🔮 The Odds Are Not in ETH’s Favor 😕
In today’s edition: 🤑 Low-cost HODLing, 🛍️ MicroStrategy’s bitcoin bags, 🤝 MetaMask teams up with Mastercard, 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.
Sreeram Kannan, founder of EigenLayer, and Olaf Carlson-Wee, founder and CIO of Polychain Capital, an investor in EigenLayer, say that the developer ecosystem around EigenLayer is sprouting up very fast, which reminds Carlson-Wee of the developer excitement in Ethereum’s early days.
They discuss the potential of EigenLayer, which uses a restaking mechanism to allow ETH stakers to reallocate their staked ETH and Liquid Staking Tokens (LSTs) to bolster security for other protocols. They cover how it could turbocharge Ethereum’s rollup scaling roadmap and enable Ethereum to become a stack of decentralized software as a service providers. Additionally, they discuss the potential risks associated with restaking as well as how EigenLayer could work with AI.
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.
What’s Poppin’?
by Sage Young and Sam Sriram
Bloomberg ETF Analyst Lowers Probability of Spot Ether ETF Approval in May to 35%
The signs that made analysts confident that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would approve spot bitcoin ETFs back in January are not currently present ahead of the May deadline, which is when the SEC makes its final decision on the first of the spot ether ETF applications.
VanEck Cuts Spot Bitcoin ETF Fees to Zero for One Year
Asset manager VanEck said it will waive the fee for investing in its spot bitcoin ETF (HODL) until March 31, 2025 unless its assets under management hit $1.5 billion before that date.
MicroStrategy Purchases 12,000 More Bitcoins for $822 Million
The publicly traded software firm MicroStrategy, which is founded by Bitcoin maximalist Michael Saylor, has purchased nearly $1 billion in bitcoin since mid-February.
MetaMask Tests Onchain Card on Mastercard Payment Network: Report
Crypto wallet MetaMask has reportedly teamed up with Mastercard to test an entirely blockchain-based payment card issued by Baanx.
Daily Bits…✍️✍️✍️
💡 Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade has been activated on Gnosis Chain’s mainnet, the Dencun upgrade will go live on the Ethereum mainnet on Wednesday.
🇳🇬 Two senior Binance executives, Tigran Gambaryan and Nadeem Anjarwalla, have been held against their will for over two weeks in Nigeria, following accusations by the Nigerian government related to untraceable funds processed by the crypto exchange in the country.
🚀 Bitcoin’s market capitalization surged past $1.4 trillion, surpassing the market cap of Silver.
🎈Solana-based defi protocol Kamino Finance has changed some of its rules for its upcoming airdrop to better reward “OG users,” following pushback from early adopters regarding the protocol’s decision to reveal its airdrop criteria ahead of its snapshot of eligible wallet addresses.
📱 Telegram, the crypto industry’s favorite messaging app, is close to reaching profitability and is considering an initial public offering (IPO), according to the firm’s co-founder Pavel Durov in his first interview in seven years.
🇺🇲 U.S. President Joe Biden’s 2025 budget proposal takes aim at crypto with line items that include a crypto mining tax and wash sale rule for digital assets, however, many of these rules were also proposed in last year’s budget and were ultimately not taken up by Congress.
😬 Crypto custody firm Copper moved $4.2 million of assets to a digital wallet linked to alleged Russian arms dealer Jonatan Zimenkov, who was placed on a US sanctions list 19 months after the transaction.
✒️ A coalition of Bitcoin developers, known as the Layer 1 Foundation, will draft guidelines for BRC-20 tokens, which is an experimental fungible token standard on the Bitcoin network. The group is co-founded by BRC-20 creator Domo and sees participation from Hiro, UTXO Management among others.
Today in crypto adoption…
📈 Solana registered an all-time high in new daily addresses. Last week the blockchain recorded its second-highest day in fees, thanks to a surge in meme coin trading on decentralized exchanges.
🇹🇭 Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will allow institutional investors and high net-worth individuals to invest in spot bitcoin ETFs that are on US exchanges. India crypto platform Mudrex will also offer the spot bitcoin ETFs to Indian investors.
💲El Salvador has a $83 million unrealized gain on its bitcoin holdings, which the country started acquiring in 2021. The country holds roughly 2,380 bitcoins ($170 million).
The $$$ Corner…
🤑 Layer 1 blockchain developer Monad Labs is eyeing a more than $200 million fundraising round led by investment firm Paradigm, which would place the startup’s valuation at $3 billion.
💸 Eclipse Labs, a development firm building a layer 2 blockchain to scale Ethereum using parts of the Solana blockchain, has raised $50 million ahead of its mainnet launch. The Series A round was co-led by Placeholder VC and Hack VC.
🎨 NFT lending protocol NFTfi secured $6 million in a Series A1 funding round from backers including Placeholder VC, Maven 11 and Brevan Howard, among others.
What Do You Meme?
Recommended Reads
Galaxy Research: Learnings from ETHDenver 2024: Ethereum Embraces a Multichain Future
Unchained: As Bitcoin Thrives Post-Spot ETFs, Will Crypto as Well?
📈 Your Market Update 📉
BTC is up 0.5% trading at $71,913
ETH is down 0.5% trading at $4,008
BTC dominance: 49.9%
Crypto market cap: $2.8T
*All data as of today, 07:06 am ET. Source: CoinGecko
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