🤑 Should We Congratulate John J. Ray III?
In today’s edition: 📊 Arbitrum nears ETH peak, ⏱️ Stellar's upgrade delay call, and more!
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What’s Poppin’?
by Sam Sriram and Sage Young
FTX Cash Reserves Rise to $4.4 Billion After Exchange Unloads Crypto Stash
FTX’s bankruptcy estate, which is led by FTX CEO John J. Ray III, has offloaded a significant amount of crypto assets, doubling its cash reserves to $4.4 billion over the course of two months.
Arbitrum Close to All-Time High in ETH Held in Its Smart Contracts
The Ethereum rollup scaling solution holds about 4.5 million ETH in its smart contracts, which is a 13% increase in the past 30 days and a 104% jump in the past year.
Stellar Foundation Pushes to Delay Protocol 20 Upgrade Until Bug Fix
The Stellar Development Foundation has disarmed its validators, urging others on the network to hold off on voting to implement the Protocol 20 upgrade until a bug fix has been released.
This week a major potential risk to Ethereum was highlighted by a bug that surfaced in Nethermind, a minority execution client. While the bug was fixed quickly, it raised the question of what would happen to the blockchain if Geth, which is used by more than two-thirds of validators and is considered a “supermajority client,” had a bug. The situation could potentially result in a catastrophic fork of Ethereum.
Ethereum developer Lefteris Karapetsas joined Unchained to discuss the different scenarios of what could happen, the potential impact of a supermajority client issue on staking services such as Lido, why he feels the incentive system is poorly designed, and what other solutions are out there to address the lack of client diversity.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Fountain, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Pandora, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Or watch it on YouTube.
Daily Bits…✍️✍️✍️
🏛️ BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF became the first to reach $2 billion in assets under management, holding nearly 50,000 bitcoins.
🌊 OpenSea CEO Devin Finzer revealed that the NFT platform is open to acquisitions.
🏦 Harvest Global Investments submitted an application for a spot Bitcoin ETF in Hong Kong and is involved in talks about the city's stablecoin sandbox.
🎤 South Korea's blockchain-based karaoke platform Somesing was hacked, resulting in the loss of over $11.5 million in SSX tokens.
🔍 CFTC Chair Rostin Behnam marked concerns over risks introduced by newly approved spot bitcoin ETFs, calling for new legislation for crypto regulation.
🔐 Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) warned against unauthorized Floki staking programs, citing high annualized returns without proper authorization.
🔍 Finnish authorities traced Monero transactions related to the Vastaamo hack and ransom demands.
💰 Lifeboat Foundation faces scrutiny for unclear use of crypto donations, despite claiming to work on various Earth-protection projects.
👾 Algorand's CEO X account hacker taunted the foundation by maintaining control and posting irregular comments, despite recovery efforts.
🚫 Florida and Alaska barred Binance US from serving residents, following alleged license renewal and regulatory compliance issues.
🛡️ Russian developer Vladimir Dunaev was sentenced to over five years in prison for aiding the Trickbot ransomware, responsible for over $833 million in crypto thefts.
The $$$ Corner…
💡 Crypto-native AI platform imgnAI secured $1.6 million in seed funding, led by Hack VC, to expand its infrastructure and launch its “digital companion” product.
What Do You Meme?
Recommended Reads
Unchained: What Is Ethereum Restaking?
@0xRainandCoffee on storage proofs
DL News: Could a forthcoming Ethereum upgrade boost Ether’s price? A recent study says yes
📈 Your Market Update 📉
BTC is down .5%, trading at $42,319
ETH is down .4%, trading at $2,274
BTC dominance: 48.58%
Crypto market cap: $1.71T
*All data as of today, 06:15 am ET. Source: CoinGecko
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