Summary (links are an extract of links below)
An exciting week, with the news on Wednesday that the SEC has approved 8 ETH ETFs. The news started to spread on Sunday 20, and reached its maximum on Monday (ETH surging 23%). Before the official approval, signs were visible for experts, and bidding platforms such as Polymarket made it readable for all. Bidding platforms indeed appear as a new source of information, making complex information quite simple, although depending on common opinion.
Thanks for reading CryptoNewsletterINSEAD’s Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
However, this major news somehow has diminishes other, which were less developed.
Let’s still mention the $150m fundraising from Farcaster, the decentralised network rising star, with 350’000 paid sign-ups since going permissionless in October.
Also, an interesting review on crypto derivatives, a report on shifting crypto-native business models of consumer apps towards building proprietary distribution at the app layer, and a coverage on $160b stablecoins market.
On the regulation side, the US seem on the move, with a possible political shift ahead of presidential elections.
Much, much more below, on people, on crypto adoption and country landscapes, altcoins, airdrops and more…
_________________________________
Potential US TikTok buyer plans to decentralise TikTok, could relay on Polkadot parachain.
Business news: M&A
Solana-based wallet Phantom acquired Bitski, web3 specialist, to integrate embedded wallets into Solana, enhancing user and developer onboarding experiences, particularly through email sign-ups.
Cool Cats partners with the Anime Alliance to support and promote anime and manga culture globally.
Business news: companies fundraising
Another innovation in fundraising: Polimec is a decentralised and community driven funding protocol, a Polkadot’s parachain.
Blockchain gaming investments reached nearly $1b in April.
Closed deals (>$3m)
$150m for Farcaster, social media protocol, in a round led by Paradigm. Other participants included a16z, Haun Ventures, Union Square Ventures, Variant and Standard Crypto. Farcaster is the permissionless protocol behind the social network Warpcast. In January it launched a feature called Frames that allows users to embed functionality on Farcaster applications without having to leave the app.
$12m for Cysic, Zk hardware acceleration company, in a pre-Series A round led by HashKey Capital and OKX Ventures.
$11m for Mighty Jaxx, in a Series A+ round
$10m for Plume Network, a startup aiming to bring real-world assets like real estate and collectibles onto blockchains, in a seed round led by Haun Ventures with participation from Galaxy Ventures, Superscrypt, A Capital, SV Angel, Portal Ventures and Reciprocal Ventures.
$10m for Dora Factory, decentralised governance infrastructure firm, in a strategic round. Nomad Capital, No Limit Holdings, Sky9 Capital, Singapore’s UOB-Signum Blockchain Fund, Interop Ventures, Cai Wensheng’s Longling Capital, and nine other renowned institutional investors joined the round.
$10m for the Fantom Foundation, to support the Sonic Foundation, a high-performance blockchain, in a round led by Hashed, with pa.rticipation from UOB Ventures, Signum Capital, Aave Foundation, and several angel investors.
$10m for Stripchain, blockchain interoperability protocol, in a round led by Sora Ventures, with participation of Hyperithm, Shima Capital, Hypersphere, Mechanism and Ascensive Assets as well as angels.
$9.5m for Alphaledger, a company that uses permissioned blockchain to issue US municipal bonds, in a Series A round led by EJF Capital with support from KDX.
$9m for KelpDAO, Ethereum re-staking platform, in a private token sale at $90m valuation, led by SCB Limited and Laser Digital, with participation of Bankless Ventures, Hypersphere Ventures, Draper Dragon, DACM, Cypher Capital, GSR, HTX Ventures and DWF Ventures as well as angels.
$8m for Blockless, a decentralised physical infrastructure network (DePIN) project providing computer support, in pre-seed and a seed rounds, led respectively by NGC Ventures and by M31 Capital and Frachtis. Other investors in the two rounds included No Limit Holdings, MH Ventures, Interop Ventures and Plassa Capital. Blockless aims to launh its testnet soon and its mainnet and native BLESS token by Q3.
$7.7m for Weather XM, DePIN weather startup, in a series A round led by Lightspeed Faction. Protocol Labs, Borderless Capital, Arca, Alumni Ventures, Placeholder VC, Red Beard Ventures, Metaplanet and others also participated. WeatherXM produces weather station hardware that collects environmental data, rewarding individuals who operate a station with cryptocurrency.
$5m for MUA DAO, a decentralized organization focused on building and operating infrastructure for the metaverse, from investors including Avalanche, ByteTrade, Rocktree Capital, and individual investor Wu Jihan.
$5m for Natix Nework, a blockchain-based and crowdsourced camera network that creates a real-time map of the world, in a public sale at a FDV of $100m.
$5m for ELFi Protocol, a decentralised derivatives trading platform, in two strategic rounds. The latest round was led by IDG Capital and KuCoin Ventures.
$3m for FantaGoal, web3 soccer game, with participation of IDG Capital, Chain Capital, Opta and KuCoin.
Announced rounds
Binance Labs announced an investment in decentralized derivatives trading platform Aevo.
OKX Ventures announced a strategic investment in Monad Labs, which is developing a "developer-forward smart contract platform that is poised to revolutionize the decentralized digital landscape".
The SEC contacted exchanges to update spot Ether ETF applications. The Nasdaq, the CBOE and the Nyse have been contacted. This triggered a huge interest, ETH surging 23% on Monday. And the news arrived on Thursday afternoon, that the SEC approved 8 Ethereum ETFs, from BlackRock, Fidelity, Grayscale, Bitwise, VanEck, Ark 21 Shares, Invesco Galaxy and Franklin Templeton. Issues now need to have their S-1 registration statements go effective before they can trade. What are the next steps? According to Bloomberg, ETH ETF demand could reach 25% of BTC’s.
The SEC’s sudden engagement with prospective spot Ethereum ETF issuers was a 180 turn, and may be purely political. Finally, will this approval raise as much interest as BTC ETFs?
Crypto ETPs to start trading on the LSE on May 28. This includes WisdomTree Physical Bitcoin (BTCW) and Physical Ethereum (ETHW) ETPs and, maybe somewhat later, 21Shares BTC and ETH products. These products are available only to professional investors.
Hong Kong may allow Ether ETF staking.
Grayscale launches trusts for Stacks (Bitcoin Layer 2) and NEAR.
May Ripple and Solana ETFs launch in 2025? They may face a harder time.
Business news: people
Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein departs company. Peter Mintzberg, currently head of strategy for asset and wealth management at Goldman Sachs, will beocme the new CEO on August 15.
Gracy Chen replaces Sandra Lou as Bitget’s chief executive, and Taurus picks Andrew Maledy to lead the North America office.
Another Ethereum foundation researcher recognizes having been paid as advisor to EigenFoundation. Is there a conflict of interest? Ethereum foundation could set up a conflict of interest rule.
The founder of DC Fintech Week, Christopher Brummer, is putting his regulatory policy expertise to work as the CEO of a new company, Bluprynt. The firm will aide crypto customers in the emerging requirements for government disclosures.
Japan web3 market.
Metaplanet stock is up 7x, as it adopts MicroStrategy’s bitcoin accumulation playbook.
Crypto friendly banks in the UAE are Commercial Bank of Dubai, Emirates NBD, Zand, Mashreq and RAKBANK.
Trump campaign starts taking crypto donations.
South Korean Crypto searches exceed stock by 25%. The top four high-frequency words are Bitcoin, NFT, airdrops, and Ethereum.
_________________
Mining
Miners targeted by Venezuela.
With BTC around $70k, mining stocks are celebrating. Riot Blockchain (RIOT) is up a staggering 32.72% to $10.96, Hut 8 (HUT) is not far behind with a 28.22% jump to $9.95, and Marathon Digital (MARA) is leading the pack with a 32.7% surge to $22.32. CleanSpark (CLSK) ‘lags’ behind with 20.78% at $18.31.
Xapo Bank launches Bitcoin deposits using the Lightning Network, popular in South America. Argentinian users account for 29% of Xapo Lightning transactions in March. Xapo uses Lightspark as Lightning payments infrastructure provided.
Coinbase to launch gold and oil futures in push to lure new traders.
Robinhood is launching gas-free trading on Arbitrum.
Prometheum, whose controversial approach to U.S. crypto compliance got co-CEO Aaron Kaplan invited to testify in Congress, says it's close to launch.
Kraken denies plans to delist USDT in EU.
OKX withdraw its application in Hong Kong and announces it will cease its operations at the end of month. Gate.HK is winding down operations and has withdrawn its license application in Hong Kong. Gate.HK, having launched in May 23, is the Hong Kong entity of Gate.io. It has stated its intention to resume opeations in Hong Kong in the future.
Binance.US wins appeal to reinstate Florida money services license.
DEXs
DEXs’ daily transaction volume spiked, 56% WoW, to $6.6b on Friday 24.
DeFi
Velvet Capital: How an intent OS eases on-chain portfolio management
GONDI facilitated 3 loans for a total of $1m.
Pendle reaches $5.78b TVL
Aave deposits top $19.5bn
Are ETH NFTS in the ‘Banana Zone’.
Yuga Labs faced a backlash over a new Punk-themed NFT collection, criticized for "diluting" the OG CryptoPunks brand. It promised the firm will “no longer touch” crypto punks.
BLASTR, a platform that makes it easy to create and collect “unruggable” NFTs.
Base revealsits “Get Based” series which includes multiple NFT drops, with all of them being offered for $5 or less, or for free. The drops will take place on OpenSea and via social app Farcaster’s ‘Frames’.
Azuki and Magic Eden have collaborated to create the first dual-chain NFT product (Ethereum - Bitcoin).
Gaming
Card creators for Fantasy.top have collectively earned 600 ETH.
FSL, the company behind Stepn app, releases Stepn Go, a move-to-earn app with social features.
Supervillain Labs, a spin off from Metapixel, with a different strategy (A Tiger Research report).
Navigating NFT Games: Spotting the Gems in a Crowded Market
A deep study on Farcaster and Lens, with a converging vision but different tracks. Very detailed and interesting report from Dune.
CastSense, an analytics platform for Farcaster.
Sports
Atleta Network, a sports specific blockchain platform, launches
Fileverse is like a Google Workspace on decentralised crypto rails.
Privacy
Railgun, an on-chain privacy protocol, has processed more than $1b worth of transactions since launch in Jan.22. Vitalik Buterin usage of the protocol has helped.
Payments
EtherFi unveils plans for credit card tied to restaking holdings.
Wallets
Metamask is working to integrate bitcoin.
Phantom is N°2 in Google Playstore, beating out PayPal, Venmo, Zelle and others.
Tokenization and Real World Assets
Jupiter partners with Wintermute and DWF Labs create the GUM (Grand Unified Market), to create liquid markets for not only crypto but also real estate, forex, stocks, and bonds on Solana.
AI
New AI startup FLock wants to entice users to help train its large language model with a crypto rewards program.
After NVIDIA results release, major AI tokens prices slid (FET, ICP, RNDR, GRT, and TAO).
_________________
Crypto derivatives : positioning and outlook. A Kaiko’s deep dive full with useful insights, on derivatives, futures, perpetuals and options.
Last week
Never short a boring market. How things have strongly changed since Wednesday 15, and the CPI publication.
May 20:
May 21:
ETH is up more than 23%, after speculation that the SEC may be doing an about-face on ETH ETFs circulated. Ethereum market cap rose by $70b. MOG and PEPE surged.
SOL reached $180, surging 13.58% in 48 hours.
Bitcoin derivatives hint at potential rally above $73k. New ATH next.
May 22:
Crypto markets consolidate.
May 23:
Bitcoin drops, Ethereum remains resilient.
May 24:
Bitcoin
23 years old Bitcoiner Dadvan Yousuf deployed the Bitcoin flag on the mount Everest summit.
Bring restaking to Bitcoin ecosystem.
Bitfinity EVM is designed to allow developers to Bitcoin-based Solidity smart contracts, allowing them to transfer BTC and Runes.
Lido and Coinbase now hold 41.7% of all validators, down from 47% at beginning of the year.
ETH ETFs without staking can benefit stakers.
Alt-coins, tokens and protocols
Consumer apps — driven primarily by memes, games, and gambling —are beginning to take center stage. Earlier this month, four new social apps (fantasy.top, friend.tech, pump.fun, YOLO Games) briefly broke into the Top 15 protocols by fees generated (chart from May 7). User numbers are still small (none have over ~20,000 DAUs), but their success from a monetization perspective represents a shift in crypto-native business models towards building proprietary distribution at the app layer.
Solana & Sui have established themselves as the fastest large chains, recording peak daily average real TPS of 1,504 and 854, respectively
.
Telegram founder Pavel Durov holds 1% of NotCoin, valued at $7m. This comes after more than 552K players donated a share of their in-game coins back in February.
Strong debate around “low float”, high FDV (Fully Diluted Valuation) tokens.
Kakarot ZK-EVM launches testnet, paving the way for zk-EVM on Starknet
Telegram to launch a new currency called ‘Stars’ for in-app payments, to be compatible with AppleStore rules.
XRP Ledger transaction volume soars and transaction costs plummet in Q1 2024.
Kabosu, the shiba inu who inspired the doge meme — which subsequently inspired dogecoin —has passed away.
Airdrops
LayerZero Labs announces pause of Sybil ‘bounty-hunter’ process after influx of reports.
STEPN airdropped digital sneakers to all Saga Badge holders.
Nyan Heroes launches Solana token and opens airdrop claims.
zkSync is planning a 21b token generation event this week, followed by an airdrop starting on June 13.
Bitlayer, a bitcoin layer 2, announces a 2 weeks event in partnership with seven others, with airdrops worth $23m in total.
Taiko, an Ethereum Layer 2 rollup project, plans a “genesis airdrop” distributing 5% of its 1 billion token supply ahead of its mainnet launch.
Pixelmon has an announced airdrop detailsfor its upcoming MON token.
Aleph Zero launches Alephoria: airdrops,tournaments and rewards.
Memecoins
Whales Market, the trustless OTC platform for buying and selling airdrop points, has unveiled its newest product, whales.meme, a no-code platform for launching memecoins on Solana. $WHALES soared 25%.
Beside Pump.fun and Party, Basecamp launches as 1-click memecoin deployer
CoinMetrics State of the Network #260 provides a wide coverage of the $160b stablecoins market.
USDe cap surges past $2.6b, in the wake of ETH ETF approval.
CBDCs
The World Economic Forum warns that quantum computers could potentially break the security of CBDCs.
_________________
US House approves FIT21 “crypto” bill; this is a major move for the industry. White House said it will not veto the FIT21 bill, although opposed to it.
The US House of Representatives passes anti-CBDC bill. The bill is aimed at blocking the Federal Reserve from issuing a CBDC without authorization from Congress.
How the SEC’s SAB121 repeal paves the way for balanced crypto regulation.
Is the Biden administration easing up on crypto as a reaction to Trump’s embrace of the industry?
Ten European countries have signed on to EU blockchain infrastructure project “Europeum”. It aims at tracing porducts’ origin, and helping businesses to protect their IP.
Brazil’s central bank aims to finalise its plans for a regulatory framework for digital assets by end of year.
Sanctions and trials
Uniswap Labs urges SEC to drop pending enforcement action in Wells response.
Taiwanese national Rui-Siang Lin, 23 has been arrested and is accused of facilitating $100 million in sales paid through crypto of illegal narcotics, including fentanyl, through the online marketplace ‘Incognito Market’.
Hong Kong’s privacy watchdog ordered Worldcoin to stop operations in the region.
Bankrupt companies
Genesis to create a ‘Victims fund’ of up to $2b. The settlement had been announced back in February.
Genesis won its case over parent company DCG, who will now eat a loss due to the judge’s ruling. Gemini, a major creditor of Genesis, will start reimbursing customers 97% of their losses from its defunct Gemini Earn program by the end of the month.
Crypto custody risk: the industry needs to be spending more to adress it.
GALA exploited for $240m. Attacker managed to sell at least $21m. GALA token crashed. The attacker later return all the remaining funds.
The "Tech Against Scams" coalition includes industry giants like Coinbase, Match Group, Meta, Kraken, Ripple, Gemini, and the Global Anti-Scam Organization (GASO).
Alleged exploiter of Pump.fun has been arrested in London.
Thanks for reading CryptoNewsletterINSEAD’s Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
