😱 Meme Mania
In today’s edition: 💳 Dogecoin as payment ? 👩⚖️ UK court confirms Craig Wright is not Satoshi, ⚡Lazarus Group strikes again, 🚨 Bitcoin’s warning signals, and more!
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Union is the first sovereign interoperability layer pioneering trustless bridging between appchains, L1s, and L2s without depending on trusted third parties, oracles, multi-signatures, or MPC. Looking to future-proof blockchain bridging, it is the only protocol that fully addresses the sovereign bridging trilemma, unlocking a horizontally-scaled future.
Ethereum’s long-awaited Dencun upgrade finally went live this week, and many layer 2s immediately saw their transaction fees fall dramatically, as was the intention. Among them was the Coinbase-incubated Base, which was created by Jesse Pollak. Pollak joined Unchained to discuss the impact Dencun was having on Base; how he thinks layer 1s and layer 2s will start to differ from one another and eventually spawn a multitude of specialized layer 3s, his response to criticisms of the increasing use of layer 2s, what he’s focusing on now, and why he supports using the word “onchain” over “crypto” or “web3.”
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Fountain, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Or watch it on Youtube.
What’s Poppin’?
by Sage Young, Jacob Oliver, Sam Sriram and Kyle Torpey
Avalanche Foundation Reveals Its 5 Initial Memecoin Holdings
The Avalanche Foundation has gained exposure to the following memecoins: Coq Inu, Gecko, Kimbo, NoChill, and Tech.
Elon Musk Teases Accepting Dogecoin as Payment for Teslas, Touting It as ‘The People’s Crypto’
Speaking at a Tesla event in Germany, Elon Musk recalled his first encounters with Dogecoin and its democratic appeal.
Lazarus Group Moves $13 Million in Stolen Crypto to Tornado Cash
North Korea’s Lazarus Group has returned to Tornado Cash to launder a portion of the $100 million worth of funds stolen from crypto exchange HTX and its HECO cross-chain bridge in November.
UK Judge Declares Craig Wright Is Not Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto
The presumed final ruling from a UK judge comes eight years after Craig Wright’s initial claims of being the person behind the Satoshi Nakamoto pseudonym, and has implications for a number of other cases involving Wright.
Bitcoin Market Flashes High Risk Signals: Glassnode
Nine out of ten risk framework metrics are flashing very high risk signals, according to Glassnode, which suggest a high degree of profit taking and speculation in the near-term.
Crypto Owners Have Flipped From Biden to Trump Ahead of November Elections, Paradigm Poll Finds
The new poll from venture firm Paradigm also found that independent voters were more likely to own crypto than either Republicans or Democrats.
Daily Bits…✍️✍️✍️
❌ The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged 17 people in relation to a $300 million crypto ponzi scheme that targeted Latino investors. The scheme which involved Texas-based CryptoFX LLC impacted 40,000 investors.
💰 Tron founder Justin Sun deposited 120,000 ether (~$480 million) into liquid staking protocol Ether.Fi.
⬇️ As the Dencun upgrade reduces fees on Ethereum-based layer 2s, crypto wallet Zerion is working on an Ethereum layer 2 rollup designed to offer zero fees. The firm will subsidize fees in the hopes of onboarding more users into crypto.
🚨 Crypto derivatives exchange Bybit and 11 of its product offerings have been flagged as suspicious by Hong Kong’s financial markets regulator. The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) said Bybit was not licensed or registered to do any regulated activity in the country.
🚀 Solana-based meme coins have posted double digit gains in the past 24 hours with Dogwifhat out in front. Arthur Hayes, the co-founder of Bitmex, even thinks Dogwifhat could surge to $10.
⬆️ Solana’s market capitalization also surged to a fresh all-time high crossing $81 billion, which surpassed the previous all-time high of $77.4 billion in November 2021. The market cap has since retreated back to the $77 billion range.
The $$$ Corner…
🐻 Bear-themed DeFi chain Berachain is reportedly raising $69 million in a round co-led by Brevan Howard Digital and Framework Ventures. The project is selling tokens to raise the funding with the startup’s valuation expected to hit $1.5 billion.
🦄 Zero-knowledge infrastructure provider Polyhedra Network closed a $20 million round led by Polychain Capital. The startup secured unicorn status as the round brings its valuation to $1 billion.
🎮 The Arbitrum Foundation announced a program to invest 200 million ARB tokens ($376 million) into gaming projects within the Arbitrum ecosystem over the next two years, however, the plan still requires approval from Arbitrum’s DAO.
📊 Crypto derivatives trading platform D2X raised $10 million in a Series A round led by Point72 Ventures. The exchange is still to launch and aims to establish a foothold in the European market.
What Do You Meme?
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📈 Your Market Update 📉
BTC is down 7.6% trading at $67,681
ETH is down 8% trading at $3,667
BTC dominance: 49.4%
Crypto market cap: $2.7T
*All data as of today, 06:12 am ET. Source: CoinGecko
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