcoin ETF ‘halves’ before BTC halving | Major Bitcoin (BTC) investor Grayscale Investments has seen its spot BTC exchange-traded fund (ETF) holdings drop 50% ahead of the anticipated Bitcoin halving event.
Bitcoin holdings in the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF (GBTC) shrunk by one-half from 619,220 BTC on the first day of trading on Jan. 11.
According to GBTC data, the spot Bitcoin ETF held 309,871 BTC on its 66th day of trading on April 16, down 50% of the amount since the trading debut. At the time of writing, the amount is worth $19.7 billion.
The GBTC “halving” came just two days before the much anticipated Bitcoin halving, which will reduce the mining reward by 50% from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC.
Occurring once every four years, or once in 210,000 blocks, the Bitcoin halving is a major event, often tied to subsequent rallies in the crypto market.
The two events do not correlate but make for another coincidence in the chronology of Bitcoin-related occurrences.
GBTC has been experiencing a massive sell-off since the first day of trading, significantly impacting the Bitcoin price.
The outflows have been largely attributed to high trading fees as GBTC had the biggest fees of the 10 spot Bitcoin ETFs in the United States — 1.5% at the trading start. The majority of Bitcoin ETFs were lowering their fees to increase competitiveness, setting trading commissions between 0.2% and 0.4%.
Related: GBTC fees will drop when Bitcoin ETFs ‘start to mature’ — Grayscale CEO
GBTC’s biggest rival, BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), offered a 0.25% fee at the trading start, not including a 0.12% discount for the first $5 billion of traded assets during the waiver period.
BlackRock's spot Bitcoin ETF has attracted a lot of inflows, with holdings surging more than 10,000% from just 2,621 BTC on the trading debut to 272,548 BTC on April 16. BlackRock’s IBIT is now 13% far from reaching GBTC holdings.
Despite the rapid growth, IBIT has failed to absorb GBTC outflows of 309,349 BTC. However, with eight other issuers, the spot Bitcoin ETF providers have accumulated around 224,552 BTC, excluding GBTC, since the trading launch.
As of April 16, 2024, the 10 spot Bitcoin ETFs collectively held around 862,162 BTC, worth $54.7 billion.
Magazine: Bitcoin Halving will pump games, Shrapnel’s ‘simple’ secret revealed: Web3 Gamer |
Web3 investment up 55% in Q1 as crypto VC interest rebounds | The total investment in Web3 firms increased by 55% in the first quarter of 2024, signaling the return of venture capital (VC) interest to crypto.
In addition to an increase of over 55% in total investment, the number of Web3 VC investment deals rose 36% in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the previous quarter, according to a Q1 on-chain report by QuickNode and Artemis.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and gaming-related Web3 protocols took the lion’s share of the investment. According to the report:
“[This indicates] that investments are increasing for the first time in over a year, and suggesting a favorable shift in VC sentiment for web3. In particular, AI and Gaming have garnered the most resounding revival of venture capital enthusiasm among the categories.”
Quarterly number of Web3 investment deals. Source: QuickNode
Further showcasing VC interest in Web3, crypto-focused VC firm Paradigm led a $225 million funding round into Monad Labs, which is building a new layer-1 blockchain network set to compete with Solana. The round was announced on April 9.
Two of the quarter’s largest early-stage rounds included a $42 million Series B round by Berachain and a $35 million pre-seed round for 0G Labs, a data availability blockchain for AI protocols.
Seed round deals saw the most growth, up 53% quarter-on-quarter, suggesting increased interest in early-stage deals. Series A and seed funding rounds nearly doubled their capital inflows compared to the previous quarter, “reflecting VCs’ renewed willingness to invest in Web3,” according to the report.
Quarterly number of Web3 investment deals, by round. Source: QuickNode
Related: With 10 days to the halving, analysts predict $150K Bitcoin top
Crypto VC interest reignites ahead of the Bitcoin halving
Several notable investment deals were announced in the period leading up to the 2024 Bitcoin halving.
On April 9, Bitcoin layer-2 network Mezo announced the completion of a $21 million Series A funding round led by Pantera Capital. Mezo enables investors to earn yield based on the time they hold their tokens. They describe it as a “Bitcoin Economic Layer.”
On April 3, reports emerged about Paradigm negotiating to raise up to $850 million for a new fund, which would make it the largest raise in the crypto industry since May 2022, when Silicon Valley-based VC firm Andreessen Horowitz raised a record-setting $4.5 billion.
What Could Go Wrong with Bitcoin Halving? Source: Cointelegraph
Related: Binance Labs shifts investment focus to Bitcoin DeFi |
Upbit suspends crypto transactions exceeding 1 million won | Upbit — one of South Korea’s largest crypto exchanges — will suspend deposits and withdrawals of digital assets of more than 1 million Korean won ($721).
The move comes in response to changes to the virtual asset service provider (VASP) Ten&Ten, one of the local facilitators of deposits and withdrawals.
In an April 17 announcement, Upbit said the suspension of use and termination of Ten&Ten’s Travel Rule Solution service is the reason behind its decision to halt deposits and withdrawals.
The Ten&Ten exchange services stopped transaction support on April 15, and the last date to withdraw crypto assets is April 22 at 10:00 am Korea Standard Time.
Ten&Ten helped the crypto exchange offer crypto deposits and withdrawals of over 1 million won. Other VASPs that allow deposits and withdrawals over 1 million won include Bblock, Gopax, FlatExchange, Aprobit, Prabang, Borabit, BTX, Flybit, Foblegate, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit, Coredocs, GDAC, Hanbitco, Qbit, Korea Digital Asset Trust and Oasis Exchange.
In a report released on April 10, the European Union named Upbit second in market share after Binance, with approximately 528.57 billion in trading volume.
In the first quarter of 2024, the South Korean won surpassed the United States dollar in crypto trading volume. According to Kaiko data, transactions in Korean won on centralized exchanges totaled over $456 billion, slightly exceeding the U.S. dollar's cumulative volume of around $455 billion.
Related: South Korean police catch $4.1M crypto scam duo
Currently, South Korean financial authorities plan to release new guidelines imposing tighter regulations for token listings on centralized crypto exchanges by the end of April or, at the latest, early May.
Authorities will also prohibit listing digital assets with hacking incidents on domestic exchanges unless the root cause is thoroughly determined.
The 24-hour trading volume at Upbit fell to $3.8 billion at the start of April after reaching a high earlier in March. On March 5, Upbit recorded a daily trading volume of almost $15 billion, the exchange’s highest trading volume of 2024 so far.
The crypto exchange’s surge in daily trading volume may be attributed to Bitcoin reaching a new all-time high of $69,200 on the same day.
Hong Kong’s financial regulator has reportedly approved three spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds, which are expected to list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in approximately two weeks.
Magazine: ETH price nears 3-year lows vs. Bitcoin — Will an Ethereum ETF stem the tide? |
BTCFi is an ‘enormous opportunity’ to make Bitcoin a productive asset — Stacks | Bitcoin decentralized finance (DeFi) will make Bitcoin (BTC) a more versatile asset with yield-generating capabilities, Andre Serrano, product and partnership manager at Stacks, told Cointelegraph in an exclusive interview:
“The vision is simple: Bitcoin is a $1.2 trillion asset class with very little on-chain activity. So there’s an enormous opportunity for protocols and layer-2s to make Bitcoin a productive asset.”
Bitcoin-native DeFi, or BTCFi, is a recent development seeking to bring DeFi capabilities to the world’s first blockchain network. With the current pace of adoption and development, the market for Bitcoin layer-2 networks could overtake the market for Ethereum layer-2s, according to Serrano:
“L2s just open up the design space for what’s possible with Bitcoin… Over the next few years, I fully expect the market for Bitcoin L2s to likely meet and exceed that of Ethereum L2s.”
Serrano’s predictions come days ahead of the anticipated Bitcoin halving, as Bitcoin was trading above the $63,500 mark as of 8:30 am UTC, following a 7.9% weekly decline, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
BTC/USD, 1-day chart. Source: CoinMarketCap
Showcasing investor demand for BTCFi, decentralized exchange (DEX) MerlinSwap raised 6,599 Bitcoin worth $480 million during its initial DEX offering (IDO) on April 5. The IDO attracted over 52,000 participants.
Related: Bitcoin supply to run out on exchanges in 9 months — Bybit
Bitcoin L2 networks are a significant element of BTCFi, enabling lower transaction costs and additional use cases for the world’s first blockchain network. For instance, L2 network Stacks enable the creation of smart contracts on the Bitcoin network.
Stacks’ Serrano argued that L2s for Bitcoin are more important than for Ethereum, which already comes with inherent smart contract capabilities. He added that L2s are necessary to scale the Bitcoin network beyond its current transaction limitations.
Andre Serrano interview with Cointelegraph. Source: Cointelegraph
He noted that some of the “low-hanging fruits” for making Bitcoin a more productive asset involved the creation of yield-generating capabilities and lending protocols around Bitcoin.
Other market participants are also optimistic about Bitcoin-native DeFi. With the current adoption rate, BTCFi could match the innovation of Ethereum DeFi, according to Nash Lee, co-founder of MerlinSwap. He told Cointelegraph:
“[Market appetite] is seeking expansive platforms capable of accommodating the surging volumes and expectations. DeFi stands out as the only sector with the potential to leverage this narrative, providing a sustainable ecosystem for Bitcoin’s evolving use cases. This dynamic sets the stage for Bitcoin DeFi to potentially match, if not exceed, the innovation and complexity seen in Ethereum’s DeFi ecosystem.”
Related: 'China is about to start bidding' — Will Hong Kong Bitcoin ETFs spark the halving rally? |
Stablecoin competition crucial for regulatory engagement — Tether CEO | Ripple’s move to launch its own stablecoin could add further legitimacy to the stablecoin landscape, according to Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino.
Speaking exclusively to Cointelegraph during Paris Blockchain Week, Ardoino said the stablecoin ecosystem needs healthy competition between big players to further legitimize the utility of fiat-backed tokens in the eyes of regulators.
“First of all, competition is great. I always believed that Tether cannot be alone. The stablecoin ecosystem is an industry because there are many players,” Ardoino said.
Stablecoins have become an increasingly important cog in the wider cryptocurrency space. With a total market capitalization of over $130 billion in April 2024, stablecoins provide a wide range of utilities, from centralized exchange to decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols.
The top 10 stablecoins by market capitalization. Source: CoinMarketCap
Ardoino said that having multiple credible players with viable and thriving businesses offering stablecoins reflects the growing importance of the sector:
“Being multiplayer helps in discussions with the regulators. If you are all alone and you have one single product, regulators will never take you seriously. If you have a group of great companies, then you are more effective.”
Ardoino also believes that Ripple’s intent to launch a stablecoin later in 2024 is indicative of the amount of room for more players to offer legitimate fiat-backed tokens.
Related: Tether’s USDT stablecoin hits historic $100B market cap
“I believe that there is space for everyone. Considering that the United States is printing around $1 trillion every 100 days, the space could probably be 30 times bigger than it is,” Tether’s CEO said.
Tether’s market dominance
Tether (USDT) is the leading stablecoin by market capitalization, valued at $108 billion on April 17. USD Coin (USDC) trails USDT as the second biggest stablecoin by market cap at $32 billion.
Tether’s latest attestation of circling USDT tokens across 15 different blockchain protocols. Source: Tether
Ardoino believes that the growing adoption of stablecoins like USDT and USDC is a direct result of rampant inflation and devaluing national currencies around the world.
“Think about Argentina, Turkey, Venezuela, Vietnam or Brazil. All these countries are looking for an alternative to the national currency. The inflation in these countries and nations has been going through the roof,” Ardoino said.
He added that more than 2 billion people remain unbanked, living off less than $300 a month. This leaves a large number of people without bank accounts and unable to transact in conventional economies.
Related: Tether boosts Bitcoin reserves with latest acquisition
The growing accessibility of digital wallets means that people are becoming increasingly able to save in digital forms of money like USDT or USDC. As Ardoino said, the simplicity of these offerings reflects a bleak reality of the global economic landscape:
“USDT’s digital dollar is nothing fancy. It simply moves on a blockchain. The sad reality is that the success of stablecoins is also directly proportional to the macroeconomic issues happening in this world.”
Ardoino maintains that circulating USDT is overcollateralized by 106%. Tether also intends to move toward 100% reserves in U.S. Treasury bills. It currently holds an estimated $90 billion of Treasury bonds.
Magazine: The real risks to Ethena’s stablecoin model (are not the ones you think) |
Crypto-like communication devices could break gov’t surveillance — Telegram founder Durov | Pavel Durov, founder of the encrypted instant messaging app Telegram Messenger, predicts that rising government surveillance will force the birth of secure communication devices inspired by cryptocurrency hardware wallets.
In a Tucker Carlson interview on April 17, Durov recalled past experiences while expressing how government entities continue to suppress the private exchange of information:
“The world is becoming less amenable. Governments are becoming less tolerant of privacy. And that’s clearly the trend because they have more technological power.”
However, Durov believes that growing oversight will force innovations around hardware devices dedicated to secure communications “in a similar way that we have hardware wallets to store your cryptocurrency.”
He claimed that the United States law enforcement agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), attempted to persuade people affiliated with Telegram to install backdoors for surveillance purposes.
Durov said that the geopolitical neutrality of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is ideal for entrepreneurs fighting for privacy and anti-surveillance:
“It’s a small country that wants to be friends with everybody. It’s not aligned geopolitically with any of the big superpowers. And I think it’s the best place for a neutral platform like ours to be in if we want to make sure we can defend our users’ privacy and freedom of speech.”
Speaking about company ownership, Durov said he avoids venture capital (VC) investments to prevent external influence on the way Telegram operates. He revealed that he holds a “few hundred million dollars” in fiat and Bitcoin (BTC), which allows him to bootstrap his projects and companies with 100% ownership.
However, he did raise funds for a few projects in the past, one of which was a cryptocurrency project.
Related: Telegram channels eligible for 50% ad revenue, but there’s a catch
Echoing Durov’s concerns about rising government surveillance, on April 16, American whistleblower Edward Snowden warned that the United States National Security Agency (NSA) is only days away from “taking over the internet” with a massive expansion of its surveillance powers.
Snowden’s alert comes after Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, pointed out that through an “innocuous change” to the definition of “electronic communications surveillance provider” in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) 702 bill, the U.S. government could go far beyond its current scope and force nearly every company and individual that provides any internet-related service to assist with NSA surveillance.
Magazine: The real risks to Ethena’s stablecoin model (are not the ones you think) |
Bollinger Band suggests further Bitcoin downside, but bull market still on: Traders | The price of Bitcoin (BTC) could see further downside in the near future without shutting down bull market momentum, according to traders using a widely used momentum indicator.
Bollinger Bands are a technical analysis tool that uses price volatility to indicate potential entry and exit opportunities in trading. Traders essentially aim to buy near the lower band and sell near the upper band.
Traders forecasted that the increased daily volatility in the price range indicates that Bitcoin is positioned for further downward movement.
“Bollinger Band squeeze being released slowly, only thing you need is close below the support and you will see expansion to 50Ks,” pseudonymous crypto trader Aqua told their 16,500 X followers in an April 17 post.
Crypto trader Aqua highlights Bitcoin’s expanding Bollinger Bands as an indicator of near-term price volatility. Source: Aqua
In a series of X posts on April 17, Stockmoney Lizards predicted a “continued correction” despite the imminent Bitcoin halving on April 20. However, they reassured that the market maintains long-term bullish momentum.
“No the bull market is not over. Just taking a break. Which is ok after such a 1-year up-only move,” they wrote.
Meanwhile, technical analyst Tony Severino suggests that Bitcoin’s price may experience significant volatility if the market cycle resembles that of 2017.
“If this cycle is like 2017 then the worst-case scenario is $53K at the Bollinger Band basis,” he stated in an April 16 post on X.
On the same day, pseudonymous crypto trader Rekt Capital declared in a post on X that Bitcoin needs to maintain its current support levels “to avoid breaking down and equalling the lows of the March 2023 18% pullback.”
Related: Bitcoin price falls under $62K amid wavering spot BTC ETF demand
Trading resource Material Indicators explained that the buy-side support is forming strongly at approximately 5% below Bitcoin’s current price of $64,242.
“Fire Charts shows bid liquidity based support is building in the $59k–$61k range with secondary support laddered down to $50k,” it wrote.
If Bitcoin’s price goes right down to the lower end of that range at $59,000, approximately $2.2 billion of long positions will be liquidated, per CoinGlass data.
Furthermore, Bitcoin’s price has minimal wiggle room before a significant amount of short positions are wiped out. If Bitcoin’s price rises just 1.15% from its current price to $65,000, $551 million in short positions will be liquidated.
Magazine: Bitcoin Halving will pump games, Shrapnel’s ‘simple’ secret revealed: Web3 Gamer
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision. |
Ore creator proposes rewards to tackle Solana congestion | Hardhat Chad, the pseudonymous creator of the Ore project, has suggested that the Solana Foundation offer a reward if it intends to incentivize testnet activity.
This suggestion comes after the Solana network faced congestion issues for nearly a week with a transaction failure rate as high as 75%.
In a post on the X social platform, Hardhat Chad said that if Solana blockchain platform wishes to encourage users to participate in testnet activities, such as testing new features or protocols, the Solana Foundation should provide an incentive in the form of SOL (SOL) tokens.
This incentive could motivate users to actively engage in testing, which can improve the platform’s performance and identify potential issues before deployment to the mainnet.
The community’s response to Hardhat Chad’s suggestion was divided. Some supported it, while others disagreed. One user, TheSoftwareJedi, disagreed, advising Chad to focus on building his project first and demonstrating goodwill to the foundation.
The user proposed that Hardhat Chad could apply for funding via a grant from the foundation but stressed the significance of preserving autonomy from foundation incentives.
However, Hardhat Chad clarified that he isn’t looking for funds from the foundation. His goal for Ore is to establish a currency, not develop testnet tools. He’s reassessing incentives to combat spam, questioning the need to prioritize building testnet spam bots.
This proposal comes after Hardhat Chad announced via social media that the immediate cessation of mining operations was essential for the well-being of the Solana network and Ore’s stakeholders. Hardhat Chad emphasized the need for an overhauled smart contract framework amid recent network difficulties.
Related: Withdrawals from real estate betting platform Parcl hit $74M after airdrop
This strategic move also aligns with the project’s roadmap for developing Ore’s second version (v2), emphasizing a commitment to long-term sustainability.
Ore, a blockchain-based project launched on Solana, is exploring the proper distribution method by using a proof-of-work (PoW) token distribution mechanism. The project is experimenting with combining PoW’s security with Solana’s fast transaction capabilities.
Since its introduction, Ore’s activity has contributed significantly to Solana’s network congestion, impacting transaction scheduling and leading to a high rate of failed transactions, especially from the memecoin frenzy on the network.
However, Solana developers have released a mainnet beta update, v1.17.31, to address the ongoing network congestion on the Solana blockchain.
This patch contains enhancements that will help with some of the ongoing network congestion, and further improvements will follow in v1.18.
Magazine: Bitcoin ETFs make Coinbase a ‘honeypot’ for hackers and governments — Trezor CEO |
Withdrawals from real estate betting platform Parcl hit $74M after airdrop | Investors providing liquidity to the Solana-based real estate betting platform Parcl have pulled more than $74 million from the protocol following its airdrop snapshot earlier in April.
Parcl distributed its native PRCL tokens to eligible users on April 15 after announcing that it had taken a snapshot of users' point balances on April 3.
Users began pulling funds shortly after the snapshot was taken. Parcl’s total value locked has fallen 39.6% to $112.1 million from its $185.6 million peak on April 2, per DefiLlama data.
Parcl users have withdrawn more than $74 million since the snapshot. Source: DefiLlama
Parcl is a decentralized real estate trading platform that allows users to speculate on the price movements of real estate markets in major cities.
Its users who participated in the airdrop campaign were allocated 80 million PRCL tokens — 8% of the total 1 billion token supply.
The platform’s PRCL token debuted at a price of $0.62 and fell as low as $0.45 in the four hours following the airdrop. It has since slightly recovered to around $0.55, according to CoinGecko.
Parcl’s is down 12.5% over the past 24 hours. Source: CoinGecko
Amid a wider market tumble that has seen Bitcoin (BTC) fall more than 7% on the week, recently airdropped tokens on the Solana network have been among the worst performers.
Related: How Solana developers are tackling network congestion challenges
The native W token of the cross-chain bridging platform Wormhole is currently down 54% from its launch on April 3. At the time, the Wormhole airdrop saw more than $800 million distributed to eligible users.
Similarly, TNSR — the native token of the Solana-based NFT platform Tensor — has tumbled 52.6% from its launch on April 3.
Solana-based tokens have been weighed down by a significant decline in the price of Solana (SOL) itself, which is currently down 30.7% on the month.
Additionally, the Solana network has been plagued by congestion issues, which saw a record 75% of user transactions fail on April 5.
Magazine: The real risks to Ethena’s stablecoin model (are not the ones you think) |
Crypto market ‘underestimates the long-term impact’ of Bitcoin halving: Bitwise | The Bitcoin (BTC) halving is days away now, scheduled for April 20, but price action in the month that follows the highly anticipated event has been historically disappointing, said Bitwise Asset Management.
In an April 16 X post, Bitwise noted past price action in the month after the Bitcoin halving for the past three halvings saw its price drop — but in the year that followed, its price saw a minimum of triple-digit percentage point gains.
In the month after the 2012 halving, Bitcoin gained 9% — but over the next year, it surged 8,839%.
A similar pattern played out in the 2016 halving: Bitcoin fell 10% the month after and gained 285% to peak at $20,000 in 2017. Again, in 2020, it saw a 6% price gain in the month post-halving, then a 548% pump in the year following.
Bitcoin’s gains after its halvings. Source: Bitwise/X
“The data is limited but the picture reveals an intriguing pattern,” Bitwise wrote. “The market prices in the short-term impact of the halving but underestimates the long-term impact.”
The current market cycle is the first time that Bitcoin has hit an all-time high before its halving.
The cryptocurrency hit its current $73,679 peak on March 13, its since corrected 16% to a low of $61,500.
Industry executives are equally pessimistic in the short term. 10x Research head of research Markus Thielen predicted on April 13 that there could be a $5-billion miner sell-off after the halving, putting downward pressure on markets.
Meanwhile, Marathon CEO Fred Thiel said that the halving rally was already factored in, bringing forward what would have been a post-halving rally.
Related: Bitcoin miners could dump $5B in BTC after halving: 10x Research
On April 16, trader and analyst Rekt Capital posted on X a list of market correction magnitudes since the 2022 bear market bottom.
There were five significant pullbacks ranging from 18% to 23%. Currently, markets have corrected 16% and suggested that there could be further to go.
Market corrections since bear market low. Source: Rekt Capital
Meanwhile, fellow analyst Cold Blooded Shiller noted that 30% corrections were not uncommon, hinting that BTC could potentially fall to around $51,000.
Magazine: Altseason on the horizon, SEC targets Uniswap, and BTC halving news: Hodler’s Digest, April 7–13 |
Bitcoin drops as dollar eyes ‘best 5-day run’ in 14 months on expected rate cut hold | The United States dollar is eying its “best 5-day run” since February 2023, while Bitcoin (BTC) has dropped over that time as interest rates are expected to remain high along with volatility leading up to the April 20 halving.
The dollar’s strengthening is likely driven by expectations of sustained higher interest rates, according to trading resource The Kobeissi Letter.
“Less than a month ago, markets were anticipating the Fed to start cutting in June. Higher for longer is now the base case,” The Kobeissi Letter wrote in an April 17 X post.
Higher interest rates typically encourage foreign investors to take advantage of greater returns on bonds and term deposits, increasing the demand for the dollar.
The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index (BBDXY), which tracks the performance of a basket of 10 leading global currencies versus the U.S. dollar, has climbed by approximately 2% over the last five trading days, its largest increase in 14 months.
According to the BBDXY, the U.S. Dollar Index score stands at 106.34, an increase from 105.28 five days prior, indicating that it has strengthened against the other nine currencies included in the index, including the euro, British pound and Japanese yen.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin has seen a 9% price decrease over the past five days to $63,936, per CoinMarketCap data.
While not always correlated, Bitcoin and the dollar have shown an inverse relationship over the years.
Reuters reported on April 16 that U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the country’s inflation rate — currently 3.5% — is not moving toward the central bank’s 2% goal, meaning it’s “likely to take longer than expected to achieve that confidence.”
Meanwhile, trader Justin Spittler warned in an April 16 X post that each time the U.S. dollar has reached “overbought levels,” it has been swiftly followed by a significant correction.
Bitcoin, which is seen as a more volatile asset, usually sees spikes in demand when the dollar weakens.
However, another factor comes into play with the Bitcoin halving scheduled just three days away, slated for April 20 — a process that reduces the amount of BTC that can be mined per block by 50%.
Related: $70K BTC price by the halving? 5 things to know in Bitcoin this week
Although this is the halving, crypto investors are showing greater confidence in riskier crypto assets compared to the 2020 halving event, according to Bitcoin’s dominance chart.
Three days before the 2020 halving, Bitcoin dominance — a ratio of Bitcoin’s market cap compared to the cumulative market cap of all other cryptocurrencies — stood 15% higher than its current level.
The U.S. dollar was 6% weaker at the time compared to its current strength.
Bitcoin’s dominance is currently 52%, according to CoinStats.
Meanwhile, the five-day rise in the U.S. dollar has also seen the crypto market sentiment tracking the Crypto Fear & Greed Index drop by 11 points since April 10.
Magazine: Jameson Lopp: Skeptical of spot Ether ETFs, BTC price prediction dilemma: X Hall of Flame
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision. |
Bitcoin miner stocks drop on ‘unsubstantiated’ post-halving profit fears: Analyst | Investor confidence in the Bitcoin (BTC) mining sector’s profitability after the cryptocurrency halves its rewards has sent Bitcoin mining shares in the United States and abroad tumbling — but those fears aren’t well founded, an industry analyst said.
“Investors will realize their fears were mostly unsubstantiated,” said Mitchell Askew, head analyst at Bitcoin mining firm Blockware Solutions. He cited post-halving profitability concerns and Bitcoin’s 7.5% price fall over the last week as the main catalysts behind miners’ falling stock prices.
“[The] halving will be a ‘buy the news’ event for public Bitcoin miners and the private ASIC market.”
Marathon Digital (MARA) and Riot Platforms (RIOT), two of the largest BTC miners, have seen their share prices tank around 53% and 54%, respectively, since their February year-to-date (YTD) highs, according to Google Finance.
CleanSpark (CLSK) hit a three-year high of $23.40 on March 25 but has since dropped 38.1% to $14.48, although it’s still up nearly 250% this year.
CleanSpark’s change in share price over the last month. Source: Google Finance
Non-U.S. Bitcoin miners such as Singapore’s Bitdeer Technologies (BTDR) and Australia’s Iris Energy (IRIS), both listed on the Nasdaq, have fallen 40.8% and 47.6% since their mid-February YTD highs of $9.16 and $8.30.
The price falls come as the fourth edition of the Bitcoin halving is expected on April 20, which will see Bitcoin mining rewards cut in half to 3.125 BTC — worth about $200,000.
Askew said the post-halving profitability fears a evidenced by the performance of the Valkyrie Bitcoin Miners ETF (WGMI), an actively managed fund tracking the Bitcoin mining market, which has had a “near zero” correlation coefficient with Bitcoin in 2024.
WGMI’s price relative to Bitcoin is approaching a previous local bottom; however, Askew expects a “rebound” in mining stocks shortly after the halving.
Related: Riot, TeraWulf and CleanSpark best-positioned miners for Bitcoin halving — CoinShares
Profitability concerns resurfaced in late January when Cantor Fitzgerald reported 11 publicly listed Bitcoin miners wouldn’t mine profitability post-halving if Bitcoin’s price remained around $40,000, its price at the time.
If Bitcoin’s price doesn’t continue to rise post-halving, it could force some U.S. Bitcoin miners to migrate or expand offshore in search of cheaper electricity costs, according to Jaran Mellerud, founder and chief mining strategist of Hashlabs Mining.
Magazine: Wolf Of All Streets worries about a world where Bitcoin hits $1M: Hall of Flame |
Why Bitcoin ETFs with ‘zero flows’ don’t mean what you think | Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) having days of zero inflows is completely normal and shouldn’t be misinterpreted as a failure of the products themselves, said Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart.
On most days, the “vast majority” of all United States ETFs post zero inflows — something completely normal for any ETFs in a given sector, Seyffart said in an April 16 X post.
“On any given day, the vast majority of ETFs will have a flow number of ZERO — this is very normal. There are ~3,500 ETFs in the U.S. Yesterday 2,903 of them had a flow of exactly zero.”
Several market commentators voiced concerns about the low inflows into U.S.-based Bitcoin ETFs. BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF was the only one to see inflows for two consecutive trading days this week — between April 12 and April 15.
BlackRock was the only fund to see inflows between April 12 and 15. Source: Farside Investors
Seyffart said the flows were no cause for concern and were typical for most ETFs due to how new inflows are recorded.
For an ETF to record new inflows or outflows, there has to be a significant enough mismatch between supply and demand to justify making or destroying new fund shares, which are issued in “creation units,” Seyffart explained.
“This ONLY happens when there is a mismatch in supply [and] demand. And that mismatch has to be large enough to justify tapping the underlying market and a ~bigger mismatch than a creation unit,” Seyffart added.
Creation units are the “lots” in which ETF shares are created and redeemed.
“Every ETF can have a different-sized creation unit. In the case of the spot Bitcoin ETFs they are blocks of shares ranging from 5,000 shares to 50,000 shares,” he said.
Related: Bitcoin Halving will pump games, Shrapnel’s ‘simple’ secret revealed: Web3 Gamer
Four of the last six trading days have seen all 10 U.S. spot Bitcoin products witness net outflows, with selling from the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) far outpacing inflows into the new funds.
On April 16, Bitcoin ETFs posted $58 million in net outflows, according to data from Farside Investors. The outflows were led by GBTC, which saw $79.4 million in outflows and $12.9 million from ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (ARKB).
BlackRock iShares Bitcoin ETF (IBIT) saw the largest inflows, generating $25.8 million. Four of the funds, including those from Bitwise and Invesco Galaxy, saw zero new inflows.
April 14 and 15 saw all combined ETFs post net outflows of $55.1 million and $36.7 million, respectively.
Outflows from GBTC have outpaced inflows into new funds. Source: Farside Investors
The recent net outflows for the Bitcoin ETFs follow several days of subpar price action for Bitcoin, which is down 7.8% on the week to $63,723, per TradingView data.
Traders and market pundits have pointed to escalating geopolitical tensions in the Middle East as well as the upcoming Bitcoin halving event — currently slated for April 20 — as primary causes of volatility.
Magazine: The real risks to Ethena’s stablecoin model (are not the ones you think) |
Railgun denies being used by North Korea as it nears $1B total volume | Crypto privacy protocol Railgun has denied being used by North Korea and other United States-sanctioned entities to launder cryptocurrency, arguing its zero knowledge-based tech prevents this and the accusations have “no evidence.”
It comes as the Railgun platform’s total volume nears the $1 billion mark, boosted by a recent X post from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin praising and defending the privacy protocol.
Railgun, founded in January 2021, uses zero-knowledge (ZK) cryptography to shield wallet balances, transaction history and transaction details allowing users to use decentralized apps (DApps) on Ethereum or other supported chains while remaining private.
Blockchain security firm Elliptic once labeled Railgun a “prime alternative to Tornado Cash” after the U.S. government imposed sanctions against the crypto mixer.
In January 2023, the FBI stated that North Korean cyber attackers used Railgun to launder more than $60 million worth of Ether (ETH) from the 2022 Harmony Bridge heist.
In an X post responding to crypto reporter Colin Wu, Railgun denied that Lazarus had used the privacy protocol, calling it “false reporting.”
“Firstly, that group is blocked from using the RAILGUN system by the “Private Proofs of Innocence” system, which went live over a year ago,” Railgun wrote on X.
“Secondly, it was a mistaken, false allegation in the first place,” it added.
Private Proofs of Innocence — also known as Private POI — was launched by Railgun’s researchers and contributors in January 2023.
It uses cryptographic assurance to ensure that funds entering the Railgun smart contract are not from a known list of undesirable transactions or actors by requiring users to create a ZK-proof that their funds are not part of a pre-set list of transactions and wallets.
Related: Advocacy groups warn of ‘adverse repercussions’ for crypto in case against Tornado Cash co-founder
Buterin has also since defended Railgun arguing that “privacy is normal” and that the privacy pools protocol makes it “much harder for bad actors to join the pool.”
Railgun hit $962.8 million in total volume, while its total value locked on Ethereum — where most of the protocol’s activity is — also crossed over $25 million, according to Dune Analytics data.
Its token Railgun (RAIL) also rallied on April 15 after it was reported that Buterin had sent 100 ETH worth $325,000 to Railgun earlier that day.
The token is now trading at $1.18 and is up 86.3% over the past seven days.
Magazine: The real risks to Ethena’s stablecoin model (are not the ones you think) |
Andreessen Horowitz raises $7.2B for new venture funds | Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) said it raised $7.2 billion to invest across several tech sectors, including gaming and artificial intelligence — but isn’t putting any more toward crypto.
The firm’s “Growth” venture strategy — a bundle of funds backing a range of early-stage startups — will receive the largest chunk of the raise at $3.75 billion. Its "Infrastructure" and "Apps" will respectively receive $1.25 billion and $1 billion, a16z said in an April 16 statement.
Its Infrastructure strategy mostly focuses on funding teams in the AI, computing and data industries, while the Apps funds focus on consumer, enterprise and fintech application builders.
The remaining $1.2 billion will be evenly split between “Games,” its gaming-focused funds, and its new “American Dynamism” fund — which invests in founders and companies supporting United States national interests in aerospace, defense, safety, education and manufacturing.
Its $4.5 billion crypto-focused fund didn’t receive any additional funding.
The $600 million dedicated to Games will be used to create a second game-focused fund, according to Andrew Chen, a general partner at a16z, who oversees its Games Fund One.
“From AI/infra, web3 games, VR/AR, 3D tooling, gamified apps, game studios, and much more. The fund targets a $300B+ industry that has spawned incredible companies over the past decade, and it’s great to be able to build,” Chen posted to X on April 16.
Chen added he’s particularly focused on funding games that integrate generative AI.
“[Generative AI] will transform many product categories, but in particular, games and interactive entertainment. This shouldn’t be a surprise, as gaming has been the driver of new killer apps for emerging computing platforms.”
A slice of the $600 million will be used in a16z’s accelerator program launched in early April, which will hand out $750,000 to a maximum of 40 gaming startups at a 12-week course in Los Angeles beginning in late July.
Related: ‘Tens of millions’ to enter Web3 through gaming in 2024 — GameFi execs
Each focus fund will have its own experts to maximize the likelihood of each fund’s success, a16z co-founder Ben Horowitz said in the April 16 statement.
“Each area requires deep expertise, so it’s not wise to try to cross-train someone in, for example, Games and Infrastructure,” said Horowitz. “Founders building AI foundation models need an entirely different set of networks and capabilities than founders building biotech therapies.”
“A great investor with the right help, the right networking, and the right expertise at the right time can be the difference between success and failure.”
Magazine: Web3 Gamer: Games need bots? Illivium CEO admits ‘it’s tough,’ 42X upside |
‘FOMO’ once drove GameFi funding, but VCs say it’s different this time | Venture capital firms haphazardly piled into blockchain gaming projects during the last bull run but are taking a much more mature and sustainable approach this time, according to industry executives.
“[It was] insane,” Shi Khai Wei, founder of cryptocurrency-focused VC firm LongHash Ventures, told Cointelegraph, adding that some GameFi projects were receiving up to $100 million valuations with only a few team members and some lofty promises.
Keiran Warwick, founder of GameFi studio Illuvium, who recently raised $12 million in VC funding, said he saw the same thing, with much of the investor fervor then driven by a fear of missing out (FOMO).
Illuvium confirmed it secured a $12 million Series A funding round on March 26. Source: Illuvium.io
“If someone’s speaking to you and they pitch a game that four or five other firms have invested in, you think, well, they’ve done their due diligence, and they know what they’re doing, so we’re just going to follow suit,” said Warwick, adding:
“You get this FOMO and traction purely because people don't want to miss out and they think, well, others are in, so we're in.”
But VCs have since expanded their checklists and want to see gameplay, artists, developers, security audits and much more, Warwick noted.
“The amount of scrutiny that VCs are putting projects under now versus then is huge.”
Wei attests to this and says a longer checklist actually helps his firm weed out the not-so-legitimate projects.
LongHash has been more invested in GameFi this time as the top-tier projects have launched or are close to launching and are priced at much more reasonable valuations, Wei explained. His firm has invested in Yield Guild Games, Saga, Guildfi, Overworld and Moonveil.
Wei said GameFi has become a focus area for LongHash Ventures in recent months and hopes the firm will be 6-12 months ahead of the curve when the next wave of FOMO kicks in.
Why #web3?
Network effects are the true underlying force of web3 and it also leads to cross-game collaborations.
“#Gaming, art, and decentralized finance all connect together [in web3],” Robby Yung (@viewfromhk), our CEO of investments, said to @lloydWahed from @manasearchuk. pic.twitter.com/JzUVndu60I — Animoca Brands (@animocabrands) April 15, 2024
Gabby Dizon, co-founder of Yield Guild Games, told Cointelegraph that VCs are now also more aware of the “cyclicality” of cryptocurrency markets, as many of them hamstrung themselves by investing at the peak of the last bull market.
Related: Crypto VC funding breaks 2-year downturn in Q1 2024
It comes as Warwick’s Illuvium.io secured $12 million in a Series A funding round in late March, led by King River Capital, Arrington Capital, and Animoca Ventures.
Among the other GameFi projects to have received funding in recent months are Helika Games, Parallel Studios and Elixer Games in $50 million, $35 million and $14 amounts, respectively.
More than $2 billion was invested into GameFi projects in Q4 2021, but funding amounts fell for six consecutive quarters after the first quarter of 2022, according to RootData.
However, the trend was finally bucked in the third quarter of that year, and the GameFi sector has seen three consecutive quarterly increases since then, including the last quarter, which tallied $268 million.
Source: RootData
Magazine: Web3 Gamer: Games need bots? Illivium CEO admits ‘it’s tough,’ 42X upside |
Senate Banking Committee chair wants to combine stablecoin bill to boost chance of passage | Sherrod Brown, chair of the United States Senate Banking Committee, has reportedly revealed plans to advance a significant stablecoin bill by combining it with legislation related to marijuana businesses and clawing back compensation for bankers.
According to an April 16 Bloomberg report, Senator Brown said he was open to passing stablecoin legislation in Congress as one of his goals, provided his concerns were addressed. The U.S. lawmaker’s reported plans included placing the stablecoin bill in a package with legislation authorizing banks to conduct business with firms selling marijuana and clawbacks for executives of failed financial institutions.
Lawmakers in both the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate have largely failed to advance bills to address regulatory concerns around stablecoins despite support from many in Congress and industry leaders. In February, House Financial Services Committee Ranking Member Maxine Waters said Democrats and Republicans were “very close” to a compromise on a stablecoin bill. In the Senate, a bipartisan group headed by Republican Cynthia Lummis and Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand have spearheaded similar legislation efforts.
Many members of both political parties in both chambers of Congress have expressed concerns about establishing the proper framework for stablecoins in a comprehensive bill. In July 2023, one of the proposed bills in the House, the Clarity for Payment Stablecoins Act, moved out of committee and was set for a full floor vote. The legislation has seen little if any, movement since that time.
Related: Is a US stablecoin bill just around the corner? Law Decoded
Should lawmakers move forward with digital asset-related legislation in 2024, they will also have to deal with their pro- and anti-crypto constituents in an election year. Control of the House, Senate and the Presidency is up for grabs.
Senator Brown, who has often spoken about the risks of digital assets in committee hearings, will likely face off for his Ohio seat against Republican nominee Bernie Moreno. Representative Patrick McHenry, who chairs the House Financial Services Committee, announced in December that he did not intend to seek reelection. Both leadership positions could be crucial in advancing crypto bills starting in 2025.
Magazine: The real risks to Ethena’s stablecoin model (are not the ones you think) |
‘Bitcoin will reach over $1M’ — Animoca founder at WebSummit Rio | Yat Siu, the founder of Animoca Brands, spoke at WebSummit Rio on April 16 on a panel titled "Bitcoin’s Revenge: Is Web3 Making a Comeback?”
At the panel, Siu said he has no doubt that Bitcoin (BTC) will reach $1 million:
"I do believe that Bitcoin could reach over a million dollars-plus over time. But, I believe, not because it is a store value, but because it will be one of the most important status symbols of the digital economy in the future.”
Cointelegraph Ambassador Kristina Lucrezia Cornèr moderated the panel, at which Ripple president Monica Long appeared alongside Siu. Long emphasized that the development of the crypto market is more important than the price of Bitcoin:
"I would say the more important place for all of us to focus on is real utility for the assets, and that’s what's going to drive long-term value and stability and liquidity for all of the assets in crypto."
Long praised Brazil and said the country is one of the places where there is a real focus on crypto development:
"Brazil [...] is a place where we're seeing breaking ground for that type of development. You have a government that creating clear rules around virtual assets, [and] a community of focused developers, and you have traditional finance banks like Itaú that are a blessing to crypto. So that is the mix of a real focus on crypto.”
Cornèr focused on the importance of Web3 for giving power to the people, especially those who do not have many choices in society. She said:
"Web3 is about giving power to the people, to those who didn't have access to certain things."
As the panel moved on to Web3, Long highlighted that, in contrast to other market cycles, there will be more maturity in Web3 companies this year, and equally important, this maturity is reflected in its current institutional adoption. She said:
"If you think about it, some of the biggest brands in financial services, like Goldman, BlackRock and Fidelity, they actually build their products and offerings in bear markets, meaning they see the bigger picture. So I think that's what's going to be very different this year, the institutional embrace.”
Web3 and spot Bitcoin ETF
Siu stated that financial inclusion and its effects, particularly on blockchain and Web3 games, are more important than institutional adoption. He said:
“We look in places like the Philippines, or even in some places in Latin America, millions of people in the world who don’t have a bank, don’t have a university education, in some cases don’t even have a high-school education. But now though having a crypto wallet, they are included in the new financial system, are becoming somewhat financially literate, taught through gaming, which is another form of play.”
Regarding spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), Long said Ripple is working with banks and payment companies around the world to use blockchain as a layer or a new infrastructure to make global money much more efficient. She noticed a greater interest in the crypto market from banks and has been wondering how to ensure regulated exposure to the market:
"As here in Brazil, there is certainly a much stronger liftoff, like Hong Kong, and that's another key market. I think one of the interesting things is that we are not done yet with the ETFs, broadly speaking, meaning Bitcoin ETF is going to emerge in other markets. [...] Now in Hong Kong, then there's Singapore, there's Tokyo, there's London, there's Europe.”
Source: WebSummit Rio
Derek Andersen contributed to the English translation of this article. |
Israeli central bank official says CBDC competition with banks is good for economy | While the impact of central bank digital currency (CBDC) on commercial banks has often been seen as a source of concern, Bank of Israel deputy governor Andrew Abir took a contrarian view in a speech published on the central bank’s website. Let the banks scramble to compete, he said, in essence.
Years of effort to increase competition in the Israeli banking sector have paid off in a variety of ways, but “we still have a long way to go,” Abir said. As the Bank of Israel raised interest rates to combat inflation, banks raised interest rates on credit, but the rise in deposit rates was “partial and slow.” He added:
“In many countries around the world, including Israel, commercial banks do not win public popularity contests. […] In Israel, some of the anger directed at the banking system is the result of the need to increase the level of competition in some of the segments.”
The design of the digital shekel includes an option to pay interest on it. Abir confidently declared that the digital shekel, which is still in its planning stages, would enjoy public support:
“The digital shekel will not be developed by some anonymous Satoshi Nakamoto. Everyone will know who is behind the digital shekel and who is responsible for it — […] the same Bank of Israel that stands behind the cash we all know and trust.”
The introduction of a digital shekel would benefit the Bank of Israel as well, by making central bank money more readily available, for instance for use in digital payments, reversing the downward trend in central bank money use brought on by technological breakthroughs in the private sector, Abir said.
Related: Israel’s central bank says CBDC could be issued if stablecoin use increases
Just the option to hold digital shekels could incentivize banks to pay higher interest, Abir said. Thus the digital shekel would give the central bank a mechanism to influence the degree of transmission of central bank interest rates.
The digital shekel reportedly has strong support among the Israeli public.
Magazine: Terrorism and Israel-Gaza war weaponized to destroy crypto |
Tokenholders approve $7.5B AI merger | Tokenholders of SingularityNet, Fetch.ai and Ocean protocols have approved a $7.5 billion merger that would create a combined Artificial Superintelligence Alliance (ASI) project.
According to the April 16 announcement, the Fetch.AI (FET) token will become the ASI token with a total supply of 2.6 billion. Meanwhile, SingularityNet (AGIX) and Ocean (OCEAN) tokens will be converted into ASI at approximate ratios of 0.43:1, with ASI tokens having a combined value of $7.5 billion post-merger. The ASI has yet to schedule a launch date.
"Our mission is to create a decentralized AI infrastructure at scale, ensuring ethical and trustworthy practices,” said Humayun Sheikh, chairman of the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance and CEO of Fetch.ai. “By combining our platforms, we empower developers and users alike, fostering a more democratic and transparent AI ecosystem."
The ASI is currently examining three distinct product pipelines: deployment of AI agents in commercial settings, neural symbolic language learning models (LLMs), and AI data sharing and utilization. “In the near term, we anticipate generating revenue as we launch the agentic network for deployment,” Sheikh told Cointelegraph in a statement. “In the short term, we’ll focus on deploying numerous commercial products that breathe life into AI applications.”
As for the project’s upcoming roadmap, ASI plans to further invest in its GPU infrastructure for its commercial, computing, and data efforts. Last month, Fetch.ai launched a $100 million investment to deploy Nvidia H200, H100, and A100 GPUs to create a platform for developers and users to utilize computing power.
Based in Cambridge, Fetch.ai uses LLMs and AI agents for its computing marketplace that matches users with AI-powered services. Meanwhile, SingularityNET, headquartered in Zug, Switzerland, explores the use of AI in realms such as finance, robotics, biomedical AI, media, arts, and entertainment. Finally, Singapore-based Ocean enables businesses and individuals to trade tokenized data assets via its platform.
Blockchain has recognized significant synergies with AI since the popularization of LLMs such as ChatGPT last year. In an interview with Cointelegraph on April 12, Booksie founder and CEO Sol Nasisi discussed the potential for AI and blockchain to enable self-publishing book platforms in the near future.
Related: SingularityNet, Fetch.AI, Ocean Protocol merger will drive decentralized AI development: ChainGPT CEO |
Reversing layoffs of 2022? Crypto exchanges are adding staff members | Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek reportedly said the exchange has been adding people to its staff in a move that could increase the number of employees by roughly 1,400.
According to an April 16 Bloomberg report, Crypto.com, Binance, Coinbase, Gemini, and Kraken have been hiring team members as cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) rally ahead of the blockchain’s halving. Many major crypto and technology companies announced significant layoffs in 2022 and early 2023 amid a market downturn, resulting in firms including FTX, Celsius, BlockFi, and others filing for bankruptcy.
Marszalek reportedly said Crypto.com had already hired 700 staff members since November 2023 and planned to onboard another 700 for customer service and corporate positions. The CEO said the addition of the staff was aimed at “slowly, thoughtfully, and strategically” supporting plans to increase its number of registered users.
According to data from Layoffs.fyi surveying 255 companies in the tech industry, there were 7,322 layoffs in March 2024 — a more than 80% decrease compared with 37,963 layoffs in March 2023.
Related: Coinbase to cut another 20% of its workforce in second wave of layoffs
At the time of publication, Coinbase listed 215 open positions on its website. Kraken listed 81, Gemini listed 80, and Binance listed 347. Many crypto firms reduced their headcounts by up to 20% in 2023 amid regulatory scrutiny and falling token prices.
Some of these changes seem to be on their way to reversing amid an all-time high BTC price and approval of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds in 2024. However, many firms in the U.S. still face civil lawsuits brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulatory concerns at the state and federal levels.
Magazine: ‘AI has killed the industry’: EasyTranslate boss on adapting to change |
Iraq commitment to capture flare gas sparks crypto mining speculation | Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister, Muhammad Ali Tamim, recently co-chaired a U.S.-Iraq Higher Coordinating Committee meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to discuss the future partnership between the two nations.
During the meeting, Deputy Prime Minister Tamim stated clearly that it was Iraq’s goal to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels, lower pollution, and engage in new partnerships to develop and employ technology to capture “flare gas,” a byproduct of the oil field industry considered a poisonous pollutant.
"The Iraqi Government is widening its partnership and conducting agreements so that we’ll be able to, for example, use technologies to capture flaring gas, to create and achieve independence in energy, and also to invest in other sources of energy, including renewables and solar energy.”
The statement surrounding the use of “technologies” to capture flare gas have caused some in the crypto community to speculate that Iraq intends to enter the Bitcoin mining sector.
Flare Gas
When crude oil is extracted and refined, gas builds up and pressurizes the processing equipment. This “waste gas” is typically either routed to a facility where it can be converted into something useful such as electricity or burnt off into the atmosphere.
Due to the remote location of many of Iraq’s oil fields, it’s long been considered economically infeasible to convert the flare gas and, as such, much of it ends up polluting the atmosphere.
Iraq’s Rumaila oil field is the world’s biggest producer of toxic flare gas, though efforts are reportedly underway to capture and repurpose as much as 60% today, with the target of ending all gas flaring in the country by 2027.
Bitcoin Mining
People have used everything from nuclear energy to their own excrement to mine cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin mining firm Giga, a Texas startup, uses the flare gas from local oil fields to power truckloads of portable mining rigs. Per a report from CNBC, the company was earning millions in profits as far back as 2021.
In Iraq the challenge comes at a much higher scale. As the world’s largest producer of flare gas pollutants, it would take an exceptional effort to convert 100% of its pollutants into usable electricity.
However, as noted above, Iraq currently has to balance its domestic energy requirements with its foreign debt. While adding power to the grid could certainly help ease the nation’s burdens, converting a portion of that electricity into Bitcoin mining could have an even greater positive impact.
Related: Crypto firm 7RCC is quietly advancing its eco-conscious spot Bitcoin ETF
Another potential avenue for using the energy provided by captured flare gas is in the area of carbon credits. Theoretically speaking, Iraq could not only reduce its own carbon footprint by capturing flare gas, but it could engage the international market by selling carbon credits via the blockchain. This would provide immutable proof of the nation's efforts and a potential temporary revenue stream as it pursues the reduction of its dependence on fossil fuels. |
GameFi ecosystem makes a comeback amid surging crypto prices | After a dormant 2022 and much-muted 2023, GameFi projects are making a comeback as the bull market rages.
This week, move-to-earn protocol StepN announced it would partner with Adidas for a 1,000 Genesis Edition nonfungible tokens (NFT) drop on Solana. The launch is part of an ongoing one-year partnership between the two firms that will see a mixture of NFTs and wearable sneaker releases in the future. Each NFT sneaker from Genesis Edition will be valued at 10,000 GMT ($2,200).
Created by FSL in 2021, StepN allows users to earn rewards for walking, jogging, or running. Rewards are available after users purchase a virtual Sneaker NFT and link their smartphones. By interacting with the app, users earn GMT tokens, which have an inflationary mechanism, a supply cap of 6 billion and a current diluted market capitalization of $1.2 billion.
"Partnership between the most widely used lifestyle app and a global brand like Adidas are now a reality indicates the direction lifestyle rewards are going,” commented Shiti Manghani, CEO of StepN. Last week, the move-to-earn protocol also announced a $30 million airdrop for its loyal users.
StepN's NFT sneaker mechanics
For other protocols, it's more about the hardware.
Earlier this month, Ordz Games revealed its first Web3 handheld gaming device, “BitBoy One.” Inspired by the first-generation Nintendo GameBoy from 1989, the device allows players to earn Bitcoin (BTC) via retro-style games.
“Through BitBoy’s native applications connected to the Bitcoin blockchain, users can play a wide variety of video games that are forever inscribed on the Bitcoin blockchain as ordinals,” wrote Ordz Games staff. “Choices range from HTML games to on-chain emulators and ROM,” they added. Both Bluetooth and WiFi are supported for multiplayer activity.
In addition, every BitBoy device comes bundled with a one-to-one 3D rendering of the physical device in the form of ordinal inscriptions, which can then be viewed on a VR device such as Apple Vision Pro. The device saw its official unveiling at Paris Blockchain Week.
The BitBoy One game device (X)
Other projects have shifted their attention to video games.
ARPG Seraph: In the Darkness, built on Arbitrum and developed by Seraph Studio, recently achieved sales of over 11,000 Ether (ETH) through multiple in-game NFT sales consisting of heroes, priority passes, gear, and others. Seraph Studio is backed by Korean gaming giant Actoz Soft. Set for pre-season launch on April 19, the game features a dark medieval setting where players can customize their heroes, battle monsters, and earn loot.
The game has teased upcoming features in its pre-season that allow players to rent their in-game NFT equipment to earn rewards as well as discoverable treasure NFTs.
Seraph: In the Darkness has been in development since 2021, with a total of $8 million spent on operations and research. During this time, developers have also been incorporating new technologies, with features such as multiplayer AI companionship available in the final release. The game is scheduled for launch on PC, iOS, and Android.
In the Darkness blockchain gameplay
As per data from DappRadar, the number of unique active wallets in GameFi has more than doubled over the past year to 2.54 million. Last December, gaming studio founders Yat Siu and Johnson Yeh predicted that “tens of millions” of players would enter Web3 gaming this year. Despite their enthusiasm, GameFi projects have also been criticized for prioritizing the “finance” aspect of gaming over fun, with several notable collapses in the past year.
Related: Is GameFi subject to the same market forces as the traditional game industry? |
UK trade association experiments with Regulated Liability Network | UK Finance, a banking and finance trade association based in the United Kingdom, has announced the beginning of an experimental phase focusing on the U.K. Regulated Liability Network (RLN). Eleven member organizations are taking part.
The experimentation will examine technical and legal issues and customer benefits in three use cases. First, it will consider payment-upon-delivery for physical products with an eye to reducing fraud online.
It will also look at the homebuying process to improve customer transparency to reduce conveyance fraud — the practice of selling an asset to avoid paying a claim by a creditor. The final case study will use digital money for digital bond settlement.
The experiments will align with Project Rosalind, a joint effort of the Bank for International Settlements and the Bank of England that concluded in June. It studied the use of application programming interfaces (API) in banks’ interactions with central bank digital currency (CBDC). The functionality of the U.K. RLN will be examined in a technical sandbox.
Related: City of London, British trade groups form new digital currency advocacy alliance
Results are expected to be published this summer. UK Finance released the results of its discovery-phase RLN experimentation in September.
Barclays, Citi, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, Mastercard, NatWest, Nationwide, Santander, Standard Chartered, Virgin Money and Visa are participants in the experimentation.
Source: Dagnum P.I.
The RLN was introduced in November 2022. It places assets and liabilities on the same ledger and focuses on interoperability between regulated forms of money using blockchain. Lloyds Banking Group head of digital and markets innovation Peter Left said in a statement:
“As a commercially led approach, RLN can unlock new features for customers’ money across a range of retail and wholesale use cases.”
In July, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Innovation Center, the SWIFT global messaging service and nine large financial institutions completed a proof-of-concept to exchange and settle commercial bank deposit tokens and central bank liabilities using a simulated United States CBDC. Participants included Citi, HSBC and Mastercard, which are participating in the UK RLN experimentation as well.
Magazine: How the digital yuan could change the world… for better or worse |
DeepMind CEO says Google to spend more than $100B on AGI despite hype | Google’s not backing down from the challenge posed by Microsoft when it comes to the artificial intelligence sector. At least not according to the CEO of Google DeepMind, Demis Hassabis.
Speaking at a TED conference in Canada, Hassabis recently went on the record saying that he expected Google to spend more than $100 billion on the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI) over time. His comments reportedly came in response to a question concerning Microsoft’s recent “Stargate” announcement.
Stargate
Microsoft and OpenAI are reportedly in discussions to build a $100 billion supercomputer project for the purpose of training AI systems. According to the Intercept, a person wishing to remain anonymous, who has had direct conversations with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and seen the initial cost estimates on the project, says it’s currently being discussed under the codename “Stargate.”
To put the proposed costs into perspective, the world’s most powerful supercomputer, the U.S.-based “Frontier” system, cost approximately $600 million to build.
According to the report, Stargate wouldn’t be a single system similar to Frontier. It will instead spread out a series of computers across the U.S. in five phases with the last phase being the penultimate “Stargate” system.
Artificial general intelligence
Hassabis’ comments don’t hint at exactly how Google might respond, but seemingly confirm the notion that the company is aware of Microsoft's endeavors and plans on investing just as much, if not more.
Ultimately, the stakes are simple. Both companies are vying to become the first organization to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI). Today’s AI systems are constrained by their training methods and data and, as such, fall well short of “human-level” intelligence across myriad benchmarks.
AGI is a nebulous term for an AI system theoretically capable of doing anything an average adult human could do, given the right resources. An AGI system with access to a line of credit or a cryptocurrency wallet and the internet, for example, should be able to start and run its own business.
Related: DeepMind co-founder says AI will be able to invent, market, run businesses by 2029
Cryptocurrency
The main challenge to being the first company to develop AGI is that there’s no scientific consensus on exactly what an AGI is or how one could be created.
Even among the world’s most famous AI scientists — Meta’s Yann LeCun, Google’s Demis Hassabis, etc. — there exists no small amount of disagreement as to whether AGI can even be achieved using the current “brute force” method of increasing datasets and training parameters, or if it can be achieved at all.
In a Financial Times article published in March, Hassabis made a negative comparison to the current AI/AGI hype cycle and the scams it’s attracted to the cryptocurrency market. Despite the hype, both AI and crypto have exploded their respective financial spaces in the first four months of 2024.
Where Bitcoin, the world’s most popular cryptocurrency sat at about $30,395 per coin in April of 2023, it’s now over $60,000 as of the time of this article’s publishing, having only recently retreated from an all-time-high about $73K.
Meanwhile, the current AI industry leader, Microsoft, has seen its stock go from $286 a share to around $416 in the same time period. |
Avalanche home loan tokenization protocol raises $10M in Series A | Homium, a home equity line of credit (HELOC) tokenization protocol built on Avalanche, has raised $10 million in a Series A funding round led by Sorenson Impact Group and Blizzard.
“Through shared appreciation home equity loans, Homium introduces a way for homeowners to borrow against their home equity without increasing their monthly debt burden,” wrote Avalanche in an April 15 announcement.
By using Homium, homeowners pledge a portion of their home’s future appreciation as collateral for loan equity in maintenance and repairs, debt consolidation or inheritance. At the same time, investors receive a tokenized asset tracking the price appreciation of a pool of shared homes on the protocol.
The Homium tokenization overview. Source: Homium
“Homium is building a valuable new asset class for institutional investors, providing a new source of uncorrelated, inflation-protected return in their core portfolios,” said CEO Tommy Mercein in a statement. The first such home tokenization loans are currently available in the United States state of Colorado.
The tokenized assets are backed by second mortgage loans made to owner-occupied single-family homes. Investors of the HELOC tokens are secured to the title like any other mortgage. Homium pledges that every home is “appraised by a third party, hybrid valuation service” with nationwide loan originators.
While the HELOC tokens are built on distributed ledger technology, they are not cryptocurrencies. Instead, the tokens are debt securities compliant with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Rule 144A regarding private placement to institutional investors. Regarding its technology, Homium explained:
“Patented technology gives Homium investors a real time window into every loan in each pool including its origination value and current marked-to-market estimated value. Because Homium loans are underwritten to a uniform standard that secures a % of the underlying home equity, this allows instant securitization of the note from inception. Investors receive pooled exposure to home price appreciation by state."
Since July 2023, Avalanche has pledged $50 million in investments for on-chain tokenization protocols, with a major focus on those specializing in real estate and digital collectibles. Meanwhile, financial services giant Citi recently described the tokenization market as the next “killer use case” in crypto.
Related: Avalanche and Chainlink collaborate on Australasian on-chain asset settlement |
Former NY Fed chief joins Binance.US board | United States-based cryptocurrency exchange Binance.US announced that a former chief compliance and ethics officer from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has joined its board of directors.
In an April 16 blog post, Binance.US said former NY Fed chief Martin Grant would be bringing his “regulatory, legal, and compliance” experience to the crypto exchange as one of its newest board members. Grant was the chief compliance and ethics officer at the NY Fed from 2005 to 2022, having joined the bank in 1990.
According to Binance.US Interim CEO Norman Reed, adding Grant would help the exchange “continue to navigate the current regulatory environment “ in the U.S. The former NY Fed chief is also the Global Head of Regulatory Affairs and Integrity at financial services firm JST Digital, adding that the crypto industry in the U.S. was “at an inflection point.”
The change to Binance.US’ board of directors came roughly two weeks after global exchange Binance — a separate entity — announced it would be forming a board for the first time. The seven-person board is chaired by Gabriel Abed, the ambassador of Barbados to the United Arab Emirates, where the exchange has some personnel and ties to regulatory authorities.
Related: Binance.US says it’s ‘radioactive’ to banks, SEC dealt ‘near-mortal blow’
Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao chaired the Binance.US board before he resigned in November 2023 as part of an agreement with U.S. authorities — a settlement that did not include the U.S. exchange. Zhao stepped down as Binance CEO and pleaded guilty to one felony charge, for which he is scheduled to be sentenced on April 30.
Binance, Binance.US and Zhao still face a civil lawsuit initially filed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in June 2023 for allegedly offering unregistered securities. The case is one of many enforcement actions the regulator is pursuing against crypto firms with operations in the country, including Coinbase and Ripple.
Magazine: ‘SEAL 911’ team of white hats formed to fight crypto hacks in real time |
History of Crypto: Crippling inflation, rising debt, and the evolving crypto landscape | The cryptocurrency market took a beating in 2022, falling more than 70% during a time when the industry made headlines around the world for all the wrong reasons — from FTX’s bankruptcy and Sam Bankman-Fried’s arrest to the $50 billion collapse of the Terra ecosystem.
The United States also saw inflation hit a 40-year high as the country’s national debt figure continued to rise.
But it wasn’t all doom and gloom. In September 2022, Ethereum made the long-awaited transition to a proof-of-stake network, and Bitcoin’s hash rate increased threefold throughout the year. The market also rebounded strongly in 2023.
Here are some of the major industry events between 2022 and 2023.
EXPLORE THE HISTORY OF CRYPTO
U.S. inflation rates have topped out, for now
Crippling inflation was one of several macroeconomic factors that contributed to the 77.2% price drawdown for Bitcoin (BTC) from its previous all-time high of $68,990 to a cycle low of $15,740 in November 2022.
In fact, the U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rate topped out at 9.1% in June 2022, marking its highest level since 1982, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Fortunately, CPI inflation started trending downward after June 2022, bottoming out at around 3% in June 2023. Since then, monthly figures have hovered around the 3% range.
Change in CPI inflation over the last 20 years. Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Since June 2023, Bitcoin has soared over 135% from $30,480 to set a new all-time high above $73,000.
However, the CPI inflation rate has risen 11.65% since November 2021, meaning Bitcoin still hasn’t hit its inflation-adjusted all-time high. That will happen when Bitcoin notches $77,026.
U.S. national debt continues to soar
The U.S. national debt continued its exponential rise in 2022 and 2023, increasing 4.35% to $33.2 trillion over those two fiscal years, according to data from the U.S. Treasury.
Change in U.S. national debt over the last 100 years. Source: U.S. Treasury
The debt, which has since risen to $34.5 trillion, has put the U.S. on an “unsustainable fiscal path,” according to U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.
Fortunately, the U.S. debt to gross domestic product ratio has decreased from about 3.2% to approximately 123%.
Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania say financial markets can only withstand another 20 years of accumulated deficits projected under current U.S. fiscal policy. After that, the debt dynamics would begin to “unravel.”
EXPLORE THE HISTORY OF CRYPTO
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong recently voiced that increased Bitcoin (BTC) adoption in the U.S. could serve as a “check and balance on excessive deficit spending,” which he believes is essential for the U.S. dollar to remain strong.
Bitcoin’s inclusion would mark a “return to financial discipline,” he added.
El Salvador is a textbook example of this, according to venture capitalist Tim Draper, who believes the country’s Bitcoin investment could help pay off the $215 million in debt it owes to the International Monetary Fund.
“[If] Bitcoin hits $100,000, they’ll be able to pay off the IMF [and] never have to talk to them again.”
FTX’s collapse shocks the world as SEC plays cop on crypto industry
Tumbling macroeconomic conditions between 2023 and 2023 arguably impacted every cryptocurrency firm, which led to an array of bankruptcies, liquidations and even prison time for some of the industry’s most controversial figures.
The events triggered a wave of regulation by enforcement action by the Gary Gensler-led U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which declared itself the “cop on the beat” for the cryptocurrency industry.
No collapse was bigger than FTX, which saw more than $8 billion in misappropriated customer funds wiped from a crashing market. BlockFi also went bankrupt — citing loans it lost from FTX — while Three Arrows Capital filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy after its excessive leverage on long positions was wiped out.
Celsius and Voyager were other notable firms that filed for bankruptcy.
Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud in November 2023 for his role in orchestrating what some described as the largest fraud in U.S. history.
The $50 billion collapse of the Terra ecosystem and its algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD (UST) also caused carnage in May 2022.
The man largely responsible for that collapse was Do Kwon, the former CEO of Terraform Labs, who spent more than five months on the run in several countries before finally being detained at immigration control in Montenegro for using a fake Costa Rican passport.
He faces fraud charges in his home country of South Korea and in the U.S. for the role he played in the Terra collapse.
The SEC became even more determined to catch the remaining “hucksters,” “fraudsters” and “scam artists” in the cryptocurrency industry after Bankman-Fried. Most notably, it sued the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, and its former CEO, Changpeng Zhao, who pleaded guilty to money laundering violations in November 2023.
The securities regulator also sued Coinbase in June 2023, claiming the trading platform unlawfully listed cryptocurrencies, which it considered to be securities.
Related: Bitcoin’s banking crisis surge will ‘attract more institutions’: ARK’s Cathie Wood
March 2023 also saw a local banking crisis, with three cryptocurrency-friendly banks collapsing: Signature Bank, Silvergate Bank and Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). This gave rise to fears that the U.S. banking system may not be as resilient as initially thought.
Even Fed Chair Powell was left scratching his head over the collapse of SVB.
EXPLORE THE HISTORY OF CRYPTO
Despite several industry setbacks, builders kept building.
Most notably, Ethereum transitioned to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism in September 2022 and, in doing so, decreased its energy consumption by over 99%.
The Bitcoin network also became more secure between 2022 and 2023, with its hash rate increasing 200% to 515 terrahashes per second during that time frame, according to Blockchain.com data.
Magazine: Unstablecoins: Depegging, bank runs and other risks loom |
Bitcoin supply to run out on exchanges in 9 months — Bybit | Bitcoin supply on cryptocurrency exchanges will dry up in nine months thanks to the 50% supply issuance reduction of this week’s upcoming Bitcoin halving.
Provided that demand from the United States Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) continues, Bitcoin’s post-halving supply dynamic will see exchange reserves run out of Bitcoin (BTC), according to an April 15 report by Bybit:
“Bitcoin reserves in all centralized exchanges have been depleting faster. With only 2 million Bitcoins left, if we assume a daily inflow of $500 million to Bitcoin Spot ETFs, the equivalent of around 7,142 bitcoins will leave exchange reserves daily, suggesting that it will only take nine months to consume all of the remaining reserves.”
Bitcoin reserves on centralized exchanges fell to a near three-year low of 1.94 million BTC on April 16, according to CryptoQuant data.
Bitcoin: Exchange reserves on all exchanges. Source: CryptoQuant
The report comes amid a wider market slump that saw Bitcoin fall over 10% during the past week to $62,924 as of 1:36 pm UTC, according to CoinMarketCap.
Bybit, the world’s third-largest exchange, expects Bitcoin prices to start recovering from the current correction, according to the report:
“With this in mind, it’s unsurprising that Bitcoin’s price may continue to climb before the halving, or even afterward, as the supply squeeze propels the price to another new record.”
Related: Korean won becomes world’s most traded fiat for crypto traders: Report
Institutional interest in Bitcoin is on the rise
Weekly inflows to spot Bitcoin ETFs have been slowing down since March. Last week saw over $199 million worth of net inflows into the ETFs, down from $2.58 billion in the week beginning March 11, according to Dune Analytics.
Bitcoin ETFs weekly net flows. Source: Dune
Despite the recent slump, the spot Bitcoin ETFs have amassed over 841,000 BTC worth $52.9 billion, with over $12.7 billion net flows since launch, according to Dune.
Bitcoin investor allocation has also risen since September 2023. Institutions are allocating an average of 40% of total assets to BTC, while retail investors average a Bitcoin allocation of 24%, according to Bybit’s asset allocation report from Feb. 24.
Bybit noted that both crypto-native firms and traditional institutions are gaining increasing exposure to Bitcoin via ETFs or proxy stocks such as MicroStrategy. The exchange expects more institutions to follow suit:
“We believe that not all institutions have been able to gain exposure since the approval of Bitcoin Spot ETFs in January 2024, as their investment mandates restrict them from investing in new products that have been in the market for only a few months.“
Related: Bitcoin halving will lead to more sustainable BTC mining: Report |
ICP’s Schnorr integration ushers in Bitcoin DeFi era | The Internet Computer Protocol (ICP) plans to use advanced threshold cryptography to unlock decentralized finance capabilities and smart contract functionality on Bitcoin’s base layer.
Speaking to Cointelegraph during Paris Blockchain Week, Dfinity senior research scientist Aisling Connolly outlined how ICP’s integration of threshold-Schnorr signatures will enable the protocol’s smart contracts to obtain addresses and authorize transactions directly to the Bitcoin blockchain.
Schnorr signatures are a specific type of digital signature named after mathematician Claus Schnorr. They work like a secret handshake between two parties, proving that one person has signed off on something without revealing their secret code.
Related: Unpacking Schnorr Signatures: Blockstream’s MuSig to Improve Bitcoin Transactions?
The implementation will allow ICP smart contracts to sign Schnorr signatures to etch Bitcoin Runes, inscribe Ordinals in a decentralized manner, send, receive and bridge BRC-20 tokens directly on the Bitcoin base layer, sign taproot transactions and re-inscribe Ordinals.
ICP anticipates the full implementation of threshold-Schnorr to be launched midway through 2024. ICP integrates the core implementation of threshold-Schnorr-BIP340, which enables smart contracts to derive addresses and authorize native Bitcoin transactions.
“Schnorr allows extra functionality, like batching transactions. It also allows for new use cases that are developing on Bitcoin. You see people inscribing Ordinals over the last year, it will help do this without any tweaks and from other chains,” Connolly explains.
The researcher added that the ability to inscribe Ordinals or etch Runes following the Bitcoin halving generally requires using Schnorr signatures. Connolly said Schnorr signatures are similar to ECDSA signatures that Bitcoin uses to control its ownership, but the former is “simpler, faster and more secure.” She said:
“If you have Schnorr as a native thing, then it allows smart contracts to directly write or etch runes on the Bitcoin blockchain. This is pretty special. I don’t know anyone who’s doing this at the moment.”
The hope is that combining Schnorr signatures with ICP’s protocol-level integration with the Bitcoin network will open possibilities for decentralized applications (DApps) and services that can leverage the liquidity and security of Bitcoin without relying on centralized bridges.
Connolly highlighted a handful of working use cases that are already being explored and built by ecosystem developers.
“One use case is ICP serving as this orchestration layer. Let’s say you have an existing DApp on Ethereum, and you want to leverage Bitcoin. You can have an ICP smart contract that works alongside it to talk and write to Bitcoin,” Connolly explains.
Others are building applications from scratch using ICP. Connolly highlighted Taler DAO, an algorithmic Bitcoin-backed stablecoin, as an example of new experiments using the infrastructure.
Related: Bitcoin Core Devs Reveal How Schnorr Signatures Can Help Scale Bitcoin
Another consideration is how the integration will be received by the wider Bitcoin community. “OG” Bitcoiners are typically skeptical of integrations and solutions that promise to bridge the preeminent cryptocurrency and its underlying blockchain to other chains.
Connolly said conversations with Bitcoin proponents suggest that there is an open attitude toward infrastructure that broadens the utility of Bitcoin:
“Some of the work that we’re doing is being picked up by Bitcoiners and in the BitVM Telegram chat, they're discussing the stuff that we're doing and how it can be used.”
The researcher believes the Bitcoin community is generally open to exploring and considering using tools like decentralized exchanges on ICP that supports noncustodial wallets. Connolly said this would allow DeFi capabilities like staking Bitcoin without relinquishing control of a user’s private keys.
“If Bitcoin is the kind of de facto store of value in a digital currency like cryptocurrency, why can it not be the sort of de facto like hyper-secure compute platform as well?”
ICP now has over 300 developers building Bitcoin-enabled DApps in the field of DeFi, NFTs, gaming and social media. ICP introduced Bitcoin integration in 2022. Using chain key cryptography removed the need to use bridges for cross-chain functionality, allowing ICP smart contracts to hold, send and receive Bitcoin.
Magazine: Big Questions: How can Bitcoin payments stage a comeback? |
Korean won becomes world’s most traded fiat for crypto traders: Report | The South Korean won became the world’s most-traded fiat currency against cryptocurrencies in the first quarter of 2024.
The won accounted for over $456 billion worth of trading volume on centralized crypto exchanges, topping the $455 billion in U.S. dollar volume, according to an April 15 research report by Kaiko.
Fiat Trade Volume Q1, 2024. Source: Kaiko
The research firm attributes the rising dominance of the won to the “fee war” between Korean crypto exchanges. The report noted:
“The improving macroeconomic environment and fierce competition among Korean exchanges has boosted trade volume on Korean markets which hit its highest level in more than two years in early March. In Q1 2024, the South Korean Won surpassed the US Dollar in terms of cumulative trade volume.”
In comparison, Euro-denominated trading pairs only amassed $59 billion worth of cumulative volume, placing in the third place for the first quarter of 2024.
Related: Bitcoin halving will lead to more sustainable BTC mining: Report
Crypto fee war among South Korean exchanges intensifies, but Upbit remains the top exchange
As the region’s leading crypto exchange, Upbit has dominated over 82% of South Korea’s crypto market share since 2021.
However, the recent bull run intensified the competition among rival exchanges, with both Bithumb and Korbit exchanges launching zero-fee campaigns in late 2023.
While Korbit’s market share remained below 1%, Bithumb’s market share tripled in the months after the introduction of zero-fee policy trading in October 2023. Yet, the aggressive zero-fee policy led to a large revenue drop for Bithumb, according to Kaiko:
“Despite its aggressive zero-fee strategy and the resulting surge in trade volume, Bithumb’s annual revenue dropped by 60% in 2023. The significant decline in revenue may have prompted the exchange to discontinue its zero-fee campaign on Feb. 5, just five months after its launch.”
Market Share Volume, South Korean Exchanges. Source: Kaiko
The research firm also noted that volumes for the Korean Won declined in early April, expecting a significant rebound with the approval of spot Bitcoin and Ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong’s financial regulator has reportedly approved three spot Bitcoin ETFs, which are expected to list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in approximately two weeks.
Related: ETH price nears 3-year lows vs. Bitcoin — Will an Ethereum ETF stem the tide? |
How acclaimed composer Hans Zimmer got to write a crypto theme song | Hans Zimmer, the iconic movie composer, can now add the wild world of crypto to his expansive list of compositions after collaborating with Tron to create a theme song for Web3.
On April 16, the Tron blockchain announced that it would have its own anthem, composed by Zimmer, brought to life through a lengthy collaboration and exchange of ideas and Web3 values with founder Justin Sun.
The track, titled “The Tron Anthem — a song for the Web3 generation,” has classic Zimmer touches. It’s a musical world of epic and dramatic proportions that blends electronic music with traditional orchestral arrangements.
Zimmer has composed music for some of the biggest contemporary blockbusters, including Interstellar, Dune, The Dark Knight and Gladiator.
But what exactly does it take to compose an anthem for a living and evolving digital community? Cointelegraph talked to Sun about creating music with Zimmer that reflected the values of the Web3 space and received an exclusive quote from the composer about his vision.
According to the announcement, this theme song has been in the works since the beginning of 2022, when the Tron founder and Zimmer opened discussions for the project. Sun said that a joint endeavor of leveraging music as a “catalyst for communication and collaboration” was at the heart of the talks.
“Hans’ unparalleled creativity and influence make him a natural ally in our quest to harness the power of music to not only showcase who we are but also to attract diverse talents and capabilities to the Web3 ecosystem.”
Related: Hollywood union deal with music giants guards against AI use
Sun said the overall mission was to help foster mutual understanding within the Web3 community, catalyze industry-wide collaboration, and propel the community toward an innovative future.
Music as a medium to showcase ideas, and represent themes or communities is one of the most accessible ways to bring in audiences.
“Blockchain technology has unlocked a new frontier of digital collaboration, transcending geographical boundaries, time zones, languages and cultures,” Sun said. “In pursuit of these goals, we recognize the transformative power of music. It serves as a universal language capable of bridging gaps and fostering connection.”
In an exclusive quote for Cointelegraph, Zimmer described a sense of what Web3 can invoke and how we can even approach it:
“Everything that the Western world certainly is built on is a legacy code of the Industrial Revolution. Our education systems are built around that, our government is built around that etc. And once the internet happened, I don’t think we really knew how to use it. I think we need to free ourselves from those philosophies and those restrictions.”
This is not the first instance of music being used as an instrument to unite communities and foster inclusivity in the Web3 space.
In the past, nonfungible tokens (NFTs) have been used as a form of micro-philanthropy to open up new funding avenues to classical musicians outside the limiting legacy institutions.
Web3 has also been able to bridge genres together through new musical collaborations through NFTs and metaverse performances, in addition to creating new means of connecting musicians to their communities.
The musical collaboration is yet another connection between the worlds of music and Web3 and points toward a more mainstream understanding of the importance of the emerging decentralized space.
Magazine: Synthetix founder Kain Warwick: It’s DeFi that’s wrong, not the market |
Bitcoin halving will lead to more sustainable BTC mining: Report | The upcoming Bitcoin halving could lead to a greener Bitcoin (BTC) mining network with more sustainable energy sources.
With Bitcoin block rewards set to be cut from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC, paired with a continually increasing Bitcoin hash rate, the profitability of mining firms could take a hit.
In turn, this could lead miners to search for greater capital efficiency via sustainable energy sources, according to Matteo Greco, research analyst at Fineqia International. Greco wrote:
“This dynamic compels mining companies to optimize capital efficiency and seek cheaper electricity sources, leading to an increasing use of renewable energy in BTC mining.”
Bitcoin has often been criticized for its high energy consumption and reliance on fossil fuels. Yet, over 54.5% of the Bitcoin network’s energy consumption has been powered by renewable energy sources since the end of January 2024, according to the Bitcoin ESG Forecast, a monthly research report written by Daniel Batten, the managing partner of CH4 Capital.
Bitcoin mining mechanics are also incentivizing greater efficiency, which could be among the main reasons for the network becoming increasingly more sustainable. Greco added:
“The BTC mining rewards mechanism inherently drives greater efficiency with each step, enhancing network security, reducing carbon emissions, and promoting research into sustainable block confirmation methods.”
Related: With 10 days to the halving, analysts predict $150K Bitcoin top
Chinese Bitcoin mining: Greener after mining ban
Despite a ban on Bitcoin mining, China currently accounts for around 15% of the global Bitcoin hash rate, according to the April 5 issue of Batten’s Bitcoin ESG Forecast.
“No off-grid coal-based mining occurs anymore. It’s too easy to spot, it competes for baseload energy and interferes with the central government’s emission targets. This has caused a significant reduction of the emission intensity of the Chinese mining post-ban.”
China’s Bitcoin mining hash rate. Source: ESG Forecast
Instead, miners in mainland China primarily rely on hydroelectric power, which is abundantly cheap during the wet months in the four regions of Xi’an, Wuhan, Bejing and Xining, noted Batten, referencing the chart below.
China precipitation. Source: ESG Forecast
Lastly, Batten noted that a significant amount of retail participants are mining Bitcoin at a loss, mainly to have an exit from the Chinese financial system. He said:
“They convert Chinese yuan for ASICS and electricity which creates BTC, which gets converted into USD. Many retail miners are happy to take the profitability hit simply to have a way to convert Yuan to USD.”
Will the Bitcoin mining industry implode soon? BTC miners explain. Source: Cointelegraph
Related: 10 days until halving: Bitcoin mining profitability won’t necessarily fall |
Peter Schiff questions Bitcoin ETF demand and $100K BTC price target | Gold proponent Peter Schiff has questioned market pundits who have set a Bitcoin price target of $100,000 in the current bull run.
Schiff also took a dig at spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and the demand created by the products in the current market.
Schiff is a known Bitcoin critic and often questions its market value and real-world use cases. Schiff called out analysts who claimed the BTC price could surpass $100,000, boosted by the significant demand created by spot BTC ETFs.
In an April 16 X post, Schiff cited the bearish performance of some of the key Bitcoin-related equity markets, such as Coinbase, MicroStrategy, Galaxy Digital and a few other crypto-linked stocks.
He questioned why the high demand for BTC is not reflected in the stocks of companies linked to BTC.
Schiff said Coinbase is down 21%, Galaxy Digital is down 26%, MicroStrategy is down 33%, and several Bitcoin mining stocks are down double digits.
However, the gold proponent didn’t specify a timeline for those losses despite most Bitcoin and crypto-linked stocks outperforming traditional market stocks by a significant margin since the start of 2024.
Only in the past week have many of these stocks recorded a downturn due to bearish momentum in the crypto market.
The current bearish momentum in the crypto market is no big surprise either. Market analysts have explained how BTC has historically seen a pre-halving dip and picks up momentum post-halving. The Bitcoin halving is scheduled for later this week.
Related: ETH price nears 3-year lows vs. Bitcoin — Will an Ethereum ETF stem the tide?
Schiff’s dig didn’t go unnoticed, with several Bitcoin proponents responding to his post debunking his selective data. One user pointed out that MicroStrategy stocks are up 300% year-on-year (YoY).
A few others called him out for cherry-picking data while sharing the performance of Bitcoin alongside gold to highlight the growth difference between the two assets.
While gold has risen to new all-time highs in the second quarter of 2024, it pales in comparison to BTC’s rise over the same period. Bitcoin proponents Dan Held and Willy Woo also reminded Schiff how he missed the opportunity to buy BTC in 2013 when it was trading at around $1,000.
Magazine: Bitcoin ETFs make Coinbase a ‘honeypot’ for hackers and governments — Trezor CEO |
Ethereum liquid staking protocol Puffer Finance raises $18M in Series A | Puffer Finance, a liquid staking project built on Ethereum restaking protocol Eigenlayer, has secured $18 million in a Series A funding round to launch its mainnet.
According to the April 16 announcement, the round was led by Brevan Howard Digital and Electric Capital, with key investments from Coinbase Ventures, Kraken Ventures, Lemniscap, Franklin Templeton, Avon Ventures (a VC fund affiliated with Fidelity Investments' parent firm), Mechanism, Lightspeed Faction, Consensys, Animoca, GSR and other angel investors.
According to data from DefiLlama, shortly after its early test phase in February, Puffer Finance surpassed a total value locked (TVL) of $1.2 billion. To date, the protocol has raised a total of $23.5 million in venture capital funding.
Puffer Finance’s TVL since launch. Source: DefiLlama
“Following this round, Puffer secured a strategic investment from Binance Labs, enhancing its position within the Liquid Restaking ecosystem,” Puffer Finance said in its announcement, alluding to “technological advancements” in tandem with its mainnet launch.
Puffer Finance’s technology allows Ethereum validators to reduce their capital to just 1 Ether (ETH), down from the 32 ETH required for individual stakers. In addition, users who stake Ether via Puffer receive Puffer liquid restaking tokens (nLRTs), which can then be used to farm yields in other decentralized finance protocols simultaneously with their Ethereum staking rewards.
The process, known as liquid staking, has been long practiced by other blockchains, such as Cosmos, and has only recently moved to Ethereum after the Merge upgrade that shifted the network to proof-of-stake. “We aim to significantly reduce the barriers for home validators to participate, while delivering the most advanced liquid restaking protocol,” Amir Forouzani, core contributor at Puffer Labs, said in a press statement.
On March 6, Cointelegraph reported that EigenLayer shot passed decentralized finance lending protocol Aave in TVL, with $10.4 billion worth of crypto committed to the protocol after temporarily removing a cap on how much users could stake.
Dune Analytics data shows EigenLayer has over 107,900 unique depositors, with DefiLlama stats showing that 74% of staked tokens are Wrapped Ether (wETH) and Lido Staked Eth (stETH). Liquid staking protocols are currently the largest DeFi protocol category with nearly $55 billion in locked value across about 160 protocols — buoyed mainly by Lido, the largest protocol by locked value at $35 billion.
Related: Restaking protocol EigenLayer partially launches on Ethereum mainnet |
Stocks and crypto at the edge of ‘significant’ correction: 10x Research | The stock and cryptocurrency markets could be “ahead of a crucial tipping point” heading for a significant price correction, according to Markus Thielen, the founder of 10x Research.
“We sold everything last night,” wrote Thielen, citing persistent inflation, decreasing rate cuts and a rising bond yield as the reasons behind his bearish outlook. In an April 16 research note, the founder wrote:
“The primary trigger is the unexpected and persistent inflation. With the bond market now projecting less than three cuts and 10-year Treasury Yields surpassing 4.50%, we may have arrived at a crucial tipping point for risk assets.”
The bearish research note comes after Bitcoin’s (BTC) price fell over 9.3% during the week to trade above the $63,400 level as of 9:15 am UTC, according to CoinMarketCap data.
The reason behind Bitcoin’s decline could be the falling expectations for an incoming interest rate cut, according to the research note:
“Most of this 2023/2024 bitcoin rally is driven by expectations that interest rates would be cut, and this narrative is being seriously challenged now.”
Traders are currently expecting rates to remain unchanged — 99% of market participants expect the Federal Reserve to maintain interest rates at the current 5.25%–5.50%, up from 93.6% a month ago, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch Tool.
Target interest rate expectation. Source: CME
Thielen added that the company sold all its tech stocks at the open during Monday’s trading session:
“We only hold a few high-conviction crypto coins. Overall, we are bearish risk assets.”
Related: ETH price nears 3-year lows vs. Bitcoin — Will an Ethereum ETF stem the tide?
Is Bitcoin price overheated?
A key technical indicator suggests that Bitcoin price may be “overbought.”
On the weekly chart, Bitcoin’s relative strength index (RSI) is currently at 67, suggesting that the asset may be overheated. Yet Bitcoin’s RSI has cooled significantly from its 2024 high of 88, hit on March 24, according to TradingView.
BTC/USD, 1-week chart. Source: TradingView
The RSI is a popular momentum indicator used to measure whether an asset is oversold or overbought based on the magnitude of recent price changes.
Investor focus has shifted to the upcoming Bitcoin halving, prompting long-term holders to start selling and moving assets off exchanges.
As long as short-term holders absorb the supply, Bitcoin price could see a recovery, according to a Bitfinex research report shared with Cointelegraph:
“There has been a shift in the makeup of the Bitcoin investor base, with new entrants (Short-Term Holders) absorbing the supply sold by Long-Term Holders (LTHs). This is evidenced by the rising Market Value to Realized Value ratio for STHs, albeit it is still below peak levels seen in previous cycles. If this dynamic of STHs absorbing LTH sell downs persists, then it could indicate room for further price growth.”
Related: ‘China is about to start bidding’ — Will Hong Kong Bitcoin ETFs spark the halving rally? |
UK to propose clearer crypto regulations by July | The United Kingdom Treasury intends to present a regulatory framework for crypto assets and stablecoins by July, with the aim of encouraging local innovation in digital assets and blockchain technology.
The U.K.’s economic secretary to the Treasury, Bim Afolami, revealed the government’s ongoing drive to lay the groundwork for revamping the country’s payments landscape while speaking at the Innovate Finance Global Summit (IFGS) 2024.
Alongside the U.K.’s focus on fiat payment innovation, Afolami highlighted the importance of crypto regulations to remain globally competitive:
“Speaking of true change, I know that the cornerstone of our position as a world leader in fintech is the delivery of our regulatory regime for crypto assets and stablecoins.”
Afolami further highlighted the British government’s perspective on regulations, which aims to find the right balance between allowing firms to innovate while protecting the consumers.
IFGS 2024: Keynote Address from Bim Afolami, economic secretary to the Treasury. Source: YouTube
The U.K. Treasury is working on the final proposals that “deal with stablecoin and (crypto) staking” and plans to deliver them by June or July. The minister added:
“Once it goes live, a whole host of crypto asset activities, including operating in exchange, taking custody of customer assets and other things, will come within the regulator perimeter for the first time.”
Afolami also announced the formation of an open finance task force during the conference.
“The task force will craft a clear set of recommendations, pinpointing the data sets of commercial incentives necessary to drive forward CFIT’s SME lending use case for open finance,” he explained.
Related: Controversial UK legislation creates ‘positive frictions’ for crypto users
From April 26, U.K. authorities will be able to retrieve crypto assets directly from exchanges and custodian wallet providers.
The law comes into effect after amendments were made to the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023, which expands the power of the National Crime Agency to confiscate and seize crypto assets the agency suspects are linked to suspicious illicit activities without needing to go through extensive legal procedures.
The Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023. Source: U.K. Parliament
While it didn’t outline its process, the most common way to destroy a crypto token is by burning it, transferring the tokens to a burn wallet address and taking them out of circulation.
Magazine: The real risks to Ethena’s stablecoin model (are not the ones you think) |
Crypto ATM firm says revenue unaffected by fluctuations in BTC price | The high volatility of cryptocurrency prices has had little to no effect on some major players in the industry, including Bitcoin Depot, a Bitcoin (BTC) ATM operator.
Bitcoin Depot, the biggest ATM operator in the United States, has recorded no correlation between its revenues and the price of Bitcoin historically, the firm stated in its 10-K annual report filed on April 15.
The company’s revenues in 2023 and 2022, $689 million and $647 million, respectively, have not been correlated to the price of Bitcoin, even in light of volatile Bitcoin prices.
While Bitcoin surged 155% in 2023, Bitcoin Depot’s year-over-year revenue growth amounted to just 6%, the company stated.
Bitcoin price (from January 2022 to January 2024). Source: CoinGecko
According to the ATM operator, the lack of correlation between Bitcoin Depot’s revenues and the BTC price comes partly from the nature of the services provided.
“Based on our own user surveys, a majority of our users use our products and services for non-speculative purposes, including money transfers, international remittances, and online purchases, among others,” Bitcoin Depot wrote.
Bitcoin Depot has also been putting efforts to reduce its exposure to volatility in BTC prices by maintaining a “relatively low balance” of Bitcoin — or less than $0.8 million — at any given time, the filing reads, adding:
“Our typical practice is to purchase Bitcoin through a liquidity provider such as Cumberland DRW or Abra. We replenish our Bitcoin only through purchases from leading Bitcoin liquidity providers and do not engage in any mining of Bitcoin ourselves.”
Bitcoin Depot pointed out two main components of the working capital required in its operations: Bitcoin in hot wallets to fulfill user orders and cash that accumulates in the Bitcoin ATM kiosks. As of Dec. 31, 2023, cash in the BTM kiosks accounted for roughly 21% of Bitcoin Depot’s average monthly revenues.
Founded in 2016, Bitcoin Depot operates a major network of Bitcoin ATM machines globally. Also referred to as BTMs, Bitcoin ATMs allow users to deposit and withdraw money using cash or a debit card.
Related: BlackRock smashes $10.5T record in Q1 managed assets
According to data from CoinATMRadar, Bitcoin Depot is the largest cryptocurrency ATM operator worldwide, operating more than 7,000 BTMs as of April 2024. Its biggest rivals, CoinFlip and BitStop, operate 4,800 and 2,500 machines, respectively.
Top Bitcoin ATM operators worldwide as of April 16, 2024. Source: CoinATMRadar
As previously mentioned, global Bitcoin ATM adoption experienced the first-ever decline in terms of the amount of machines installed in 2023.
According to Bitcoin Depot CEO Brandon Mintz, the ATM industry will likely see a significant rebound following the much anticipated Bitcoin halving event, expected to occur this week.
Magazine: The real risks to Ethena’s stablecoin model (are not the ones you think) |
Microsoft pours $1.5B into UAE AI company, sets sights on global expansion | Microsoft continues its expansion into global artificial intelligence (AI) with a strategic partnership and $1.5 billion investment in the Abu Dhabi-based AI tech holding company, G42.
In an announcement on April 16, Microsoft explained that the investment aims to propel AI development forward and expand the accessibility of cutting-edge technologies in both the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and on a global scale.
As part of the collaboration, G42 will run its AI applications and services using Microsoft’s AI computing platform, Azure. The two entities stressed that the partnership will go beyond the Emirates and provide advanced AI solutions to clients in the “global public sector,” as well as large enterprises.
Additionally, the investment aims to support skill development for workers in the UAE to build a “diverse” AI workforce and talent pool.
Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the chairman of G42, said that the investment is a “pivotal” moment in the company’s growth.
Brad Smith, Microsoft’s vice chair and president, added that the partnership will also be looking toward areas of the world that are more in need.
“Our two companies will work together not only in the UAE but to bring AI and digital infrastructure and services to underserved nations.”
As part of the collaboration, Smith is also expected to have a seat on the board of directors at G42.
Related: Nvidia eyes Indonesia for $200M AI center amid global AI scramble
This investment comes as the latest in a string of multiple billion-dollar investments Microsoft has been making in countries all over the world.
On Feb. 15, Microsoft pledged to invest the funds to boost AI infrastructure in Germany over the next two years with a $3 billion euro investment.
Only a few days later, the company revealed that it would also invest $2 billion in AI infrastructure development in Spain, aiming to boost local capacity for the technology.
Most recently, on April 9, Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman said the company intended to make a “significant, long-term investment” in the United Kingdom as it starts hiring “passionate innovators.”
However, Microsoft is not the only AI developer making strides in scooping up investment deals and interactions in the race for AI dominance.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been hosting hundreds of executives from Fortune 500 companies to pitch AI services to diversify revenue streams and tap into new markets, putting it in direct competition with Microsoft, a major stakeholder in the company.
Magazine: AI didn’t kill the metaverse, it will build it — Alien Worlds, Bittensor vs Eric Wall: AI Eye |
Bitcoin halving impact on altcoins | Bitcoin’s (BTC) growing dominance over the last 15 years signifies the importance of the mechanisms creator Satoshi Nakamoto devised to overcome the shortcomings of the fiat ecosystem — one of them being halving.
Nakamoto invented the Bitcoin halving mechanism, which reduces the BTC rewards for mining over time to slow down the issuance of the limited 21 million BTC. The Bitcoin halving in 2024—like the previous three halving events—is set to leave a long-lasting impact on Bitcoin as well as the countless altcoin ecosystems it helped create over the years.
Altcoins will react differently to the Bitcoin halving depending on various factors, including tokenomics, value proposition and its overall contribution toward financial freedom. The Bitcoin Halving 2024 will put five key dimensions of altcoins to the test — market sentiment, market price, technology stack, blockchain forks and allocation of reserves.
Changing investor sentiment
The Bitcoin market heavily influences the investment patterns of crypto investors. Given that the Bitcoin price has soared after every halving, investors are eyeing altcoins that have the potential to skyrocket post-halving.
The Fear & Greed Index for Bitcoin and other large cryptocurrencies based on the analysis of investors' online emotions and sentiments. Source: alternative.me
Bitcoin’s stellar price appreciation and retention across 2024 have boosted investors’ confidence. As a result, current market sentiment suggests that many investors are anticipating an altcoin boom.
Speaking to Cointelegraph, the BNB Chain core development team echoed the market sentiment, stating that “The Bitcoin halving is known for triggering shifts in market sentiment within the Web3 ecosystem.”
Related: Is the Bitcoin halving the right time to invest in BTC?
According to the BNB (BNB) developers, projects with solid fundamentals and innovative technologies attract more investors’ attention during Bitcoin halving events. Altcoin projects are prepping new incentive programs and campaigns to attract crypto opportunists.
“On our end, we are seeing more initiatives aimed at fostering ecosystem growth and innovation,” the team added.
Upgrades in technology stack
Bitcoin halvings often serve as a catalyst for innovation and evolution within the broader Web3 technology stack. And for altcoins, this technological catch-up is made possible by consistent and prolonged support from the developer community. Advancements in the Bitcoin network serve as a blueprint for altcoin ecosystems as they cater to the rising public demand for faster transactions, improved utility, and price appreciation, among others.
Source: Casey Rodarmor, the creator of Bitcoin ordinal NFTs
Mo Shaikh, co-founder and CEO of Aptos Labs, told Cointelegraph, "The Bitcoin halving underscores the exploding global interest in Web3. Across Aptos ecosystem and beyond, we are seeing near webscale utility potential for millions—and soon billions—of people in DeFi, gaming, and entertainment.”
The core BNB developers underscored the importance of updating the underlying technology to address specific market needs and enhance a token’s utility and adoption. In-house initiatives and support programs targeted toward incentivisng builders “encourage technological advancements and ecosystem growth,” which ensure that the ecosystem is primed for long-term success.
Speaking to Cointelegraph, Stefan Kimmel, CEO of the M2, revealed that the crypto exchange's strategy aligns with the upcoming halving that is set to permanently reduce the issuance of Bitcoin. Kimmel added:
“Looking at the broader landscape, while halving garners attention, we are cognizant that it’s just a part of a larger narrative. The confluence of ETFs, quantitative easing, and halving will define the future contours of the market.”
Similarly, aspiring future-ready projects must pick and choose the right upgrades in tune with Bitcoin halcving 2024.
Altcoin price movement
The altcoin ecosystem reciprocates the price movements in Bitcoin. However, some tokens will outperform others during the bull market. Investors monitor short-term volatility in altcoins around the time of Bitcoin halving, intending to add altcoins into their portfolio.
The halving has historically impacted Bitcoin’s price dynamics, which has reverberated through the altcoin market. The team added:
“Staying informed and identifying altcoins with strong fundamentals and promising growth trajectories remain paramount for profitable trades.”
Additionally, changes in Bitcoin’s mining rewards and difficulty post-halving may indirectly affect altcoin mining profitability, influencing miners' behavior and potentially impacting altcoin prices.
According to Kimmel, M2 plans to remain focused on delivering solid yield products and fostering cryptocurrency adoption and innovation, irrespective of these cyclical events.
Related: ‘Bitcoin-only’ buy-and-hold investing outperforms altcoins over long term, analysis shows
Consensus-based blockchain forks
The changes accompanying Bitcoin halvings often bring forth particular challenges that require community members of altcoin ecosystems to vote on ‘make or break’ decisions.
Diverging economic incentives for miners, farmers and stakers coupled with community disagreements and governance issues often result in soft and hard forks.
Source: Peter Todd, Bitcoin developer
Consensus-based blockchain forks may be a solution to address disagreements within the community. These forks can create new cryptocurrencies with modified protocols designed to meet the needs and preferences of specific factions within the community.
On the other hand, some communities prefer working on the existing blockchain rather than building one from scratch. For example, BNB Chain core developers revealed they are working on BNB Beacon Chain Fusion, an upgrade dedicated to making the BNB Chain ecosystem more efficient. BNB Smart Chain (BSC) is also introducing a major upgrade, BEP 336, with the mainnet hard fork scheduled for June.
Related: Generation Z and millennials choose crypto over stocks — Report
Bitcoin reserves allocation
Investors looking for greater return on investment (ROI) post-halving often reallocate some of their Bitcoin holdings into various altcoins. Diversification, as an investment strategy, increases one’s chances of higher returns and helps spread risk across different assets.
On the flip side, altcoin projects have been found to increase their Bitcoin allocation in the treasury to minimize volatility. Explaining the intent, BNB Chain core devs added:
“Altcoins with strong use cases, supportive communities, and promising growth prospects may attract a portion of Bitcoin reserves, contributing to increased liquidity and trading volume in the altcoin ecosystem.”
Investors should take a ‘do your own research (DYOR)’ approach when delving into altcoin investments. Background checks about the founder and their team, audit reports, and market credibility are some factors to consider when researching new altcoin projects.
Magazine: Synthetix founder Kain Warwick: It’s DeFi that’s wrong, not the market |
Arkham’s top 5 doxed crypto hodlers own $3.5B, but 35% is untouchable | The top five identified crypto whales with publicly known wallet addresses hold around $3.5 billion in crypto, according to a dashboard from blockchain intelligence firm Arkham.
However, due to lost passwords and private keys, a large chunk of it is inaccessible.
On April 15, the on-chain intelligence platform announced the updated dashboard revealing the holdings of some of the world’s on-chain-verified richest crypto holders and whales, including Tron’s Justin Sun and Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin.
The top five crypto holders on its list currently own an aggregate of $3.47 billion in digital assets, according to the data. However, around 35% or $1.21 billion of that total has been flagged as ‘inaccessible.’
Arkham’s crypto top five
Justin Sun tops the list with a reported $1.06 billion in his crypto wallet. The Tron network founder’s wallet is heavy on his own stablecoin, Decentralized USD (USDD), with $275 million in holdings, followed by the network’s native token, Tron (TRX), of which he holds $237 million worth.
Rain Lõhmus, the founder of Estonia-based LHV Bank, is second on Arkham’s list with $769 million worth of Ether. However, it has been flagged as inaccessible, as it was reported in November that he lost access to his private key.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin comes third with a wallet containing $757 million, primarily in ETH, of which he holds 245,425 tokens.
The Bitcoin wallet of the former chief technology officer at Ripple, Stefan Thomas, shows up as fourth on the list. However, his $442 million worth of Bitcoin (BTC) has also been flagged inaccessible.
Thomas lost access to more than 7,000 Bitcoin in 2011 after losing the password to the encrypted hard drive holding the details of his cryptocurrency.
In October, crypto recovery firm Unciphered offered to unlock the IronKey hard drive.
Related: Ethereum’s next hard fork could make lost private keys a thing of the past
Crypto venture capitalist James Fickel rounds out the top five with $436 million worth of digital assets in his wallet, according to Arkham.
Other notable crypto wallets in the top ten include early adopter Patricio Worthalter, who holds $219 million worth, primarily in ETH. General Partner at Cluster Capital, Winslow Strong, is listed as holding $27.5 million worth of digital assets.
For those included, the dashboard displays public wallets tagged by Arkham, their current token holdings and balance history, a breakdown of portfolios across chains and historical daily balances, and recent activity.
However, the list doesn’t contain whale wallets that are linked to unknown or pseudonymous owners, such as Bitcoin’s creator Satoshi Nakamoto whose BTC holdings are estimated to be worth tens of billions across multiple addresses, or other crypto titans that currently aren’t linked to a particular wallet address.
Magazine: 1 in 6 new Base meme coins are scams, 91% have vulnerabilities |
Bored Ape NFT floor price hits lowest point in over two and a half years | The floor price of Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) nonfungible tokens (NFTs) has fallen over 90% from its peak, down to 11.1 Ether (ETH) — its lowest point since August 2021.
BAYC is now approaching a sub-10-ETH floor price after a 50% fall since March 1 alone, according to NFT Price Floor.
BAYC’s change in NFT floor price since August 2021. Source: NFT Price Floor
The Yuga Labs-backed NFT project launched in April 2021 — meaning its NFT price floor is now where it was four months after it launched.
The NFT collection’s fall from a peak of 128 Ether (ETH) set on May 1, 2022, is part of an industry-wide decline in popularity for digital art NFTs.
However, it should be noted that a few BAYC NFTs have continued to sell significantly above their floor price, which is calculated by taking the lowest-priced NFT in a given collection.
For example, BAYC #830 sold for 504.3 ETH ($1.92 million at the time) last month, while several other rare items have sold above 30 ETH in recent days.
Top BAYC sales over the last 90 days. Source: NFT Price Floor
The largest NFT collection by market cap, CryptoPunks, has also fallen from its peak floor price of 113.9 ETH, but only by 64%.
Related: 5 ways to monetize your digital art with NFTs
Meanwhile, industry commentators continue to ponder whether digital art NFTs can make a comeback.
Speaking to Cointelegraph, Shi Khai Wei, co-founder and chief operating officer of LongHash Ventures, argued that digital art NFTs “were never meant to exist on their own as projects,” and teams behind them should consider merging them with other verticals in the blockchain industry to be made useful.
“It is very hard to raise things without a clear vision of the brand and actual products behind it,” Wei explained.
However, NFTs can also be a “superpower” for blockchain-based projects that already integrate in-game economies and offer NFT ownership, Wei added.
“It is much easier if you already have a super clear vision. Here’s the game, here’s an infrastructure, here’s a chain, here’s a marketplace, and then you have your early adopter core community adopt [behind it].”
Magazine: Digital artist OSF gives fans a pledge of ‘art until I die’: NFT Creator |
NSA ’just days from taking over the internet’ warns Edward Snowden | The United States National Security Agency (NSA) is only days away from “taking over the internet” with a massive expansion of its surveillance powers, according to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
In an April 16 post to X, Snowden drew attention to a thread originally posted by Elizabeth Goitein — the co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice — that warned of a new bill that could see the U.S. government surveillance powers amplified to new levels.
The bill in question reforms and extends a part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) known as Section 702.
Currently, the NSA can force internet service providers such as Google and Verizon to hand over sensitive data concerning NSA targets.
However, Goitein claims that through an “innocuous change” to the definition of “electronic communications surveillance provider” in the FISA 702 bill, the U.S. government could go far beyond its current scope and force nearly every company and individual that provides any internet-related service to assist with NSA surveillance.
“That sweeps in an enormous range of U.S. businesses that provide wifi to their customers and therefore have access to equipment on which communications transit. Barber shops, laundromats, fitness centers, hardware stores, dentist’s offices.”
Additionally, the people forced to hand over data would be unable to discuss the information provided due to hefty gag order penalties and conditions outlined in the bill, added Goitein.
The bill initially received heavy pushback from privacy-conscious Republicans but passed through the U.S. House of Representatives on April 13.
Related: Norway passes data center legislation signaling more scrutiny for Bitcoin miners
Part of the pushback saw the bills’ proposed spying powers time-frame cut from five years to two years, as well as some minor amendments to the service providers included under the surveillance measures.
However, according to Goitein, the amendment did very little to reduce the scope of surveillance granted to the NSA.
In her view, the amendment could even see service providers such as cleaners, plumbers and IT service providers that have access to laptops and routers inside people’s homes be forced to provide information and serve as “surrogate spies,” claimed Goitein.
The bill has seen strong pushback from both sides of the political aisle, with several government representatives claiming the bill violates citizen’s constitutional rights.
Democratic Senator Ron Wyden described the bill as “terrifying” and said he would do everything in his power to prevent it from being passed through the Senate.
“This bill represents one of the most dramatic and terrifying expansions of government surveillance authority in history.”
Republican Congressperson Anna Paulina Luna, who voted against the bill in the House of Representatives, said Section 702 was an “irresponsible extension” of the NSA’s powers. Luna added that if government agencies wanted access to data, they must be forced to apply for a warrant.
The bill is slated for a vote on April 19 in the U.S. Senate.
Magazine: Creating ‘good’ AGI that won’t kill us all — Crypto’s Artificial Superintelligence Alliance |
BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF is the only fund with inflows since Friday | BlackRock’s Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF) has been the only United States-based spot Bitcoin fund to see inflows over the past two days, with all other ETFs posting zero inflows or lower.
The iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) posted net inflows of $73.4 million on April 15, down from the $111.1 million the day prior. The eight other ETFs — bar Grayscale’s — posted $0 flows over the past two days, per Farside Investors data.
However, IBIT’s inflows weren’t enough to outpace outflows from the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC). It saw $110.1 million in outflows on April 15, slowing from April 14’s $166.2 million.
IBIT’s two-day flows in the second column with GBTC’s third from the right. Total flows are in the far right column. Source: Farside Investors.
All 10 spot Bitcoin ETFs saw net outflows across April 14 and 15 — $55.1 million and $36.7 million, respectively.
Total cumulative ETF flows to April 15. Source: Farside Investors
The recent outflows for U.S. Bitcoin ETFs follow a rollercoaster weekend for Bitcoin, which is down 11.6% on the week to $63,410, per Cointelegraph Markets Pro.
Related: Hong Kong’s Ether, Bitcoin ETFs will be ‘lucky to get $500m’
Meanwhile, global Bitcoin investment products saw outflows of $110 million for the week ending April 12, which CoinShares’ research head James Butterfill said highlights the “hesitancy amongst investors.”
Butterfill reported all combined crypto investment products saw net outflows of $126 million last week, and week-on-week volumes perked from $17 billion to $21 billion.
TradingView data shows Bitcoin hovering above its weekly low. Source: Cointelegraph Markets Pro
Iran’s April 13 attack on Israel sent Bitcoin into freefall, hitting a three-week low of $61,918.
The cryptocurrency’s April 20 slated halving — where its issuance is cut in half — is also causing price volatility as traders eye how it will affect Bitcoin’s price action.
X Hall of Flame: Expect ‘records broken’ by Bitcoin ETF: Brett Harrison (ex-FTX US) |
Musk to charge new X users to post, but some say it won’t stop the bots | Billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk is planning to charge new users to tweet in an attempt to curb an ongoing spam problem on his microblogging platform X, though not everyone is convinced this will stem the tide of crypto-scam-touting bots.
X owner Musk said, “Unfortunately, a small fee for new user write access is the only way to curb the relentless onslaught of bots,” on April 15 in reply to a post by the X Daily News account regarding the testing of a spam reduction policy.
The announcement stated that X might be expanding its policy to charge new users to use basic functions such as posting, replying, liking or bookmarking a post.
Musk said tools such as CAPTCHA can already be bypassed by current AI and “troll farms” with “ease.”
Musk has been battling the bots ever since he took over Twitter in a $44-billion deal that was completed in October 2022.
He said the onslaught of fake accounts “also uses up the available namespace, so many good handles are taken as a result.”
A similar policy was already implemented in New Zealand and the Philippines on a trial basis in October. The “Not A Bot” subscription method for new users in those two countries required a $1 payment to access additional features.
“This won’t stop bots completely, but it will be 1000X harder to manipulate the platform,” said Musk at the time.
Many, however, argue that the new potential charges won’t prevent the onslaught of bots.
Blockchain sleuth ZachXBT was among many who didn’t agree with the method, stating:
“There are hundreds of business verified scam accounts every week which scammers pay thousands of dollars for.”
He used a screenshot of a dubious verified Wormhole X account that was posting spurious links for an airdrop.
“There is an entire black market for these accounts,” he said before adding that it will also “kill new user growth.”
Meta Mint team member Roxo said, “The issue has nothing to do with new accounts being made its that X staff are completely useless at terminating fake accounts” before adding that the majority of bots and scam accounts were created years ago.
Related: Elon Musk offers users free premium features on X, crypto scammers included
In late March, Musk said that accounts with 2,500 verified subscribers as followers would no longer need to pay for “Premium” features. However, the ability to purchase verification status on the platform may have opened the doors for scammers, reported Cointelegraph.
Earlier this month, X announced it was starting a “significant, proactive initiative to eliminate accounts that violate our rules against platform manipulation and spam.”
Magazine: ‘SEAL 911’ team of white hats formed to fight crypto hacks in real time |
OKX launches Ethereum layer-2 network for lower fees & interoperability | Cryptocurrency exchange OKX has joined the likes of Coinbase in launching an in-house Ethereum-based layer-2 network to provide lower fees and interoperability for users interacting with decentralized applications.
OKX’s launched the public mainnet of X Layer, its zero-knowledge proof powered network, on April 15. The network was built using Polygon’s chain development kit (CDK) and enables shared state and liquidity across multiple blockchain networks using the Ethereum scaling protocol’s Aggregation Layer.
An announcement shared with Cointelegraph notes that X Layer provides faster, cheaper transaction capabilities when interacting with on-chain applications. The network uses ZK-proofs, the underlying technology used by various Ethereum layer-2 networks for improved security and scalability.
Related: Ethereum layer 2s to hit $1T market cap by 2030: VanEck
X Layer is EVM-compatible, allowing developers to launch or migrate Ethereum-based decentralized apps (DApps) without having to rewrite the underlying code.
A statement from OKX chief marketing officer Haider Rafique notes that X Layer and other layer-2 networks are set to become integral infrastructure for an interconnected Web3 ecosystem.
“We are building an ecosystem that is as seamless and interoperable as possible. We think X Layer has limitless potential thanks to our strong community and its connectivity with other Ethereum-based networks,” Rafique said.
OKX launched the mainnet beta of X Layer in November 2023, which attracted more than 50 Web3 DApps to launch on the testnet. OKX notes that DApps including the Graph, Curve, LayerZero, QuickSwap, Galaxy and Timeswap are in the process of deploying on its proprietary layer-2 network.
X Layer will allow OKX users to transfer assets, deposit and withdraw cryptocurrencies on OKX and access nearly 200 DApps offering token swaps, staking and smart contract functionality. OKX’s native OKB token acts as X Layer’s native token and is used to pay gas fees on the network.
Related: Ethereum ecosystem needs a major mindset shift for global impact, says Vitalik Buterin
Polygon CDK is touted to provide symbiotic benefits for OKX, X Layer and other chains connected to Polygon’s AggLayer. X Layer essentially connects to other chains built on Polygon CDK through the AggLayer, which allows for the transition of liquidity between these chains.
According to Polygon CEO Marc Boiron, this creates an interconnected network of liquidity across different blockchain protocols
“X Layer’s connection to the AggLayer solves the fragmentation of liquidity and users across chains on the AggLayer so they can all grow together. OKX’s 50 million users now have an easy path to onboarding to X Layer and all the other chains connected to the AggLayer.”
Investment management firm VanEck estimates that Ethereum layer-2 networks could exceed $1 trillion in market capitalization by 2030. These networks have become integral to helping Ethereum achieve scale, powering low-fee, secure and decentralized transactions and applications.
Magazine: 1 in 6 new Base meme coins are scams, 91% have vulnerabilities |
Cryptojacker conned $3.5M from cloud firms to mine crypto, feds allege | United States prosecutors have charged a man with wire fraud and money laundering charges after he allegedly defrauded two cloud computing providers to run a “large-scale illegal ‘cryptojacking’ operation” — with the perpetrator facing up to 50 years in prison.
The Brooklyn U.S. Attorney’s Office on April 15 claimed Charles O. Parks III, also known as “CP3O,” defrauded the two companies of $3.5 million to mine $970,000 in cryptocurrencies, including Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC) and Monero (XMR) using the two firm’s resources without paying.
Cryptojacking is when an entity uses resources such as computing power or electricity without permission to mine crypto. Types of malware can inject software to mine crypto that drains a small amount of resources from a network of computers.
Parks was arrested in Nebraska on April 13 and charged with wire fraud, money laundering and engaging in unlawful monetary transactions.
He faces a combined maximum sentence of 50 years in prison and is slated to appear before an Omaha federal court on April 16.
The indictment alleged Parkes created multiple accounts with a subsidiary of “Company 1,” a “cloud computing and consumer electronic device headquartered in Seattle, Washington,” and “Company 2,” a firm that makes “personal computers and related services headquartered in Redmond, Washington.”
From around January to August 2021, Parks allegedly used multiple fake “names, corporate affiliations and email addresses,” including from companies he registered — MultiMillionaire LLC and CP3O LLC — to make accounts at the companies.
He then “tricked and defrauded” the services into “approving heightened privileges and benefits, including elevated levels of cloud computing services and deferred billing accommodations,” the indictment alleges.
Parkes deflected when the providers started inquiring about “questionable data usage and mounting unpaid subscription balances,” prosecutors claimed.
Highlighted excerpt of the indictment against Parkes. Source: U.S. Attorney’s Office
The indictment claims Parkes laundered some of his mined crypto through “Cryptocurrency Exchange 1,” which “bills itself as a ‘decentralized company, with no headquarters.’”
Related: IRS investigation chief expects uptick in crypto tax evasion this year
Other funds were allegedly laundered through a payments provider, bank accounts and a New York City-headquartered nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace.
He structured the payments in a bid to avoid the $10,000 minimum transaction reporting requirements under federal law, the indictment said. Prosecutors claimed to have found multiple instances of Parkes moving $9,999 and smaller amounts from the crypto exchange to a bank account.
Prosecutors alleged Parks used the proceeds for “extravagant purchases,” including a luxury Mercedes Benz, jewelry and “first-class hotel and travel expenses.”
Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement: “This Office will continue to prioritize prosecuting criminal actors who use new, sophisticated technology to engage in the old scheme of fraud and deceit.”
Magazine: ‘SEAL 911’ team of white hats formed to fight crypto hacks in real time |
Hong Kong’s Ether, Bitcoin ETFs will be ‘lucky to get $500m’ | Three recently approved spot Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in Hong Kong may not be as big of a deal as some may think, according to senior Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas.
On April 15, The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) issued conditional approvals to three offshore Chinese asset managers to begin issuing spot Bitcoin and Ether ETFs. The asset managers cleared for approval include Harvest Fund Management, Bosera Asset Management, and China Asset Management.
However, in an April 15 post to X, Balchunas shot down lofty predictions that the ETFs could generate $25 billion in inflows and pointed to four main reasons why crypto investors should temper their expectations for the recently approved products.
“Don't expect a lot of flows — I saw one estimate of $25b that's insane. We think they'll be lucky to get $500m.”
Justifying his predictions, Balchunas explained that the Hong Kong ETF market is “tiny” when compared to countries like the United States, adding that these ETFs don’t allow Chinese retail investors with official access to the products.
Balchunas noted these three prospective ETF issuers were tiny relative to “big fish” asset management giants such as BlackRock — which currently boasts more than $9 trillion in assets under management.
“U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs have more assets than the entire HK ETF market,” wrote Balchunas in a follow-up post to X.
Related: Bitcoin eats up fresh bid liquidity as BTC price fights for $65K
Additionally, Balchunas said the capital environment for these funds was far less efficient than elsewhere, and fees would likely be set around the 1-2% mark — a far cry from the “dirt cheap fees in the U.S. Terrordome.”
“The underlying ecosystem there is less [liquidity] efficient = these ETFs will likely see wide spreads and prem discounts,” said Balchunas.
“Takeaway: Other countries adding [Bitcoin] ETFs is no doubt additive but it's nickel-dime compared to the mighty US market.”
On the other hand, the chief crypto analyst at Real Vision and former crypto analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, Jamie Coutts, said that despite recent reservations at the size of the Hong Kong ETF market, the products would open up a “massive pool of capital” for Chinese investors, who Coutts says are already savvy with skirting government-imposed capital controls.
Notably, the Hong Kong FSC approved the spot Bitcoin and Ether ETFs to be launched using an in-kind model, meaning new ETF shares can be issued directly using BTC and ETH.
The in-kind creation model stands in contrast to the cash-create redemption model, which allows issuers to create new ETF shares only with cash. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs currently use the cash-create model, with the SEC fearing that cash-create could lead to money laundering and fraud-related issues.
The spot ETFs are slated for launch in roughly two weeks' time.
Magazine: Bitcoin ETFs make Coinbase a ‘honeypot’ for hackers and governments — Trezor CEO |
‘Disable iMessages’ ASAP to avoid crypto zero-day exploit: Trust Wallet | Crypto wallet provider Trust Wallet is urging Apple users to disable iMessage, citing “credible intel” of a zero-day exploit that could allow hackers to take control of users’ phones.
“Alert for iOS users: We have credible intel regarding a high-risk zero-day exploit targeting iMessage on the Dark Web,” the firm posted to X at 7:53 pm UTC on April 16.
The firm stressed the zero-day exploit can infiltrate and take control of iPhone users without clicking a link and that high-value account holders are most at threat.
A zero-day exploit is a cyberattack vector that takes advantage of an unknown or unaddressed security flaw in computer software, hardware or firmware.
Trust Wallet stressed that all crypto wallets held on an iPhone with iMessage switched on are at risk.
The firm’s CEO, Eowyn Chen, shared a screenshot of which she claims to be a potential zero-day exploit, showing an asking price of $2 million for the exploit.
However, the so-called threat was met with skepticism from several industry pundits.
“If this is your ‘credible intel’ it’s embarrassing. You don’t have evidence of a iOS exploit you have a screenshot of a guy claiming to have an exploit,” pseudonymous blockchain researcher Beau said in response to Chen’s screenshot.
Asked whether it’s better to be “safe than sorry,” Beau stressed Trust Wallet’s alert could cause panic-induced harm.
More than 1.2 million X users viewed Trust Wallet’s alert on X over the first four hours.
Another skeptical comment from crypto analyst Foobar later led the firm into revealing its intel was sourced from its “security team and partners” that constantly check for threats.
Cointelegraph reached out to Apple but didn’t receive an immediate response.
Related: WinRAR patches zero-day bug that targeted stock and crypto traders
It comes as Apple released emergency security updates to fix two iOS zero-day vulnerabilities that were exploited in attacks on iPhones last month.
Apple’s iMessage application has also been used as an attack vector for hackers in previous events, according to security researchers at Kaspersky.
Meanwhile, more than 280 blockchain networks are at risk of zero-day exploits that could put at least $25 billion worth of crypto at risk, cybersecurity firm Halborn claimed last month.
Magazine: Should crypto projects ever negotiate with hackers? Probably |
What to expect at Changpeng Zhao’s sentencing on April 30 | Former Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao is scheduled to appear before a federal judge more than 160 days after pleading guilty to one felony count as part of a settlement agreement with United States authorities.
On April 30, Judge Richard Jones will hear from prosecutors and CZ’s attorneys in United States District Court for the Western District of Washington for one of the most anticipated legal proceedings in the crypto space since the conviction and sentencing of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. Zhao’s sentencing hearing has already been pushed back once, but at the time of publication, it was expected to be held by the end of the month.
In November 2023, Zhao pleaded guilty to one count for failure to maintain an effective Anti-Money Laundering (AML) program while at Binance, violating the Bank Secrecy Act. He resigned as CEO as part of the plea deal, in which the crypto exchange and Zhao agreed to pay $4.3 billion to settle “civil regulatory enforcement actions” in the United States — which did not include a lawsuit from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Under U.S. sentencing guidelines, Judge Jones could put CZ in federal prison for up to 10 years, but there is a recommended sentence of 12 to 18 months for the charge he's facing. Bankman-Fried received a 25-year sentence on March 28, but other than the fact both cases involve high-profile members of the crypto space, there are few similarities. Some have suggested that given his guilty plea and cooperation with authorities, Zhao could face no prison time.
“I would say [these cases] are not comparable from a charges perspective, but they are extremely comparable from the perspective that the [Justice Department], the SEC and the federal government are making it very clear that they are not going to tolerate nefarious behavior,” Moe Vela, a former Director of Administration for then-Vice President Joe Biden, told Cointelegraph.
Vela added that U.S. authorities may be trying to “send a message” to illicit players in the crypto space, regardless of whether the judge imposes a harsh sentence on CZ. However, he speculated that the former Binance CEO could “see some leniency” from the judge due to Zhao's cooperation and guilty plea.
Related: What to expect at Sam Bankman-Fried’s sentencing hearing
Mark Bini, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of New York, told Cointelegraph that, unlike Bankman-Fried’s criminal case, CZ’s felt more “like a regulatory offense.” However, he said there was a risk that events around Hamas’ attack on Israel could potentially influence the judge overseeing CZ’s sentencing.
In the wake of the Hamas attack, many reports have surfaced alleging connections to crypto being used to fund terrorist organizations. The allegations may not be entirely unrelated to the former Binance CEO’s charge for failure to maintain an AML program and the exchange’s civil case.
“The wild card and where public sentiment might line up with what the government feels about the case is that there is that case out there against Binance [...] accusing them of having laundered funds related to Hamas,” said Bini. “Something like that [...] might be framed in some way as showing how serious that what looks like a regulatory offense has real-world consequences that prosecutors might argue should be taken into account.”
Bini added:
“The facts of the case may be so compelling to the judge in some bad way for CZ that the judge feels that a more significant sentence is called for.”
Since his guilty plea, Zhao has remained mainly free to travel within certain areas of the United States on a $175 million bond. His legal team has made several requests for the former Binance CEO to travel to the United Arab Emirates to visit family before his hearing, all of which the judge has denied.
Magazine: US enforcement agencies are turning up the heat on crypto-related crime |
Senators Warren, Grassley want details on CFTC’s communications with FTX | United States Senators Elizabeth Warren and Charles Grassley have sent a letter to Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) chair Rostin Behnam asking for an accounting of Behnam’s contacts with former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried before the cryptocurrency exchange’s collapse. The writers say they want to “renew requests” for that information and cite a letter addressed to Behnam and others by Sen. Josh Hawley.
Warren and Grassley, who represent opposite ends of the U.S. political spectrum, reminded Behnam that he told a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing in December that “My team and I met with Mr. Bankman-Fried and his team [...] over the past 14 months, we met 10 times in the CFTC office at their request.”
Behnam, who was the sole witness speaking at the hearing, used the hearing as a platform to appeal for more authority, saying, “Without new authority for the CFTC, there will remain gaps in a federal regulatory framework, even if other regulators act within their existing authority.” Warren and Grassley wrote in a letter dated April 12:
“Safeguarding the savings and retirements of Americans requires Congress and market regulators like the CFTC to determine how this multi-billion-dollar crime was allowed to happen.”
Behnam also noted that CFTC-regulated and FTX-owned LedgerX was not part of the FTX collapse and remained operational.
The senators are demanding accounts of all meetings, phone calls, written correspondence and conversations between Behnam or CFTC staff and Bankman-Fried, FTX, Alameda or associated executives. In addition, they ask for a “timeline of CFTC’s knowledge of the fraud committed, including but not limited to a description of any proposed or ongoing investigations into those parties.”
Source: Crypto Asset Investor
According to the letter, the senators want to “understand the nature of your [Behnam’s] repeated correspondence with Mr. Bankman-Fried” before knowledge of his crimes became public.
Related: CFTC Chairman Rostin Behnam cites LedgerX as success story amid FTX collapse
Republican Hawley wrote to Behnam, Attorney General Merrick Garland and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler in November asking if their agencies had begun investigations into FTX or Alameda before their collapse or entered into confidential settlements with the companies or their executives.
Magazine: Sam Bankman-Fried: The crypto whale who wants to give billions away |
BIS envisions global ‘Finternet’ running on unified ledger technology | The Bank for International Settlements has presented its fullest and strongest argument so far for unified ledger technology in a paper coauthored by BIS chief Agustin Carstens. The paper describes a “financial system for the future,” which it calls the Finternet, that would use unified ledgers as a vehicle.
Unified ledgers could remove a host of the pain points in the current financial system by improving speed, compliance and privacy in the financial system, the BIS paper claimed. Unified ledgers “bring together multiple financial asset markets […] as executable objects on common programmable platforms.” This flexibility offers advantages over digital transactions on other platforms:
“Even when individuals use sophisticated front-end interfaces to make supposedly ‘digital’ transactions, behind the scenes, movements of money and other financial assets often rely on the owners of siloed proprietary databases to initiate and process transfers.”
Unified ledgers “combine all the components needed to complete financial transactions—financial assets, ownership records, rules governing their use and other relevant information—in a single venue.” This gives them the potential to overcome issues related to technical standards and governance and eliminate third-party messaging systems.
Related: SWIFT proposes a role for itself in a tokenized future on a unified ledger
However, the BIS does not envision a single unified ledger. Rather, multiple unified ledgers would interact among themselves and with the financial system beyond the Finternet through apps. Unified ledgers require tokenization of assets, especially money, for transfers using smart contracts. The proposal creates a tokenization manager role that would monitor regulatory requirements.
Source: Bank for International Settlements
Carstens introduced the concept of unified ledger in February 2023. The topic was taken up again in the 2023 BIS annual report. The recently announced Project Agora also crucially uses unified ledger. The BIS and seven central banks are participating in that project, which involves central bank digital currency and tokenized money transfers.
The idea has also been considered by global financial messaging service SWIFT. The international Monetary Fund’s proposed XC platform is also highly similar in many details.
Magazine: Bitcoin in Senegal: Why is this African country using BTC? |
Filecoin Foundation launches Chinese legal inquiry into STFIL incident | Filecoin Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes the development of Web3 storage protocol Filecoin, “has a lawyer in China” and is investigating the reported detention of Filecoin Liquid Staking (STFIL) team members, according to an April 13 social media post from foundation senior fellow Danny O’Brien.
Withdrawals from the STFIL protocol stopped working in early April after a developer wallet made several unscheduled upgrades and moved $23 million worth of Filecoin (FIL) tokens to an address whose owner is unknown. On April 8, the STFIL team announced that core technical members was detained by local Chinese police and that the mysterious upgrades and transfers had occurred during these detentions. This announcement left many users of STFIL wondering how they could recover funds.
In the post, O’Brien stated that “FF has a lawyer in China who has been looking into the incident,” adding that the foundation has “high confidence” that members of the STFIL team are in police custody. The foundation has not been able to confirm whether the police possess the funds, but they expect to know this information in “upwards of a week.” The foundation plans to allow its attorney to represent all staking providers and leasers in any court proceedings related to the incident.
O’Brien promised to share more information once the plan's details are finalized. He also asked staking providers who lost funds to provide contact details through a Google Doc or Slack Channel set up for this purpose.
Source: Filecoin Foundation senior fellow Danny O’Brien.
Filecoin is a decentralized storage protocol that allows PC owners to rent out their hard disk space to users with data storage needs. It requires storage providers to provide FIL tokens as collateral to guarantee that they store data per their agreements.
FIL holders can lend out their tokens to the storage providers, in which case they earn a portion of the fees collected. This process is called “FIL staking.”
STFIL is a protocol that pools FIL tokens and stakes them through a network of trusted storage providers. When users deposit FIL into the STFIL protocol, they receive STFIL tokens in exchange. When the protocol is functioning correctly, these STFIL tokens can be redeemed for their underlying deposited FIL plus accumulated staking rewards. However, this redemption process stopped functioning in April, after the unauthorized upgrades and transfers were made.
Related: What is Filecoin and How Does it Work?
STFIL is not the only Web3 protocol to encounter criminal legal action in China. Users of the Multichain cross-chain bridging platform saw more than $1.5 billion of their crypto frozen after Chinese police arrested the protocol’s development team. The funds have still not been recovered.
Fantom Protocol, one of the biggest depositors to Multichain, filed for bankruptcy in March in an attempt to pursue at least some of the lost Multichain funds through litigation. According to Fantom co-founder Andre Cronje, it may take “years” for investors to obtain a court order that can force police to hand over the funds. |
Blockchain for Good Alliance launches at Blockchain Life Dubai | The Blockchain for Good Alliance (BGA) announced its official launch on April 15, at the Blockchain Life Dubai event.
Describing itself as a “collaborative network of organizations, projects, and individuals committed to leveraging blockchain technology to solve global social, environmental, and economic challenges,” the BGA has partnered with blockchain-based organizations of nearly every stripe.
These include Bybit Web3, Solana Foundation, Aptos, Moledao, Harvard Blockchain Club, ICP.Hub UAE, American University of Sharjah (AUS), Coineasy, Libera, Edu3Labs, Alchemy Pay, Bu Zhi DAO and XueDAO.
The newly launched organization will work as an incubator for blockchain tech, according to its website. It’ll provide networking opportunities connecting builders with mentors, resources, and events.
A spokesperson named Abbie, a representative of the Harvard Blockchain Club, said in a statement that:
"We are thrilled to be a part of the Blockchain for Good Alliance (BGA) launch. Through our commitment to exploring university initiatives such as establishing a blockchain publication repository and supporting BGA's impactful projects, we aim to foster a culture of innovation and collaboration within our academic community.”
Blockchain social platform Moledao, a BGA partner, described the alliance as a path towards mass adoption in a YouTube video posted on April 14.
The concept of “blockchain for good” was recently studied by Italian researcher Silvia Semenzin, at the GRASIA Research Group, Institute of Knowledge Technology, Complutense University of Madrid, in a research article posted to Sage Journals.
According to Semenzin, many initiatives to “do good” through the use of blockchain technology are either motivated by profit seeking or largely ignorant to the realities of disparate class financial relativities.
The Blockchain for Good Alliance will operate as a non-profit, something that should largely assuage the typical concerns associated with tech-based endeavors to do good.
Related: Over half of U.S. charities now accept cryptocurrency donations
Lily Liu, President of Solana Foundation, said in a statement that this collaboration “enhances our commitment to harnessing blockchain for global benefit.” She added that the platform would drive “impactful change,” by joining the partners together:
“This has opened doors for innovative public infrastructure projects such as Helium and Hivemapper, where users not only contribute but also earn from their participation. Moreover, Solana's technology facilitates accessible cross-border remittances and new financial products, making it a pivotal player in creating a more inclusive financial system.” |
Hong Kong green lights first spot Bitcoin ETFs: Law Decoded | The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) has reportedly approved three spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
The list includes ETFs from Harvest Global Investments, China Asset Management and a partnership between HashKey and Bosera Asset Management.
Following the initial approval, the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong will require approximately two weeks to finalize listing procedures and related arrangements.
The approval of the first spot Bitcoin (BTC) ETFs in Hong Kong could catalyze Bitcoin’s post-halving rally, according to Herbert Sim, chief operating officer of crypto exchange Websea, who told Cointelegraph:
“[The] halving is not the only thing to look out for in the price action. But rather the upcoming Bitcoin ETF approval in Hong Kong. The big banks of China will all have to start buying Bitcoin themselves, too.”
Meanwhile, the chief executive of investment firm VanEck says it is unlikely the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will approve spot Ether (ETH) ETFs in May.
In a recent interview, Jan van Eck said his firm’s spot Ether ETF application will “probably be rejected.” He noted that VanEck was the first to file for a spot Ether ETF in the U.S. alongside Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest, with both awaiting final decisions by May 23 and May 24, respectively.
U.S. Treasury wants to tighten crypto crime control
U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Adewale Adeyemo continued advocating for more enforcement powers for his agency in testimony before the Senate Banking Committee.
In a hearing on countering illicit finance, terrorism and sanctions evasion, Adeyemo outlined three proposed reforms to improve U.S. enforcement efforts against international bad actors using crypto.
The proposed reforms include the introduction of secondary sanctions targeting “foreign digital asset providers” engaging in illicit finance. U.S. sanctions prohibit institutions from using U.S. correspondent accounts and transaction processing through banks, Adeyemo said, but crypto exchanges and money services do not always depend on the use of correspondent accounts. “A new secondary sanctions tool” is needed.
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Dubai to ease burdens for small crypto firms
Dubai’s crypto landscape is transforming, but smaller players are grappling with hefty regulatory burdens amid the buzz.
Matthew White, CEO of Dubai’s Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority (VARA), unveiled ambitious plans to alleviate the compliance costs plaguing small crypto entities.
The VARA official said that getting regulated is a “costly exercise” and that many people lack the resources. White explained a potential fix, where larger participants could “host” smaller ones.
With this structure, costs would be carried by entities with more resources. “The cost of compliance is borne by the larger systemic players, and this allows the smaller players to come into the ecosystem, be regulated, but also not have to suffer the same sort of level of costs of compliance that we’ve got,” he said.
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Australia busts unlicensed crypto miners
Hundreds of Australian investors are more than 160 million Australian dollars ($104 million) out of pocket after a group of cryptocurrency mining companies — NGS Crypto Pty, NGS Digital Pty and NGS Group (collectively “NGS companies”) — collapsed into liquidation.
The Australian Security and Investments Commission (ASIC) launched civil proceedings against the companies and their directors, Brett Mendham, Ryan Brown and Mark Ten Caten.
The NGS companies have been accused of targeting local investors to establish self-managed superannuation funds and then convert the funds into cryptocurrency for investment in blockchain mining packages with promised fixed-rate returns.
ASIC alleges that approximately 450 investors entrusted a total of 62 million AU$ ($40 million) to these companies, which also operated without the necessary Australian license.
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Fiji central bank warns against crypto use, disappointing Bitcoin hopes | The Reserve Bank of Fiji (RBF) has issued a warning to the public against using cryptocurrency for payment or investment. This is a reversal of the Fijian prime minister’s perceived position on crypto.
Fijian residents may even face criminal charges for investing in cryptocurrency abroad using “funds held in Fiji,” the release added. Apparently, the warning was motivated by cryptocurrency promotion in the country:
“The Governor of the RBF, Mr Ariff Ali acknowledges that there are indications of persons or entities promoting cryptocurrency investment schemes in Fiji. These investment schemes are increasingly being promoted through various platforms including social media.”
The RBF has not licensed any person or entity to provide cryptocurrency investments or trade in virtual assets, it said.
Hopes were high for the adoption of Bitcoin (BTC) in Fiji after Sitiveni Rabuka, a long-time presence on Fiji’s political scene, became prime minister in December 2022. This was mainly due to the pronouncements of Tongan member of parliament and nobleman Mata'i'ulua 'i Fonuamotu, Lord Fusitu’a, who labeled Rabuka “pro-Bitcoin” in an X (then Twitter) post shortly after Rabuka’s election. “Let’s go 2 for 2 - BTC Legal Tender Bills for the Pacific in 2023,” Fusitu’a posted.
Source: Lord Fusitu'a.
Lord Fusitu’a went on to explain that Rabuka “asked me to meet with him a number of times & show him step by step how Fiji can do bitcoin legal tender like Tonga.” A comment on Fusitu’a’s post noted that Rabuka had not made any public statements on the use of Bitcoin. “I don’t think he’s been asked about it,” Lord Fusitu’a replied.
Lord Fusitu’a was a vocal proponent of the introduction of Bitcoin in 2022, to the extent of converting the national treasury to the cryptocurrency. Those measures have yet to be enacted in the country.
Related: Island nation turns to metaverse to preserve its disappearing heritage
The new statement from the RBF is in line with the advice of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on cryptocurrency. The IMF released a paper on the use of digital money in Pacific Island countries in February in which it called cryptocurrencies “poor substitutes for means of payment, and they carry additional macroeconomic risks.”
Magazine: Why are crypto fans obsessed with micronations and seasteading? |
Meta announces VR education metaverse for ages 13 and up | Meta is bringing its enterprise level Quest services to the education sector, the social media giant announced on April 15.
The company’s Quest virtual reality (VR) headsets have become “by far the most popular extended reality (XR) headsets on the market” according to Statista. The sector is expected to reach an installed user base of more than 34 million units by the end of 2024.
If that prediction remains true, the VR sector will have demonstrated a compound annual growth rate of approximately 27.3% since 2020 when, according to Statista, the installed VR user base was about 14.2 million.
In order to maintain its pole position, Meta recently unveiled a slew of products and services aimed at the enterprise metaverse market. As Cointelegraph recently reported, the pivot showed a shift away from individualized user experiences such as games and one-off immersive environments. The next leg in this pivot appears to be a greater push towards educational products and services.
Per a blog post from Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg:
"Later this year Meta will be launching a new product offering for Quest devices dedicated to education. … It will allow teachers, trainers and administrators to access a range of education-specific apps and features and make it possible for them to manage multiple Quest devices at once, without the need for each device in a classroom or training environment to be updated and prepared individually.”
The new product’s name and details are to be revealed “in the coming months” with a full launch anticipated by the end of 2024. According to the blog post, it’ll be available in the Quest for Business market which includes most territories in Europe, Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, and the United States.
Meta gave several examples of educational facilities already employing Quest headsets, including a life sciences course at the university of Glasgow that immerses students inside the human body, a criminal justice course at New Mexico State that places users at a virtual crime scene, and a business class at Stanford University that helps prepare students for interviews.
Related: NASA created VR metaverse to prep astronauts for life on lunar space station |
Base asset tokenization protocol loses $1.7M due to private key leak | Real-world asset tokenization protocol Grand Base (GB), which operates on Coinbase’s native layer-2 blockchain, has suffered $1.7 million in losses after a private key compromise.
“On April 15 at 03:01:27 AM +UTC, an exploit happened on our contracts,” wrote an admin in the protocol’s Telegram chat. “For this specific reason, we urge all our community members to stay away from this contract as it is not safe anymore.”
According to blockchain analytics firm PeckShield, the private key leak resulted in the theft of $1.7 million in tokens from its liquidity pools, which have since been swapped on-chain for Ether (ETH) and sent to an external address. Simultaneously, the protocol’s native token lost 99% of its value in the past 24 hours due to the incident.
The Grand Base Telegram admin reiterated that “this token contract is NOT safe anymore and you should NOT swap or interact with it, stay safe. We will update you asap on the next step.”
In a follow-up analysis by blockchain analytics firm CertiK, it appears that the hacker gained control of Grand Base deployer contracts and subsequently minted an excess number of GB tokens without authorization before withdrawing them.
A subsequent post from Grand Base staff claims that developers have “tracked all the wallets of the hacker” and are awaiting the next move. “We are in talks with CEXs [centralized exchanges] to freeze any funds that he might move,” Grand Base staff added.
Grand Base’s description of the attack. Source: Telegram
Users were not impressed with the news of the Monday hack.
“I’m very sorry for everyone involved here,” one user wrote in Grand Base’s Telegram chat. “Please, don’t lose more money here. Abandon this and don’t deposit a single dollar more into this thing, whatever happens.”
“There are hidden loopholes in this contract,” another user alleged. “The total balance does not show any changes, and it belongs to hidden loopholes. Do you know if it was intentional by dev or not?” they added. Before the minting attack, Grand Base had a maximum GB token cap of 50 million.
The Grand Base tokenization protocol was launched less than five months ago. It allowed users to deposit collateral to mint real-world assets in the form of ERC-20 tokens and provided liquidity for the tokenized assets to earn rewards.
Related: This platform aims to make seamless RWA tokenization possible |
ETH price nears 3-year lows vs. Bitcoin — Will an Ethereum ETF stem the tide? | The price of Ether (ETH) in Bitcoin (BTC) is nearing a three-year low. However, several key technical indicators are flashing bullish, and some analysts are anticipating potential gains ahead for ETH/BTC.
Ethereum down 33% vs. Bitcoin since the Merge
Ethereum price in USD terms has more than doubled in price since switching to proof-of-stake in September 2022. But the picture is very different when priced in Bitcoin as the ETH/BTC pair is down roughly 33% since the Merge.
More recently, ETH/BTC has continued slumping, losing over 9% in the past month with a drop to 0.048 BTC. The last time the trading pair was this low was in May 2021, according to Tradingview data.
Ether price fell over 11% during the past week to $3,239, pushing the relative strength index (RSI) to 44 on the daily time frame, down from the 85 reached on March 11. This suggests that Ether is no longer in "overbought" territory.
The RSI is a popular momentum indicator used to measure whether an asset is oversold or overbought based on the magnitude of recent price changes.
Traders should keep an eye on the $3,200 psychological mark, which would liquidate over $97 million worth of leveraged short positions. A move further down to $3,170 would liquidate over $329 million worth of short leverage across all exchanges, according to Coinglass data.
ETH Exchange Liquidation Map. Source: Coinglass
Ether price has been underperforming Bitcoin’s price this year in U.S. dollar terms. Bitcoin is up 49% year-to-date (YTD), while Ether is up 36%. Over the past three months, BTC rose 56% while ETH rose 28%, Tradingview data shows.
Related: 'China is about to start bidding' — Will Hong Kong Bitcoin ETFs spark the halving rally?
Is it a good time to buy ETH?
The last time the ETH/BTC ratio was around 0.048 BTC was at the beginning of May 2021 before ETH price fell two consecutive months in a row, declining 2.5% during May and over 15% to $2,276 by the end of June 2021.
Yet, Ether price could be setting up for a rally, thanks to the approval of Bitcoin and Ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in Hong Kong, according to Andrey Stoychev, the head of Prime Brokerage at Nexo. He told Cointelegraph:
“Bitcoin has its all-important block rewards halving in days, just as Ether balances on exchanges stand at a multi-year low. That setup alone could invite more investor exposure to ETH in anticipation of bigger news from Hong Kong – namely, the approval of local Bitcoin- and Ether-based ETFs. In light of this market situation, it could be argued that Ether could perform a sharp, idiosyncratic catch-up.”
The current Ether price levels could represent a good buying opportunity, said Stoychev:
“Even at current rates, market participants could buy ETH for both a short-term catch-up play, as well a longer-term trade given all the potential developments. With that said, the key levels to watch for now in ETH/USD would be $3,300 on the topside and $3,000 on the downside.”
The focus on Bitcoin ETFs, combined with the high transaction costs on the Ethereum network, has taken the spotlight off Ether, according to Jonathan Caras, the head of communication at Levana perpetual futures protocol.
Caras added that Ether will need a significant catalyst, like an Ethereum ETF, to make a comeback. He told Cointelegraph:
“Ethereum will need a catalyst to catch up, either from its own ETF or some other method of promoting institutional adoption in order to reverse the downward relative trend.”
Related: How high can Bitcoin go? New BTC price prediction sees cycle top at $180K
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision. |
History of Crypto: NFT mania and digital ownership | Welcome to the History of Crypto, a Cointelegraph series that brings readers back to the most significant events in the crypto space. Powered by Phemex, the timeline allows crypto community members to explore and look back at the important events that shaped the industry into what it is today.
In the tumultuous landscape of the digital age, where trends come and go at the speed of a click, one phenomenon has risen to prominence like few others: nonfungible tokens (NFTs). The years 2020 and 2021 marked a period of unprecedented growth and widespread adoption of these digital assets, reshaping the way we perceive ownership, art and the internet itself. In fact, in 2021 alone, the NFT market saw approximately $25 billion in trading volume, compared to an almost non-existent metric just a few years prior.
.@blackmirror_xp just launched its Smile Club digital collectibles on @base today
Here's everything you need to know ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/ahim0CLOpw — nft now (@nftnow) March 12, 2024
While the concept of blockchain technology had been around for over a decade, the emergence of NFTs captured the imagination of both creators and collectors. NFTs represent unique digital assets stored on a blockchain, ensuring their scarcity and authenticity. This innovation allowed for the tokenization of digital art, music, videos and even tweets, turning intangible creations into valuable commodities.
The concept of NFTs can be traced back to at least 2012 when the Colored Coins protocol was created on the Bitcoin blockchain. This protocol allowed users to issue custom tokens representing digital or physical assets. However, it wasn’t until later, with the emergence of Ethereum smart contracts and the ERC-271 token standard in 2017, that nonfungible tokens specifically for digital assets became possible.
One of the earliest and most notable examples of NFTs gaining widespread attention in 2017 was CryptoKitties. Developed by Canadian studio Axiom Zen, CryptoKitties is a blockchain-based virtual game that allows players to purchase, collect, breed and sell virtual cats. Following the success of CryptoKitties, numerous other projects began experimenting with NFTs for various purposes, including digital art, virtual real estate, in-game items and more. Platforms like Decentraland and NBA Top Shot gained traction during this period, showcasing the diverse applications of NFTs beyond gaming.
Then, between 2020 and 2021, mainstream adoption exploded.
NFTs reached new levels of mainstream recognition in 2021 as high-profile sales made headlines, including digital artwork selling for millions of dollars and celebrities launching their own NFT collections. In one such case, on Nov. 2, 2021, award-winning writer and director Quentin Tarantino announced he would auction off seven uncut scenes from Pulp Fiction as NFTs, built on the Secret Network.
Other sales, too, mesmerized headlines, such as the $69 million sale of Beeple’s digital artwork “Everyday: The First 5,000 Days” at Christie’s auction house in March 2021. Newly created digital artworks by artists like Pak and Grimes fetched millions of dollars in auctions and private sales upon inception. During this time, iconic collections, such as Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks, were also born.
Each being a part of a 10,000 algorithmically generated profile pictures collection, in March 2021, a CryptoPunk NFT (#7804) sold for over $7.5 million at auction, marking one of the highest prices paid for a single CryptoPunk at the time. Following this milestone, in October 2021, a rare triple Bored Ape set, consisting of three apes sold as a bundle, fetched over $24 million at a Sotheby’s auction. At the same time, the number of NFT marketplaces expanded rapidly during this period. Platforms such as OpenSea, Rarible, Foundation and Nifty Gateway gained widespread popularity, providing avenues for creators to mint and sell their digital assets. OpenSea emerged as one of the largest NFT marketplaces, with monthly trading volumes surpassing $1 billion by mid-2021, a figure since overtaken by Blur and OKX NFT.
Going to sleep tonight like damn. We love you Apes.
Thank you for an incredible night 2 of #ApeFestHK. pic.twitter.com/lfqmmQBypa — Bored Ape Yacht Club (@BoredApeYC) November 4, 2023
However, this surge in popularity also brought criticism regarding environmental concerns due to the energy-intensive nature of blockchain transactions, as well as questions about the intrinsic value of digital assets. Indeed, during the crypto winter of 2022–2023, the trading volume of NFTs fell by a staggering 99% from its 2021 peak.
Legal disputes also emerged over the ownership and authenticity of digital assets, highlighting the need for clear regulations and guidelines. Some platforms implemented verification mechanisms to authenticate the originality of NFTs and protect creators’ rights, while others grappled with defining ownership in decentralized ecosystems. Indeed, following the widespread publicity of the Pulp Fiction NFTs, Miramax sued the Hollywood director in a copyright lawsuit that was settled in September 2022. Yuga Labs, the current owner of both the BAYC and CryptoPunks series, also faced similar legal battles over its digital collections.
Yet, all was not lost; with the ongoing crypto bull market, NFTs trading volume has recovered. New NFT projects, especially in Hong Kong, are surging in popularity, with collections gobbled up shortly after release. New protocols, such as ParaSpace (now Parallel Finance), are developing new tools for the ever-increasing NFT lending market. Meanwhile, new Ethereum token standards, such as ERC-404, seek to fractionalize NFTs and enable their widespread access.
Overall, the NFT space continues to evolve, with ongoing experimentation in various industries and new platforms emerging to cater to different niches within the NFT ecosystem. Additionally, efforts to address environmental concerns and improve the sustainability of blockchain technology are underway as developers and enthusiasts seek to ensure the long-term viability of NFTs as a form of digital ownership and expression.
Punk #305 is home, hanging on the walls of @icamiami next to a Warhol. This is where she belongs. She will be on display until December 20th and remain in the museum's permanent collection. pic.twitter.com/hKe5tmexyx — CryptoPunks (@cryptopunksnfts) December 3, 2022
Related: The different types of NFTs: A beginner’s guide |
South African exchange VALR wins dual crypto licenses | South African cryptocurrency exchange VALR has been granted new crypto asset service provider (CASP) licenses from the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) following new requirements for industry firms.
VALR — which secured $55 million of equity funding from Pantera Capital, Coinbase Ventures and others — received Category I and II CASP licenses from the FSCA. This makes VALR one of the first cryptocurrency companies in the country to receive both licenses.
Speaking to Cointelegraph, VALR co-founder and CEO Farzam Ehsani said securing a CASP license from the FSCA was a significant milestone for the exchange.
The company has been actively working with South African regulators to draft and implement a regulatory regime that fosters the growth of the cryptocurrency and blockchain sector while ensuring investor protection.
Related: South Africa to mandate crypto exchange licenses by end of 2023: Report
“Our license underscores our unwavering dedication to compliance, security, and providing a trustworthy platform for the crypto community. We welcome this regulatory milestone for South Africa and applaud the regulators for taking this important step for the nation,” Ehsani said.
The FSCA opened license applications in June 2023, giving crypto asset service providers six months to apply for a license to comply with South African regulations. Companies had until Nov. 2023 to apply and would be regulated under the country’s Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services Act.
Ehsani also explained the difference between the two categories of licenses. A CAT I license is the standard financial service provider (FSP) license required for a CASP in South Africa to provide advice or exchange services to its customers.
“A CAT II license, or discretionary mandate license, enables customers to give VALR and other licensed CAT II FSPs a mandate to use its discretion to structure the customer’s portfolio for example. This allows VALR to explore exciting product categories such as bundled offerings,” Ehsani said.
The act aims to protect customers and investors and enable regulators to take enforcement action for compliance failures. South Africa became the first African country to formally license cryptocurrency exchanges through regulatory frameworks that have been in development since 2021.
Related: South Africa begins licensing crypto exchanges as applications pile up
As previously reported, the FSCA approved 59 license applications from cryptocurrency platforms in March 2024. At the time of the initial Reuters report, the FSCA was processing 262 licensing applications from crypto exchanges out of 355 applicants.
In January 2023, South Africa’s Advertising Regulatory Board also updated its requirements to address the rising popularity of cryptocurrency investing. The rule changes were aimed at protecting consumers from unethical advertising.
A new clause in Section III of the country’s advertising code requires companies and individuals in South Africa to abide by certain advertising standards regarding the provision of cryptocurrency products and services.
Adverts, including cryptocurrency offerings, must “expressly and clearly” state that investments may result in the loss of capital “as the value is variable and can go up as well as down.“
Advertising for particular services and products must be “easily understandable” for intended audiences. Adverts must also give balanced messages around returns, features, benefits and risks associated with the associated product or service. Social media influencers also have to abide by the amended rules.
Magazine: 1 in 6 new Base meme coins are scams, 91% have vulnerabilities |
Norway passes data center legislation signaling more scrutiny for Bitcoin miners | Norway passed new legislation related to data centers, signaling more potential scrutiny for Bitcoin (BTC) miners.
The new legislation will mandate official registration from all data centers in the country, including information about the owners and leaders of these centers and the type of digital services they offer. Norway will become the first European country to establish such a framework.
With the new legislation, the government hopes to offer politicians a better overview of data centers in their municipalities, which will offer a better basis for accepting or declining their operations, said Terje Aasland, Norway’s minister of energy.
“The purpose is to regulate the industry in such a way that we can close the door for the projects we do not want”
The decision could mean more scrutiny for Bitcoin miners in the country, on top of the upcoming Bitcoin halving, which will reduce block issuance rewards in half, endangering the profitability of Bitcoin miners.
The crypto mining industry has been largely unregulated in Norway, added Aasland:
“[Crypto mining] is linked with large greenhouse gas emissions, and is an example of a type of business we do not want in Norway.”
The minister added that they are not interested in businesses looking to extract cheap energy from the country.
Related: Samsung secures $6.4B grant to expand Texas chip manufacturing: Report
Bitcoin miners under pressure
Numerous Bitcoin mining firms are currently operating in northern Norway, where electricity is the cheapest in the country.
Crypto mining firms in northern Norway use nearly as much electricity as the district of Lofoten, according to a 2023 report by local media outlet Dagsavisen.
Yet, Aasland noted that Bitcoin mining firms aren’t desired in the country. The minister stated that he welcomes data centers that fulfill societally beneficial roles, like centers that operate as storage servers, which he called an important part of the social structure of Norway.
The number of Bitcoin mining firms operating in the country is unknown to the government at the moment, but the new legislation will offer more information that will be used to carry on with Norway’s digitalization plan, according to Karianne Tung, the minister of digitalization and public governance of Norway.
Bitcoin miners are already under more pressure following this week’s upcoming halving. Bitcoin miners could liquidate $5 billion worth of BTC in the months after the halving, according to calculations by the head of research at 10x Research, Markus Thielen.
Related: 10 days until halving: Bitcoin mining profitability won’t necessarily fall |
Hong Kong approves first Bitcoin and Ether ETFs | Update April 15, 1:10 pm UTC: This article has been updated to include comments from OSL chairman Patrick Pan.
Hong Kong has become the latest country to approve spot exchange-traded funds (ETF) for Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), with local regulators issuing approvals to at least three local issuers.
The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) conditionally approved its first spot BTC and ETH ETFs on April 15, Reuters reported.
At least three offshore Chinese asset managers, including Hong Kong units of Harvest Fund Management, Bosera Asset Management and China Asset Management (ChinaAMC), will launch their spot Bitcoin and Ether ETFs soon.
Bosera will launch its spot crypto ETFs in collaboration with Hong Kong-based HashKey Capital. OSL Digital Securities, a licensed digital asset platform in Hong Kong, will act as the sub-custodian for ChinaAMC and Harvest.
Hong Kong’s securities regulator issues a conditional authorization letter to an ETF application if it generally satisfies its requirements, subject to various conditions, including fee payments, document filing, and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange’s (HKEX) listing approval.
The Hong Kong regulator reportedly approved that the spot Bitcoin and Ether ETFs will be launched as in-kind ETFs, meaning new ETF shares can be issued using BTC and ETH.
The in-kind creation model is opposed to the cash-create redemption model, which allows issuers to create new ETF shares only with cash. Spot Bitcoin ETFs currently use the cash-create model in the United States as local securities regulators opted for this redemption method.
Related: Hong Kong regulator fast-tracks Bitcoin spot ETF approvals
“The in-kind subscription model for the spot BTC and ETH ETFs in Hong Kong represents a substantial innovation,” OSL board chairman and CEO Patrick Pan told Cointelegraph. “This mechanism enhances market liquidity by allowing the direct exchange of the asset for ETF shares, reducing reliance on cash settlements and facilitating uninterrupted trading flows,” he added, stating:
“This principle is essential for ensuring market stability and is consistent with practices in both digital and traditional asset ETFs.”
Pan noted that receiving an approval in principle signifies that the firms have cleared most of the crucial vetting processes and brings them closer to the launch. However, it’s still early to expect when exactly the spot Bitcoin ETF will start trading in Hong Kong, he noted, adding:
“The dates are not yet confirmed. However, all parties involved are diligently working to expedite the launch. The initiation of these ETFs is expected to significantly boost capital inflow into the digital asset market in Hong Kong."
Cointelegraph approached the SFC, Bosera and Harvest for a comment regarding the ETF approval but did not receive a response at the time of publication.
The new approvals follow expectations that the SFC will green-light the first batch of spot Bitcoin ETFs on April 15. According to reports, HKEX will need roughly two weeks to finalize listing procedures and other arrangements after the SFC’s approval.
Magazine: Filecoin staking platform busted, Matrixport says ‘short ETH’: Asia Express |
Samsung secures $6.4B grant to expand Texas chip manufacturing: Report | Samsung will receive $6.4 billion worth of grants from the United States government to expand its chip manufacturing in Texas.
The South Korean manufacturing conglomerate secured the grants in a broader effort to expand chip manufacturing in the United States.
The funding will come from the 2022 Chips and Science Act, which aims to boost chip production for the automotive, aerospace and defense industries. The aim is to bolster national security, unnamed administration officials told Reuters, according to an April 15 report.
The grants will support two production facilities, including a research center and a packaging facility, while also allowing Samsung to expand its semiconductor manufacturing facility in Austin, Texas, said Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.
“[These grants] will allow the U.S. to once again lead the world, not just in semiconductor design, which is where we do now lead, but also in manufacturing, advanced packaging, and research and development.”
Samsung will reportedly invest another $45 billion in the expansion of its Texas chip manufacturing facility by the end of 2030.
The news comes a month after reports of ChatGPT creator OpenAI planning to produce its own semiconductor chips for its artificial intelligence (AI) applications. OpenAI may be receiving funding from the United Arab Emirates state-backed group MGX.
Related: 'China is about to start bidding' — Will Hong Kong Bitcoin ETFs spark the halving rally?
Chip shortage remains the most pressing concern for miners ahead of the Bitcoin (BTC) halving.
Beyond the emergence of potential climate-focused regulation, chip shortages remain the biggest risk for Bitcoin mining firms ahead of this week’s upcoming Bitcoin halving.
Bitcoin mining firm Riot Platforms outlined 12 continued risks for Bitcoin mining profitability in its 2023 annual report. The shortage of chip supply was among the most pressing concerns, which could impact its mining operations over the long term. According to the report:
“The ongoing global supply chain crisis, coupled with increased demand for computer chips, has created a shortfall of semiconductors.”
In 2023, U.S. Bitcoin miner CleanSpark cited potential “cryptocurrency hardware disruption” and possible difficulties obtaining new hardware in its 10-K filing.
Mining Bitcoin at home — Is it time to start?. Source: Cointelegraph
Related: 10 days until halving: Bitcoin mining profitability won’t necessarily fall |
OKX launches WIF and MEW spot trading amid memecoin craze | Cryptocurrency exchange OKX is moving to capitalize on the ongoing memecoin craze by listing major rising Solana-based memecoins like the Dogwifhat (WIF) and the Cat in a Dog’s World (MEW).
OKX has officially started spot trading for WIF and MEW, according to the exchange’s announcement on X. OKX users can now start depositing WIF and MEW tokens on the exchange to start trading the memecoins against the Tether (USDT) stablecoin.
According to the announcement, WIF spot trading will open at 9:00 am UTC on April 15, or one hour after MEW spot trading was launched. The withdrawals for both tokens will open at 10:00 am UTC on April 16, OKX noted.
WIF and MEW are among fast-growing memecoins, trading millions of dollars each day. Both are based on the Solana blockchain, which has been outperforming rival networks such as Ethereum and Avalanche in terms of network activity and adoption due to the ongoing memecoin frenzy.
Launched in November 2023, Dogwifhat (WIF) has emerged as one of the biggest memecoins, making it to the list of the top 50 coins by market capitalization by the first quarter of 2024 at nearly $50 billion.
At the time of writing, WIF is the 42nd-largest cryptocurrency by market cap and the third-largest memecoin after Elon Musk’s favorite memecoin, Dogecoin (DOGE), and Shiba Inu (SHIB), according to data from CoinGecko.
The token is trading at $3, up around 13% over the past 24 hours at the time of writing.
Top five memecoins by market capitalization. Source. CoinGecko
The new Cat in a Dog’s World, or MEW, cryptocurrency was launched just a few weeks ago, officially debuting on March 26. The memecoin aims to disrupt the dominance of dog-themed memecoins, including DOGE, SHIB and WIF.
Related: Trader hits $6M pay day after spending $8K on Ethereum memecoin
At the time of writing, MEW is trading at $0.0052, up 80% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko data.
The newly listed memecoins join a series of memecoins already available on OKX. At the time of writing, the exchange lists roughly 20 memecoins, including the new additions, according to its official website.
Magazine: 5 dangers to beware when apeing into Solana memecoins |
Scam crypto projects using stolen funds for liquidity disappear | Three crypto projects disappeared from the internet hours after blockchain investigator ZachXBT traced their liquidity to funds looted from previous hacks.
On April 14, ZachXBT identified a wallet address holding stolen funds that were providing liquidity to three new crypto projects: lending protocol Leaper Finance on Blast (1,800 followers on X), Zebra DAO on Base (3,200 followers) and Glori Finance on Arbitrum (3,200 followers).
Further investigations found that the wallet was previously used to fund a rug pull project and is currently providing liquidity funds to several projects across multiple blockchains, including Base, Solana, Scroll, Optimism, Arbitrum, Ethereum and Avalanche.
Shortly after being called out on X, the projects’ websites and social media accounts were deleted and remain inactive. However, the scammer running the Leaper Finance social media account acknowledged ZachXBT’s ability to trace fake projects.
The scam crypto projects deleted the social media accounts. Source: X
Right before deleting the account, they said, “Nice work! My comrades here at Lazarus fear you yet admire you!” while offering a partnership for a new scam token launch.
According to ZachXBT, the scammers in question are responsible for stealing millions of dollars worth of crypto from projects such as Magnate Finance, Kokomo Finance, Lendora and Solfire, among others.
The trend suggests that the stolen funds are being repurposed to create scam crypto projects primed for pulling off rug pull or exit scams on unwary investors.
Investors are advised to conduct thorough research on crypto projects before investing, including doing background checks on the founders and team and confirming the legitimacy of the audit report.
Related: New crypto scam drains users’ wallets without transaction approval
Ethereum layer-2 protocol Base saw an 18-fold increase in cryptocurrency funds stolen from phishing scams in March compared to January. According to blockchain anti-scam platform Scam Sniffer, approximately $3.35 million was stolen from phishing scammers on Base in March alone.
Scam Sniffer told Cointelegraph it expects even more phishing attacks on Base in April as the number of assets and active users on the chain continues to increase.
The rise in Base phishing scams comes amid a recent memecoin craze on the Coinbase-backed chain, which, according to L2Beat, has helped push Base’s total value locked above $3.2 billion — marking a 370% increase so far in 2024.
Magazine: Altseason on the horizon, SEC targets Uniswap, and BTC halving news: Hodler’s Digest, April 7–13 |
Solana's mainnet beta update v1.17.31 aims to resolve congestion issues | Solana developers have released a mainnet beta update, v1.17.31, to deal with the ongoing network congestion on the Solana blockchain.
The update was released on April 12, and now, after three days of testing, it is being recommended for general use by mainnet beta validators.
This patch contains enhancements that will help with some of the ongoing network congestion and will be followed by further enhancements in v1.18.
The current version will help improve the network congestion and issues with the open interest jump. Some of the key upgrades include:
Show staked vs. non-staked packets sent down/throttled
Quic: use smallvec to aggregate chunks, save 1 alloc per packet
BankingStage Forwarding Filter
Tighten the minimal streams per 100ms for staked node
Treat super low staked as unstaked in streamer QOS
Default staked client in LocalCluster
Solana developer Anza asked validators to upgrade the latest patch only when there’s less than a 5% delinquent stake.
Delinquency on Solana refers to inactive validators, and the percentage refers to the total stake for offline validators. Thus, validators are requested to install the updates only when there are less than 5% inactive validator stakes on the network.
Related: Over $1B in US Treasurys have now been tokenized on-chain
Amid a growing network activity and memecoin frenzy, Solana network faced congestion issues for nearly a week with a transaction failure rate as high as 75%. While developers were working on the fix, a co-founder of Solana noted that the ongoing network congestion issues were merely a bug rather than a network issue.
The Solana Foundation attributed current network congestion problems to various factors, including a large demand for Solana block space and a delayed implementation of patches to tackle network-related issues.
Solana Foundation strategy lead Austin Federa told Cointelegraph that developers had been working non-stop to fix the issue, but the network demand has outpaced the timely developer intervention.
Federa added that engineers had “not been sleeping much” as they readied patches and tested features before they hit mainnet.
However, Solana devs have developed a series of patches to tackle the ongoing issue, with the first released for developers on April 15.
Magazine: Bitcoin ETFs make Coinbase a ‘honeypot’ for hackers and governments — Trezor CEO |
Germany’s largest federal bank to offer crypto custody services: Report | Update April 15, 11:30 am UTC: This article has been updated to include quotes from Bitpanda.
Germany’s largest federal bank, the Landesbank Baden-Württemberg, will start offering cryptocurrency custody solutions in the second half of 2024.
The bank will start offering crypto custody services to institutional clients in partnership with the Austria-based Bitpanda cryptocurrency exchange.
The German federal bank has been seeing increasing corporate demand for digital asset custody, Jürgen Harengel, managing director of corporate banking at Landesbank Baden-Württemberg, told Bloomberg:
“The demand from our corporate customers for digital assets is increasing.”
The Landesbank Baden-Württemberg will tap Bitpanda’s institutional custody solution for its offering. Bitpanda Custody is a crypto custody platform with decentralized finance (DeFi) capabilities, registered with the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), according to Bitpanda’s homepage.
The partnership will be enable the bank to tap into Bitpanda's digital asset platform, custody services and relevant licenses, Gonzalo Lamas, the head of global communication at Bitpanda, told Cointelegraph:
“As part of this cooperation, LBBW leverages our “Investment-as-a-Service” infrastructure and services, which is used to source and provide custody services for cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other digital assets. The collaboration aims to enhance LBBW's digital asset offerings, ensuring high security and innovative solutions for corporate clients.”
Related: 'China is about to start bidding' — Will Hong Kong Bitcoin ETFs spark the halving rally?
German banks prepare for MiCA regulations by the end of 2024
The Landesbank Baden-Württemberg isn’t the only German bank mulling crypto services. Deutsche Bank has also been working on digital asset custody services since September 2023, tapping Swiss crypto startup Taurus for crypto custody and tokenization services.
In February, DZ Bank, Germany’s second-largest bank, announced its plans to launch a crypto trading pilot later in 2024. The bank unveiled its digital asset custody platform in November 2023
The banks in Europe’s largest economy are preparing for the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation that will take full effect in December 2024 as the first comprehensive legal framework for the crypto industry.
Crypto exchanges will then become fully regulated entities from the end of 2024, Vyara Savova, senior policy lead at the European Crypto Initiative, told Cointelegraph:
“2024 is the year of MiCA, and the whole EU will now have a comprehensive legal framework for crypto-assets, crypto-asset services, and crypto-asset service providers (also known as CASPs). Crypto exchanges are a type of CASP under MiCA and will become fully regulated in December 2024.”
The MiCA bill is still being finalized. The second consultation package for reverse solicitation guidelines under MiCA is set to end on April 29. The outcome of the consultation will be influential for MiCA’s final implementation in December, according to Savova:
“[The consultation will determine] how exchanges and other CASPs from countries outside of the EU might provide services to EU citizens without a license and how these services should be marketed in Europe. The outcomes of this consultation will be critical for MiCA’s implementation in December.”
Related: With 10 days to the halving, analysts predict $150K Bitcoin top |
How Solana developers are tackling network congestion challenges | The Solana Foundation has pinned recent network congestion issues on a combination of high demand for Solana block space and a failure to implement patches related to its networking stack in a timely manner.
Solana Foundation strategy lead Austin Federa spoke exclusively to Cointelegraph during Paris Blockchain Week about efforts to address recent issues with user transaction congestion.
“The goal of the Solana project is to build the world’s fastest network that is open, permissionless and decentralized, and that is a tall order. There’s a team of engineers across different core contributor groups working on building the Solana network, and sometimes, they don’t quite get it right,” Federa explained.
Solana Foundation strategy lead Austin Federa (left) with Gareth Jenkinson (right) at Paris Blockchain Week.
According to the foundation’s strategy lead, Solana’s consensus layer continues to operate as designed, but there is agreement that the network is not living up to expectations from a user experience perspective.
“It’s running at about 700 transactions per second now, which is still pretty commendable, even in the sort of degraded state the network is in now. But a lot of work still needs to be done on the Solana core protocol,” Federa said.
Network developers have been planning fixes to “bottleneck” issues in a specific component of its networking stack implementation.
However, the roadmap for implementing upgrades and expected demand on the Solana network “did not line up,” said Federa, adding:
“The charitable view of this is a failure of success. There’s massive demand for the Solana block space, and there’s a huge demand for the network. It’s processing more transactions than Ethereum’s layer 1 and layer 2s combined.”
Federa conceded that a less charitable reading of the situation suggests a failure to plan and implement network upgrades. He added that ecosystem developers may have been able to anticipate the sort of demand spikes based on the network’s past usage.
Related: Solana devs target April 15 for failed TX fix — It’s ‘not a design flaw’
As previously reported, Solana developers aimed to implement a fix for an “implementation bug” that recently caused the transaction failure rate on Solana to skyrocket. Federa said engineers had “not been sleeping much” as they readied patches and tested features before they hit mainnet:
“It has been an ecosystem effort to identify the problem, potential solutions, and short-term and long-term improvements to the network.”
Some protocols should have a beta label
Solana has copped criticism for network outages over the past two years, with the blockchain going down for short periods of time. However, the layer 1 is not the only protocol that has grappled with downtimes, with Ethereum layer-2s Base, Arbitrum and Starknet having experienced issues in recent months.
Federa said that emerging blockchain networks are still in a growth phase, drawing comparisons to the early days of Amazon Web Services and the outages it experienced. Nevertheless, the blockchain industry is being closely scrutinized, and Federa said expectations are not unfounded:
“I think it’s appropriate to be upset about downtimes and outages. The goal is 100% uptime, and that should be the goal for the whole industry. If that comes at the expense of no scale, that’s not necessarily the best trade-off.”
Federa also highlighted various layer-2 protocols’ downtime and outages as an indicator that the industry is still developing and growing. This is part of the reason why Solana still operates under a beta label.
“The beta tag is honest. The network today does not represent the final form of what developers hope it will be in the future, and there might be other networks that probably should also append a ‘beta’ tag to them,” Federa said.
Solana released v1.17.31 for general use by mainnet validators on April 15. The release contains enhancements that are anticipated to alleviate ongoing congestion on the network.
Magazine: 1 in 6 new Base memecoins are scams, 91% have vulnerabilities |
Weekend Wrap: Berachain raises $100M, Trump NFT sales dump and more | Berachain gets $100 million in Series B raise
Layer-1 blockchain Berachain — which is yet to announce its mainnet — has raised a $100 million Series B funding round.
Venture firms Framework Ventures and Brevan Howard Digital led the round, with contributions from Hack VC, Animoca Ventures and Polychain Capital, among others, Berachain said in an April 12 X post.
It will use the money to expand in multiple regions, including Singapore, Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America, Bloomberg reported on April 12.
Some of the contributors to Berachain’s Series B round. Source: Berachain/X
Berachain’s investors backed the blockchain through a simple agreement for future tokens (SAFT) — where the investors gave money for a future Berachain token.
The blockchain’s testnet has reportedly processed 100 million transactions, and it is aiming to launch its mainnet in the second quarter of this year, which has been created for compatibility with Ethereum-based applications.
Anonymous Berachain co-founder “Smokey The Bera” said in a funding announcement seen by Bloomberg that the raise was “a major validation of our approach to building a blockchain that’s built on feedback from real users and developers.”
Smokey the Bera onstage at Hong Kong’s Hack Summit on April 9. Source: Smokey The Bera/X
In mid-March, Bloomberg reported that Berachain was raising a $69 million round at a valuation of $1 billion, citing people familiar. The firm didn’t share its new valuation.
Trump NFT volumes drop 99% as criminal trial begins
Trading of nonfungible tokens (NFTs) spruiked by former United States President Donald Trump has tanked 99% as his New York criminal trial begins.
The 45,000-strong Trump Digital Trading Cards NFT collection — the first ever NFTs that Trump licensed his image to — was seeing hundreds of weekly sales in early February, then sank to just a handful of sales since early March, according to OpenSea.
The collection hasn’t seen a sale since April 2. The second version of Trump’s NFTs has fared better, with 966 sales in the past 30 days compared to the original’s 16.
The weekly trading volume (gray) and average price change (blue) of Trump’s original NFT collection over 90 days. Source: OpenSea
Jury selection begins on Monday, April 15, for Trump’s trial — he’s facing 34 felony charges filed by the Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg for allegedly faking business records to cover up a $130,000 payment he made to porn star Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about an alleged affair.
Trump has pleaded not guilty.
Newsweek reported last month that the NFT collections were pulled from sale until the end of 2024, according to an OpenSea source that didn’t explain why.
The former president doesn’t own or control the NFT collection but instead licenses his image to a company that does called NFT International, LLC.
Ad giant Dentsu makes Azuki NFT anime series
Advertising and creative giant Dentsu partnered with the Chiru Labs, the firm behind the NFT collection Azuki to make an anime series using characters from Azuki’s NFTs.
On April 11, Dentsu said it would help make the three-part anime series called Enter The Garden, with episodes to be released throughout 2024.
The first will drop on April 30, with a trailer for the episode released alongside the partnership announcement.
Azuki is an NFT collection that features anime-style art characters — to which the holders own the intellectual property rights. Some have built businesses off their NFT, including a skateboard and a tea shop.
The series will include cameo appearances of the characters and product placement of the businesses owned by NFT holders, Dentsu said.
Dentsu’s head of anime operations Yusuke Nii said in the announcement that anime has grown into a “global phenomenon” and claimed the firm would “continue to pursue this partnership even further.”
Bitcoin to ‘trend higher’ after weekend flash crash: Novogratz
Bitcoin (BTC) will shake off its slump and is set to “trend higher” after a shaky trading weekend following Iran’s attack on Israel, says Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz.
Cointelegraph Markets Pro shows Bitcoin dropped over 8% to a three-week low of $61,918 on April 13 after Iran launched hundreds of strikes against Israel for the first time, with Israel reporting one serious injury of a seven-year-old.
“After the risk flush, [Bitcoin] will resume its trend higher, Novogratz wrote in an April 13 X post. The price drop saw around $964 million worth of liquidations in the 24 hours over April 13.
“I pray cool heads prevail and this is not the start of a major regional conflict,” he added.
Bitcoin has already started to gain, seeing a 1.5% bump in the past day to $65,407.
Other news
Nigeria traced local Binance executive Nadeem Arjarwalla to Kenya after he escaped custody and is taking steps to extradite him.
Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission could approve the first batch of spot Bitcoin ETFs on Monday, April 15, which market watchers say could spark another post-halving price rally.
Magazine: 5 dangers to beware when apeing into Solana memecoins |
PAXG hit new high amid Middle East tensions, raising questions about Bitcoin | The gold-backed digital asset from Paxos spiked to an all-time high over the weekend amid a backdrop of rising tensions in the Middle East, leading to some questioning Bitcoin’s (BTC) value as a geopolitical hedge.
The PAXG gold-backed crypto token hit $2,855 on April 13 as Bitcoin prices conversely tanked $5,000 in a matter of hours from over $67,500 to bottom out at around $62,700 in a 7.5% daily rout, according to data from CoinGecko.
“Bitcoin may be many things, but it is not a geopolitical hedge,” commented Bob Elliott, co-founder and CEO of Unlimited Funds and former executive of Bridgewater, in a post on X.
Geopolitical tensions in the Middle East were ramped up over the weekend following an Iranian drone and missile attack on Israeli targets.
The former Bridgewater Associates research head added that this weekend was another good empirical test as BTC traded with a “near-perfect negative correlation over the last day to PAXG.”
“If anything, it’s becoming an even worse hedge over time,” he exclaimed.
BTC and PAXG prices. Source: Bob Elliott
The PAXG token could not sustain momentum, however, and retreated to its previous spot gold-linked price level of around $2,376 at the time of writing.
The asset has made slow and steady progress since the beginning of March, rising 20% in tandem with prices of the underlying precious yellow metal, which hit a peak of $2,400 per ounce last week.
However, some noted that the Paxos token has very little liquidity, with just $36 million daily volume compared to major high-cap crypto assets that trade in the billions.
Glassnode on-chain analyst “Checkmatey” commented that those who “posted about the price of an illiquid gold token trading higher today as a dunk on Bitcoin are an unserious market commentator.”
Meanwhile, Elliot observed that Bitcoin exhibited similar market action last year when it traded down in the period following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, while gold traded up.
“These correlations look to be getting more negative over time,” added Elliott, who cited the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
“BTC largely traded randomly in a relatively tight range in the lead-up and following the invasion,” he added. Gold prices jumped 12% during February and March that year.
Analyst Willy Woo also referred to price action during the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war, adding that Bitcoin “recovery happens within days.”
Related: Bitcoin nosedives as political tensions escalate in the Middle East
Elliott concluded that from a geopolitical perspective, Bitcoin is not a store of value asset, and its broader use may link it more closely to aggregate financial assets.
“Along the geopolitical dimension, its pretty conclusive BTC is not ‘digital gold.’”
At the time of writing, Bitcoin had already started its recovery from the weekend dump, topping $65,800 in early trading on April 15.
Magazine: Altseason on the horizon, SEC targets Uniswap, and BTC halving news: Hodler’s Digest, April 7–13 |
Bitcoin miners could dump $5B in BTC after halving: 10x Research | There could be a large outflow of Bitcoin (BTC) from miners in the months following the Bitcoin halving as in previous cycles, according to a market analyst.
Bitcoin miners could potentially liquidate $5 billion worth of BTC after the halving, according to calculations by the head of research at 10x Research, Markus Thielen, in an April 13 analyst note.
“The overhang from this selling could last four to six months, explaining why Bitcoin might go sideways for the next few months — as it has done following past halvings,” he added.
Thielen said that the same could happen again, with crypto markets potentially facing “a significant challenge in a six-month ‘summer’ lull.”
Bitcoin prices remained range bound between $9,000 and $11,500 in the five months that followed the 2020 halving.
This year, the halving will occur around April 20, just six days away, so markets may not see any significant upward trajectory until around October if history rhymes.
BTC post-2020 halving prices. Source: 10x Research
Additionally, miners tend to stock up on BTC, “leading to a supply/demand imbalance and a subsequent rally in Bitcoin prices,” leading up to the halving, he said.
This has already occurred, with BTC prices surging 74% in 2024 to reach an all-time high of $73,734 on March 14 before correcting to below $63,000 in mid-April.
Thielen also thinks that altcoins, in particular, could bear the brunt of this situation. Many of them have been falling back heavily over the past week and many remain a long way away from their peaks in 2021.
“Even if there is a correlation between the halving and an altcoin rally, as some predict, historical evidence shows that the rally typically begins almost six months later.”
Related: Bitcoin halving will have to battle with ‘weak time of year’ — Coinbase
Thielen postulated that Marathon, the world’s largest Bitcoin miner, has built an inventory “that will likely be gradually sold after the halving to prevent a revenue cliff from occurring.”
Marathon pre-halving accumulation. Source: 10x Research
As Marathon (currently) produces 28–30 BTC per day, this could result in 133 days of additional supply hitting the market plus the BTC it produces, which would be 14–15 BTC per day after the halving, he said.
“Other miners will likely follow a similar strategy to liquidate part of their inventory gradually.”
The researcher concluded that if all miners have a similar strategy to sell inventory post-halving, “this could result in a maximum of $104 million of BTC selling per day — reversing the supply/demand imbalance that caused BTC to rally pre-halving.”
Last week, Marathon CEO Fred Thiel said that the firm’s break-even rate would be about $46,000 per BTC to remain profitable after the halving, predicting that there is unlikely to be any significant price movements in the six months that follow the event.
Magazine: Altseason on the horizon, SEC targets Uniswap, and BTC halving news: Hodler’s Digest, April 7–13 |
Only 6 altcoins in the top 50 have outperformed Bitcoin this year | Only six altcoins among the top 50 tokens by market capitalization have managed to outperform Bitcoin (BTC) so far this year, as Bitcoin dominance reached a three-year high over the weekend.
The memecoin Dogecoin (DOGE) stands as the best-performing altcoin in the top 50, having posted year-to-date gains of just over 77% — climbing from $0.09 on Jan. 1 to $0.15 at the time of publication, per TradingView data.
Included in the remaining outperformers are fellow memecoin Shiba Inu (SHIB), Bitcoin smart contract network Stacks (STX), Binance’s BNB (BNB), Ethereum layer-2 network Mantle (MNT) and GPU-sharing blockchain network Render (RNDR).
Bitcoin has grown from a price of $44,100 on Jan. 1 to $65,000 at the time of publication, a year-to-date gain of 54%.
Many have pegged the price rise to consistent institutional inflows into the 10 United States-traded spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) approved in January this year, generating more than $12 billion in cumulative net inflows, per Farside Investors data.
Notably, Bitcoin dominance pushed to a new year three-year high of 56.5% on April 13, as the cryptocurrency bounced back sharply from a marketwide sell-off sparked by escalating geopolitical tensions in the Middle East.
Bitcoin dominance reached its highest level on April 14. Source: TradingView
The Bitcoin dominance metric refers to the ratio of Bitcoin’s market cap compared to the cumulative market cap of all other cryptocurrencies.
While Bitcoin recovered ground in the following days, the majority of smaller altcoins failed to find their footing and tumbled significantly in price.
Alternative layer-1 network Aptos (APT) and decentralized crypto exchange Uniswap (UNI) led the decline among the top tokens 50 by market cap, posting losses of 35% and 31%, respectively, in the last seven days.
Related: Bitcoin’s ‘normal drop’ leads to $256M longs liquidated — Analysts
In an April 14 investment note viewed by Cointelegraph, IG Market analyst Tony Sycamore said Bitcoin appears to be on track for its fourth weekly decline, with the expectations of no further U.S. Federal Reserve rate weighing on crypto investing sentiment.
Despite the current negative-leaning sentiment toward risk assets, Sycamore predicted that Bitcoin would gradually climb to around $80,000 in the coming months — depending on whether or not it can hold above its key support mark.
“Providing Bitcoin remains above the [$60,000–$58,000] support zone, we expect the uptrend to resume towards $80,000,” Sycamore wrote.
Magazine: 5 dangers to beware when apeing into Solana memecoins |
John Deaton’s crypto backers help outraise Warren in Senate race | Pro-crypto lawyer John Deaton has outraised Senator Elizabeth Warren over the first quarter of this year for his bid to seize her Senate spot — bankrolling $1.36 million compared to Warren’s $1.09 million.
A who’s who of crypto backers make up Deaton’s top donors, including Ripple executives Chris Larsen and Brad Garlinghouse, Gemini founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, SkyBridge Capital founder Anthony Scaramucci, Cardano and Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson and Kraken co-founder Jesse Powell.
In total, Deaton’s contributors have given him nearly $360,700 for Q1 2024, plus the $1 million he loaned to his campaign, preliminary filings to the United States Federal Election Commission (FEC) show.
Deaton’s top Senate campaign donors between January and March 2024. Source: FEC
In comparison, Warren reported raising just under $1.09 million — all from donors alone.
Deaton rose to prominence defending XRP (XRP) holders’ interests in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s legal fight against Ripple.
He announced his bid for Warren’s Senate seat representing Massachusetts in February, running as a Republican against the 11-year Democratic Party incumbent.
Warren has long campaigned against crypto and introduced bills she claims are to “level the playing field” between crypto and traditional financial markets, which her detractors claim would drive innovation and investment out of the United States.
Related: Crypto users could ‘make a difference in a close election’ in the US — CoinFlip CEO
Among Deaton’s largest individual contributors were Ripple’s Larsen and Garlinghouse, Scaramucci and the Winklevoss twins.
Each made the maximum donation of $6,600 — the max of $3,300 each to the primary and general election bids.
Cardano’s Hoskinson, Kraken’s Powell and Casa wallet founder Jameson Lopp each threw in $3,300 to Deaton’s primary campaign challenge, as did Ripple legal chief Stuart Alderoty.
The U.S. Senate elections are set to be held on Nov. 5 with 34 of the 100 total seats up for contestation alongside all 435 seats in the House alongside the presidency — with it likely that former President Donald Trump will again face off with President Joe Biden.
Magazine: Pro-XRP lawyer John Deaton ‘10x more into BTC, 4x more into ETH: X Hall of Flame |
IRS investigation chief expects uptick in crypto tax evasion this year | The United States Internal Revenue Service says it’s gearing up for a significant rise in crypto tax crime cases going forward, as U.S. citizens hit the deadline to file their taxes on April 15.
Speaking to CNBC at the Chainalysis Links event in New York, IRS criminal investigation chief Guy Ficco said his agency was getting ready to deal with an uptick in cases of tax fraud and evasion that have come along with it.
“There’s going to be a lot more charged Title 26 crypto cases this year and moving forward.”
A Title 26 tax code refers to citizens who willfully evade paying taxes by lying or obfuscating their reporting documents.
Ficco said that crypto had previously been used mostly as a tool in financial crimes such as fraud, scams, and money laundering — however, he said his agency had recently observed a drastic uptick in “pure crypto tax crimes,” and expected even more in the near future.
Ficco said his agency is prepared for an increase in crypto tax crime. Source: CNBC
“This could be purely not reporting income generated from crypto sales, it could be hiding the true basis of crypto and that’s an area I anticipate an increase in,” Ficco said.
He mentioned that his agency has partnered with blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis as well as several other law enforcement agencies to better crack down on crypto crime.
“My IRS special agents are phenomenal at tracing and following money, but some of the tools and applications that are needed in the crypto world — that’s where the experts at Chainalysis come in,” he said.
Ficco also outlined some basic rules for those looking to file their taxes properly and not get stung by the IRS.
Related: Biden's mining tax is the least sensible part of his 2025 budget proposal
“The basic rule of thumb is that you have a basis in the asset. When you dispose of that asset [...] the point where you sold is your disposition,” said Ficco.
“If you acquire something at $10,000 and you sold it for $20,000 — you have a $10,000 gain and that’s what you need to pay tax on.”
Ficco said his agency had grown more aggressive when investigating and prosecuting U.S. citizens who had either failed to report their crypto taxes in the past as well as those who had actively obfuscated or lied on their tax return.
On Feb. 6, a federal grand jury indicted Texas man Frank Richard Ahlgren III with filing false tax returns avoiding reporting requirements on more than $4 million worth of gains made on Bitcoin (BTC).
Magazine: ‘SEAL 911’ team of white hats formed to fight crypto hacks in real time |
TradFi firms now prefer public blockchains: Ex-Grayscale exec | Traditional financial institutions are more keen on tokenizing assets on public blockchains than ever before, says a former Grayscale executive.
Speaking with Cointelegraph, Celisa Morin, who served as Vice President of Platform Distribution at Grayscale until mid-2022, said that a new BlackRock-led narrative among TradFi institutions could see more firms look to tokenize assets on public chains over private ones.
“I think we see a preference for private chains with JPMorgan’s Onyx. But I do think that this was the narrative a few years back. Now, I think it's very much the public blockchains.”
Morin is now the head of international law firm Reed Smith’s crypto department, explaining it would make sense for larger traditional financial institutions to follow the lead of BlackRock — which launched its $100 million tokenized ‘BUIDL’ fund on the Ethereum network on March 18.
The BUIDL fund now holds $288 million in assets per Dune Analytics data.
Top tokenized funds of government securities. Source: Dune Analytics
BlackRock’s move to launch a fund on Ethereum wasn’t without controversy, with the asset manager’s on-chain wallet quickly becoming the target of various spoofs from crypto enthusiasts.
Deposits to BlackRock’s public wallet included legally dubious transactions from the now OFAC-sanctioned mixer Tornado Cash, as well as a roster of various cryptocurrencies from real-world asset (RWA) tokenization projects and memecoins.
Despite the potential legal troubles that come with opting to tokenize assets on public blockchains — instead of using a more KYC and AML-friendly private network, Morin said many firms would likely take the lead from BlackRock.
“If BlackRock has made these choices, I don’t know why the rest of the crew would be held back.”
Morin also noted that Franklin Templeton had already made the “forward thinking” move to launch its tokenized money market fund on the payments-oriented Stellar Network in 2021. The fund integrated with the Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution Polygon in October last year.
Related: Over $1B in US Treasurys have now been tokenized on-chain
Franklin Templeton’s three-year-old Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund (FOBXX) now boasts a total of $360.2 million in U.S. Treasurys. In total, $1.08 billion in U.S. Treasurys have now been tokenized across 17 products.
Ethereum ETF in May unlikely
Morin was less enthusiastic about spot Ether (ETH) exchange-traded funds (ETFs), saying it's unlikely they would be approved in May. She agreed that the lack of communication between the United States Securities and Exchange Commission between prospective fund issuers was a bad sign.
Echoing the sentiments of Senior Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas — Morin said the chances of an approval by VanEck’s deadline on May 23rd grew slimmer with each day the SEC refrained from engaging in public comment.
Magazine: Bitcoin ETFs make Coinbase a ‘honeypot’ for hackers and governments — Trezor CEO |
Crypto sleuth warns of scammers behind DeFi protocol | Pseudonymous blockchain investigator ZachXBT issued a warning about a group of scammers attempting to entrap more victims in a new fraud using millions of stolen funds.
In a thread on X, ZachXBT disclosed the findings of an investigation over Leaper Finance, a lending protocol based on Blast. According to the analysis, the group is behind several rug pulls, including those that hit users of Magnate ($6.5 million), Kokomo ($4 million), Solfire ($4.8 million) and Lendora.
“In the past they let the TVL grow to 7 figs before stealing all of users funds deposited to the protocol and falsify KYC documents + use low tier audit firms. They now have launched scams on Base, Solana, Scroll, Optimism, Arbitrum, Ethereum, Avalanche, etc,” noted ZachXBT.
The group is also believed to be responsible for scams on Hash DAO, Glori Finance and ZebraDAO. Losses attributed to the group are estimated at over $20 million.
A rug pull takes place when the developers of a blockchain-based protocol suddenly withdraw all of their funds from a liquidity pool or project wallet, essentially draining the funds invested by others. This usually happens without any warning, leaving investors with worthless tokens or assets.
As part of the latest scam endeavor, the group reportedly funded a Leaper Finance address on the Blast network with nearly $1 million laundered from previous scams, adding further liquidity to lure victims.
Shortly after Leaper Finance’s connection to the scams was revealed, the group replied to ZachXBT, harassing the investigator while announcing a “token launch.”
“Nice work! My comrades here at Lazarus fear you yet admire you!” they said in reference to the North Korean hacker group Lazarus. Leaper Finance and Glori Finance accounts on X have been deactivated, and the projects’ websites have also gone dark.
According to a Feb. 29 research report by blockchain security firm Immunefi, over $200 million worth of cryptocurrency was lost to hacks and rug pulls within the first two months of 2024 across 32 individual incidents.
Magazine: 5 dangers to beware when apeing into Solana memecoins |
VC Roundup: Capital flows and alternative funding models fuel crypto startups | Venture capitalists are back in crypto, bringing with them liquidity for alternative funding methods for startups, such as grants and node sales.
Base-native lending platform Seamless, for instance, has announced a co-sponsored initiative with layer-3 Degen Chain and semi-fungible token protocol Pandora that will distribute nearly $600,000 in grants to creators and developers building on Base.
While Degen focuses on developers interested in building within Farcaster and Degen Chain, Pandora seeks creators interested in ERC-404 technology for their collections and memecoins.
“Members of the various communities will be evaluating applications, so it’s important that there’s a clear vision of how the grants will help uplift the relevant ecosystems. Useful and innovative ideas are encouraged,” told Cointelegraph Ras, a pseudonymous member of the Seamless Community Grants Program (SCGP).
New grant submissions are available through the Community Governance forum. Applicants must complete a form detailing their project and specific needs.
Another grant round is just around the corner, this time from the SingularityNET ecosystem. The Deep Funding Round 4, which will provide over $1 million in capital for decentralized artificial intelligence initiatives, is expected to be unveiled in early May.
While grants can be a valuable resource for new projects and developers, a more welcoming funding environment is also emerging for crypto startups. Investment in crypto firms rose by 38% during the first quarter of 2024, and the number of projects receiving funding grew by 49% — the highest since the fourth quarter of 2021.
In March alone, over $1.1 billion was invested across 180 crypto-related projects, a 52.5% month-on-month increase, with funds primarily directed toward infrastructure and decentralized finance projects.
Among April’s highlights to date, Paradigm led a $225 million round on layer-1 protocol Monad Labs, while Auradine, a crypto mining hardware provider, completed a Series B funding worth $80 million.
In this edition of Cointelegraph’s VC Roundup, we feature startups that raised capital during the first weeks of April.
AI-blockchain platform Sapien raises $5M in seed round
The artificial intelligence data labeling startup Sapien has secured a $5M seed investment from Primitive Ventures, Animoca, Ravikant Capital, and Yield Guild Games. Founded in 2023 by Trevor Koverko, previously of Polymath, Sapien aims to solve an AI bottleneck: data labeling. The company uses blockchain technology to implement gamification in data labeling and rewards for labelers to produce higher-quality work. The global data labeling market is currently estimated at around $3 billion, primarily dominated by labeling farms in developing countries. “This funding will allow us to expand our team, expand our frontend labeling infrastructure, and provide better quality data,” said Koverko in a statement.
Ribbit Capital leads $10.6M funding round for Alpen Labs’s Bitcoin-based economy
Alpen Labs, a Bitcoin layer-2 developer, has successfully raised $10.6 million to enhance Bitcoin’s blockchain scalability using zero-knowledge proofs. Emerging from stealth mode, Alpen Labs aims to introduce smart contract functionality to Bitcoin through its rollup infrastructure. The funding round, led by Ribbit Capital, also saw participation from Castle Island Ventures, Robot Ventures, and Axiom Capital. The startup, which began its journey nearly two years ago, focuses on creating a programmable and scalable layer for Bitcoin, supporting various on-chain financial applications, including payments, lending, and stablecoins. The team has veterans from Blockstream Research, Nethermind, Aleo, and Palantir, building an ecosystem that will enable applications to settle transactions via Bitcoin.
Node sales generated $8M for Ethereum layer-2 HYCHAIN
Layer-2 decentralized network for gaming HYCHAIN has raised 2,098 Ether (ETH), worth over $8 million, within 48 hours through a node sale. The protocol employs a business model that allows community members to earn rewards by operating software nodes. Participants receive 25% of transaction fees indefinitely for contributing to network security. According to the platform, 16,876 node keys were created by 3,357 unique holders. The HYCHAIN mainnet launched on March 9, providing several features and bridges for connectivity with Ethereum and Polygon networks.
Web3Firewall secures $2.5M in pre-seed funding
Web3Firewall completed a $2.5 million pre-seed funding round led by Laser Digital — Nomura’s digital asset subsidiary, gumi Cryptos Capital, and SPEILLLP, a Susquehanna International Group member. Founded in 2023 by Dr. Samer Fayssal, former chief information security officer at BitGo, the company offers an integrated risk and compliance platform designed for blockchain and digital asset companies, specifically targeting firms working in decentralized finance (DeFi), nonfungible tokens (NFTs), and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). According to the startup, the platform will go live in the second quarter of this year, featuring real-time threat detection, prevention, and response powered by AI and machine learning.
Magazine: Creating ‘good’ AGI that won’t kill us all — Crypto’s Artificial Superintelligence Alliance |
Nigeria’s Binance crackdown threatens Web3 industry | Nigeria is feeling the consequences of actions against Binance executives, with investors withdrawing from deals and partnerships, particularly in the web3 sector. They mention Nigeria’s perceived lack of safety for business and government hostility, citing the Binance case as evidence, according to Lucky Uwakwe, the chairman of Nigeria's Blockchain Industry Coordinating Committee (BICCoN).
In an interview with Cointelegraph, Uwakwe, head of Nigeria’s intercommunity working group involving Blockchain Nigeria User Group (BNUG), Cryptography Development Initiative of Nigeria (CDIN), and Stakeholders in Blockchain Technology Association of Nigeria (SiBAN), expressed investors’ concerns.
According to Uwakwe, investors worry about potential repercussions similar to Binance’s fate when investing in local Web3 companies. He pointed out that already invested parties are gradually divesting.
Binance executives Tigran Gambaryan and Nadeem Anjarwalla came to Nigeria in February following claims that the exchange manipulated the country’s fiat currency, the naira. The executives were detained and slammed with five counts bordering on money laundering after a meeting with the Nigerian government over Binance’s regulatory woes.
Uwakwe stated that the government’s approach to the Binance issue is adversely impacting the entire nation. By pursuing fines against Binance, the government is essentially undermining the entire industry, sacrificing potential growth for short-term measures.
When asked about the possibility of the current trial resulting in an acquittal for the Binance executives, Uwakwe expressed skepticism. He believes the executives face slim chances of acquittal unless certain conditions are met internally by the company, according to the government’s perspective. He said,
“The chances are probably 90-10, 90 for the government,10 for the Binance executives in question…”
Uwakwe emphasized that even in the event of the Binance executive’s acquittal by the judge, there’s a strong possibility that the Nigerian government may disregard the court ruling. This pattern has been observed before, especially in cases perceived to threaten the country’s stability.
Related: Binance executive tracked to Kenya, extradition underway
Uwakwe addressed a potential question from the international community about why the Nigerian crypto community isn’t vigorously advocating for the release of the Binance executives. He suggested that if Binance had engaged relevant associations earlier, they would have garnered support from pressure groups and lobbying efforts.
The Nigerian government has often been at odds with cryptocurrency exchanges. Binance ceased operations using the naira on March 8 after Nigerian government criticism of crypto exchanges singled it out in February.
In August 2022, Nigeria was named the most crypto-obsessed country in the world by the number of Google searches for “cryptocurrency” or “buy crypto.”
Magazine: Bitcoin hits new highs, SEC delays options decision, and stablecoin bill looms: Hodler’s Digest, March 3–9 |
Blockchain fraud group shifts $1M to Blast for new schemes | A group with a history of blockchain fraud on platforms like Magnate, Kokomo, and Lendora is launching new schemes on Blast. They have recently moved around $1 million in laundered funds to finance their fraudulent activities.
According to on-chain detective ZachXBT, the funds were initially moved from an Ethereum address linked to previous scams to another address on the Polygon network. Later, the assets were converted into Wrapped ETH (wETH) and moved across multiple blockchain networks via bridging services like Orbiter and Bungee.
Eventually, they were used on the Blast platform to purchase LEAP tokens, increasing liquidity in what appears to be another setup for unsuspecting victims. At the same time, ZachXBT suggests that the same individuals are probably responsible for another ongoing project called ZebraLending on the Base platform, boasting a current total value locked (TVL) of around $311K.
This group has a history of launching numerous projects that attract significant TVL but later abscond with the funds. Their tactics often involve fabricating Know Your Customer (KYC) documents and collaborating with less reputable auditing firms to give an appearance of legitimacy.
This group has targeted a range of platforms, including Base, Solana, Scroll, Optimism, Arbitrum, Ethereum, and Avalanche, showcasing their operational flexibility and extensive presence in the blockchain sphere.
Related: Base hits $4B TVL as monthly txs outstrip Ethereum and Arbitrum
The repeated occurrence of these ripoffs creates the need for vigilance within the blockchain neighborhood. Investors are encouraged to exercise increased caution, specifically with new initiatives on platforms like Blast involving significant fund transfers.
Verifying project qualifications, examining audit experiences, and comprehending the channels of fund transactions are vital steps people can take to safeguard their investments. In addition, local community customers are inspired to share data and guide each other in determining suspicious actions to avert further victimization.
A nonfungible token (NFT) game called Munchables, built on Blast, suffered a $ 62 million exploit on March 26. Munchables announced it had been compromised and said it was tracking the exploiter’s movements and “attempting to stop the transactions.”
Around $400 million in Ether (ETH) was taken out of the Ethereum layer-2 network Blast after the launch of its mainnet on Feb. 29, unlocking nearly $2.3 billion in staked crypto previously locked up on the network. Blast crossed $2.1 billion in total value locked (TVL) just days ahead of its newly announced mainnet launch — slated for the end of this month.
Magazine: NFT Collector, DCinvestor: Is this the best NFT collection in the world? |
Binance executive tracked to Kenya, extradition underway | The Nigerian Government has traced Binance executive Nadeem Arjarwalla to Kenya following his escape from custody and is currently taking steps to extradite him back to Nigeria.
According to a report from local media outlet Punch, sources from within the office of the Nigerian presidency disclosed that Arjarwalla went into hiding once he arrived in Kenya.
The Nigerian government is collaborating with Interpol and Kenyan police to bring Arjarwalla back to Nigeria to face charges leveled against him.
Anjarwalla arrived in Nigeria in February following claims that the exchange manipulated the country’s fiat currency, the Nigerian naira. Arjarwalla was detained alongside another Binance executive after a meeting with the Nigerian government.
The county’s Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC) heads up the investigation and slammed the exchange and its two executives with five counts bordering on money laundering. However, Anjarwalla reportedly escaped custody on March 22 and was able to board a flight out of the Nigerian capital, Abuja.
Anjarwalla reportedly flew out of Abuja on a Middle East airline. However, it is unclear how he managed to board the international flight, as his United Kingdom passport, with which he entered Nigeria, remains in the custody of the Nigerian authorities.
Related: Nigeria’s government is blaming Binance for its own mismanagement
According to an immigration official, the Binance executive fled Nigeria on a Kenyan passport, and authorities are now trying to determine how Anjarwalla acquired the passport, as he had no other travel documents while in custody.
While Arjarwalla remains out of the country, the other Binance executive, Tigran Gambaryan, pleaded not guilty to the charges, with his wife and others calling for his release after several weeks in detention. Gambaryan’s wife has launched a petition to bring him back to the United States, which had 3,373 signatures at the time of publication. However, Gambaryan’s case has been adjourned until April 19.
On March 5, Binance announced that it intended to cease all naira transactions, effectively exiting the market. Binance also mentioned that Binance’s peer-to-peer platform delisted all naira trading pairs in late February.
On Feb. 27, the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria argued that crypto exchanges in Nigeria were suspected of handling illicit transactions, also pointing to “suspicious flows” of funds at Binance.
Magazine: SBF gets 25 years in prison, Fidelity eyes ETH staking, and Coinbase’s court loss: Hodler’s Digest, March 24-30 |
Solana open interest sheds nearly $440M as price slumps 11% | Solana open interest (OI) and its price have declined in the past 24 hours, mirroring a broader decline across the cryptocurrency market. However, traders are remaining optimistic, viewing it as a “good opportunity.”
On April 14, OI in Solana’s (SOL) stood at $1.62 billion, approximately 21% down from the previous day, according to CoinGlass data. OI measures the total value of all outstanding or unsettled Solana futures contracts across exchanges.
At the time of publication, Solana’s price is $136.54, down 11% over the past 24 hours, per CoinMarketCap data.
Solana futures open interest reached its peak for the year at the beginning of this month. Source: CoinGlass
The sudden drop in Solana’s price erased $36.55 million worth of traders’ long positions, potentially disappointing those anticipating a price spike leading up to the Bitcoin halving on April 20.
The remaining top 10 cryptocurrencies have seen a comparable decline, with XRP (XRP) experiencing the most significant drop of 12.12% over the past 24 hours. Dogecoin (DOGE) followed closely with a 10.86% decrease, while Cardano’s (ADA) trailed slightly behind at 10.20%.
It’s uncertain how long this downturn will last, yet traders maintain a fairly positive outlook for the overall altcoin market.
The marketwide price decline prompted prominent trader GCR Classic to break their silence on X after over a year, advising his 273,500 followers on April 14 that the current moment presents a “good opportunity to scale into high conviction tokens.”
Meanwhile, in an April 13 X post, crypto entrepreneur Kyle Chasse told his followers that they will “probably see altcoins up like 20-30% by Monday.”
Although on-chain analysis firm Glassnode suggests that might not be the case. It highlighted that Bitcoin drawdowns have been much worse in previous “euphoria phases,” which many traders use as an indicator for the rest of the market.
In an April 12 post on X, it explained that during previous euphoria phases, price retracements have often exceeded 25%. However, in the current market, there have only been two recent drawdowns of around 10% since surpassing all-time highs on March 5.
Related: Solana memecoin frenzy raises questions about crypto utility, reputation
This comes amid multiple network issues with Solana in recent times.
On April 9, Cointelegraph reported that intermittent congestion on the Solana blockchain forced several crypto projects to postpone their launches. Solana developers say they are working on a fix by April 15.
Users of the Solana blockchain reported increasing issues around network congestion and transaction errors over several weeks. New projects, especially those planning token launches, decided to hold off until the technical difficulties were resolved.
Magazine: Altseason on the horizon, SEC targets Uniswap, and BTC halving news: Hodler’s Digest, April 7-13
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision. |
Bitcoin’s ‘normal drop’ leads to $256M longs liquidated — Analysts | Bitcoin’s price decline of over 7% in the last 24 hours has resulted in $256 million in losses for traders with long positions.
However, analysts believe it’s nothing out of the ordinary despite escalating geopolitical tensions in the Middle East.
“So far, this is a normal drop. In fact, we’ve had several 20-22% drops this cycle,” Benjamin Cowan stated in an April 13 post on X.
“Chaos is good for Bitcoin,” MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor declared in an April 13 post on X.
Meanwhile, pseudonymous crypto trader Rekt Capital believes the price of Bitcoin (BTC) will resume its “uptrend,” although not before experiencing short-term pain first:
“Bitcoin will retrace deep enough to convince you that the Bull Market is over,” Rekt explained.
On April 13, Bitcoin’s price plummeted right down to $60,919, before finding support at $62,060.
At the time of publication, its current price is $63,858, according to CoinMarketCap data.
Bitcoin’s price has gone right down to $60,919 in the past 24 hours. Source: CoinMarketCap
The sudden price plunge led to a total of $319.15 million in liquidations from leveraged positions in Bitcoin over the past 24 hours.
According to CoinGlass data, this included $256.58 million from long positions and $62.58 million from short positions.
Traders seem to be bracing for further downside. If Bitcoin’s price were to revert to its price level of $67,000 just 24 hours ago, short positions totaling $1.05 billion would face liquidation.
A total of $319.15 million was liquidated in Bitcoin positions over the past 24 hours. Source: CoinGlass
Although the entire cryptocurrency market experienced widespread pain as $945.9 million was liquidated from 253,554 traders over the last 24 hours.
The Crypto Fear and Greed Index — a tool that tracks crypto market sentiment — currently stands at a greed level of 72, a slight decrease from last week’s extreme greed score of 78.
Related: Why XRP price might jump 70% vs. BTC after the Bitcoin halving
The global crypto market cap has also taken an 8% hit, dropping down to $2.23 trillion.
Meanwhile, Cointelegraph recently reported that the growth in demand from Bitcoin whales has never been stronger.
Demand from “permanent holders” has exceeded the market supply of new Bitcoin for the first time, according to data shared by crypto analytic firm CryptoQuant.
This indicates that the amount of new Bitcoin produced by mining is insufficient to meet crypto investors’ demand, and the scarcity will only grow further after the halving of the Bitcoin.
Magazine: 1 in 6 new Base meme coins are scams, 91% have vulnerabilities |
Bitcoin nosedives as political tensions escalate in the Middle East | Bitcoin price plummeted over 8.4% on April 13 after Iran launched an attack on Israel, escalating geopolitical conflicts in the Middle East.
The price of Bitcoin (BTC) dropped from around $67,000 to $61,625, wiping out over $130 million in market capitalization within minutes following news of the attack.
The sell-off is also affecting other cryptocurrencies. At the time of writing, Ether (ETH) was down 9.81% to $2,927, while Solana’s (SOL) sank 15.96% to $129. According to CoinMarketCap data, the global crypto market capitalization declined 8.19% to $2.23 trillion.
Bitcoin price on April 13. Source: TradingView
According to Bloomberg, Iran launched drones toward Israel on Saturday, April 13. The action is retaliation for an attack conducted by Israel days before, which targeted a diplomatic compound in Damascus, Syria, killing seven Iranians, including two generals.
Aside from the airstrikes, Iranian authorities have reportedly seized a cargo ship owned by a billionaire Israeli.
On April 12, United States President Joe Biden warned that Iran would launch attacks “sooner than later,” highlighting that the U.S. would help defend Israel:
“We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel, we will help defend Israel, and Iran will not succeed.”
The conflict between Iran and Israel significantly escalates tensions in the region, something the U.S. has been reportedly trying to prevent since the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas, which has led to broader ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas.
U.S. officials have been urging Israel not to escalate tensions in their response to Iran, a government source told CNN. The officials also expressed frustration with the lack of prior information Israel provided regarding its airstrike in Damascus. Israel only informed a U.S. official when its planes were already en route to Syria, sources said.
“We were not aware that Israel was going to carry out this airstrike in advance,” the official stated. “Minutes before it happened and when Israeli planes were already in the air, Israel reached out to a U.S. official to say they were in the process of conducting a strike in Syria. It did not include any details on who they were targeting or where it would be conducted, and the strike was already underway before word could be passed through the U.S. government.” |
SEC breaks from past policy guidelines in Uniswap crackdown | The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is contradicting years of its own policy guidelines with its latest action against decentralized crypto exchange Uniswap, according to Cinneamhain Ventures’ Adam Cochran.
In a legal analysis on X, Cochran referred to several previous decisions by the U.S. regulator over the definition of an exchange and what it means for Uniswap’s potential legal battle.
The SEC has previously issued “No-Action Letters” in 1986, 1991 and 1997 for entities seeking guidance on routing and matching trades electronically. According to Cochran, the entities were “looking to establish their first system for routing and matching trades electronically. They were concerned that would make them an “exchange.”
“But the SEC concluded that because the execution was on a separate system that matching, routing, communicating and ordering as a “computer service system” did not meet the holistic definition of “an exchange.”
Another precedent contradicting the SEC relates to classifying front ends as an exchange. The regulator’s guidance in letters from 1989 and 1990 was that an interface that displays and communicates with an exchange is not in itself an exchange.
“The SEC guidance found that because these interfaces, even though they profited from bringing together buyers and sellers to exchange explicit securities the fact that the settlement and payment happened elsewhere meant these interfaces were not exchanges,” explained the venture capitalist.
Cochran also noted that in 1998, on the SEC No-Act. LEXIS 18, the Commission declared the matter settled and would no longer respond to No-Action Letter requests.
In addition, connecting buyers and sellers does not constitute an exchange. The SEC provided this guidance to companies in 1979, 1996 and 1999, according to Cochran’s analysis.
“The exchange needed to involve the legal transfer of the assets and/or finances. So even though a buyer on Uniswap may commit to a purchase, by signing a transaction with their private key the Uniswap Labs frontend, isn’t what’s settling it.”
Another relevant point in the analysis concerns asset listing. In 1998, the commission found that having an electronic system for common stocks that are not listed on an existing exchange does not constitute an exchange, regardless of whether fees are charged.
“In this case, the commission found that once again, so long as their informational interface was no clearing and settling these transactions, then just because it was the primary listing location of an asset, it was not somehow more of an exchange.”
SEC’s Wells notice
Uniswap enables automated token exchanges on the Ethereum blockchain, allowing users to swap multiple crypto tokens without using traditional intermediaries.
Uniswap Labs, Uniswap’s main developer, has been under regulatory scrutiny since 2021. On April 10, however, the platform was served a Wells notice — a formal notification that the regulator’s staff intends to recommend enforcement action.
Uniswap Labs previously claimed it was only responsible for developing the app’s front-end portal. According to the team, the front end is separate from the Uniswap protocol, which is autonomous code released for public use.
Cochran’s analysis backs up these claims. According to him, the front end and the smart contract are separate elements in a crypto trade.
“In fact, we know these elements are distinct, because you can execute trades on the smart contract through other interfaces (like Etherscan or swap aggregators), or even directly through a node.”
Magazine: Bitcoin ETFs make Coinbase a ‘honeypot’ for hackers and governments — Trezor CEO |
GBTC sees $166M outflows despite CEO’s ‘equilibrium’ remark | The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) continues to experience significant outflows, with over $166 million and more than 2,500 Bitcoin withdrawn from the fund’s holdings on Friday, April 12.
According to Farside Investors data, outflows from GBTC have now exceeded $16.2 billion since its conversion to a spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF) in January. Throughout April, the daily outflows from GBTC have fluctuated between $75 million and $300 million.
Inflows into other spot Bitcoin ETFs have also slowed, indicating declining investor engagement. GBTC recorded significant outflows of $767 million this week, contributing to the net negative flows from spot Bitcoin ETFs.
BlackRock has maintained strong support, with assets under management for its iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF exceeding $15 billion, narrowing the gap to GBTC.
Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein hinted on April 10 that outflows from the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust might be stabilizing, suggesting optimism among traders and investors, but outflows have continued.
One potential reason behind the massive GBTC outflows is its comparatively high management fee of 1.5%, which is significantly higher than the 0.30% average fee charged by its competitors.
Related: Bitcoin price takes liquidity near $69K as gold surge rattles markets
Sonnenshein noted that markets often exhibit high excitement when commodity or thematic exposure products first emerge. However, these products mature as time passes, leading to market consolidation as investors focus on a few offerings.
According to Farside data, GBTC saw outflows of $17.5 million on April 10, a significant decrease from the $154.9 million outflows recorded on April 9. The previous low was on Feb. 26 when GBTC outflowed $22.4 million. The daily GBTC outflow average since January is $257.8 million.
GBTC launched in 2015 and converted to an ETF in January, alongside the launch of nine other spot Bitcoin ETFs after Grayscale won a lawsuit against the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, forcing it to review a GBTC conversion bid it previously denied.
Bankrupt crypto lending firm Genesis recently offloaded approximately 36 million GBTC shares to acquire 32,041 Bitcoin.
Magazine: Bitcoin ETFs make Coinbase a ‘honeypot’ for hackers and governments — Trezor CEO |
Hollywood union deal with music giants guards against AI use | Entertainment industry workers have struck a preliminary agreement with top record labels like Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment to secure higher minimum wages and safeguards against using artificial intelligence (AI).
According to a statement on the website of the Hollywood actors’ union — the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) — the “Sound Recordings Agreement” covers the period from 2021 to 2026 and has received unanimous approval from SAG-AFTRA’s executive committee, representing about 160,000 actors and media personnel.
As the music industry faces the challenge of songs produced by generative AI, which allows internet users to easily replicate the voices of artists — frequently without the artists’ permission — the proposed agreement with record labels mandates consent and compensation before releasing songs featuring digital replicas of artists’ voices.
According to SAG-AFTRA, the terms “artist,” “singer” and “royalty artist” exclusively denote humans under this accord. The agreement also encompasses enhancements in health and retirement benefits, along with an expansion in the portion of streaming revenue subject to contributions.
A final vote for ratification by members is anticipated in the coming weeks.
The agreement comes as AI technology has become a significant concern in the entertainment sector, dominating discussions between SAG-AFTRA and major studios in 2023. Following months of strikes, negotiations concluded in November with a contract agreement.
Related: Amazon denies using AI voice in Road House remake
SAG-AFTRA national executive director and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland believes that Music’s essence should perpetually stem from authentic human expression and lived experiences:
“This agreement ensures that our members are protected. While technology can enhance the creative process, the essence of music must always be rooted in genuine human expression and experience.”
In January, SAG-AFTRA reached another agreement with Replica Studios — an AI voice technology company — concerning the use of AI voices in video games. The agreement will provide performers with the right to consent and negotiate with the AI company, as well as the power to opt out of “continued use” of their voices in “new projects.”
AI holds immense potential in film, especially in virtual filmmaking. It offers lifelike sets and cost efficiency. With its greater creative flexibility and lower production costs, this technology has the potential to completely transform the filmmaking process. Despite its transformative power, the AI protection deal aims to ensure fair credit for industry contributors.
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Coinbase requests interlocutory appeal over SEC’s ‘controlling question’ | Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has requested a United States court to scrutinize a specific “controlling question” raised by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in its ongoing lawsuit against the exchange.
“The question presented here is unencumbered by factual disputes and therefore ripe for immediate review,” Coinbase argued in an April 12 filing with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Coinbase chief legal officer Paul Grewal explained in an April 12 post on X that the “controlling question” revolves around whether an investment contract requires “something contractual."
“Whether an “investment contract” can exist absent any post-sale obligation is a pure, controlling question of law,” the exchange claims in the court filing.
Grewal elaborated that while Coinbase holds the view that an investment contract requires contractual obligations after the sale, the SEC argues that it doesn't.
Source: Paul Grewal
This comes after U.S. District Judge Katherine Failla denied Coinbase’s motion to dismiss the SEC’s case against the exchange, alleging that it operates as an unregistered exchange, broker and clearing agency.
However, if the court decides to approve the interlocutory appeal, it could potentially significantly influence the case, which has been ongoing since June 2023.
This is because the SEC asserted that Coinbase crypto transactions were investment contracts “despite an absence of any alleged contractual undertakings,” according to Coinbase.
“Reversal on the question presented would dispose of the SEC’s principal claims, which account for the bulk of the complaint’s factual allegations.”
It further claims that a question of law is controlling if its resolution could “significantly affect the conduct of the action.”
Related: Coinbase cleared in lawsuit over crypto transactions
Grewal highlighted the early filing of Coinbase’s appeal request, submitted just 17 days after the motion to dismiss was denied.
However, he justified the action due to its significance for the wider crypto industry, with the aim of resolving the dispute over crypto transactions as soon as possible.
“We’re asking to take this up on appeal earlier than normal because it's critical to our industry. The SEC’s action against us and other digital asset companies goes way beyond the legal authority granted by Congress and puts an unjust cloud over US digital asset innovation.”
This comes after Coinbase achieved a major victory in a civil lawsuit against plaintiffs claiming that the exchange offered and sold them unregistered securities.
On April 6, Cointelegraph reported that the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled in favor of Coinbase, confirming that secondary sales of cryptocurrencies on its platform do not violate the Securities Exchange Act.
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Winklevoss twins become co-owners of Bitcoin soccer club, inject $4.5M of BTC | Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss have joined as co-owners of Bitcoin podcaster Peter McCormack’s Real Bedford Football Club (RBFC) after investing $4.5 million worth of Bitcoin (BTC) to support the club’s plans.
The Winklevoss twins executed the investment and acquisition through their investment firm, Winklevoss Capital, according to a recent statement.
The funding will be used to establish a Bitcoin treasury for the club, with McCormack telling Cointelegraph the treasury aims to safeguard the club “against long-term fiat debasement.”
“The investment helps with the infrastructure. We need to grow this with our ambitions,” McCormack explained.
Additionally, the funds will be allocated toward developing a new training center and ongoing support for girls’ and youth football.
In 2021, McCormack acquired RBFC, which is based in his United Kingdom hometown of Bedford, with a population of just under 200,000.
He holds ambitions for RBFC — which accepts Bitcoin for game day tickets, merchandise, sponsorships and beverages — to compete in the English Premier League alongside well-known U.K. clubs like Manchester United and Chelsea.
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“We are a long way from the Premier League. As exciting as that is our ambition, I work on one league at a time,” McCormack stated.
The Winklevoss twins share McCormack’s vision of bringing RBFC to the top league in the United Kingdom.
“We’re not just investing in a football club, we’re investing in a dream to bring Premier League football to Bedford,” Cameron Winklevoss said.
“We share in Peter’s deep conviction in Bitcoin and its ability to supercharge RBFC’s quest to make it into the Premier League,” Tyler Winklevoss added.
This comes after it was recently reported that the Winklevoss twins donated $4.9 million to the crypto-focused Fairshake super political action committee to support crypto-friendly candidates in the upcoming United States elections.
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China is about to start bidding' — Will Hong Kong Bitcoin ETFs spark the halving rally? | The potential approval of the first batch of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in Hong Kong could be a big catalyst for Bitcoin’s (BTC) halving rally, commentators say.
Hong Kong could approve 4 Bitcoin ETFs before halving
Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) could approve the first batch of spot Bitcoin ETFs by April 15, days before the Bitcoin halving is set to cut the supply issuance rate of BTC.
The Hong Kong regulator has reportedly accelerated the approval process for four spot Bitcoin ETFs, according to local news media reports. The potential approval could attract more buying demand for Bitcoin, by offering BTC exposure to both retail and institutional investors in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong regulators could approve both Bitcoin and Ether ETFs on April 15, according to crypto entrepreneur and investor Lark Davis, who wrote in an April 12 X post:
“Hong Kong likely to approve BOTH Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs as soon as Monday! China is about to start bidding the same week the Bitcoin halving is happening!”
It will take approximately two weeks to finalize ETF listing procedures on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, after the securities regulator greenlights the initial set of spot Bitcoin ETFs.
Related: How high can Bitcoin go? New BTC price prediction sees cycle top at $180K
Can ETFs spark Bitcoin’s post-halving bull run?
The approval of the first spot Bitcoin ETFs in Hong Kong could catalyze Bitcoin’s post-halving rally, according to Herbert Sim, chief operating officer of crypto exchange Websea, who told Cointelegraph:
“Halving is not the only thing to look out for in the price action. But rather the upcoming Bitcoin ETF approval in Hong Kong, which also happens next week. The big banks of China will all have to start buying Bitcoin themselves too.”
Sim noted that Hong Kong-based ETFs will only add to the institutional demand and inflows created by large U.S. ETF issuers such as BlackRock, which he expects to continue. He added:
“And with this supply cut from the Bitcoin Halving, prices will definitely soar.”
Large investors, or so-called mega whales, that are holding at least 10,000 BTC are accumulating Bitcoin at the current price level, in anticipation of next week’s approval, according to popular crypto commentator Bitcoin Munger’s April 12 X post:
“The only cohort that is net-accumulating Bitcoin is the largest whales (>10k). Just ahead of Hong Kong ETF approvals and the halving. A positive contrarian signal if I had to guess.”
Trend Accumulation Score by Cohort. Source: Bitcoin Munger
ETF inflows have been a significant part of Bitcoin’s price rally. By Feb. 15, Bitcoin ETFs accounted for about 75% of new investment in the world’s largest cryptocurrency as it surpassed the $50,000 mark, according to CryptoQuant research.
Bitcoin’s price action has been closely correlated with the net Bitcoin ETF inflows, according to Thomas Fahrer, the co-founder of Apollo, who wrote in an April 12 X post, referencing the below chart:
“I would have thought it was extremely obvious that ETF flows are driving Bitcoin [price]…”
Net Bitcoin Flows, Year-To-Date Chart. Source: Thomas Fahrer
Related: Hong Kong’s in-kind ETF creation could be a significant market opportunity: Analysts
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision. |
VeChain announces tokenized gloves in partnership with UFC — community responds | According to an April 12 blog post from VeChain, gloves worn by UFC fighters will soon be tokenized and their identities tracked on the VeChainThor network.
The gloves will contain VeChain near-field communication (NFC) chips that record fight data, proving the authenticity of each pair, the post stated. After the fight, the athletes will “donate and give away" their gloves, making them into collectors’ items. The chips inside each pair will allow a buyer to check the authenticity of the item via a VeChainThor network smart contract. Fighters will begin wearing the gloves at UFC 300, which is scheduled for April 13.
VeChain UFC tokenized gloves. Source: VeChain.
In its post, VeChain claimed that the system will help prevent fraud in the secondary market, which is a common problem for buyers who seek to own the gloves worn during particular fights. The new items use aspects of VeChain’s ToolChain system, a supply-chain management system that some enterprises use to track items and make sure they make it to the intended recipient.
VeChain announced that an initial set of 12 exclusive gloves will be given to “A-list” celebrities, including Joe Rogan. UFC CEO Dana White will also be making a live presentation to announce the partnership.
On VeChain’s Reddit board, holders of the VeChainThor (VTHO) token had mixed reactions to the news. Some were excited about the new use case for the network. “[W]e're going to be minting rwa [real world asset] gloves as [non-fungible tokens] every ufc event!” said pez86. Another user, VETterDaysAhead, also saw the announcement as positive, stating, “Gloves and merchandise tracking sound great. Hoping they do QR code scanning on TV for events that burns VTHO as well." 🔥🔥🔥”
Related: What is VeChain, and how does it work?
But not everyone was impressed. Some users thought the new gloves would not burn enough VTHO from transaction fees to have any appreciable effect on the price. “Hey man, that's like a whole 10 VTHO burned per year. UFC gonna topple Walmart China in usage,” stated tkim91321 in a sarcastic reply to another user who had complained about the overhyped announcement.
In another post, tkim91321 elaborated on their position, asking rhetorically, “And this would burn how many VTHO per month?” and then answering, “Nothing materially significant.”
According to Coinmarketcap data, VeThor’s market cap was over $283 million as of April 12, making it one of the top 300 cryptocurrencies in the world. In May 2022, the network’s foundation had $1.2 billion in its treasury. In June of that year, the VeChain Foundation began its relationship with UFC, entering into a $100 million sponsorship deal with the mixed martial arts promotion. |
Crypto Biz: Tokenization spikes, SEC delays Bitcoin ETF options, and more | United States Treasurys tokenized on public blockchains surpassed $1 billion as traditional financial firms continued to load securities on-chain amid a prolonged period of elevated interest rates.
Data compiled by 21.co and Dune Analytics shows that tokenized government securities reached the $1 billion mark in assets on March 28, distributed across 17 products. A majority of the assets are based on the Ethereum, Polygon and Stellar networks.
“The growth in tokenized treasuries on public blockchains like Stellar is a result of more asset issuers recognizing blockchain technology makes good business sense,” Paul Wong, director of product, CBDCs and institutions at the Stellar Foundation, told Cointelegraph.
Investment firm Franklin Templeton is among the companies tokenizing assets, with over $360.1 million in assets and 33.6% of the market share through its Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund. The fund, launched in 2021, is based on the Polygon and Stellar blockchains.
By volume, tokenized securities represent the largest asset class on the Stellar network, with a total tokenized market cap of over $430 million as of late March. “Blockchain is here to stay and is the future. We expect to see exponential growth in tokenization in the next few years,” said Wong.
Aside from the rise of tokenization markets, this week’s Crypto Biz explores PayPal’s stablecoin, SushiSwap’s move to a “Labs model,” and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) delaying a decision on options trading on spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
SEC defers decision on Bitwise, Grayscale Bitcoin ETF options
The U.S. securities regulator has delayed its decision to allow the New York Stock Exchange to offer options trading on spot Bitcoin (BTC) ETFs. According to the April 8 filing, the SEC’s pushback will impact options trading on the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust and any other trust that holds Bitcoin on the NYSE. The securities regulator reached the same outcome for Nasdaq in March, which requested options trading on BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust. The next deadline for the SEC to either approve, deny or delay the proposed rule change on the NYSE is May 29.
PayPal stablecoin circulation dropped 38% in March — Paxos
The circulation of PayPal USD (PYUSD), a stablecoin issued by PayPal and Paxos, declined by 39% in March, totaling $188.5 million. Previous months saw higher circulation, with $304 million in February and $301 million in January. Despite experiencing rapid growth in early 2024, doubling its market value within one month by mid-January, PYUSD has since faced a decline in circulation and market capitalization. The PYUSD treasury held $14.9 million in United States Treasury bonds as of March 29. The market capitalization of PYUSD has been decreasing since late February, falling from an all-time high of $312 million on Feb. 26, according to CoinGecko data.
SushiSwap DAO backs transition to “Labs model” in preliminary vote
SushiSwap has received a positive sign to move forward with a plan to adopt a less decentralized “Labs model.” Over 62% of voters favored this transition in a signal vote concluded on April 10. The proposal, introduced on March 26, outlines the creation of Sushi Labs, an autonomous entity responsible for managing the Sushi ecosystem’s administrative, technical and operational aspects. Tokenholders would still decide on treasury allocations but wouldn’t participate in operational decisions. In addition, the new entity would receive 25 million SushiSwap (SUSHI) tokens — worth around $39 million at current prices — and future airdrops from its affiliated protocols and partners. The Sushi community has criticized the move.
Paradigm leads $225 million funding round for new “Solana killer” L1
Crypto-focused venture capital firm Paradigm has led a $225 million funding round into a new layer-1 blockchain network, which is set to compete for market share with Solana and other top networks. Monad Labs aims to build a new layer-1 smart contract network with faster speed and lower costs than Ethereum. According to a March 14 X post by Monad, the new L1 will be 100% compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine and capable of up to 10,000 transactions per second. Crypto VC funding turned positive in the first quarter of 2024, breaking a two-year slump.
Before you go: Smart contracts that can be turned on and off by a multisig mechanism or governance vote are potentially problematic, says Coin Center’s Peter Van Valkenburgh.
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