Adam Efrima is the SSV Core team Co-founder. He has been active in the crypto industry since 2013. Over eight years living in China working in the financial industry and fintech space, Adam has worked in CITIC Bank covering outbound investments for Chinese SOEs, he was also in charge of setting up the eToro Shanghai operation. Since then, Adam has been deeply involved in Ethereum staking, co-founding top performing staking project Bloxstaking as well as co-founding SSV Network, a decentralized validator infrastructure for ETH staking.

Adam Swick is the Chief Growth Officer at Marathon Digital Holdings. Prior to joining Marathon, he served as a principal at Refinery Ventures, where he was responsible for identifying and recommending business strategies to accelerate the growth of all companies in Refinery’s portfolio. Before Refinery, Swick was the director of strategic finance at Kraken Digital Asset Exchange, where he managed the company’s balance sheet, debt program, investor relations, and all forecasting activities. Prior to Kraken, he founded Swick Capital, a crypto-asset hedge fund, worked at Pritzker Group Venture Capital, and was a consultant at Boston Consulting Group. Swick holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and a BS in finance from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

Amanda Cassatt is the founder and CEO of Serotonin. Amanda previously served as Chief Marketing Officer of ConsenSys from 2016 through 2019. Joining one year after the launch of Ethereum, Amanda played a crucial role in defining, creating, and growing the narrative for ConsenSys, Ethereum, and blockchain overall.

Amanda stewarded the ConsenSys brand through its global expansion across enterprises, governments, developers, and consumers. She created and scaled the marketing team to over 50 people, serving both the ConsenSys brand and 50+ portfolio companies such as MetaMask, Infura, Truffle, and Gitcoin; managing teams in product marketing, growth, design, content, community, events, email, analytics and SEO. Amanda’s contributions to some of the most successful product launches, token sales and fundraises landed her on Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2016. Amanda is the author of the world's first web3 marketing book, Web3 Marketing: A Handbook for the Next Internet Revolution.

Amanda Keleher currently serves as Chief People Officer at Consensys, one of the largest and fastest-growing companies in the blockchain technology space. A well-rounded business leader with an over 25-year career in the technology space, Amanda is the driving force behind the human element of Consensys where she is responsible for overseeing all of the aspects of people, from building and maintaining the company culture to harnessing human capital as a key driver of business. 

Before joining ConsenSys, Amanda served as the Head of People at ThoughtWorks, a global technology consultancy company, for nearly ten years, where she led the global scale expansion by opening offices around the world and recruiting a diverse workforce at a time when the DevOps movement had just been born and a new skill set were yet to be developed. After her time at ThoughWorks, she served as the Executive Vice President, People &amp; Culture of Index Exchange, one of the world’s premier ad tech organizations; and as VP of People at Little Bits and Intent Media where she excelled in designing effective and creative strategies to attract and retain world-class talent in hyper competitive environments

Andrea Berry is a seasoned online video strategist with 15+ years of experience in transformative media partnerships. 

Her early successes include helping to launch Qello Concerts, the first direct-to-consumer live-music OTT service, later transforming it into Qello Media Services and Vimeo’s OTT channels offering across various industries as their first strategic sales director for their enterprise.

Currently, as the Head of Business Development at Theta Labs, Andrea leverages her expertise in online video and blockchain to drive strategic partnerships and growth opportunities for the company. She helps enterprises take advantage and lean into the opportunities Web3 presents. 

Andrew Thurman is a Data Editor based in Washington, DC. He previously wrote for CoinDesk and Cointelegraph, and worked in various roles for Chainlink and Nansen. His analysis has been quoted in The Financial Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Forbes, Fortune, Reuters, The BBC, CNBC, and elsewhere. Contact Andrew at andrew@blockworks.co.

Andrey Sergeenkov writes educational articles as a freelancer. His works have been published in Coindesk, Cointelegraph, Entrepreneur and CoinMarketCap. He believes that transforming society towards lifelong learning, combined with decentralization in government and business, will lead to exponential social development.

Andy Bromberg is CEO of Beam and Contributor to the Eco Protocol. Eco has raised more than $90 million from an array of leading investors, including a16z Crypto, L Catterton, Activant Capital, Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, and others. Prior to Eco, Andy was Co-founder and President of CoinList. Andy is also a founding board member at FreeWorld, a non-profit seeking to end institutionalized poverty in the United States by providing access to living-wage jobs for people with criminal histories. He studied Mathematics and Computer Science at Stanford University and co-founded the Stanford Bitcoin Group.

An established and versatile Financial Executive with over two decades of experience running multiple trading businesses across top-level banks such as HSBC, Barclays, and UBS. After running the top Agency and SSA business for both UBS and Barclays, he took over Emerging Markets macro trading for Barclays. In 2018, wanting to go deeper into Emerging Markets he took a role as Head of Latam local markets trading where he was responsible for trading activities across Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, and Chile. In 2021 DeMartino moved into Crypto when he became CEO and founder of Coinbase Risk Strategies focused on DeFi and Derivatives trading. More recently he started Trident Digital Group, a crypto-native solutions firm that is focused on lending and safe yield generation and stablecoin adoption.


Antoni is a co-founder of Aleph Zero Foundation (Switzerland), an organization overseeing the development of the Aleph Zero blockchain, and a Managing Partner of Cardinal Cryptography (Poland), firm focused on core development of the Aleph Zero ecosystem.

Ari Juels is the Weill Family Foundation and Joan and Sanford I. Weill Professor in the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech and the Technion and a Computer Science faculty member at Cornell University. He is a Co-Director of the Initiative for CryptoCurrencies and Contracts (IC3). He is also Chief Scientist at Chainlink Labs. He is the author of crypto thriller novel The Oracle (Talos Press), which was released on 20 February 2024.

Austin Alexander is co-founder of LayerTwo Labs, a company focused on advancing the Bitcoin ecosystem through innovative solutions and specializing in the development of Drivechain, a specific type of blockchain sidechain designed to foster creativity and scalability within Bitcoin.

Austin Campbell is the founder and managing partner of Zero Knowledge Consulting and an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School. Previously, he has run portfolio management at Paxos for the stablecoins as well as being the chief risk officer of Paxos National Trust, has managed fixed income trading desks at JP Morgan and Citi, and has been a portfolio manager and structurer at Stone Ridge, the parent of NYDIG. He holds a BS in Mathematics from CSU Chico and a MBA from NYU Stern.

Ben Strack is a senior reporter covering macro and crypto-native funds, financial advisors, structured products, and the integration of digital assets and DeFi into traditional finance. Prior to joining Blockworks, he covered the asset management industry for Fund Intelligence and was a reporter and editor for various local newspapers on Long Island. He graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in journalism.

Contact Ben via email at ben@blockworks.co

Bessie is a Brooklyn-based reporter covering DeFi and technology. Bessie worked as a tech journalist for The Org prior to joining Blockworks and was a management consultant for KPMG in another life. She is originally from Melbourne, Australia and holds an MA from New York University. She is also the mother of a bratty cat named Mochi. You can reach Bessie at bessie@blockworks.co

Bezalel Eithan Raviv, an ex-member of IDF Cyber Unit 8200, is a seasoned entrepreneur with deep expertise in technology and innovation. He now leads Lionsgate Network, a blockchain analysis firm specializing in professional money recovery services for digital asset investors in the +$2.5 trillion market. Prior to this role, Bezalel founded an investment banking firm supporting AI startups and developed Halleluiah, a pioneering web3 migration pattern for global music copyrights.

Billy Sebell is the Executive Director of the XDC Foundation and an early contributor to the XDC Network. Since early 2018, Billy has worked to develop the XDC community, focused on ecosystem and network growth and implementing use cases in trade finance. Billy previously spent more than 25 years in manufacturing and consumer products, dealing with the challenges businesses face in capital markets and international trade.

Bogdan is the Co-Founder and CTO of Tenderly, the full-stack infrastructure solutions provider powering Web3 developer teams with the essential tools and services throughout their development journeys. 

Prior to co-founding Tenderly, Bogdan worked as a software engineer for major software platforms such as MVP Workshop and Go Daddy where he was responsible for constructing and managing the development of distributed cloud systems before realizing the lack of infrastructural support for Web3 developers. With his vast experience in constructing, expanding, and overseeing extensive distributed cloud systems, he is well-versed in the intricacies of blockchain technologies and their practical applications. 

Brandon Truong is lead product contributor for ZetaChain. He previously co-founded social platform Yada (which was acquired in 2020) and spent time building products for BuzzFeed and Udacity. 


 Brian Pak is CEO &amp; Co-Founder of ChainLight, an award-winning blockchain security firm that specializes in smart contract audits and on-chain monitoring. He is also a co-founder of Theori, an established US-based offensive cybersecurity company, since 2016, which he still leads today, having now amassed trusted partners including Microsoft, Google and Samsung. Brian’s early career started when he co-founded and developed Kaprica Security, inventing and patenting the Skorpion Charger, an Android mobile charger that can detect malicious software with no user action required. He has worked on research and development projects with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the US. Brian is also a founder of the team PPP (Plaid Parliament of Pwning) which won DEF CON CTF, one of the most prestigious hacker competitions held in Las Vegas, in 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2022 and 2023. Brian graduated with a Masters Degree in Software Security Research from Carnegie Mellon University.

Byron Donalds grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and he is also the proud son of a hardworking and loving single mother. His mother dedicated her time instilling in him that greatness requires sacrifice, which drives him as a devoted family man and United States Congressman.  

Byron is a graduate of Florida State University and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in finance and marketing. Byron's career led him to Southwest Florida, where he worked in the banking, finance, and insurance industries. Elected to the Florida House of Representatives in 2016, Byron represented Hendry County and east Collier County in the State Capitol. During his tenure in the Florida House, Byron served as the PreK-12 Quality Subcommittee Chair during the 2018-2019 Legislative Session and served as the Insurance &amp; Banking Subcommittee's Chairman 2019-2020 Legislative Session. While serving in the Florida House, primarily focused on elder affairs, criminal justice reform, and ensuring that each child has access to a world-class education. 

Byron is committed to serving and giving back to the community that gave him so much. He has served Southwest Florida in many ways, including previously serving on the Board of Trustees for Florida Southwestern State College after being appointed by then-Governor Rick Scott. Byron continues to volunteer in his church as a youth leader and a mentor. He also enjoys volunteering as a coach in youth football and basketball leagues.

Congressman Byron Donalds lives in Naples, Florida, with his wife, Erika, and their three sons: Damon, Darin, and Mason. Byron has spent his entire adult life serving others, whether it be through volunteering, business, or leadership. He is committed to representing Florida's 19th Congressional District's conservative values in Washington DC to ensure a stronger Florida and a stronger nation.

Cameron B. Pick is a partner and patent attorney at the Chicago-based intellectual property boutique law firm Marshall, Gerstein &amp; Borun. He prosecutes patents for emerging technologies, including blockchain and crypto, among other innovative areas. He may be reached at cpick@marshallip.com. 

​​Casey Wagner is a Senior Reporter based in New York. Casey covers crypto regulation, markets and central banks. Prior to joining Blockworks, she reported on macroeconomics at Bloomberg News. She graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in Media Studies. Contact Casey via email at casey@blockworks.co

Chris Brooks founded CryptoAssetRecovery.com in 2017 to help digital asset owners recover lost assets. Chris was a programmer at Fidelity Investments, VP of Technology at venture-backed Carescout (which sold to GenWorth, a spinoff of General Electric) and has founded and sold three bootstrapped internet companies. 

Chris Swenor is a seasoned entrepreneur and blockchain pioneer with a 20-year career that kicked off as a self-taught programmer at age 13. He swiftly moved from corporate roles into startups, leading several to successful acquisitions. Chris started venturing into blockchain and cryptocurrency in 2013, founding Reach in 2019, a platform that has since attracted over $13M in funding and onboarded more than 8,000 developers.

In recent years, Chris founded Humble, a decentralized exchange on Algorand, and Alloy, a blockchain gaming platform acquired in 2023. He is currently working on Voi Network, a layer 1 blockchain empowering its community with user-centric governance and economics. 

Christopher Perkins is President of CoinFund, a web3 focused Registered Investment Advisor.  He is also a member of the CFTC’s Global Markets Advisory Committee and its Digital Asset Markets Subcommittee.

Damian Alvarez is a communications professional helping Web3 clients get their stories heard. He is currently the Head of Communications at Aori, an omni-chain logic layer that leverages off-chain data storage to enable high-frequency on-chain trading. He has worked at agencies such as Edelman and YAP Global to assist a variety of emerging and established clients to engage in industry-wide narratives surrounding technology. He may be contacted at damian@aori.io.

Dan Keeler is Editor-in-Chief at Blockworks. Prior to joining Blockworks, he was Frontier Markets Editor at the Wall Street Journal where he managed the Journal’s coverage of smaller emerging markets as well as created a number of high-profile events and a highly regarded newsletter. Before joining the WSJ, he was the Editor of Global Finance magazine. He is also the founder of New York’s FM Network, a group that hosts gatherings of finance professionals focused on smaller emerging markets.

Contact Dan via email at dan@blockworks.co

Daniel Batten is a ClimateTech investor, Bitcoin environmental impact analyst, CEO advisor and author. He is most widely known for his data-driven approach to Bitcoin mining research.


Daniel Cawrey has been involved full-time in the crypto space since 2013, including as an editor at CoinDesk. He is author of 2020’s “Mastering Blockchain” and 2023’s “Understanding Crypto” books, both available on Amazon.

Daranee Ganesh is a publishing and production manager based in Washington, DC. She holds an LLB with a focus on emerging technologies. Prior to Blockworks, Daranee worked on several legal and non-profit projects aimed at integrating decentralized solutions in the social justice framework, specifically within immigration and environmental law. Contact Daranee at daranee@blockworks.co.

Darren Kleine is an Alberta-based reporter covering podcast content at Blockworks. Previously reporting for Cointelegraph, he wrote feature content and a weekly series focused on the personal stories of influential figures in the Web3 space. He has been an active participant in the NFT art scene since 2020, creating works on curated platforms including SuperRare and KnownOrigin and hosting an NFT art-focused podcast called NFP with DKleine. Contact Darren Kleine at darren@blockworks.co.

David is an Editor based in the Netherlands focused on data-driven journalism. Previously, he wrote for TheNextWeb's crypto vertical before launching Protos in 2021. He's a reformed hardline Bitcoiner passionate about permissionless and decentralized networks. Contact David at david@blockworks.co

Denelle Dixon is the CEO and Executive Director of the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), a non-profit organization focused on working with and supporting changemakers to create equitable access to the global financial system through blockchain technology. She leads the teams that help maintain Stellar's codebase, support the communities around Stellar, and advocate on behalf of the network with international stakeholders. Before joining Stellar, Dixon served as COO of Mozilla, one of the most successful mission-driven open-source organizations.. During her tenure at Mozilla, she led the organization’s business, revenue and policy teams including the ongoing fight for net neutrality and the global effort to ensure that people can control their personal data.

Elliot is the Head of Climate Strategy at Sustainable Bitcoin Protocol, where he is helping unlock Bitcoin's clean energy potential by bridging sustainable miners and climate-conscious investors. In his role at Sustainable Bitcoin Protocol, Elliot educates policymakers and NGOs on Bitcoin’s relationship with the energy system. He is a climatetech operator focused on alleviating energy poverty, bridging the digital divide, and promoting financial inclusion through technologies such as Bitcoin. Elliot was previously a Schwarzman Scholar and has served in the military, US Department of Energy, Clinton Foundation, and more. 

Evan Thomas is General Counsel for Alluvial, a software development company supporting the Liquid Collective liquid staking protocol. He was previously at Wealthsimple, Canada’s largest consumer fintech, where he was Head of Legal for Wealthsimple’s crypto trading platform. While at Wealthsimple, Evan helped launch Canada’s first regulated staking product. Before Wealthsimple, Evan was a litigator at Osler, Hoskin &amp; Harcourt LLP for nearly 15 years. Among other notable cases, Evan was hearing counsel to 3iQ Corp. in its appeal securing regulatory approval for Canada’s first publicly traded bitcoin fund in 2019.

Felix Xu, crypto geek, early adopter, and NFT collector. Felix graduated from NYU Stern and founded two crypto projects, ARPA and Bella Protocol, among the global top 500 by market cap. Felix previously worked at Fosun Investment, Sackler family office, and Vertical Research in New York and Beijing. Felix loves sailing, kitesurfing and was featured in the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times for his NFT collection.

Fraser is co-founder &amp; CTO of Cubist and an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University. She is an expert in software correctness: her research focuses on systems security, automated bug finding, and formal verification, from verifying (parts of) production systems like browser JITs, to finding exploitable bugs in real codebases. Her tools have found many zero-day bountied bugs and CVEs in the Chrome and Firefox browsers and multiple operating systems. Fraser received her BA in English and her MS and PhD in Computer Science from Stanford.


Garrett Harper is the producer for the Empire podcast. Garrett worked in private equity and product management before jumping into crypto full-time in 2021. His favorite thing about crypto? It conflates art, gaming, finance, software, and psychology into one hyper-growth industry.

Haden Patrick is Director of Business Operations of Cordial Systems, a provider of institutional-grade self custody software using a Zero Trust security model.  Haden has executive experience in team leadership, engineering and education originating from his 24 year career as a Naval Officer. After co-founding SoloKeys, the first open-source security key company, he went on to manage projects connecting web3 to traditional finance at a cryptocurrency trading firm before joining Cordial Systems.

Hannah Finnerty is Blockworks' editorial operations manager and is based in the US. Hannah previously worked in podcast production for The National in Abu Dhabi. She graduated from Bowling Green State University with a degree in multiplatform journalism and Middle Eastern politics. Contact Hannah at hannah@blockworks.co.

Hatu Sheikh is the co-founder and CMO of DAO Maker, the largest on-chain funding platform with 1.5M+ users. The platform's contracts have distributed over $600M, with a cumulative return of around 10x. Hatu has a strong background in marketing and strategy and has played a pivotal role in driving the success of various blockchain-based projects and tokens, crafting effective marketing strategies, and forging powerful synergies within the industry.

Hind Kurhan is a Co-Founder of Thesis Defense, a decentralized technology security auditing company whose mission is the facilitation of broad adoption of decentralized technology by improving security and audit consistency throughout the blockchain sphere.


Ian Rogers is the Chief Experience Officer at Ledger, leading the consumer-facing business delivering the world’s #1 way to buy and secure cryptocurrency.  Prior, Ian was the Chief Digital Officer at LVMH for five transformative years, working with a portfolio of nearly one hundred brands across luxury including Louis Vuitton, Dior, Sephora, and Hennessy.  Ian also sits on the boards of Dr Marten’s and Lyst.

Ian spent twenty years bringing digital music to the mainstream, first with Winamp then Yahoo!, Beats, and Apple.  Ian contributed to the 2015 launch of Apple Music including Beats 1, their digital streaming channel. Ian graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science (with honors, Phi Beta Kappa) from Indiana University in 1994.  Ian built some of the earliest music-related Web sites in the early 90s and has been working with Beastie Boys since 1993.

Ishan is a University of Texas McCombs School of Business graduate with a BBA in Finance &amp; Marketing. He founded and managed a Private Equity Fund that reached an eight-figure Assets Under Management (AUM) and has also gained experience with many top 200 projects of crypto market cap. In 2022, he helped found SCRIB3, a Web3 Marketing and PR venture. He was notably among the first to raise an alert about potential deceptive and unethical business practices by FTX. Ishan contributes as a DeFi analyst, an active angel investor, and an advisor in projects like Polygon Technologies.

Jack Kubinec is a DeFi and DAO reporter based in Brooklyn, New York. Jack previously interned at Blockworks before joining full-time. He graduated summa cum laude from Cornell University with a degree in sociology. Contact Jack at jack.kubinec@blockworks.co.

Jag is the CEO and Co-Founder of Tangible, a platform focused on redefining asset ownership and value creation by transforming the way real-world assets, specifically real estate, are bought, sold, and leveraged on-chain. As a serial entrepreneur, Jag has founded three companies prior to Tangible. Lime Fuel, Jag’s first company, offers a wholesale fuel market for small and medium-sized enterprises, was sold to Applegreen PLC after four years of operation. Jag went on to found Vid Inc., a platform disrupting the social media industry with a video social media platform that rewards users for the value they provide to the platform. Jag most recently founded Singh Capital, a crypto-dedicated fund that conducts yield farming, quant and arbitrage strategies, which he still remains involved in.


James Cirrone is a breaking news reporter based in New York. Prior to joining Blockworks, James was a reporter and newsletter writer at Bloomberg News. He graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in journalism. He also played trumpet in the university’s marching band. Contact James via email at james.cirrone@blockworks.co.

Jeff is an editor at Blockworks, based in the United States. He has been a part of the blockchain space for over a decade, most recently working as US news editor at Cointelegraph. His areas of focus include empowering artists and creators through technology, using proof-of-participation methods to reward self-improvement, reducing the effectiveness of Sybil attacks, seeking transparent equity for disadvantaged communities, and exploring fairer models of world governance. Contact Jeff at Jeffrey@blockworks.co.

Jesper Johansen is the founder and CEO of NORTHSTAKE, a regulated custodial staking company specialized in building regulatory compliant crypto staking products for institutional investors and financial institutions. The team holds backgrounds from financial institutions, pension funds, large investment companies to consulting, technology and audit firms, such as Accenture, Deloitte, PwC as well as blockchain and crypto projects e.g. DAI Foundation (MakerDao), Ethereum and L1/L2s. 

Prior to NORTHSTAKE, Jesper held leadership positions with Accenture Strategy and Deloitte Consulting advising clients in heavily regulated industries to implement new technologies and drive business transformation. He holds a MBA from Copenhagen Business School and a B.Sc. in International Business. 

Jess Sun is an independent writer and content strategist. She loves bringing good ideas to light, helping the people behind them shine, and bridging gaps in understanding. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn. Go to her website to learn about working with her.

Jim Myers is an engineer, early-stage investor, and the CTO &amp; Co-Founder of Flipside Crypto, a leading blockchain data analytics and business intelligence platform. Prior to co-founding Flipside, Jim developed the core technology that took products from 0 to 1 at companies such as Mylestone, Pluralsight, and Smarterer. Jim’s journey into the crypto industry began in 2015, eventually co-founding Flipside Crypto in 2017 to help empower crypto communities to create and share data-driven insights on the projects they care most about. Jim's passion for building extends to the broader startup community via his developer event series, Stack Dive, and as an angel investor to several local Boston-area startups, including AdHawk and LinkSquares. In a previous life, Jim developed advanced models to quantify risk and abnormal returns in the market for Financial Transmission Rights, a type of energy derivative.

JJ is an advisor, mentor and co-founder working across Bitcoin, mining and web3. He currently mentors for Outlier Ventures new Bitcoin Base Camp program and has co-founded a new protocol operating in stealth mode.

Joeyz Yu is an entrepreneur with over 18 years of experience in product design and development. He co-founded Sending Labs to revolutionize communication protocols and social applications for Web3, leading the development of their flagship products SendingMe and SendingNetwork. Previously, Joeyz co-founded MoboTab, where he created the Dolphin Browser, used by over 200 million users and later acquired by ChangYou. Joeyz's passion for empowering users and building exceptional teams drives his mission to shape the future of the internet. 

John is the Editor of Evergreen Content at Blockworks. Before Blockworks, he was the producer and founder of an explainer studio called Best Explained. As Evergreen Editor, he manages the production of explainers, guides and all educational content for anything crypto related. He is passionate about making digital asset education more accessible for degens and fence-sitters alike. Contact John at john@blockworks.co

John Wu is President of Ava Labs, an Andresseen Horowitz backed technology company building the next-generation blockchain platform: Avalanche. John’s objective is to open up financial services and products to all. In this role, he leverages his expertise from over 20 years as a fintech executive and technology investor to create a blockchain-enabled solution for originating, issuing, and trading financial assets.  

Jonathan currently serves as the Global Head of Growth at the Web3 ecosystem, Elastos, overseeing marketing, business development, investment and ecosystem strategies. With a background in corporate communications and technology marketing from roles at Edelman, Weber Shandwick, and Burson-Marsteller, Jonathan has transitioned to focus on Web3 innovation in his recent positions at Elastos and CreDA.

Joseph Schiarizzi is the Founder of Open Dollar, a lending protocol built on Arbitrum and has been a blockchain developer for 7 years. Before Open Dollar, Joseph worked at ConsenSys and later led Developer Relations for Gitcoin. He has contributed to impactful DAOs including Meta Cartel and Raid Guild, and is also the chair of the environmental sustainability council for Falls Church, VA. $5B+ has gone through smart contracts Joseph has contributed to. 

Julian Deschler is the Co-Founder of Elusiv, a universal encryption layer for Web3 powering the decentralized world. Elusiv went live on Solana Mainnet in March 2023 following a $3.5 million seed round in November. Julian started carving out his entrepreneurial path during his studies. Involved in the startup world as a board member of START Munich, a member of Sigma Squared, and a scholarship holder from UnternehmerTUM, he brought this wealth of experience to the Web3 landscape. With past roles in TradFi &amp; several Web3 companies, including Staking Facilities, Julian drives the business strategy of Elusiv. His extensive speaking participation at numerous Web3 conferences further underscores his dedication to fostering the future of privacy in Web3. 


Justin Banon is a thought leader and advocate for Web3 technologies, as well as being co-founder of Boson Protocol — a decentralized commerce protocol enabling the tokenization and trade of physical assets without intermediaries.


Katherine is a news editor based in Austin. She worked as a senior producer and correspondent at TheStreet prior to joining Blockworks. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree with a focus on journalism from Sarah Lawrence. Contact Katherine via email at katherine@blockworks.co.

Kevin is the co-founder and CEO of Keyrock. Before founding Keyrock in 2017, Kevin worked at Roland Berger, where he spent a few years as a consultant and started investigating the expanding cryptocurrency market in 2014. With a background in Business Engineering and International Management, Kevin is an entrepreneur at heart passionate about using innovative technologies to build efficient markets and increase financial inclusiveness. 

Kristin is the Executive Director of the Blockchain Association, the Washington DC-based trade association representing more than 80 of the industry’s leading companies. Kristin serves as a liaison between policymakers and the cryptocurrency industry to assist in the creation of legislation and regulation that promotes the growth of the cryptocurrency ecosystem in the US.

Lasha Antadze is the co-founder of Rarilabs (formerly Rarify Labs), a company advancing Rarimo, a layer for universal access and verification for digital identities. In 2022, Rarilabs received US$10 million in a Series A funding round from Pantera Capital at a $100 million valuation.

As a serial founder, Lasha has close to a decade of experience in the blockchain industry. Prior to Rarilabs, Lasha co-founded decentralized auction platform Shelf Network. This was recognized by the 2018 Frontier Innovations Awards as the best blockchain use-case for the real world. It was acquired by the Aurora Group in 2022.

As early as 2015, Lasha led the world’s first government blockchain initiatives as a part of the anti-corruption reform for state property auctioning in Ukraine. Prior to this, he worked on the Ukrainian government’s e-identity and digitalization reform and EU's Stork 2.0 digital signature standardization, placing him in a distinctive position at the intersection of identity and Web3.

Laura is a digital assets policy expert, and serves as the UK Policy Lead for Crypto Council For Innovation (CCI). CCI is the premier global alliance for advancing innovation, which believes in leading with a global view, advocating for inclusive regulation, and developing evidence-based insights to support government and business leaders.  

Leo Li is the Chief Growth Officer of CARV, spearheading operations, strategy, and outreach across departments. At CARV, a leading data-sharing protocol and AI-powered gaming super app, Leo oversees more than 600 onboarded games and 1.5 million users. His leadership ensures the seamless integration and utilization of CARV's suite of tools for user acquisition, onboarding, and management.

Before joining CARV, Leo held key roles as a publishing producer and operations manager at Electronic Arts, Garena, and Tencent. His extensive background includes the global publishing of popular titles including FIFA Online, Apex Legends Mobile, Arena of Valor, and more.

Leo Mizuhara is the Founder and CEO of Hashnote, a fully regulated, institutional-grade investment management platform for DeFi, seamlessly merging the advantages of traditional finance with the innovation of decentralized finance. Leo’s leadership and passion for fintech stems from his successful career, including previously running Systematic Trading for FICC Options at DRW for five years, and a 12-year tenure at Bank of America as a managing director and senior portfolio manager in the Corporate Investments Group in New York. His vision for Hashnote is to create the future of finance – one that integrates the best of both traditional and DeFi systems.

Leroy Hofer is the CEO and Co-Founder of ELOOP, a Vienna-based carsharing provider and blockchain startup. He graduated from the Commercial Academy Bregenz before studying Business Administration at the University of Vienna, from which he soon switched to the field of Journalism and ultimately completed his education with a Bachelor's degree. Together with his roommate Nico Prugger, Leroy Hofer developed the idea for ELOOP. In the company founded in 2019, he is primarily responsible for the areas of vision, business development, and legal matters.

Macauley is a Senior Editor based in Germany. He was an editor and content creator in the pro chess world for 14 years before an interest in crypto led him to Bucerius Law School (MLB 2020), a thesis on stablecoins, DeFi and CBDC, and a career change. He also holds an MA in Film Studies; film credits include Associate Producer of the 2016 Netflix feature documentary, "Magnus" about World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen. Contact: macauley@blockworks.co

Marc Taverner is the CEO and co-founder of XEROF, a leading Swiss financial services provider specializing in cryptoassets. He has more than 30 years of experience in the technology industry and now pioneers the use of cryptoassets for liquidity and efficiency in financial services worldwide.

Previously, Marc founded InComm Conferencing, a company focusing on detailed events ranging from large-port calls, operator-assisted conferences, webcasts, medical education events, investor relations calls, and onsite production. He successfully sold the company to join the C-suite of the leading European Bitcoin and blockchain firm, Bitfury. Marc then directed INATBA, one of the largest multi-stakeholder blockchain trade associations in Europe, backed by the European Commission and Abu Dhabi Global Market. During his tenure, he led the multi-stakeholder response to the EU cryptoasset regulation MiCA. Marc is also an angel investor and advisor to several web3 and crypto companies.

Mariana Krym, COO of VSC, a HealthFi ecosystem that leverages Web3 technology to promote positive lifestyle habits through anonymized health data monetization. Mariana has also worked as a crypto trader for close to a decade and is a veteran media consultant expert, having worked with such notable companies as Waze (now Google), Twitter, Spotify, Snapchat, and LinkedIn.

Mark Hendrickson is a product leader who lives in Barcelona, Spain having previously grown up in Menlo Park, California, studied at Bowdoin College, and started his technology career in San Francisco. He has extensive experience leading product strategy, management, design, development, and marketing efforts at early-stage software startups such as Hiro, TechCrunch, Plancast, Lift, and KITE. He currently serves as the general manager for Leather, the Bitcoin and Stacks wallet.

Mark Long is CEO of Shrapnel, a AAA first-person extraction shooter, with a creator ecosystem that empowers players to own their creations and shape the future of the game. A former head of Xcloud at Microsoft and publishing at HBO, he is a 27-year game industry veteran who has produced more than 32 titles on every platform from SEGA Genesis to Oculus Rift. Established across many media forms, Mark is also a member of the Producers Guild and a New York Times bestselling graphic novel author.

Dr. Markus Franke is an economist who has been working at the intersection of economics and technology in TradFi (J.P.Morgan, Merrill Lynch, Allianz), as a post-doc researcher (including the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Columbia Business School in New York and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology), and in Web3 (on Celo, as a board member of cLabs, founder of Mento Labs, and advisor of many projects in the EVM space).  

Markus Infanger joined Ripple in January 2019 and currently is the SVP of RippleX, a business unit supporting partnerships and developer growth around the XRP Ledger. Prior to Ripple, Markus was in banking for over 20 years leading global teams in Foreign Exchange. He is currently also completing an Executive MBA with TRIUM (LSE, NYU, HEC Paris). 

Martin Derka, Ph.D., is the Head of New Initiatives at Quantstamp, a web3 security company. He has years of experience in the development of smart contracts and platforms built on Ethereum, specializing in DeFi security and economic manipulations. At Quantstamp, Martin assists with both securing projects prior to deployment, and crisis management in the aftermath of an exploit.

Martin Goycoolea Scott is the Product Lead &amp; Builder of Zeal. His journey into the crypto space began in 2017, via a drive to make personal finance approachable and user-friendly. Since then, Martin has spent his time focused on making personal finance and payments easier and friendlier. Martin has a wealth of experience in tech, working as Head of Growth at Mach, Office Lead at Revolut, Head of Product and Growth at EdTech firm Eedi.

Matan Almakis, Head of Protocol at DOP, is actively contributing to the wave of data ownership in Web3. With a background in driving growth at Lamina, Matan now leads DOP's product architecture, giving Web3 users the power to share their data exactly how and with whom they prefer. He believes that encrypting sensitive financial information on chain is a fundamental human right and affirms that data ownership is crucial for the mass adoption of Web3. Matan is dedicated to leveraging blockchain technology to address real-world challenges with a human-centered approach.


Matthew is a brand strategist and Web3 product builder. He is the co-founder &amp; COO of Mojito, the first company to spin out of Serotonin. Mojito is a Web3 platform for NFT commerce that powers Sotheby’s dedicated NFT marketplace, Sotheby’s Metaverse, where Matthew currently serves as Managing Director. Previous to his work at Serotonin, Matthew founded the blockchain-for-journalism startup Civil, which was acquired by ConsenSys, one of the most important companies in the Ethereum blockchain ecosystem. Before entering the world of decentralized technology, Matthew led Nine Lines, a prominent marketing agency where he worked with 40+ consumer startups over 6 years, and he co-created the digital marketing course for General Assembly. 

Mauricio is the co-founder of Ledn, a digital currency lending company that prioritizes transparency and client control through new, innovative products such as DCNs, Growth Accounts, and Custodied loans. Ledn was the crypto industry's first digital asset lending company to complete a Proof-of-Reserves.  Since its inception in 2018, Ledn has originated over $635M (USD) retail loans and over $4B in institutional loans.

Mauricio experienced the impacts of hyperinflation in Venezuela and saw how quickly money can lose all its value. In hopes that he could provide for his family in the future, he escaped the economic catastrophe through Bitcoin and went on to earn his MBA at Western University in Canada.

Views are my own. The author is a co-founder of 21 Technologies Inc. (Ledn). Read Ledn’s disclaimers at https://ledn.io/legal/disclaimers and risk disclosure statement at https://ledn.io/legal/risk-disclosure-statement.

Michael Bodley is a US-based senior editor (investigations) at Blockworks, where he focuses on the intersection of Wall Street and digital assets. Before that, he worked for TheStreet.com and institutional newsletter Hedge Fund Alert. His work has been published in outlets including The Boston Globe and The Washington Post. Contact Michael at michael.bodley@blockworks.co

Michael McSweeney has worked in crypto media since 2014, including editorships at CoinDesk and The Block. In his spare time, he writes fiction and plays disc golf. Contact Michael at michael.mcsweeney@blockworks.co.

Misha Komarov, founder of =nil; Foundation, a leading developer of zero-knowledge infrastructure and Ethereum scalability such as =nil;’s native circuit compiler zkLLVM, Proof Market, ‘Placeholder’, and the self-titled zkSharding rollup, =nil;. Misha is a leading developer of infrastructure for effective zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) generation. He is a researcher and developer in the fields of cryptography and database management systems (DBMS), developing vital infrastructure within zero-knowledge technology such as =nil;’s native circuit compiler zkLLVM, Proof Market, and ‘Placeholder’.

Mitch Kochman is Director of Platform Sales at BitGo, where he manages BitGo’s premier client relationships with exchanges, miners and payments platforms. He is predominantly focused and passionate about the Bitcoin-only ecosystem. Mitch has been with BitGo since 2022 and previously spent 11 years at IBM as a sales executive leading global software strategy at several major banks, the last of which being J.P. Morgan Chase. Mitch graduated from University of Maryland with a B.S. in Information Systems and Accounting.


Mo Shaikh is the Co-Founder &amp; CEO of Aptos Labs. He is a 3x founder with over a decade of blockchain/crypto and multinational financial services experience—including a stint on the alternative assets team at Blackrock.

Molly Jane Zuckerman is the opinion editor at Blockworks. She previously led educational content at CoinMarketCap and ran the news desk at Cointelegraph. Molly Jane is now based in New York after almost a decade in Russia, and can talk your ear off about Russia lit and detective novels. Contact Molly Jane: molly@blockworks.co

Nicky is the Senior Partner at XReg Consulting, a boutique public policy and regulatory affairs consultancy specializing in cryptoassets. A former regulator with 15 years of experience in the crypto and financial services industries, Nicky leads the development of XReg’s presence in the Americas, with a strategic focus on Latin America, the Caribbean and North America.

Since founding XReg, Nicky has supported governments and international public bodies with the development and implementation of risk-based, outcomes-oriented cryptoasset regulatory frameworks and strategies that mitigate risk and leverage smart innovation.

He also provides strategic regulatory advice to some of the largest crypto businesses in the world and has successfully secured licenses and authorisations for clients in Europe, Gibraltar, the Caribbean and Asia. As the co-chair of the Global Digital Finance (GDF) AML working group, he helps shape global cryptoasset regulatory standards that mitigate risk and encourage innovation.

Prior to founding XReg, Nicky spent over nine years at the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission (GFSC) as the Head of Risk and Innovation, where he was part of the team that led the design and implementation of the world’s first bespoke regulatory framework for firms using Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT).

Nse Barna is the Chief of Staff at the Aleo Network Foundation, where she oversees the company’s strategic planning and execution. She has a rich history of orchestrating major political campaigns across California. Committed to advancing diversity and inclusivity in tech, Nse leverages her Political Science and International Relations degree from The University of Texas at San Antonio. She champions the widespread use of blockchain and zero-knowledge technology in emerging markets, viewing technology as a powerful tool for empowerment and social change.

Ogle has been an active investor in cryptocurrencies since 2012. He stays busy building different products to benefit the space, including his upcoming networking marketplace Shibuya. He is also building a new blockchain called Glue which focuses on addressing security risks and lack of good user experience in the crypto space. In the meantime, he chases down cybersecurity criminals via his cybersecurity company, Ogle Security Group.

Ornella Vallana aka OrnellaWeb3, is the Marketing &amp; Community Lead at Bankless Academy, a free and interactive open-source web3 education platform that provides the essential tools and knowledge needed to ‘go bankless’. She also hosts DAOnboarding, a podcast sharing stories of contributors in web3. With a diverse background of over 15 years in community building, marketing, and branding across fields such as science, music, and now web3, she is focused on democratizing access to blockchain knowledge, particularly through multilingual education. 

Ornella champions the idea that everyone, even those from the most diverse fields or skill sets, can learn about web3, discover their Ikigai, and become a BUIDLer in the space. Her commitment to decentralization and inclusive education drives her to change the narrative around crypto and blockchain, emphasizing its potential as a public good and fostering community-led initiatives that can bring a new future for younger generations.

Bessie Liu

Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, has released a new blog post discussing a new cryptographic proving system that can make zero-knowledge proofs more efficient.



The proving system, called Binius, is designed to operate directly over binary code on computers. Binary code is a language understood by computers, and it is used to store information and represents data using the symbols zero and one, otherwise known as bits. 



Although there are some similarities between STARKs and Binius, Buterin explains that the mathematical tricks that enable these different proving systems are very different.&nbsp;



Generally speaking, STARKs is a technology that has enabled complicated statements to be easily cryptographically verified. It is designed in a way that can easily compute numbers when they are of small value, when there are large values, STARKs generate extra values, which can lead to inefficiency.&nbsp;



Unlike STARKs that “arithmetize” a statement into a polynomial equation — a mathematical expression which model a relationship between variables in a block — Binius treats data as a hypercube and grid, and uses multilinear polynomials to perform cryptographic proofs.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">BInius: highly efficient proofs over binary fields<a href="https://t.co/lHAGXbgI9r">https://t.co/lHAGXbgI9r</a> <a href="https://t.co/3Xx4zIAm1b">pic.twitter.com/3Xx4zIAm1b</a>&mdash; vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) <a href="https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1784912087098999263?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 29, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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Binius converts individual values into bits and places them in a hypercube and a square. This hypercube is then converted into a grid and computations are performed in order to receive an output matrix.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1021" height="637" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/image.png" alt="" class="wp-image-85182" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/image.png?w=1021 1021w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/image.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/image.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/image.png?w=412 412w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/image.png?w=418 418w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/image.png?w=351 351w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/image.png?w=80 80w" sizes="(max-width: 1021px) 100vw, 1021px" /></figure>



A verifier will then perform its own computational calculations to ensure that the information itself matches and ensure that the compute columns returns a value claimed by the prover.



“I highly encourage people to understand and explore! Lots of innovations have been happening in ZK-proving recently. And I expect lots more to come soon,” Buterin wrote in an <a href="https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1784912152655974533">X post</a>.



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Vitalik Buterin talks ways to make zk proofs more efficient

Casey Wagner

In a highly anticipated move, the Federal Reserve chose to hold interest rates at their existing level on Wednesday following the Federal Open Market Committee two-day policy meeting.&nbsp;



The rate hike pause marks the central bank’s sixth since consecutively raising interest rates from March 2022 to July 2023. Persistent inflation and a healthy labor market contributed to central bankers’ decision to hold rates, they said.&nbsp;



“In considering any adjustments to the target range for the federal funds rate, the Committee will carefully assess incoming data, the evolving outlook, and the balance of risks,” Wednesday’s <a href="https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/files/monetary20240501a1.pdf">statement</a> read. “The Committee does not expect it will be appropriate to reduce the target range until it has gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably toward 2%.” 



Central bankers will need to see more evidence that inflation is easing before cutting rates, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said Wednesday during a press conference.



“The path forward is uncertain,” <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/jerome-powell">Powell</a> said.&nbsp;



“Although some measures of short-term inflation expectations have increased in recent months, longer-term inflation expectations appear to remain well anchored as reflected in a broad range of surveys of households, businesses and forecasters, as well as measures from financial markets,” he added.



Stocks and cryptocurrencies were little changed on the news. Bitcoin (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/btc">BTC</a>) traded sideways in the moments after the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/federal-reserve">Fed</a> released its statement at 2 pm ET, sitting around $57,786 at time of publication, per Coinbase. The largest cryptocurrency is down about 4% over the past 24 hours.&nbsp;



Ether (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/eth">ETH</a>) similarly traded flat, hovering around $2,900 at time of publication – about 1% lower over 24 hours.&nbsp;



The Nasdaq Composite and S&amp;P 500 indexes inched marginally higher on the news, managing to move just barely into the green after an otherwise disappointing trading session.&nbsp;



Bitcoin has hovered below $60,000 since early Wednesday, a downward trend analysts say is poised to continue.&nbsp;



“A break to the downside through $59,200 in BTC has led to an accelerated selloff and, barring an unforeseen catalyst, there seems little in the way of this market testing the [$53,000] area before a meaningful turnaround,” Mike Tauckus, head of trading and structuring at BitOoda, said.&nbsp;



Markets on Wednesday expected about a 9% chance a rate cut will come in June, according to <a href="https://www.cmegroup.com/markets/interest-rates/cme-fedwatch-tool.html?redirect=/trading/interest-rates/countdown-to-fomc.html">data</a> from CME Group.



Updated May 1, 2024 at 2:37 pm ET: Added statement from Fed Chair Jerome Powell. 



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Fed holds interest rates, markets hardly react 

Molly Jane Zuckerman

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="256" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-60166" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=80 80w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



This isn’t going to be another op-ed about how silly it is for celebrities to do cryptocurrency ads. We all know that they don’t age well.



Instead, what I’d like to opine on is why a cryptocurrency ad with Marshall Mathers, aka Eminem, falls flat in particular. If you’re going to put a celebrity in your crypto ad, you need to go all out with creativity, humor or just overall entertainment value. Eminem’s new crypto ad does none of that —&nbsp;it has almost nothing to do with the rapper, or crypto at all.



The rapper’s voiceover on an <a href="http://crypto.com">advertisement for Crypto.com</a> aired during the Lakers NBA play-off game last week. The ad itself, just a minute long, shows a nameless, faceless boxer getting ready to face-off in a match at the Crypto.com Arena. You can hear Eminem’s voice saying empty platitudes of encouragement in the background, telling the audience to enjoy the moment, before the screen shows the somewhat infamous slogan, “Fortune favors the brave.”



I say infamous, because Matt Damon’s 2022 Crypto.com SuperBowl commercial —&nbsp;where the Oscar-nominated actor was actually pictured on screen saying that catchphrase out loud — just looked so silly in the wake of the FTX crash. Damon later gave an <a href="https://gizmodo.com/matt-damon-crypto-com-crypto-bitcoin-1850282413">awkward, pause-filled red carpet interview</a>, noting that he only did the commercial to support his water non-profit in a down year.



Some are <a href="https://www.stereogum.com/2261473/eminem-is-crypto-coms-new-spokesman-teases-new-album-the-death-of-slim-shady/news/">already speculating</a> that Eminem’s main motivation to lend his voice to Crypto.com’s latest ad is part of a marketing push for his upcoming album. But his motivations for being crypto’s latest celebrity spokesperson aren’t important. What’s important is how soulless that advertisement is. Watching the commercial for the first time as a longtime Eminem stan, I lamented all of the missed opportunities staring me in the face.



Read more from our opinion section: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/cryptos-best-use-case-buying-goats-twitter">Crypto’s best use case? Buying goats on Twitter</a>



For one, this is far from Eminem’s first foray into crypto —&nbsp;he had his own, pretty cringey Bored Ape phase at the peak of the NFT boom, culminating in a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjrA-slMoZ4">half-animated BAYT music video</a> with none other than Snoop Dogg. That was terrible, and also funny: and Crypto.com’s pretty basic ad could have benefitted from any sort of creative reference to Eminem’s actual crypto interests.&nbsp;



Granted, Crypto.com is not an NFT platform. That doesn’t mean that you aren’t allowed to have a sense of humor — especially when creating a likely very expensive advertisement with a very famous, previously NFT-obsessed rapper.



Which brings me to my second point —&nbsp;there’s no rap. Paying Eminem to remain faceless and read a short, only slightly rhyming text over a black-and-white boxing video feels like paying <a href="https://www.thecut.com/2019/07/i-think-about-bob-dylans-victorias-secret-ad-a-lot.html">Bob Dylan to promote Victoria’s Secret</a>.



Eminem’s crypto ad isn’t the first since the unfortunate crypto Super Bowl. Both Coinbase and Greyscale also <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/nba-nhl-bitcoin-halving-ads">put out slightly more entertaining ads</a> in the lead up to the Bitcoin halving, albeit celebrity-less ones.&nbsp;



As I said at the top, my point here isn’t to convince the world that celebrities in crypto ads are setting themselves up for <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/celebrities-erase-ftx-ties">future embarrassment</a>, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/what-do-tom-brady-steph-curry-and-naomi-osaka-have-in-common-an-ftx-lawsuit">loss of money</a> and even potentially <a href="https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2022-183">SEC fines</a>. We already know that. And I also know that no one will stop crypto companies, especially during a bull market, from paying celebrities tons of money to promote their brands anyway. Sam Bankman-Fried set that precedent, and even with him in jail, it really shows no signs of abating.



Instead, I’d like to propose that if we are going to keep having celeb-studded crypto ads —&nbsp;make them really sparkle. Pay Eminem to write an entire song about trading on Crypto.com and release it alongside his new album, with a specially crypto-themed music video (he already has the experience). Get JoJo Siwa to <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@itsjojosiwa/video/7352686405887331630">wrap another car</a> with whatever memecoin logo, or Brooklyn Beckham to tattoo Dogecoin eyes next to his <a href="https://pagesix.com/article/brooklyn-beckham-tattoos-for-nicola-peltz/">tattoo of his wife’s eyes</a>.



Celebrity crypto ads, in my opinion, should only exist if they do something really creative or really silly: In other words, make them match the whimsy and creativity of this burgeoning financial tech industry. I’m not sure that any SEC lawyers would agree with me. Good thing I don’t work for the SEC.



Otherwise, make celebrity crypto endorsements illegal for all of the obvious reasons (high potential for securities fraud and misleading investors to start). In a nutshell — go silly or go home.



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I don’t care much about tech, I don’t care a whole lot about finance, either. I care about writing stories and watching weird things unfold. And that’s why I’ve ended up in crypto. But because I’m missing that passion for what crypto and blockchain are all about — finance, tech, privacy, yadda yadda — I’m going to write instead about what I am actually interested in. Everything about crypto that has very little to do with crypto. That’s what this column will be about. All the tangential stories that come out of the blockchain and crypto space, what I think about them, and how I navigate it all as a skeptical former Russian literature major. It’s precisely my perch as an outsider that lets me do what I do: Opine on all sides of any crypto issue, no strings attached, no skin in the game. If you want to talk crypto with me, let’s go off topic.



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Eminem’s new crypto ad fails to capture the moment, lets it slip

Ben Strack

Stablecoin issuer Tether has notched a record quarterly net profit at a time during which the company is broadening its scope.&nbsp;



Tether tallied an all-time high net profit of $4.52 billion in the first quarter, according to a Wednesday attestation report by auditing firm BDO.&nbsp;



Tether’s first quarter net operating profits of $1 billion were driven by its US Treasury holdings, the company added. Other profits stemmed from mark-to-market gains in its bitcoin and gold positions.



Bitcoin’s price hit a new peak of about $73,000 in mid-March before trending downward in April.



The $4.52 billion total obliterates the former record of $2.85 billion in net profit gathered during the last three months of 2023.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/tether-monthly-profit-q4">Tether made nearly $1B in monthly profit during Q4</a>



Tether’s token, <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/usdt">USDT</a>, is intended to maintain a value of $1 and can be redeemed for US dollars at any time.&nbsp;&nbsp;



As of March 31, <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/tether">Tether</a>’s reserves were nearly $6.3 billion higher than the liabilities of the companies issuing USDT.&nbsp;&nbsp;



USDT’s market capitalization was roughly $110 billion at 10 am ET, behind only bitcoin and ether among crypto assets. That figure is more than triple the $33 billion market cap of competing stablecoin USDC.&nbsp;



The latest disclosure comes as Tether seeks to build out its business beyond just <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/stablecoins">stablecoins</a>.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/tether-hiring-ai-division-jobs">Tether looks to ‘build the next generation of open AI models’ with new data division</a>



It recently launched a data initiative focused on developing and investing in new technology, for example. Other new divisions include a unit focused on blockchain-based financial infrastructure and one involved in the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/mining">mining</a> and energy sectors.&nbsp;



“With this evolution beyond our traditional stablecoin offerings, we are ready to build and support the invention and implementation of cutting-edge technology that removes the limitations of what’s possible in this world,” CEO Paolo Ardoino said in a statement last month.



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Tether just obliterated its former net profit record for a single quarter 

The world’s largest asset manager appears poised to move deeper into the tokenization space after injecting capital into a tokenization firm it has worked with before.



BlackRock led a $47 million funding round for Securitize, a company focused on bringing physical and traditional financial assets onto the blockchain, the firms said Wednesday.&nbsp;



Fintech companies and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/citibank-explores-tokenization-wisdomtree">traditional finance giants have increasingly been testing out tokenization</a>, noting that blockchain rails can help reduce costs and improve transparency. BlackRock Larry Fink has called tokenized securities “the next generation for markets.”&nbsp;



To that end, <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/blackrock">BlackRock</a> and Securitize are not strangers.&nbsp;



BlackRock launched its first tokenized fund — the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund — in March, offering a different way to earn US dollar yields. Qualified investors can subscribe to that fund through Securitize Markets.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/blackrock-tokenized-fund-trading-circle-usdc">Circle debuts way to trade BlackRock tokenized fund shares for USDC</a>



&#8220;We believe that <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/tokenization">tokenization</a> has the potential to drive a significant transformation in capital markets infrastructure,” Joseph Chalom, BlackRock&#8217;s global head of strategic ecosystem partnerships, said in a statement. “Our investment in Securitize is another step in the evolution of our digital assets strategy.&#8221;&nbsp;&nbsp;



Chalom is now a member of Securitize’s board of directors.



Other investors in the $47 million funding round include Hamilton Lane, ParaFi Capital and Tradeweb Markets.&nbsp;



Private markets investment firm Hamilton Lane in January 2023 made <a href="https://securitize.io/learn/press/hamilton-lane-fund-securitize-polygon">available</a> one of its equity funds through a Securitize feeder fund tokenized on Polygon.&nbsp;



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BlackRock doubles down on tokenization via investment in Securitize

David Canellis

Katherine Ross

Michael McSweeney

<h2 class="wp-block-heading">CZ is no SBF&nbsp;</h2>



CZ was sentenced yesterday to four months in prison for violating the Bank Secrecy Act.&nbsp;



It’s not what the government wanted and it’s not what CZ wanted. But all things considered, we say he got a pretty damn good deal. I wonder what SBF is thinking.&nbsp;



Zhao pleaded guilty last November for failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program at Binance. He had to resign as CEO and hand over $50 million in fines, but his ownership of the exchange is intact and his net worth is still in the tens of billions (Forbes estimates $33 billion while Bloomberg says it’s closer to $36 billion, either way, $50 million is pocket change).&nbsp;



The prosecution asked the judge for three years. CZ’s team made a valiant attempt for house arrest or probation.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/changpeng-zhao-sentencing-verdict">Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao sentenced to 4 months in prison</a>



In the end, judge Richard Jones settled in the middle, citing the moving letters CZ’s supporters wrote to the court and the indifference the Binance founder displayed while breaking the law. After all, CZ’s apparent catch phrase was “ask for forgiveness not permission.”&nbsp;



Even if it wasn’t exactly what they wanted, <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/changpeng-zhao">CZ</a>’s team seems pretty content. The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/30/technology/binance-founder-changpeng-zhao-sentenced.html">reported</a> that CZ’s son, a college student in the US, attended the hearing and “silently pumped his fist” when the judge said he would be ignoring the government’s request.&nbsp;



CZ’s co-founder seemed to be taking a victory lap on X hours after the sentencing was announced.&nbsp;&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Got it. <a href="https://t.co/qctXcY0b0r">https://t.co/qctXcY0b0r</a>&mdash; Yi He (@heyibinance) <a href="https://twitter.com/heyibinance/status/1785411272156061958?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 30, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



The sentencing comes roughly a month after <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ftx">FTX</a>’s founder SBF was sentenced to 25 years in prison. It’s a large discrepancy, but it should come as no surprise.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sbf-shows-no-remorse-sentencing-reaction">25 years for Sam Bankman-Fried — A fair sentence, or no?</a>



SBF<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sbf-blew-it-final-defense-trial"> famously avoided accepting responsibility</a> for his actions, a point the judge held against him. It also didn’t help that SBF lied on the stand. CZ, on the other hand, pleaded guilty. He cooperated and took responsibility.&nbsp;



And then, of course, there is the difference in the type of crimes. The SEC does claim in its civil suit that Binance <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/binance-pushes-back-sec-lawsuit">was commingling funds</a>, but no one ever made any allegations of theft. Plus, the very nature of the crimes CZ admitted to make Binance an asset to the US government — the exchange itself is essentially a tool for tracking down money launderers and illicit actors.&nbsp;



They may both be exchange founders, and they both may be in prison for an overlapping 120 days, but the similarities stop there.&nbsp;&nbsp;



— Casey Wagner



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Data Center</h2>



<ul>
<li>Daily net flows into <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/binance">Binance</a> have mostly kept an even <a href="https://dune.com/21co/binance-proof-of-reserve">keel</a> over the past month leading up to Zhao’s sentencing, ranging from -$613 million to $1.9 billion.</li>



<li>Ethereum is working through the <a href="https://www.validatorqueue.com/">validator</a> queue, with 11,780 currently waiting, down from 22,300 earlier last month.</li>



<li>Arbitrum and Base are neck-and-neck for daily active addresses. The former has <a href="https://app.artemis.xyz/chains">taken</a> the lead with 373,500 to 369,600.</li>



<li>Futures traders have been <a href="https://www.coinglass.com/LiquidationData">liquidated</a> for $420 million on centralized exchanges over the past day — more than 80% of it longs.</li>



<li>Tether’s <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/tether">supply</a> is steady at about $110.5 million, currently on its longest sideways streak since January.</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">BTC memecoins take a breather</h2>



Runes are tipped to eventually replace the more experimental BRC-20 tokens. Let’s see how that process is going.



Ordinals creator Casey Rodarmor launched the Runes protocol at the same block height as the Bitcoin halving, now nearly two weeks ago.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/runes-bitcoin-token-standard-ordinals">A look into Runes, a new Bitcoin token standard for issuing fungible tokens</a>



Technically, Runes (and BRC-20 tokens) can be issued for purposes other than memecoins, but practically every one of the hundreds of thousands onchain are memecoins with silly names, like DOG•GO•TO•THE•MOON and ANARCHO•CATBUS.&nbsp;



Putting a dollar value on BRC-20 and Runes markets isn’t exactly feasible. Their markets are mostly illiquid and spread across multiple platforms with large price variations.



Still, the top 15 or so most liquid and widely held BRC-20 tokens are currently altogether worth around $2 billion, going by the most simple calculations, while the entire Runes market is currently valued at under $800 million, according to a GeniiData <a href="https://geniidata.com/user/poshi/runes-market-overview">dashboard</a>.



The most prominent BRC-20s have, however, been shedding market value ever since the halving, although it could be said they were trending downwards all year.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/xdCcrxLRVcROCqZNhLoWvjI129lW_52G1JbPnQA0KFdYP7lnrGguvOVBJNukTmkUCabHHPb_u935BansBfcR-qEPub8x9HWMg5ldIIp1G5yh2GBtjepl0XRnJFgzChCWJdeAsfK271OmKQrmHZucfUE" alt=""/></figure>



We’re still a ways away from Runes flipping BRC-20s for total market cap, but they’re making progress



Overall, Runes represented about 20% of all Bitcoin <a href="https://dune.com/cryptokoryo/runes">transactions</a> over the past two days, with BTC transfers comprising the rest. Before the halving, BRC-20s often made up one third of Bitcoin activity.&nbsp;



Meanwhile, BRC-20 <a href="https://geniidata.com/user/poshi/ordinals-brc20">activity</a> dried up almost immediately after the halving and has now dropped by upwards of 90%. It was common to see more than 100,000 BRC-20 mints and over 10,000 transfers per day in the weeks leading up to the halving — yesterday, there were only 825 mints and 6,300 transfers.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-runes-launch">Bitcoin Runes look to spice up the halving party</a>



Runes traders are also taking a breather. Bitcoin processed more than 400,000 Runes <a href="https://geniidata.com/user/poshi/runes-market-overview">transactions</a> per day in the three days following the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/bitcoin-halving">halving</a>. Tuesday saw only about a quarter of that number.&nbsp;



Daily volumes for Runes are now looking to rebound and find equilibrium around $15 million per day, after notching almost $30 million daily in the beginning.



It could be that some of the biggest BRC-20s keep some staying power due to the Lindy effect, even if Runes continue to grow.&nbsp;



But considering how many new Runes debut and are minted each day, it seems like only a matter of time until capital flight really hits.



— David Canellis



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Take a deep breath&nbsp;</h2>



Well, this week is certainly a lesson in patience.&nbsp;



With bitcoin under $60,000 and US <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/bitcoin-etf">bitcoin ETF</a> inflows down to a trickle, it’s tempting to expect good news.&nbsp;



Unfortunately, you’re not going to find such news with the Hong Kong spot bitcoin and ether ETFs. At least, not with the expectations that many have thanks to the incredibly successful launch of their US cousins.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-etf-outflows-persist-third-straight-week">Bitcoin ETF snapshot: A few firsts during another week of outflows</a>



Bloomberg’s Eric Balchunas and James Seyffart have warned that the Hong Kong market <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/hong-kong-crypto-etf-predicted-inflows">won’t replicate the US demand</a>, and they were right. Trading day volumes, according to K33 Research, came in around $12.4 million. That’s a bit shy from the launch day volume of $4.5 billion seen by the US products.



“Initial indications showed expected inflows to total close to $300 million, while real combined volumes amounted to little more than $11 million,” &nbsp;BitOoda wrote. The firm noted that the “disappointing” numbers led to the “dramatic selloff” that we saw Tuesday.



But the thing is: the two markets are not at all comparable.&nbsp;



“By market size, it’s more reasonable to compare the Hong Kong ETF market to the Brazilian and Australian ETF markets, which saw BTC ETF launch day volumes of $3.3 million and $1.1 million, respectively. The HK ETF launch is thus decent when assessed through more sober comparisons,” K33 said in its note.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-etf-regulation-in-asia">After crypto ETF movement in Hong Kong, other Asia regulators could act&nbsp;</a>



The funds, in the next few months, could see 23,000 to 28,000 of bitcoin inflows as the segment matures in the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/hong-kong">Hong Kong</a> market. Again, this will surely disappoint those looking for flashy numbers —- that figure represents about two days worth of inflows from <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/blackrock">BlackRock</a>’s bitcoin ETF IBIT back in February.&nbsp;



All of this is to say that there should be a “check yourself before you wreck yourself” realignment of expectations when it comes to the Hong Kong ETFs.



It’s —&nbsp;quite literally — the earliest of days for the products, and there is still time for them to show impressive numbers. Traders just need to put aside their comparisons for a while.&nbsp;



— Katherine Ross



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Works</h2>



<ul>
<li>Rep. Patrick McHenry <a href="https://twitter.com/PatrickMcHenry/status/1785317163110130028">accused</a> SEC Chair Gary Gensler of misrepresenting the regulator’s position on ETH.&nbsp;</li>



<li>BlackRock’s BUIDL hit $375 million in deposits, CoinDesk <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/04/30/blackrocks-buidl-becomes-largest-tokenized-treasury-fund-hitting-375m-toppling-franklin-templetons/">reports</a>.</li>



<li>Coinbase <a href="https://www.coinbase.com/blog/coinbase-integrates-bitcoins-lightning-network-in-partnership-with">integrated</a> Bitcoin’s Lightning Network.</li>



<li>Standard Chartered warned that bitcoin could fall to $50,000, The Block <a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/291908/standard-chartered-bitcoin-price-fall-50000">reports</a>.</li>



<li>Tether notched a net profit of $4.5 billion, <a href="https://tether.io/news/tether-releases-q1-2024-attestation-reports-record-breaking-4-52-billion-profit-highest-treasury-bill-ownership-percentage-ever-total-group-equity-of-11-37-billion/">according</a> to its latest attestation report.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Morning Riff</h2>



There are no crypto coincidences.



That fact surely includes yesterday’s indictment of longtime Bitcoin investor Roger Ver just as ex-Binance boss CZ was handed a meme-length prison sentence.



Ver, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/roger-ver-tax-fraud-charges">accused of tax fraud</a>, is almost a picture-perfect “send a message” target for the US government’s crypto investigators.&nbsp;



Pile on last week’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/doj-arrests-founders-samourai">arrests of the Samourai Wallet</a> co-founders, and you’ve got a pretty convincing picture of a regulatory apparatus that wants to put the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/samourai-wallet-matters-memecoins-privacy">crypto industry on notice</a>.&nbsp;



Maybe I’m being conspiratorial. Then again, it feels like crypto kind of snuck up on the US government. One day, it&#8217;s weird internet money, the next it’s a major driver of Wall Street activity and there’s billions of dollars worth of BTC on Uncle Sam’s balance sheet.



It’s easy to write of Ver’s indictment. But if you’ll pardon the tin-foil hat I’m sporting these days, I think things are just getting started.&nbsp;



4 indeed.&nbsp;



— Michael McSweeney



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Empire Newsletter: Why CZ and SBF’s sentencings were so different

Anchorage Digital is now custodying shares of a tokenized Treasury fund via a partnership with Arca Labs meant to advance institutional participation in the segment.&nbsp;



The link-up comes as the tokenization of real-world assets is set to continue as a “defining trend” for institutional crypto in 2024, Anchorage CEO Nathan McCauley told Blockworks.



The innovation unit of crypto investment firm Arca first issued shares of its US Treasury Fund as digital asset securities, known as ArCoin, in 2021. The company has argued that ArCoin can replace US Treasurys in enterprise workflows while reducing costs and improving transparency.



The company has now turned to <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/anchorage-digital">Anchorage</a> — a crypto-focused bank chartered by the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) — to custody the shares.


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="alignright size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="5763" height="3842" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Anchorage-Digital-Co-Founders-Nathan-McCauley-and-Diogo-Monica-3.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-85120" style="width:467px;height:auto" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Anchorage-Digital-Co-Founders-Nathan-McCauley-and-Diogo-Monica-3.png?w=5763 5763w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Anchorage-Digital-Co-Founders-Nathan-McCauley-and-Diogo-Monica-3.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Anchorage-Digital-Co-Founders-Nathan-McCauley-and-Diogo-Monica-3.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Anchorage-Digital-Co-Founders-Nathan-McCauley-and-Diogo-Monica-3.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Anchorage-Digital-Co-Founders-Nathan-McCauley-and-Diogo-Monica-3.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Anchorage-Digital-Co-Founders-Nathan-McCauley-and-Diogo-Monica-3.png?w=2048 2048w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Anchorage-Digital-Co-Founders-Nathan-McCauley-and-Diogo-Monica-3.png?w=386 386w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Anchorage-Digital-Co-Founders-Nathan-McCauley-and-Diogo-Monica-3.png?w=392 392w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Anchorage-Digital-Co-Founders-Nathan-McCauley-and-Diogo-Monica-3.png?w=329 329w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Anchorage-Digital-Co-Founders-Nathan-McCauley-and-Diogo-Monica-3.png?w=80 80w" sizes="(max-width: 5763px) 100vw, 5763px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Anchorage Digital Co-Founders Nathan McCauley and Diogo Mónica</figcaption></figure></div>


The alliance allows Anchorage clients to keep ArCoin in custody at the bank. Institutions can now access the tokenized shares from the Anchorage platform as it would for the hundreds of assets the company supports.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/federally-chartered-bank-intros-settlement-network">Crypto-focused federal chartered bank intros settlement network</a>



McCauley has said Anchorage meets the Securities and Exchange Commission’s definition of a “qualified custodian.” The term was included in the regulator’s February 2023 <a href="https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-30">proposal</a> that would “entrust safekeeping of client assets” to such entities.



“Now that institutions have validated the benefits of blockchain technology, companies are seeking the most secure and seamless digital assets solutions that meet US regulatory standards,” Arca Labs president Jerald David said in a statement.



The Anchorage platform uses hardware security modules, which keeps assets offline in segregated, on-chain vaults while keeping them accessible. The model serves as a “major unlock” for institutional participation in <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/tokenization">tokenization</a>, McCauley argued.



Tokenizing assets — from real estate to funds — has made headlines in recent years as some of the biggest fintech companies and traditional finance players delve deeper into blockchain-related experiments. Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/citibank-explores-tokenization-wisdomtree">Citi the latest TradFi player to test out asset tokenization</a>



The world’s largest asset manager, <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/blackrock">BlackRock</a>, launched the USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund in March, marking the firm’s first tokenized offering.&nbsp;



Fellow fund behemoth Franklin Templeton, which debuted its OnChain US Government Money Fund in 2021, started allowing institutional investors to transfer shares of the fund — represented by BENJI tokens — to other shareholders last week.



Roger Bayston, Franklin Templeton’s head of digital assets, previously told Blockworks that BENJI essentially acts as a stablecoin while also generating income.&nbsp;



“Looking ahead, we will continue to expand our custody support for tokenization projects to advance institutional participation in the ecosystem for the long term,” McCauley said.



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Anchorage, Arca Labs link up in bid to advance tokenization adoption

While inflows into spot bitcoin ETFs and anticipation around the Bitcoin halving helped fuel BTC’s price rally in the first quarter, the asset may now need a new upward driver.



Investor demand for the US bitcoin funds have stalled in recent weeks and “halving” headlines have slowed given the event came and went on April 19.



Bitcoin’s price (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/btc">BTC</a>) was about $60,300 on Tuesday at 3 pm ET — down 13% from a month ago.&nbsp;



The asset had seen a record seven consecutive months of price growth. That is set to end in April, a fate <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/btc-record-monthly-growth-streak-jeopardized">some segment observers had expected</a>.&nbsp;



It’s tricky to determine whether the long-term effects of the latest halving — an event during which per-block rewards for mining bitcoin <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-2024-occurs">dropped from 6.25 to 3.125 BTC</a> — have been priced in, said Hashdex research head Pedro Lapenta.&nbsp;



Bitcoin prices have historically peaked between 12 to 18 months after each halving, indicating BTC’s price might not hit new heights until next year. But bitcoin had never reached a record price so soon before a halving as it did this year — putting into question past trends.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/history-of-bitcoin-halvings">The history of Bitcoin halvings — and why this time might look different</a>



Either way, the recent BTC slump in April shouldn&#8217;t be alarming, Lapenta added.



“With bitcoin seeing seven straight months of gains, it&#8217;s typical for the period following a <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/bitcoin-halving">halving</a> to involve modest increases or corrections, as we&#8217;re observing now,” he told Blockworks.



Fineqia International analyst Matteo Greco attributes BTC’s price decline to more investors taking profits after entering the market during the downturns of 2022 and 2023. Many ETF investors who saw significant share price appreciation since January did the same, he added.



To that end, the bitcoin ETF category has seen <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-etf-outflows-persist-third-straight-week">three straight weeks of net outflows</a> — an unprecedented streak since such funds hit the US market in January.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/franklin-templeton-institutional-bitcoin-etf-allocation">New mix of bitcoin buyers bode well for ecosystem: Franklin Templeton exec</a>



Those outflows are driven mainly by money exiting the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF (GBTC), which is not new. That said, the category flow-leader — BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) — has seen zero flows on four straight trading days <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/blackrock-bitcoin-etf-inflows-streak">following a 71-day inflow streak</a>, according to Farside Investors <a href="https://farside.co.uk/?p=997">data</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“Short-term uncertainty remains regarding whether demand for bitcoin ETFs has peaked or if investors are simply cautious due to BTC&#8217;s seven-month streak without a correction since September of last year,” Lapenta said.



K33 Research analysts Anders Helseth and Vetie Lunde wrote in a Tuesday note that “increasingly cautious traders” have indeed contributed to BTC’s price fall in recent weeks — “with the current market neither signaling bullish nor bearish aggression,” they added.&nbsp;



The macroeconomic outlook is set to be a BTC price-mover this week, Helseth and Lunde noted, as traders will listen for the Federal Reserve’s guidance on rate cuts and easing.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“Rate cut expectations have moderated substantially in the past month, with the market now pricing in one rate cut for the remainder of 2024 compared to the market&#8217;s expected six cuts in December 2023,” they wrote in the research note.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-slides-ahead-of-fed-rate-decision">Cryptocurrencies, stocks slide ahead of Fed rate decision</a>&nbsp;



A less uncertain macroeconomic environment for risk assets would likely contribute to the next positive price movement for bitcoin, Lapenta said.&nbsp;



Renewed demand for bitcoin’s network utility, like <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/runes-bitcoin-token-standard-ordinals">via the Runes protocol</a>, points to a bullish outlook for BTC, he added. So too does large banks, pension funds and other traditional finance players wading deeper into the space, via ETFs or otherwise.&nbsp;



Lapenta noted: “Taking everything into account, our outlook for 2024 remains positive, with a strong possibility of reaching another all-time high by year-end.&#8221;



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What could drive BTC price with halving complete, ETF demand stalled

The Runes protocol has gained a lot of interest in the Bitcoin community over the past few months.&nbsp;



Runes is a fungible token standard designed by Casey Rodarmor, the creator of Ordinals. The protocol is designed to be an alternative to BRC-20, an experiment token standard for fungible tokens on Bitcoin.



The BRC-20 standard is built on ordinals, which means it stores information in a Bitcoin transaction&#8217;s witness data, in a similar way, runes data is stored in a data storage function called OP_RETURN, Bob Bodily, the founder of Bioniq, told Blockworks.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/motoko-sentinels-ordinal-volume-bitcoin-halving">Motoko Sentinels gain traction despite ordinal volume decrease post-halving&nbsp;</a>



“Runes is a very elegant byte-efficient protocol; everything is encoded down into integers that you can store in the operator,” Bodily said.&nbsp;



Unlike BRC-20 tokens, which often leave behind “junk” after transactions which can consequently clog the network, runes use Unspent Transaction Outputs (UTXOs), and messages sent using the rune protocol (called runestones) will be <a href="https://docs.ordinals.com/runes.html">stored </a>on Bitcoin transaction outputs.&nbsp;



With Runes, users can deploy (etch), mint, and launch tokens in the same way that they can with ERC-20 tokens.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-runes-launch">Bitcoin Runes look to spice up the halving party</a>



Rennick Palley, the founding Partner at Stratos, a VC firm focused on early-stage crypto projects, believes that Runes may have a bright future in enabling bitcoin miners to remain profitable.&nbsp;



&#8220;By adding a whole new layer of fungible tokens on <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/bitcoin">Bitcoin</a>, Runes is making the network busier and more versatile. This should mean more transactions and, by extension, more fees for miners. It’s especially promising because it meshes well with Bitcoin’s existing UTXO model, which is a core part of how miners operate,” Palley said.



However, he notes that with Runes&#8217; growing popularity, transaction fees may climb, making everyday Bitcoin transactions less appealing due to their cost.&nbsp;



“It should encourage more BTC to transact off the layer,” Palley remarked. “Overall, I see the rise of layer-2 solutions as a major positive. These technologies will be the key to enabling hyperbitcoinization. Bitcoin would always need layer-2 solutions to scale — <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ordinals">ordinals</a>, BRC20s and Runes have just accelerated the timeframe, which is great.”



Alexei Zamyatin, co-founder of BOB, a hybrid layer-2 powered by Bitcoin and Ethereum, shares this sentiment. He notes that although bitcoin miners are likely to remain profitable thanks to the Runes protocol, high fees remain a concern.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-cycle-miners-energy-strategy">This Bitcoin halving cycle, miners need a new energy strategy</a>



“Ultimately, trading and other DeFi related activity will have to move to Bitcoin layer-2s/sidechains if [they] are to compete with the UX people are used to from Ethereum and Solana. Otherwise, the 10 min[ute] block times and high fees will result in a decrease of activity very quickly once first speculation is done,” Zamyatin said.



Zamyatin also noted that the growing interest in Bitcoin layer-2s can not be credited solely to Runes but remains a net positive for the Bitcoin ecosystem. Additionally, he notes that many projects are currently riding the “hype wave,” though these projects will likely disappear from the ecosystem in the long term.&nbsp;



“There are a number of strong technical and product teams that may be able to create a strong competition for ETH layer-2s. A lot of this still depends on technical innovation in the form of BitVM or a fork to Bitcoin, which I personally do not believe will happen soon, unfortunately,” he said.



Despite this, Zamyatin remains optimistic, noting that <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/layer-2-2">layer-2s</a> and Bitcoin sidechains will likely bring more value to the Bitcoin blockchain.&nbsp;



“The Bitcoin learning curve is steep and we need to give people a simple way to start playing around with Bitcoin assets — instead of, as previously, tell[ing] them that anything else but Bitcoin is a scam,” he said. “This is certainly something that has changed since Ordinals: Bitcoin has become more welcoming of new developers and builders, with the toxic maximalist culture subsiding into irrelevance.&#8221;



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A look into Runes, a new Bitcoin token standard for issuing fungible tokens

Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao was sentenced to 4 months in US prison today.&nbsp;



The sentence is lower than some bettors expected, with those on Polymarket expecting the judge to hand down a sentence of six months.



Zhao will now head to a US prison to serve out his sentence, which is lower in comparison to the 36 months sought by the Department of Justice. Zhao’s team only sought five months probation.&nbsp;



Zhao also must pay a $50 million fine, as stipulated in his guilty plea signed in November.&nbsp;



Prosecutors aimed high when requesting Zhao’s sentence — which is double the 18 months at the high end of the guidelines — because they wanted the sentence to match the “gravity” of Zhao’s crimes, the government wrote in their sentencing memo last week.&nbsp;



&#8220;If Mr. Zhao does not face incarceration after deliberately and willfully planning to violate U.S. law to build the largest crypto exchange in the world and get rich in the process … then no one will face incarceration and the BSA will for intents and purposes be a dead letter,” prosecutors argued at the hearing, <a href="https://twitter.com/nikhileshde/status/1785355429582979304">according</a> to CoinDesk’s Nikhilesh De.&nbsp;



We broke down what you need to know about the sentencing in our X article:



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://twitter.com/Blockworks_/status/1785384325329920330"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1192" height="872" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-30-at-3.08.55-PM.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-85087" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-30-at-3.08.55-PM.png?w=1192 1192w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-30-at-3.08.55-PM.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-30-at-3.08.55-PM.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-30-at-3.08.55-PM.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-30-at-3.08.55-PM.png?w=351 351w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-30-at-3.08.55-PM.png?w=357 357w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-30-at-3.08.55-PM.png?w=299 299w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Screenshot-2024-04-30-at-3.08.55-PM.png?w=80 80w" sizes="(max-width: 1192px) 100vw, 1192px" /></a></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Now what?</h2>



Zhao’s sentencing comes less than a month after former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried received his own legal judgment.&nbsp;



Unlike CZ, SBF didn’t reach a deal with the government and was instead found guilty of fraud by a jury in New York at the end of last year. He’s now serving a sentence of 25 years; far more jail time than the former Binance CEO.



As part of his plea deal, he agreed not to contest a sentence of 18 months.



While this wraps up the DOJ’s actions against Zhao and Binance, the two still face charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission. The regulator was notably absent from the DOJ’s settlement. The agreement included the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, and Office of Foreign Assets Control.



The SEC and Binance, in court documents earlier this month, said that they were in the middle of the discovery process. The filing <a href="https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67474542/securities-and-exchange-commission-v-binance-holdings-limited/?filed_after=&amp;filed_before=&amp;entry_gte=&amp;entry_lte=&amp;order_by=desc">noted</a> that Zhao “served responses to the SEC’s interrogatories” and the two continue to discuss the SEC’s document requests.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What led to Zhao’s jail time</h2>



Zhao&#8217;s guilty plea was part of the multibillion-dollar settlement the government reached with Binance at the end of last year. The agreement&#8217;s sticker price, set at $4 billion, shocked many, although the investigation into the crypto exchange had been reported several times over a period of years.



Prior to the judge’s decision, the former executive received 161 letters of support from family and friends, asking the judge for leniency.&nbsp;



Zhao, in his letter to the judge, wrote that there was “no excuse” for the lack of anti-money laundering and compliance controls at Binance. He said he wished he could “change that part of Binance’s story.”



Since late last year, Zhao has been on US soil as ordered by the court. The former executive is not a US citizen — something that his team brought up to argue for leniency — and resides with his family in the United Arab Emirates. Zhao, his lawyers said ahead of the sentencing, cannot be sent to a minimum security facility because he’s not a US citizen, which they wanted taken into account.



While the Tuesday hearing shuts the book on the DOJ&#8217;s case against Binance and Zhao, the crypto enforcement actions against others in the Web3 space don’t end there. Just last week, the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/doj-arrests-founders-samourai">Justice Department arrested the founders of Samourai Wallet</a>, alleging that it acted as a mixer for criminal funds. <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/roman-semenov-tornado-cash-ofac-list">It also has open cases</a> against Tornado Cash’s Roman Semenov and Roman Storm.



Want more details about CZ’s sentencing and what’s next? <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter here</a>. ICYMI, Blockworks reporter Casey Wagner <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/empire-newsletter-eigenlayer-airdrop-criticisms">gave some insight</a> into the hearing ahead of CZ’s Tuesday court date.



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Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao sentenced to 4 months in prison

Bitcoin investor Roger Ver was charged with tax fraud by the US Department of Justice on Tuesday.



The DOJ is seeking Ver’s extradition for a trial in the US. He was arrested in Spain on US criminal charges. 



The DOJ alleges that Ver evaded $50 million in taxes. Ver, the DOJ noted, became a citizen of St. Kitts and Nevis in 2014, but he still had two US companies — MemoryDealers.com and Agilestar.com. The Justice Department said that Ver bought bitcoin for both himself and the two companies. 



Ver was required to pay an “exit tax” on the capital gains. Both the companies and Ver allegedly owned roughly 131,000 bitcoin in 2014, with the companies specifically owning 73,000 of that sum.



“As a result of his expatriation, Ver allegedly was required under U.S. law to file tax returns that reported capital gains from the constructive sale of his world-wide assets, including the bitcoins, and to report the fair market value of his assets,” the DOJ’s release <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/early-bitcoin-investor-charged-tax-fraud">said</a>.



The IRS, the DOJ said, lost “at least” $48 million due to the allegations against Ver.&nbsp;



“The indictment further alleges that by June 2017, Ver’s two companies continued to own approximately 70,000 bitcoins. Around that time, Ver allegedly took possession of those bitcoins and in November 2017 sold tens of thousands of them on cryptocurrency exchanges for approximately $240 million in cash,” a press release from the DOJ said.&nbsp;



Ver also provided “false or misleading information” to a law firm he hired so that he could allegedly conceal the amount of bitcoin both he and his companies held. 



“As a result, the law firm allegedly prepared and filed false tax returns that substantially undervalued the two companies and their 73,000 bitcoins and did not report that Ver owned any bitcoins personally,” the release said.



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DOJ charges Roger Ver with tax fraud

Global authorities are intensifying their war against one of crypto’s core use cases — and no, I don’t mean memecoins. 



Crypto mixers have long been in the regulatory crosshairs for their use by money launderers and other illicit actors. Mixing tech obfuscates the original source of a crypto transaction —&nbsp;anathema to the kind of surveillance conducted by regulators across the world’s financial system.&nbsp;



Such efforts saw a significant expansion with last week’s arrests and indictment of the co-founders of privacy-focused bitcoin wallet Samourai.



The co-founders, accused of enabling more than $100 million in laundered funds, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/doj-arrests-founders-samourai">face decades</a> in prison if convicted. The US Department of Justice, which shut down Samourai’s services and seized its websites, called it “a haven for criminals to engage in large-scale money laundering and sanctions evasion.”



This case is a big deal —&nbsp;so big, in fact, that one wonders whether the crypto community fully appreciates the gravity of what’s been happening. Or where things could go from here: Self-censorship by developers afraid of legal drama, greater centralization of crypto services and the further abandonment of the US as a destination for technology innovation.&nbsp;&nbsp;



In the past two years, regulators have targeted other mixing services and platforms. Roman Sterlingov, founder of mixing service Bitcoin Fog, was convicted earlier this month on similar charges and faces sentencing in July.&nbsp;



Tornado Cash, the Ethereum-based mixer, was sanctioned in 2022 and one of its co-founders is <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/custodia-bank-will-continue-fed-battle">currently on trial</a>, with a verdict expected next month.



The Bitcoin network’s <a href="https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block">founding message</a> referenced looming bailouts for British banks. It was, in a sense, a rejection of the old ways of money and finance and a promise, however tiny at the time of genesis block, of something new. That didn’t mean simply breaking away from entrenched financial interests, but breaking away from centralized parties who have the power to oversee and control transactions.



The war on mixing can be viewed as the inevitable reaction to such efforts. Certain transactions — namely, those tucked out of sight — are undesirable, and governments will spare no expense in prosecuting not only the criminals who use mixing tools, but those that dare to develop them.  



Read more from our opinion section: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/stop-chasing-degens-crypto-adoption">Stop chasing degens</a>



Developers are taking notice. ZkSNACKs, the developer of Wasabi Wallet, another privacy-centric wallet, <a href="https://blog.wasabiwallet.io/">announced</a> over the weekend that it would block US residents from its services.



Users, too, are on notice. On April 25, the FBI said that users of crypto-centric unlicensed money transmission businesses “may encounter financial disruptions during law enforcement actions, especially if their cryptocurrency is intermingled with funds obtained through illegal means.”



The notice later put it more bluntly: “Using a service that does not comply with its legal obligations may put you at risk of losing access to funds after law enforcement operations target those businesses.”



The Samourai indictments represent an aggressive warning to services that operate outside the sphere of surveillance —&nbsp;and that’s the point.&nbsp;



I believe people in crypto should care more about this. Far, far more.&nbsp;



Public policy is unsexy and not nearly as fun as rolling the dice on the latest memecoin. The bar to actually being able to make a difference in such fights is especially high and, perhaps, not one prioritized by some in the industry. This might be especially true for those whose livelihoods may or may not depend on friendly relations with the US government.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Regulators, at least recently, appear set on jailing developers for daring to provide resources to those who don’t want every inch of their financial history dissected. Crypto was always intended to be a path for just that —&nbsp;being your own bank, as the saying once went —&nbsp;but the industry’s original intentions were lost in the memecoin circus. Or perhaps the silly speculation was always the point.&nbsp;



If the FBI notice is any indication, the authorities want you to keep on using the bank —&nbsp;albeit one with a more crypto-friendly face.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>


<div class="wp-block-post-author-biography">Michael McSweeney has worked in crypto media since 2014, including editorships at CoinDesk and The Block. In his spare time, he writes fiction and plays disc golf. Contact Michael at michael.mcsweeney@blockworks.co.</div>


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Samourai Wallet matters more than your memecoins

Coinbase is poised for a strong showing when it reports its first quarter results later this week, analysts said — though some questions remain.&nbsp;



Still, the revenue outlook for Coinbase’s layer-2 network and its international offerings, for example, would give the market a better sense of the crypto exchange’s trajectory, one analyst said.&nbsp;



The lift Coinbase is set to see upon reporting earnings on Thursday is due in part to volatile crypto markets and rising prices seen during the first three months of 2024, noted Morningstar analyst Michael Miller.



Bitcoin’s price rose to an <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-all-time-high">all-time high price</a> around $73,000 in mid-March. Though the asset’s price has retreated in recent weeks to below $61,000, BTC is up roughly 38% year to date. 



“Trading revenue should be much higher than last year, and I expect the company to be solidly profitable,” Miller told Blockworks. “USDC’s market capitalization also staged a major recovery during the quarter, so there will be significant tailwinds to its interest income as well.”



<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbases-circle-investment-reflects-the-shoring-up-of-major-revenue-stream">Interest earned on Coinbase USDC reserves</a> represents a decent chunk of the company’s revenue — amounting to $172 million during the fourth quarter of 2023. That stablecoin revenue figure was roughly 19% of Coinbase’s net revenue during those three months.



Owen Lau, executive director at Oppenheimer &amp; Co, said he too expects a “meaningful beat” for Coinbase given the crypto exchange’s strong trading volumes and likely improved stablecoin revenue.&nbsp;



“<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/coinbase">Coinbase</a> could also benefit from the mark-up of their corporate investment portfolio due to their adoption of accounting rule ASU 2023-08,” Lau told Blockworks.&nbsp;



The law requires entities to measure certain crypto assets at fair value, with changes in fair value recorded in net income.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Expectations by the numbers</h2>



Oppenheimer analysts anticipate that Coinbase trading volume hit roughly $300 billion during the first quarter — up 95% from the prior quarter, according to an April 3 research note.&nbsp;



The average market cap of USDC increased 12% quarter over quarter to $28 billion, they added.



Lau and his team also project first quarter subscription and services revenue, which comprises income related to <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/stablecoins">stablecoins</a>, to rise 15% from the prior quarter to $432 million.



They anticipate Coinbase’s total revenue in the first three months of the year to be $1.4 billion. That would be a 48% increase from the $954 million of total revenue notched in last year’s fourth quarter.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-earnings-q4-analysis">Coinbase reported Q4 earnings Thursday. Here’s what stood out.</a>



Another result to pay attention to will be Coinbase’s adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA).



The company notched positive adjusted EBITDA in all four quarters in 2023 — amounting to $964 million — as it prioritized expense cuts last year.



Oppenheimer analysts project adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter to have reached $699 million, primarily driven by higher estimated trading revenue than previously expected.



Those total revenue and adjusted EBITDA predictions are 20% and 42% higher than consensus estimates, respectively, according to the Oppenheimer research note.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Questions that need answering</h2>



Lau said in addition to seeing how the main metrics compare to Oppenheimer’s estimates, guidance around second quarter subscription and services revenue, as well as its upcoming expenses, will be key to forecasting the outlook for Coinbase.



Miller said he will be listening for executives’ thoughts on the company’s international expansion efforts.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-global-expansion">Coinbase is ramping up global efforts with ‘forward-looking regulators’ </a>“We are seeing some strong volume growth from its international futures and spot trading, but this business does have much lower fees per trade than its core business,” Miller told Blockworks. “It would be helpful to get some idea of how this new volume translates into revenue.” Coinbase has also seen <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/base-coinbase-l2-success">increasing use of its Base layer-2 network</a>, the Morningstar analyst noted.



“I’m interested in how they are viewing that business and its long-term monetization potential,” Miller added.&nbsp;



Other questions related to Coinbase’s trajectory are nothing new.



The company continues to navigate its lawsuit with the Securities and Exchange Commission, for example, the result of which is expected to impact the business.



District Judge Katherine Polk Failla denied most of Coinbase’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-sec-motion-securities">efforts to dismiss</a> the suit last month. <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/judge-rules-against-coinbase-sec-dismissal">She said the regulator “sufficiently pleaded”</a> that the crypto company operates as a clearing agency, broker and exchange under federal laws.&nbsp;



“We currently believe that this case will be a long legal battle and will likely go to the Supreme Court to get the final decision,” Oppenheimer analysts wrote in their latest Coinbase note.



The lawsuit is a “key risk” that could impact Oppenheimer’s price target of $276 for Coinbase, the note adds.&nbsp;



Coinbase’s stock price hovered around $208 at 12 pm ET — up 33% year to date but down 17% in the last month.



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Analysts expect strong Q1 report for Coinbase, but are watching for this 

Cryptocurrencies and US equities dipped Tuesday as latest wage data confirmed that inflation is persisting ahead of the Federal Reserve’s interest rate decision.&nbsp;



Bitcoin (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/btc">BTC</a>) and ether (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/eth">ETH</a>) lost around 3% and 5% over 24-hours, respectively, erasing Monday’s gains. Analysts attribute the dip to the lower-than-expected trading volumes for spot bitcoin and ether exchange-traded products in Hong Kong, which debuted this week. 



“Disappointing ETF volumes out of Hong Kong, however, led to a dramatic selloff, with [bitcoin and ether] dropping ~3.5% to open the day,” Mike Tauckus, head of trading and structuring at BitOoda, said. “Initial indications showed expected inflows to total close to $300 million, while real combined volumes amounted to little more than $11 million.”&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/hong-kong-crypto-etf-predicted-inflows">Successful Hong Kong crypto ETF flows would pale in comparison to US funds</a>



Spot <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/bitcoin-etf">bitcoin ETFs</a>, which hit the market in the US earlier this year, saw more than $4.5 billion in day-one trading volumes, by comparison.&nbsp;



Stocks were also in the red Tuesday. The S&amp;P 500 and Nasdaq Composite indexes were down 0.7% and 0.4%, respectively, midway through the session. The dip comes as wage data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics showed a 4.4% year-over-year increase in wages and salaries last month. The rise is doing little to calm traders that heightened inflation is a problem of the past.&nbsp;



The Fed’s Open Market Committee meeting kicked off today and central bankers will reveal their interest rate decision Wednesday afternoon. Fed fund futures show a 0.5% chance of a rate cut this cycle, according to <a href="https://www.cmegroup.com/markets/interest-rates/cme-fedwatch-tool.html?redirect=/trading/interest-rates/countdown-to-fomc.html">data</a> from CME Group.&nbsp;



Markets are starting to get spooked that a rate cut may not come at all in 2024, a possibility that is further fueled by data that shows the economy is relatively strong.&nbsp;



“The best-case scenario would be for [Fed Chairman Jerome] <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/jerome-powell">Powell</a> to come out and admit that he got the December pivot promise wrong, and that the Fed would continue to monitor the data for signs and cut rates as soon as they are confident that inflation’s downward path has resumed and is sustainable,” Noelle Acheson, author of the Crypto is Macro Now newsletter, said. “This has the benefit of sounding reasonable while leaving cuts on the table.”



As for bitcoin, Tauckus says the crypto is in the clear, for now, but should it dip below $60,000, a more sustained selloff is on the table.&nbsp;



“We view $59,200 as a significant support level for BTC, and should this level get breached with momentum, a pullback to $53,000 is possible,” Tauckus said.



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Cryptocurrencies, stocks slide ahead of Fed rate decision 

<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Stake, not steak</h2>



Don’t call it an airdrop.



EigenLayer’s finally-confirmed token generation event is a “stakedrop” — a very different concept.



Anyone who had staked with Ethereum restaking platform EigenLayer before the March 15 snapshot can receive a linear distribution of EIGEN tokens, scaled to the points they’ve received, between May and September this year.&nbsp;



What makes EigenLayer’s airdrop a stakedrop is that those EIGEN tokens can’t be <a href="https://blog.eigenfoundation.org/announcement/">transferred</a>, which means they can’t be sold or traded until a yet-to-be-determined date.



EIGEN can only be staked with EigenLabs’ proof-of-concept/proof-of-value data availability service EigenDA, at least in the beginning, until other apps building with EigenLayer integrate the token into their own platforms.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/eigen-labs-eigen-token">Eigen Labs drops white paper debuting EIGEN token</a>



That’s one way to get around the day-one dumping problem often associated with token airdrops: hard-coded diamond hands, with a whiff of additional rewards.



There was about 3.14 million ETH ($12.2 billion) in EigenLayer on the snapshot date — now there’s 4.86 million ETH ($15.8 billion). By raw ETH <a href="https://defillama.com/protocol/eigenlayer">count</a>, EigenLayer’s total stake has swelled by about half in those six weeks, and is easily the second-largest DeFi app behind liquid staking platform Lido.



<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/eigenlayer">EigenLayer</a>’s growth has been largely attributed to the implicit promise of an <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/airdrop">airdrop</a> scaled to its points program.&nbsp;



There are three main points of contention over the EigenLayer stakedrop:



<ol>
<li>Linear distributions skew unfairly toward well-capitalized <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/staking">staking</a> whales (the rich get richer).</li>



<li>US users can’t claim EIGEN despite EigenLayer accepting their stakes.</li>



<li>Short vesting schedules that potentially start at distribution, rather than activation of the ability to transfer.</li>
</ol>



There’s some truth to all those concerns.&nbsp;



Yes, it sucks that US users can’t claim an airdrop without deliberately avoiding geoblocks with a VPN. It’s especially ironic given that EigenLabs itself is headquartered in Seattle, and is backed by a bevy of US-based investors, but there were no geoblocks put in place at the app-layer to discourage American stakers.



The Cayman Islands-registered Eigen Foundation, however, is in charge of all token matters. The foundation says no dice for US residents, alongside a number of other jurisdictions — which, in any case, is par for the course in crypto these days.



As for the vesting schedules that could begin at distribution, it does feel grimy that insiders and early investors may start counting down toward a liquidity event (read: selling on exchanges) before users know for sure when they can sell their own stash. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail, and the Foundation will clarify its policy.



By far the most valid concern is the linear distribution schedule, which runs in contrast to the Jito-like airdrops that <a href="https://www.dlnews.com/articles/defi/solana-jito-airdrop-a-boon-for-small-investors/">reward</a> the little guy.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/defi-points-farming-crypto-investments">DeFi ‘points’ farming has reshaped the crypto investment landscape</a>



Taking the <a href="https://dune.com/hahahash/eigenlayer">current</a> EigenLayer points distribution as a proxy for the actual snapshot, EigenLayer has 117,000 unique depositors and 36% have under 500 points, altogether worth 0.2% of the supply, while the top 2,227 depositors (2% of the total) have gathered almost 90% of points supply.&nbsp;



So, napkin math suggests the top ~2% of EigenLayer stakers will receive ~90% of the EIGEN stakedrop, which has been earmarked for 15% of the total supply at launch.&nbsp;



This sends only one message to the average crypto user: Your active participation, in the end, can mean very little.



— David Canellis



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Data Center</h2>



<ul>
<li>EigenLayer’s total ETH <a href="https://defillama.com/protocol/eigenlayer?denomination=ETH">locked</a> fell 5% overnight, equal to about 150,000 ETH ($453.2 million).</li>



<li>Ether inflation <a href="https://ultrasound.money/">continues</a>, now at more than 10,200 ETH ($31 million) over the past week. Extrapolated over the next year, that’s a 0.45% inflation rate.</li>



<li>Daily bitcoin <a href="https://tokenterminal.com/terminal/projects/bitcoin">fees</a> are at three-week lows as Runes interest dies down.</li>



<li>Over the past two days, 70% of Bitcoin transactions were BTC transfers, with Runes <a href="https://dune.com/cryptokoryo/runes">making</a> up most of the rest.</li>



<li>Worldcoin has paid out $504 million in token <a href="https://tokenterminal.com/terminal/metrics/token-incentives">incentives</a> over the past 90 days, ranked fourth behind Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana.</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Judgment day</h2>



After some delay, CZ’s big day has finally arrived.&nbsp;



The <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/binance">Binance</a> founder is scheduled to be sentenced in federal court in Washington state at 12 pm ET (9 am PT) this morning.&nbsp;



We’re not one to place bets, but if we had to, we’d say <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/changpeng-zhao">CZ</a> is probably going to spend some time behind bars. It’s a high profile case, so he’ll receive credit for cooperating and pleading guilty, but an example still has to be made.&nbsp;



CZ <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/binance-changpeng-zhao-deal-unpacked">entered into a guilty plea agreement</a> in November, admitting he failed to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program at Binance — a violation of the Bank Secrecy Act.&nbsp;



The government says CZ should face three years in prison — double the high end of the federal guidelines range. The defense, unsurprisingly, is going for the lowest end of the recommendations: five months probation, ideally with conditions that allow him to return to his home in the UAE.&nbsp;



Prosecutors say the “gravity” of the crimes, plus CZ’s “willful” involvement, means a stricter punishment is in order. Prosecutors also highlighted national security threats and vulnerabilities, which they say CZ enabled through his negligence.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/government-alleges-cz-threatened-us-security">Government says CZ threatened US security, recommends doubling Guideline sentence</a>



The defense argues CZ faces unfairly harsh conditions if he is incarcerated. Given that he is not a US citizen, he’s ineligible for a minimum-security facility, his team wrote. Plus, he cooperated with the US government.&nbsp;



CZ’s team also hired a private security company to create a plan for home confinement in the UAE should the judge decide house arrest is in order. Again, we aren’t one to place bets, but this seems like a serious long shot. We don’t even want to know what the defense paid this company.&nbsp;



The hearing should be fairly quick. The government and defense will present their sentencing recommendations to the judge, which were filed last week. Victims and advocates will have a chance to address the court, as will CZ.&nbsp;



We expect CZ will take the opportunity to speak. For his sake, we hope CZ is more eloquent and apologetic than Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX’s founder, was <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sbf-blew-it-final-defense-trial">at his own sentencing last month</a>.



CZ is already miles ahead of his former frenemy <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/sam-bankman-fried">SBF</a>, though. Binance is still up and running, and <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-04-29/ex-binance-ceo-cz-may-be-richest-person-ever-in-jail-in-us">Bloomberg</a> says he’s worth $43 billion. The $50 million fine CZ has to hand over is a drop in the bucket.&nbsp;



— Casey Wagner



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Sell, sell, sell!</h2>



Executives from a few different crypto companies are raking in the dough this year.&nbsp;



Take <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/michael-saylor">Michael Saylor</a>. If you’ve been here a while, you know we’ve already discussed his stock sales once — but the MicroStrategy co-founder made roughly $400 million.&nbsp;



MSTR, trading around $1,200 a share, is up nearly 300% year to date as it benefits from the bitcoin bull run we’ve seen so far this year.&nbsp;



Saylor’s sales are a unique case of, dare I say, luck? Last year, the company disclosed that the executive would unload 5,000 shares a day between January and April.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/michael-saylor-bitcoin-chair">Let Michael Saylor cook</a>



Unless someone at <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/microstrategy">MicroStrategy</a> has a crystal ball, Saylor’s sales came at one of the most beneficial times in crypto. And he still has a “significant ownership stake,” according to CFO Andrew Kang.&nbsp;



While no one at Coinbase has managed to notch nearly $400 million in stock sales, the executive team has made $441 million in net insider stock sales year to date. To put that into perspective, the team notched net sales of $175 million in 2023.&nbsp;



CFO Alesia Haas has sold roughly 90,000 shares for an average of $233 a share. COIN trades around $216 currently, with a 52-week high of $283. It’s in a similar boat as MicroStrategy, up over 325% year to date.&nbsp;



CEO Brian Armstrong comes out on top of the sales though, making $152 million so far. He <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-stake-sale-brian-armstrong">finished selling 2% of his stake</a> in the company earlier this year. Like Saylor, the sales were disclosed ahead of time.



These stock sales aren’t unusual when looking at the sales themselves, as executives would want to profit when their stocks are making such dramatic gains.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/microstrategy-second-convertible-senior-notes-offering">MicroStrategy announces another senior notes offering to buy more bitcoin</a>



Saylor’s profits are some of the most interesting, simply because — as Kang said on the earnings call Monday evening — the sales were “programmatic” and Saylor actually had to execute the sales ahead of an options expiration.&nbsp;



Now one has to wonder how much bitcoin Saylor plans to buy with those funds.



— Katherine Ross



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Works</h2>



<ul>
<li>MicroStrategy bought 122 bitcoin for $7.8 million in April, Michael Saylor <a href="https://twitter.com/saylor/status/1785037831175630938">says</a>.</li>



<li>Polymarket traders <a href="https://polymarket.com/event/how-long-will-czs-sentence-be?tid=1714477057562">think</a> former Binance CEO CZ will be sentenced to less than a year in prison.&nbsp;</li>



<li>The spot bitcoin and ether ETFs officially <a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/currencies/asias-first-spot-bitcoin-ether-etfs-gain-hong-kong-debut-2024-04-30/">debuted</a> in Hong Kong overnight but the reception was “lukewarm,” Reuters reports.</li>



<li>Avalanche <a href="https://www.avax.network/blog/avalanche-integrates-with-stripe-for-crypto-onramping">integrated</a> with Stripe’s brand-new crypto onramp.</li>



<li>ICYMI: The SEC has been investigating ETH for over a year, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-investigation-of-eth-as-security">according</a> to an unredacted filing from Consensys.</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Morning Riff</h2>



One foot in, one foot out.



So it seems to go in the <a href="https://www.verdict.co.uk/web-2-5-and-the-future-of-decentralised-finance/">world of Web 2.5</a>, a concept I don’t 100% grok. But it strikes me as one of those phrases bandied about to justify, well, whatever business model is being pursued by these transitory prognosticators.



Some refer to Web 2.5 as the “bridge” between <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/web2">Web2</a> and <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/web3">Web3</a> —&nbsp;yes, these varying editions of the internet can be a bit dizzying — though, the ruder interpretation might be that Web 2.5 denizens aren’t ready for the full plunge, so to speak.



I think this is misguided. Bitcoin’s OG pitch was to be one’s own bank —&nbsp;that is, shedding the perceived shackles of the financial system.&nbsp;



Maybe those Web 2.5 folks ought to do the same. Pinch the nose, climb the decentralization diving board and jump. It might be a bit easier to follow exactly what you stand for and what you’re trying to accomplish if you do.&nbsp;



— Michael McSweeney



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Empire Newsletter: What’s wrong with EigenLayer’s airdrop

Motoko Sentinels, a new ordinal collection that launched on the Bioniq Marketplace, saw its trading volume increase following the Bitcoin halving, despite the high trading volumes immediately following the event.&nbsp;



Although total ordinal volume had decreased by over 58% the day following the Bitcoin halving due to <a href="https://dune.com/dgtl_assets/bitcoin-ordinals-analysis">high</a> network fees, the Motoko Sentinel collection saw its trading volume increase by 20%.&nbsp;



Kyle Langham, the director of data and analytics at DFINITY, told Blockworks that this is because the Bioniq marketplace operates on the Internet Computer Protocol (ICP). This network, which is natively integrated with Bitcoin, can maintain lower transaction costs regardless of the fee environment on the native Bitcoin chain.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-ordinals-trading-frenzy">Bitcoin ordinals volume jumps while ERC-404 experiment loses steam</a>



“ICP is what you call a generation three blockchain. We’re not trying to replicate Ethereum or Solana; we’re trying to replicate AWS but on the blockchain,” Langham said.



Applications hosted on ICP will already be integrated with <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/web2">Web2</a>, enabling developers to make API calls on ICP. The team is also working on Web3 integrations, or what it calls “chain fusion.”



“We integrated with Bitcoin a year and a half ago at the protocol level, so there’s a Bitcoin light node running on ICP facilitating developers to build <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ordinals">ordinal</a> marketplaces — like Bioniq — on top of ICP that can communicate directly with the Bitcoin network,” Langham said. 



Bob Bodily, co-founder and CEO of Bioniq, notes that through building on ICP, the marketplace can offer users faster transactions at lower costs.&nbsp;



“You can do more with your ordinals, and with your runes, or BRC-20 tokens when you bridge them to a more programmable blockchain,” Bodily said. “There are a lot of limitations on Bitcoin One.”



Bodily explains that users using ordinal marketplaces on Bitcoin layer-1 may encounter problems like MEV bots and getting sniped in the mempool.



“Generally, it’s expensive to transact on <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/bitcoin">Bitcoin</a> in a higher fee environment, so the whole goal of Bioniq was to create a layer for people to do more with their ordinals that is fun, interesting and engaging,” Bodily said.



Despite these advantages, Blockworks&#8217; initial tests on the Bioniq platform encountered some technical difficulties, including errors during transactions and registration issues, which were eventually resolved. These challenges highlighted areas for potential improvement in user experience.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-runes-launch">Bitcoin Runes look to spice up the halving party</a>



Motoko Sentinels is Bioniq&#8217;s first project to explore this area. These individual <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/nfts">NFTs</a> can be sent out on missions to earn experience and “level up.”



“As they level up, you get more layers on your Motoko, and you can eventually go and ascribe them directly on Bitcoin as part of the gameplay,” he said. “This means they’re minted on a Bitcoin layer-2, with the ability to inscribe to Bitcoin at a subsequent later date, which is really handy when fees are high.”



At the time of writing, there are three inscribed Motoko Sentinels. The collection has a trading <a href="https://bioniq.io/collection/motoko-sentinels/inscriptions">volume</a> of 3.75 and a floor price <a href="https://bioniq.io/collection/motoko-sentinels/inscriptions">of</a> 0.002 (~$127).



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