5º Web3: Blockchain, cripto, NFTs - 1st April
News:
- "We believe that post-FTX, the regulatory environment will be much less favorable for Binance and that they will face significant regulatory pressure across multiple jurisdictions." (Insider)
- Crypto wants its shine back. (The New York Times)
- Binance's public chatrooms show some employees and support volunteers helping customers bypass China's crypto ban, including evading the company's KYC checks (Rohan Goswami / CNBC)
- Tether estimates the company will make $700M in profit in Q1, taking its excess reserves to back its USDT stablecoin to $1.66B, above $1B for the first time (Arjun Kharpal / CNBC)
- Filing: a federal judge grants the US government's request to temporarily halt Voyager's bankruptcy plan, putting its proposed ~$1B sale to Binance.US on hold (Jeremy Hill / Bloomberg)
- Nvidia CTO Michael Kagan says crypto does not “bring anything useful for society” and other processing power uses like AI are more worthwhile than mining crypto (Alex Hern / The Guardian)
- Filing: MicroStrategy bought 6,455 BTC for ~$150M from February 16 to March 23 at an average price of $23,238; the company held ~$4.14B worth of BTC on March 23 (Larry DiTore / The Block)
- Regulators are choking the crypto industry in the US, but major policy decisions should be made by Congress and state legislatures, not by unelected officials (Katie Haun / Wall Street Journal)
- Sources: the Hong Kong arms of three Chinese state banks reached out to offer services to crypto companies in the past few months, despite a mainland crypto ban (Bloomberg)
- Researchers say North Korean hackers are likely laundering stolen crypto by renting cloud compute to mine fresh coins, avoiding more scrutinized crypto mixers (Andy Greenberg / Wired)
- CryptoQuant: BUSD saw $500M+ in outflows in the ~24 hours after the CFTC filed its Binance lawsuit vs. $2B after the SEC's Paxos crackdown in February 2023 (Shaurya Malwa / CoinDesk)
- Sources: Huobi partnered with Dominica and prompts new Chinese users to apply for a Dominican digital citizenship to evade China's crypto trading restrictions (Wall Street Journal)
- The FDIC tells Signature's crypto depositors that they must close their accounts by April 5, as Flagstar Bank's bid excludes ~$4B in Signature's crypto deposits (Bloomberg)
- The SEC sues shuttered crypto exchange Beaxy and its execs for allegedly not registering and Beaxy Digital's founder for raising $8M via unregistered token BXY (Sarah Wynn / The Block)
- Sources: Gemini is preparing to launch an international crypto derivatives exchange to offer perpetual futures, which US regulations prohibit for retail traders (Akash Pasricha / The Information)
- How a New York couple, who used to host an RT show, became key advisers to El Salvador on its bitcoin adoption while making crypto investments in the country (Santiago Pérez / Wall Street Journal)
- A US court rules the bZx protocol meets the definition of a general partnership and finds the DAO's token holders are liable for losses from a $55M hack in 2021 (Sam Reynolds / CoinDesk)
Startups raising funds
- Conduit, a platform that enables developers to launch OP stack rollups, raised $7m in seed funding led by Paradigm. Link
- Cega, a Singaporean crypto derivatives startup, raised $5m. Dragonfly Capital led, and was joined by Pantera Capital and Robot Ventures. Link
- EigenLayer, an ethereum restaking protocol, raised $50m in Series A funding. Blockchain Capital led, and was joined by Coinbase Ventures, Polychain Capital, Hack VC and Electric Capital. Link
- True I/O, a Carlsbad, Calif.-based provider of blockchain solutions for supply chain security, device management and software licensing, raised $9m in Series A funding led by Deal Box Ventures. Link
- Polytrade, a web3 protocol focused on global trade, raised $3.8m in seed funding from Alpha Wave, Matrix Partners, Polygon Ventures, Singularity Ventures and GTM Ventures. Link
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