Crypto Weekly 3/3/2024
A weekly summary of the latest crypto news...
Crypto weekly is co-authored by @serdave
PRICE CHANGE: WTD/YTD
- Crypto Market Cap ($2.5T): +17% / +38%
- BTC ($62,170): +20% / +46%
- ETH ($3,422): +10% / +50%
- SOL ($129): +24% / +26%
- UNI ($12.58): +14% / +72%
- MATIC ($1.07): +8% / +11%
- Tether Mkt Cap ($99B): +1% / +8%
- USDC Mkt Cap ($29B): +3% / +18%
- BTC / ETH Dominance: 50% / 17%
THIS WEEK IN CRYPTO
- BlackRock and Fidelity have captured 79% of total inflows into the "Newborn Nine," a nickname for the group of new spot bitcoin ETFs that were approved by the SEC on Jan 10. Link.
- Bitcoin hit a recent high of $64,000 this week, before plunging 7% to $59,400 in under an hour. The sharp sell-off caused a total of $700 million in liquidations. Link.
- Crypto exchange Gemini will return at least $1.1 billion to its Earn customers through the Genesis Global bankruptcy. All Earn users are expected to receive 100% of their digital assets back in kind. Link. Post.
- Nigeria's government has demanded $10 billion from Binance, saying the crypto exchange has funneled $26 billion of funds out of the country. Link. Link.
- State attorneys general in 8 states filed a joint amicus brief in the SEC's lawsuit against crypto exchange Kraken, arguing that the SEC exceeded its authority in suing the exchange. Link.
- SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce said the agency is in an "enforcement-only mode" when it comes to crypto. Link.
- Bitcoin closed February with a 44% gain, its largest monthly advance since December 2020. Link.
- The SEC has objected to a $166 million retainer payment to Terraform's lawyers, claiming the funds should go to investors and creditors. Terraform is the company behind Luna and the TerraUSD stablecoin. Link. Link.
- Telegram plans to share 50% of ad revenue with channel owners. Payments and settlement will take place on Telegram's The Open Network (TON) blockchain. Link.
- The total value of assets deposited on re-staking protocol EigenLayer reached $10 billion. Link.
- Bitcoin's next halving event, when miners' block rewards get cut in half, is estimated to arrive on April 21. Block rewards will drop from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. Link.
- Ethereum Layer 2 Blast launched its mainnet. Blast was founded by Tieshun Roquerre, founder of NFT marketplace Blur, and aims to provide a native yield model for ETH and stablecoins. Link.
- Robinhood Wallet enabled token swats on Arbitrum. Link.
- Bitcoin miners in the US will not be required to report on their power usage, after the Department of Energy dropped the requirement after being sued by blockchain groups. Link.
- Morgan Stanley is reportedly looking into adding spot Bitcoin ETFs to its brokerage platform. Link.
- Ex-FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried asked the judge overseeing his case for leniency, arguing that SBF should be treated like Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, who received an 11 year sentence. SBF faces up to 115 years in prison and will be sentenced March 28th. Link.
- The Coinbase app crashed this week due to heightened traffic driven by the price rally in Bitcoin and Ethereum. Link.
- The upcoming Ethereum Dencun hard fork upgrade is set to be deployed on mainnet on March 13th. Dencun is most notable for enabling EIP-4844, proto-danksharding, which is expected to reduce transaction costs and throughput on ethereum Layer 2s. Link.
- Coinbase has added Nethermind and Erigon as execution clients for ethereum staking. To date it has relied only on the Geth execution client software. Link.
- Liquid restaking protocol ether.fi raised $23 million in a Series A round led by Bullish Capital and CoinFund. Total value locked on the network grew to $1.8 billion from less than $10 million a year ago. Link. Data.