🔮 Trickle or Pour? Predicting Inflows Into Hong Kong ETFs
In today’s edition: 💥 Bitcoin funds experience outflows, 💻 Mainnet rollout for OKX's X Layer, 🌉 Picasso Network's IBC extension, and more!
👯♀️ Refer Unchained with a friend and earn a Premium subscription
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.
The Bitcoin halving is just around the corner, expected to be on April 19 or April 20.
Arthur Hayes, CIO of Maelstrom, and Will Clemente, co-founder of Reflexivity Research, discuss the rise in bitcoin prices ahead of the halving, the impact of the approval of spot bitcoin ETFs in the US, and the potential effects of the halving on the price trajectory post-halving. They also discuss the potential impact of a new class of investors on bitcoin’s price, volatility, and decentralization.
Moreover, they dive into the impact of the macroeconomics, geopolitical, and demographic conditions for the crypto asset industry, the potential for layer 2s on Bitcoin, and their price predictions for bitcoin by year-end.
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 Michael Bodley, Sam Sriram, and Sage Young
How Much Money Could Pour into Hong Kong’s New Bitcoin, Ether ETFs?
Inflows into Hong Kong’s newly-approved bitcoin and ether ETFs could be hindered by regulations barring mainland China investors from purchasing them.
Bitcoin Funds Saw $110 Million Weekly Outflows
Institutional investors reduced exposure to crypto investment products last week, as ETF activity dipped to 31% of total volumes.
OKX Latest Exchange to Roll out Mainnet of an Ethereum Layer 2 Blockchain
OKX’s 50 million users can withdraw tokens from the exchange to its “X Layer” to transact on onchain applications, which have been built on the new Ethereum layer 2 scaling solution.
Picasso Network Extends IBC Protocol to Bridge Solana and Cosmos
Picasso, which aims to be an interoperability network and a restaking layer for Solana, has leveraged the IBC protocol to connect Solana and Cosmos, allowing liquidity to flow between the two blockchain ecosystems.
Daily Bits…✍️✍️✍️
👨⚖️ US senators demanded CFTC Chair Rostin Behnam disclose details of his interactions with Sam Bankman-Fried to investigate potential regulatory lapses before FTX's collapse.
💰 Uniswap Labs' fee increase to 0.25% resulted in a daily fee record but raised concerns about potential user migration to other platforms due to higher costs.
🐵 Bored Ape Yacht Club's NFTs saw a significant drop in floor price, reaching the lowest level since August 2021, down over 90% from their peak.
🌿 Europol arrested nine people in connection with the “JuicyFields” cannabis-focused Ponzi scheme, seizing $1.6 million in crypto as part of the investigation into the fraud, which stole $687 million from investors.
🛠️ Offchain Labs launched Arbitrum BOLD on the testnet, a protocol designed to enhance security and validation on Arbitrum chains through interactive fraud proofs and defenses against delay attacks.
🎭 Vitalik Buterin actively supported the privacy-focused coin mixer Railgun, used for anonymizing Ethereum transactions, amid its controversial use by groups such as North Korea’s Lazarus Group.
🍣 Amid organizational restructuring, SushiSwap signaled a major treasury shift from its DAO to a “Labs” entity, with a significant portion of community votes backing the move.
Today in Crypto Adoption...
🇬🇧 The UK is set to introduce new legislation by July that will regulate stablecoins along with crypto staking, exchange, and custody services, aiming to establish the country as a global crypto hub.
🇩🇪 Germany's largest state-backed bank, LBBW, in partnership with Bitpanda, announced plans to offer crypto custody services targeting corporate clients in the latter half of 2024.
The $$$ Corner…
💧 Liquid restaking protocol Puffer secured $18 million in Series A funding led by Brevan Howard Digital and Electric Capital, setting the stage for its mainnet launch.
What Do You Meme?
Recommended Reads
Crypto Alpha, Macro and everything in-between by Linn’s Leverage
CoinDesk: Hong Kong Boards the ETF Express
DL News: Why DAOs are cashing out their tokens just as prices rise
📈 Your Market Update 📉
BTC is down 6%, trading at $62,447
ETH is down 6.3%, trading at $3,044
BTC dominance: 51.62%
Crypto market cap: $2.39T
*All data as of today, 07:00 am ET. Source: CoinGecko
We Are Hiring!
A Sponsorships Manager to grow sponsorships across all its platforms as the publication itself grows. See the details and apply here.
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!