⚔️ zkSync vs Polyhedra
In today’s edition: 🐕 DWF Labs invests in memecoins, 🤝 Riot's bid to create largest bitcoin miner globally, 💹 Record $14.9B crypto inflows in 2024, 🌐 ENS considers layer 2 expansion, and more!
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Why Many Democrats, Including the White House, Have Come Around on Crypto
Sheila Warren, CEO of the Crypto Council for Innovation, joins Unchained to explore the dramatic shift by Democrats in the last few weeks on crypto. She explains why she believes the overturning of SAB 121 and the House vote for the FIT21 bill were both instrumental to the White House’s changing view on crypto and may have played a role in the SEC’s surprising approval of spot ETH ETFs.
Having worked for years on passing crypto legislation and as a lifelong Democrat, Sheila describes what kinds of arguments were persuasive to Democratic members of Congress, addresses some criticisms of the FIT21 bill, and gives her perspective on the debate about single-issue voters.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Or watch it on YouTube.
What’s Poppin’?
by Sage Young, Juan Aranovich, and Sam Sriram
Who Should Claim ZK? Polyhedra and zkSync Clash Over Token Ticker
Polyhedra and zkSync are at odds over the “ZK” token ticker, with the community largely supporting zkSync. Will this dispute impact future token ticker practices?
DWF Labs to Invest in Memecoins, Onchain Data Reveals LADYS Transactions
DWF Labs’ public statement and onchain activity are additional signs of institutions broadening their exposure to the mainstream but once niche area of the crypto ecosystem.
Bitfarms Shares Jump Following Riot’s $950 Million Proposal to Acquire Bitfarms
Riot Platforms’ proposal to purchase all outstanding shares of Bitfarms comes a few weeks after the former CEO of Bitfarms, Geoffrey Morphy, filed a lawsuit against Bitfarms for wrongful dismissal and aggravated damages.
ENS DAO to Vote on Layer 2 Expansion Plans
ENS Labs plans to expand to either its own custom layer 2 network or an existing public one, with the goal of lowering gas costs and increasing transaction speeds.
Crypto Inflows Hit Record High of $14.9 Billion Year to Date
Bitcoin exchange-traded products saw $1 billion of inflows last week, pushing the overall inflows into digital asset products to a year-to-date record high
Daily Bits… ✍️✍️✍️
⛓️ Former FTX executive Ryan Salame was sentenced to 7.5 years in prison, exceeding the government's recommendation, for campaign finance violations and operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business, marking the first sentencing among FTX's top executives. Do you want Laura to interview Ryan Salame? Then vote on the competition by liking this comment!
⚖️ A federal judge dismissed the SEC’s case against Debt Box and ordered the SEC to pay $1.8 million in attorney and receivership fees, concluding a civil lawsuit filed by the commission in 2023.
🚨 Caitlyn Jenner criticized Sahil Arora on X, stating he "f*cked with too many powerful people." This comes amid Jenner's promotion of the $JENNER memecoin and accusations of Arora's involvement in various celebrity memecoin launches.
🔗 LayerZero saw its daily message count drop from 348,000 on April 30 to 70,000 by May 5, following the protocol's snapshot for an upcoming airdrop.
💰 Two researchers recovered nearly $3 million in bitcoin from a 2013 crypto wallet by exploiting an old vulnerability in the password manager RoboForm, helping the wallet owner retrieve 43.6 BTC.
💹 Semler Scientific, a healthcare tech company, saw its shares surge by 27% after announcing that it adopted bitcoin as its primary treasury reserve asset, purchasing 581 bitcoins for $40 million.
📈 Volatility Shares announced that their leveraged ether ETF (ETHU) will begin trading on June 4, marking the first leveraged ether ETF available in the US nearly a year after launching their leveraged bitcoin fund.
🦠 Binance executive Tigran Gambaryan, who is jailed in Nigeria, is suspected to have malaria, according to his family. Despite a court order for his hospital transfer, he remains in Kuje prison, struggling with potential severe throat infection and malaria.
🔍 Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) will inspect crypto trading platforms applying for licenses as a crucial June 1 compliance deadline approaches, requiring all platforms to be licensed or "deemed-to-be-licensed" to operate legally.
The $$$ Corner…
🔗 GaiaNet, an AI infrastructure project, secured $10 million in funding to advance decentralized networks for generative AI tools, partnering earlier this year with UC Berkeley to develop AI-powered teaching assistants for STEM students.
💸 Oracle developer Switchboard raised $7.5 million in a Series A funding round, co-led by Tribe Capital and RockawayX, to enhance its oracle tools and expand use cases with Web3 developers and community members.
💰 Anzen Finance, the issuer of the USDz stablecoin, closed $4 million in seed funding, with backers including Mechanism Capital and Circle Ventures, to expand support for USDz across multiple blockchains and DeFi protocols.
What Do You Meme?
📈 Your Market Update 📉
BTC is down 1%, trading at $67,933
ETH is down 2.5%, trading at $3,815
BTC dominance: 49.59%
Crypto market cap: $2.7T
*All data as of today, 06:31 am ET. Source: CoinGecko
Recommended Reads
The Block: A closer look at EigenLayer daily flows since EIGEN airdrop
The Defiant: Trump’s Suddenly All About Crypto. What Changed?
Unchained: What Is Multi-Party Computation (MPC) And How Does It Work on Blockchains?
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