🚨🤷♀️ SEC Exemptions Muddy the Waters for Crypto Custodians
In today’s edition: 🏛 Sam Bankman-Fried alleges the court favored prosecutors in his appeal,🗽📈 Circle moves to new Wall St HQ ahead of planned IPO, and more!
Transform financial services through DeFi & Tokenization at Meridian 2024. Stellar Development Foundation’s annual conference will take place in London, UK, from October 15 to 17. Learn More.
Gevulot is the universal proving infrastructure for ZK. Try ZkCloud with free usage, plus extended grant opportunities for premier customers, until 'Q1 2025.
DOOM, now actually onchain! Show off your skills, verify your gameplays and enshrine your name on immutable leaderboards. RIVES is an onchain fantasy console built with Cartesi Rollups. Join the DOOM Olympics mainnet launch: 7 days, 7 disciplines and a $15,000 prize pool.
Bitcoin Is Worth Over $1 Trillion. How Much Will Coinbase’s New cbBTC Grab?
Coinbase’s new wrapped bitcoin alternative, cbBTC, just launched. Will it challenge the dominance of WBTC in DeFi, or is it just another centralized solution? Coinbase’s vice president of engineering, Will Robinson, breaks it all down.
On Thursday, Coinbase unveiled cbBTC, a tokenized version of Bitcoin on Base, a layer 2 blockchain built on Ethereum. This launch follows the recent BitGo controversy about the custody arrangement for Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) now involving Justin Sun, sparking concerns within the crypto community.
In this episode, Will Robinson, Coinbase’s vice president of engineering, discusses the strategic importance of cbBTC, how it differentiates from other wrapped Bitcoin products, and what this means for the future of Bitcoin within DeFi ecosystems.
Will Coinbase’s reputation as a “trusted custodian” be enough to make cbBTC the go-to choice for Bitcoin in DeFi, or will the industry remain skeptical?
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.
Earn bitcoin on Gemini here.
What’s Poppin’?
by Jason Brett
SEC Surprisingly Details Exemptions From SAB 121, Further Muddying the Waters
Paul Munter, chief accountant at the SEC, revealed in a speech earlier this week that the SEC has granted exemptions to rules relating to the custodying of crypto assets that have been widely reviled in the industry.
Daily Bits… ✍️✍️✍
⚖️ Sam Bankman-Fried appealed his fraud conviction, alleging judicial bias and claiming the court favored prosecutors, compromising his defense in the FTX case.
🏢 Circle is relocating its headquarters to New York’s 1 World Trade Center ahead of its planned IPO, signaling its growing importance in the global financial system.
🚫 Binance blacklisted attacker addresses linked to the rise of Clipper malware attacks, which alters crypto withdrawal addresses. Several users have experienced financial losses, according to the exchange, and its advising users to verify wallet addresses and scan for malware before making transactions.
🎮 TreasureDAO considers moving from Arbitrum to ZKsync for its Treasure L2 launch, sparking criticism for potentially "grant hopping" to gain better developer incentives.
❄️ Stablecoin issuers froze nearly $5 million linked to North Korea’s Lazarus Group after a blockchain investigation revealed the group laundered millions in stolen crypto.
🐱 Pluto Studio faces backlash after unexpectedly altering Catizen game airdrop criteria, leaving many players disappointed with their token allocation.
🔓 DeltaPrime, a crypto broker, lost over $6 million in tokens after a private key leak allowed a hacker to redirect the Arbitrum version's admin proxy to a malicious contract.
What Do You Meme?
📈 Your Market Update 📉
BTC is down 2.1%, trading at $58,689
ETH is down 4.5%, trading at $2,302
BTC dominance: 54.36%
Crypto market cap: $2.13T
*All data as of today, 06:48 am ET. Source: CoinGecko
Recommended Reads
Distributed Rebellion: A thesis on crypto x AI from Delphi Labs
CoinDesk: U.S. Political Prediction Markets: Why Kalshi's Court Victory Matters
We Are Hiring!
A Bitcoin Reporter to cover all things Bitcoin. See the details and apply here.
A Regulatory Reporter to cover regulatory topics in the space. See the details and apply here.
A Senior Editor to help assign and edit daily news stories, as well as work on features and other editorial projects as needed. See the details and apply here.
An Audience Development Director to broaden the reach of the publication’s content, whether through the web, social media, newsletters, podcast platforms, or videos. See the details and apply here.
🔝 Are you hiring and want to promote the postings in the Unchained newsletter? Let us know!