Adam Efrima is the SSV Core team Co-founder. He has been active in the crypto industry since 2013. Over eight years living in China working in the financial industry and fintech space, Adam has worked in CITIC Bank covering outbound investments for Chinese SOEs, he was also in charge of setting up the eToro Shanghai operation. Since then, Adam has been deeply involved in Ethereum staking, co-founding top performing staking project Bloxstaking as well as co-founding SSV Network, a decentralized validator infrastructure for ETH staking.

Adam Swick is the Chief Growth Officer at Marathon Digital Holdings. Prior to joining Marathon, he served as a principal at Refinery Ventures, where he was responsible for identifying and recommending business strategies to accelerate the growth of all companies in Refinery’s portfolio. Before Refinery, Swick was the director of strategic finance at Kraken Digital Asset Exchange, where he managed the company’s balance sheet, debt program, investor relations, and all forecasting activities. Prior to Kraken, he founded Swick Capital, a crypto-asset hedge fund, worked at Pritzker Group Venture Capital, and was a consultant at Boston Consulting Group. Swick holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and a BS in finance from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

Amanda Cassatt is the founder and CEO of Serotonin. Amanda previously served as Chief Marketing Officer of ConsenSys from 2016 through 2019. Joining one year after the launch of Ethereum, Amanda played a crucial role in defining, creating, and growing the narrative for ConsenSys, Ethereum, and blockchain overall.

Amanda stewarded the ConsenSys brand through its global expansion across enterprises, governments, developers, and consumers. She created and scaled the marketing team to over 50 people, serving both the ConsenSys brand and 50+ portfolio companies such as MetaMask, Infura, Truffle, and Gitcoin; managing teams in product marketing, growth, design, content, community, events, email, analytics and SEO. Amanda’s contributions to some of the most successful product launches, token sales and fundraises landed her on Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2016. Amanda is the author of the world's first web3 marketing book, Web3 Marketing: A Handbook for the Next Internet Revolution.

Amanda Keleher currently serves as Chief People Officer at Consensys, one of the largest and fastest-growing companies in the blockchain technology space. A well-rounded business leader with an over 25-year career in the technology space, Amanda is the driving force behind the human element of Consensys where she is responsible for overseeing all of the aspects of people, from building and maintaining the company culture to harnessing human capital as a key driver of business. 

Before joining ConsenSys, Amanda served as the Head of People at ThoughtWorks, a global technology consultancy company, for nearly ten years, where she led the global scale expansion by opening offices around the world and recruiting a diverse workforce at a time when the DevOps movement had just been born and a new skill set were yet to be developed. After her time at ThoughWorks, she served as the Executive Vice President, People &amp; Culture of Index Exchange, one of the world’s premier ad tech organizations; and as VP of People at Little Bits and Intent Media where she excelled in designing effective and creative strategies to attract and retain world-class talent in hyper competitive environments

Andrea Berry is a seasoned online video strategist with 15+ years of experience in transformative media partnerships. 

Her early successes include helping to launch Qello Concerts, the first direct-to-consumer live-music OTT service, later transforming it into Qello Media Services and Vimeo’s OTT channels offering across various industries as their first strategic sales director for their enterprise.

Currently, as the Head of Business Development at Theta Labs, Andrea leverages her expertise in online video and blockchain to drive strategic partnerships and growth opportunities for the company. She helps enterprises take advantage and lean into the opportunities Web3 presents. 

Andrew Thurman is a Data Editor based in Washington, DC. He previously wrote for CoinDesk and Cointelegraph, and worked in various roles for Chainlink and Nansen. His analysis has been quoted in The Financial Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Forbes, Fortune, Reuters, The BBC, CNBC, and elsewhere. Contact Andrew at andrew@blockworks.co.

Andrey Sergeenkov writes educational articles as a freelancer. His works have been published in Coindesk, Cointelegraph, Entrepreneur and CoinMarketCap. He believes that transforming society towards lifelong learning, combined with decentralization in government and business, will lead to exponential social development.

Andy Bromberg is CEO of Beam and Contributor to the Eco Protocol. Eco has raised more than $90 million from an array of leading investors, including a16z Crypto, L Catterton, Activant Capital, Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, and others. Prior to Eco, Andy was Co-founder and President of CoinList. Andy is also a founding board member at FreeWorld, a non-profit seeking to end institutionalized poverty in the United States by providing access to living-wage jobs for people with criminal histories. He studied Mathematics and Computer Science at Stanford University and co-founded the Stanford Bitcoin Group.

An established and versatile Financial Executive with over two decades of experience running multiple trading businesses across top-level banks such as HSBC, Barclays, and UBS. After running the top Agency and SSA business for both UBS and Barclays, he took over Emerging Markets macro trading for Barclays. In 2018, wanting to go deeper into Emerging Markets he took a role as Head of Latam local markets trading where he was responsible for trading activities across Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, and Chile. In 2021 DeMartino moved into Crypto when he became CEO and founder of Coinbase Risk Strategies focused on DeFi and Derivatives trading. More recently he started Trident Digital Group, a crypto-native solutions firm that is focused on lending and safe yield generation and stablecoin adoption.


Antoni is a co-founder of Aleph Zero Foundation (Switzerland), an organization overseeing the development of the Aleph Zero blockchain, and a Managing Partner of Cardinal Cryptography (Poland), firm focused on core development of the Aleph Zero ecosystem.

Ari Juels is the Weill Family Foundation and Joan and Sanford I. Weill Professor in the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech and the Technion and a Computer Science faculty member at Cornell University. He is a Co-Director of the Initiative for CryptoCurrencies and Contracts (IC3). He is also Chief Scientist at Chainlink Labs. He is the author of crypto thriller novel The Oracle (Talos Press), which was released on 20 February 2024.

Austin Alexander is co-founder of LayerTwo Labs, a company focused on advancing the Bitcoin ecosystem through innovative solutions and specializing in the development of Drivechain, a specific type of blockchain sidechain designed to foster creativity and scalability within Bitcoin.

Austin Campbell is the founder and managing partner of Zero Knowledge Consulting and an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School. Previously, he has run portfolio management at Paxos for the stablecoins as well as being the chief risk officer of Paxos National Trust, has managed fixed income trading desks at JP Morgan and Citi, and has been a portfolio manager and structurer at Stone Ridge, the parent of NYDIG. He holds a BS in Mathematics from CSU Chico and a MBA from NYU Stern.

Ben Strack is a senior reporter covering macro and crypto-native funds, financial advisors, structured products, and the integration of digital assets and DeFi into traditional finance. Prior to joining Blockworks, he covered the asset management industry for Fund Intelligence and was a reporter and editor for various local newspapers on Long Island. He graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in journalism.

Contact Ben via email at ben@blockworks.co

Bessie is a Brooklyn-based reporter covering DeFi and technology. Bessie worked as a tech journalist for The Org prior to joining Blockworks and was a management consultant for KPMG in another life. She is originally from Melbourne, Australia and holds an MA from New York University. She is also the mother of a bratty cat named Mochi. You can reach Bessie at bessie@blockworks.co

Bezalel Eithan Raviv, an ex-member of IDF Cyber Unit 8200, is a seasoned entrepreneur with deep expertise in technology and innovation. He now leads Lionsgate Network, a blockchain analysis firm specializing in professional money recovery services for digital asset investors in the +$2.5 trillion market. Prior to this role, Bezalel founded an investment banking firm supporting AI startups and developed Halleluiah, a pioneering web3 migration pattern for global music copyrights.

Billy Sebell is the Executive Director of the XDC Foundation and an early contributor to the XDC Network. Since early 2018, Billy has worked to develop the XDC community, focused on ecosystem and network growth and implementing use cases in trade finance. Billy previously spent more than 25 years in manufacturing and consumer products, dealing with the challenges businesses face in capital markets and international trade.

Bogdan is the Co-Founder and CTO of Tenderly, the full-stack infrastructure solutions provider powering Web3 developer teams with the essential tools and services throughout their development journeys. 

Prior to co-founding Tenderly, Bogdan worked as a software engineer for major software platforms such as MVP Workshop and Go Daddy where he was responsible for constructing and managing the development of distributed cloud systems before realizing the lack of infrastructural support for Web3 developers. With his vast experience in constructing, expanding, and overseeing extensive distributed cloud systems, he is well-versed in the intricacies of blockchain technologies and their practical applications. 

Brandon Truong is lead product contributor for ZetaChain. He previously co-founded social platform Yada (which was acquired in 2020) and spent time building products for BuzzFeed and Udacity. 


 Brian Pak is CEO &amp; Co-Founder of ChainLight, an award-winning blockchain security firm that specializes in smart contract audits and on-chain monitoring. He is also a co-founder of Theori, an established US-based offensive cybersecurity company, since 2016, which he still leads today, having now amassed trusted partners including Microsoft, Google and Samsung. Brian’s early career started when he co-founded and developed Kaprica Security, inventing and patenting the Skorpion Charger, an Android mobile charger that can detect malicious software with no user action required. He has worked on research and development projects with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the US. Brian is also a founder of the team PPP (Plaid Parliament of Pwning) which won DEF CON CTF, one of the most prestigious hacker competitions held in Las Vegas, in 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2022 and 2023. Brian graduated with a Masters Degree in Software Security Research from Carnegie Mellon University.

Byron Donalds grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and he is also the proud son of a hardworking and loving single mother. His mother dedicated her time instilling in him that greatness requires sacrifice, which drives him as a devoted family man and United States Congressman.  

Byron is a graduate of Florida State University and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in finance and marketing. Byron's career led him to Southwest Florida, where he worked in the banking, finance, and insurance industries. Elected to the Florida House of Representatives in 2016, Byron represented Hendry County and east Collier County in the State Capitol. During his tenure in the Florida House, Byron served as the PreK-12 Quality Subcommittee Chair during the 2018-2019 Legislative Session and served as the Insurance &amp; Banking Subcommittee's Chairman 2019-2020 Legislative Session. While serving in the Florida House, primarily focused on elder affairs, criminal justice reform, and ensuring that each child has access to a world-class education. 

Byron is committed to serving and giving back to the community that gave him so much. He has served Southwest Florida in many ways, including previously serving on the Board of Trustees for Florida Southwestern State College after being appointed by then-Governor Rick Scott. Byron continues to volunteer in his church as a youth leader and a mentor. He also enjoys volunteering as a coach in youth football and basketball leagues.

Congressman Byron Donalds lives in Naples, Florida, with his wife, Erika, and their three sons: Damon, Darin, and Mason. Byron has spent his entire adult life serving others, whether it be through volunteering, business, or leadership. He is committed to representing Florida's 19th Congressional District's conservative values in Washington DC to ensure a stronger Florida and a stronger nation.

Cameron B. Pick is a partner and patent attorney at the Chicago-based intellectual property boutique law firm Marshall, Gerstein &amp; Borun. He prosecutes patents for emerging technologies, including blockchain and crypto, among other innovative areas. He may be reached at cpick@marshallip.com. 

​​Casey Wagner is a Senior Reporter based in New York. Casey covers crypto regulation, markets and central banks. Prior to joining Blockworks, she reported on macroeconomics at Bloomberg News. She graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in Media Studies. Contact Casey via email at casey@blockworks.co

Chris Brooks founded CryptoAssetRecovery.com in 2017 to help digital asset owners recover lost assets. Chris was a programmer at Fidelity Investments, VP of Technology at venture-backed Carescout (which sold to GenWorth, a spinoff of General Electric) and has founded and sold three bootstrapped internet companies. 

Chris Swenor is a seasoned entrepreneur and blockchain pioneer with a 20-year career that kicked off as a self-taught programmer at age 13. He swiftly moved from corporate roles into startups, leading several to successful acquisitions. Chris started venturing into blockchain and cryptocurrency in 2013, founding Reach in 2019, a platform that has since attracted over $13M in funding and onboarded more than 8,000 developers.

In recent years, Chris founded Humble, a decentralized exchange on Algorand, and Alloy, a blockchain gaming platform acquired in 2023. He is currently working on Voi Network, a layer 1 blockchain empowering its community with user-centric governance and economics. 

Christopher Perkins is President of CoinFund, a web3 focused Registered Investment Advisor.  He is also a member of the CFTC’s Global Markets Advisory Committee and its Digital Asset Markets Subcommittee.

Damian Alvarez is a communications professional helping Web3 clients get their stories heard. He is currently the Head of Communications at Aori, an omni-chain logic layer that leverages off-chain data storage to enable high-frequency on-chain trading. He has worked at agencies such as Edelman and YAP Global to assist a variety of emerging and established clients to engage in industry-wide narratives surrounding technology. He may be contacted at damian@aori.io.

Dan Keeler is Editor-in-Chief at Blockworks. Prior to joining Blockworks, he was Frontier Markets Editor at the Wall Street Journal where he managed the Journal’s coverage of smaller emerging markets as well as created a number of high-profile events and a highly regarded newsletter. Before joining the WSJ, he was the Editor of Global Finance magazine. He is also the founder of New York’s FM Network, a group that hosts gatherings of finance professionals focused on smaller emerging markets.

Contact Dan via email at dan@blockworks.co

Daniel Batten is a ClimateTech investor, Bitcoin environmental impact analyst, CEO advisor and author. He is most widely known for his data-driven approach to Bitcoin mining research.


Daniel Cawrey has been involved full-time in the crypto space since 2013, including as an editor at CoinDesk. He is author of 2020’s “Mastering Blockchain” and 2023’s “Understanding Crypto” books, both available on Amazon.

Daranee Ganesh is a publishing and production manager based in Washington, DC. She holds an LLB with a focus on emerging technologies. Prior to Blockworks, Daranee worked on several legal and non-profit projects aimed at integrating decentralized solutions in the social justice framework, specifically within immigration and environmental law. Contact Daranee at daranee@blockworks.co.

Darren Kleine is an Alberta-based reporter covering podcast content at Blockworks. Previously reporting for Cointelegraph, he wrote feature content and a weekly series focused on the personal stories of influential figures in the Web3 space. He has been an active participant in the NFT art scene since 2020, creating works on curated platforms including SuperRare and KnownOrigin and hosting an NFT art-focused podcast called NFP with DKleine. Contact Darren Kleine at darren@blockworks.co.

David is an Editor based in the Netherlands focused on data-driven journalism. Previously, he wrote for TheNextWeb's crypto vertical before launching Protos in 2021. He's a reformed hardline Bitcoiner passionate about permissionless and decentralized networks. Contact David at david@blockworks.co

Denelle Dixon is the CEO and Executive Director of the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), a non-profit organization focused on working with and supporting changemakers to create equitable access to the global financial system through blockchain technology. She leads the teams that help maintain Stellar's codebase, support the communities around Stellar, and advocate on behalf of the network with international stakeholders. Before joining Stellar, Dixon served as COO of Mozilla, one of the most successful mission-driven open-source organizations.. During her tenure at Mozilla, she led the organization’s business, revenue and policy teams including the ongoing fight for net neutrality and the global effort to ensure that people can control their personal data.

Elliot is the Head of Climate Strategy at Sustainable Bitcoin Protocol, where he is helping unlock Bitcoin's clean energy potential by bridging sustainable miners and climate-conscious investors. In his role at Sustainable Bitcoin Protocol, Elliot educates policymakers and NGOs on Bitcoin’s relationship with the energy system. He is a climatetech operator focused on alleviating energy poverty, bridging the digital divide, and promoting financial inclusion through technologies such as Bitcoin. Elliot was previously a Schwarzman Scholar and has served in the military, US Department of Energy, Clinton Foundation, and more. 

Evan Thomas is General Counsel for Alluvial, a software development company supporting the Liquid Collective liquid staking protocol. He was previously at Wealthsimple, Canada’s largest consumer fintech, where he was Head of Legal for Wealthsimple’s crypto trading platform. While at Wealthsimple, Evan helped launch Canada’s first regulated staking product. Before Wealthsimple, Evan was a litigator at Osler, Hoskin &amp; Harcourt LLP for nearly 15 years. Among other notable cases, Evan was hearing counsel to 3iQ Corp. in its appeal securing regulatory approval for Canada’s first publicly traded bitcoin fund in 2019.

Felix Xu, crypto geek, early adopter, and NFT collector. Felix graduated from NYU Stern and founded two crypto projects, ARPA and Bella Protocol, among the global top 500 by market cap. Felix previously worked at Fosun Investment, Sackler family office, and Vertical Research in New York and Beijing. Felix loves sailing, kitesurfing and was featured in the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times for his NFT collection.

Garrett Harper is the producer for the Empire podcast. Garrett worked in private equity and product management before jumping into crypto full-time in 2021. His favorite thing about crypto? It conflates art, gaming, finance, software, and psychology into one hyper-growth industry.

Haden Patrick is Director of Business Operations of Cordial Systems, a provider of institutional-grade self custody software using a Zero Trust security model.  Haden has executive experience in team leadership, engineering and education originating from his 24 year career as a Naval Officer. After co-founding SoloKeys, the first open-source security key company, he went on to manage projects connecting web3 to traditional finance at a cryptocurrency trading firm before joining Cordial Systems.

Hannah Finnerty is Blockworks' editorial operations manager and is based in the US. Hannah previously worked in podcast production for The National in Abu Dhabi. She graduated from Bowling Green State University with a degree in multiplatform journalism and Middle Eastern politics. Contact Hannah at hannah@blockworks.co.

Hatu Sheikh is the co-founder and CMO of DAO Maker, the largest on-chain funding platform with 1.5M+ users. The platform's contracts have distributed over $600M, with a cumulative return of around 10x. Hatu has a strong background in marketing and strategy and has played a pivotal role in driving the success of various blockchain-based projects and tokens, crafting effective marketing strategies, and forging powerful synergies within the industry.

Hind Kurhan is a Co-Founder of Thesis Defense, a decentralized technology security auditing company whose mission is the facilitation of broad adoption of decentralized technology by improving security and audit consistency throughout the blockchain sphere.


Ian Rogers is the Chief Experience Officer at Ledger, leading the consumer-facing business delivering the world’s #1 way to buy and secure cryptocurrency.  Prior, Ian was the Chief Digital Officer at LVMH for five transformative years, working with a portfolio of nearly one hundred brands across luxury including Louis Vuitton, Dior, Sephora, and Hennessy.  Ian also sits on the boards of Dr Marten’s and Lyst.

Ian spent twenty years bringing digital music to the mainstream, first with Winamp then Yahoo!, Beats, and Apple.  Ian contributed to the 2015 launch of Apple Music including Beats 1, their digital streaming channel. Ian graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science (with honors, Phi Beta Kappa) from Indiana University in 1994.  Ian built some of the earliest music-related Web sites in the early 90s and has been working with Beastie Boys since 1993.

Ishan is a University of Texas McCombs School of Business graduate with a BBA in Finance &amp; Marketing. He founded and managed a Private Equity Fund that reached an eight-figure Assets Under Management (AUM) and has also gained experience with many top 200 projects of crypto market cap. In 2022, he helped found SCRIB3, a Web3 Marketing and PR venture. He was notably among the first to raise an alert about potential deceptive and unethical business practices by FTX. Ishan contributes as a DeFi analyst, an active angel investor, and an advisor in projects like Polygon Technologies.

Jack Kubinec is a DeFi and DAO reporter based in Brooklyn, New York. Jack previously interned at Blockworks before joining full-time. He graduated summa cum laude from Cornell University with a degree in sociology. Contact Jack at jack.kubinec@blockworks.co.

Jag is the CEO and Co-Founder of Tangible, a platform focused on redefining asset ownership and value creation by transforming the way real-world assets, specifically real estate, are bought, sold, and leveraged on-chain. As a serial entrepreneur, Jag has founded three companies prior to Tangible. Lime Fuel, Jag’s first company, offers a wholesale fuel market for small and medium-sized enterprises, was sold to Applegreen PLC after four years of operation. Jag went on to found Vid Inc., a platform disrupting the social media industry with a video social media platform that rewards users for the value they provide to the platform. Jag most recently founded Singh Capital, a crypto-dedicated fund that conducts yield farming, quant and arbitrage strategies, which he still remains involved in.


James Cirrone is a breaking news reporter based in New York. Prior to joining Blockworks, James was a reporter and newsletter writer at Bloomberg News. He graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in journalism. He also played trumpet in the university’s marching band. Contact James via email at james.cirrone@blockworks.co.

Jeff is an editor at Blockworks, based in the United States. He has been a part of the blockchain space for over a decade, most recently working as US news editor at Cointelegraph. His areas of focus include empowering artists and creators through technology, using proof-of-participation methods to reward self-improvement, reducing the effectiveness of Sybil attacks, seeking transparent equity for disadvantaged communities, and exploring fairer models of world governance. Contact Jeff at Jeffrey@blockworks.co.

Jesper Johansen is the founder and CEO of NORTHSTAKE, a regulated custodial staking company specialized in building regulatory compliant crypto staking products for institutional investors and financial institutions. The team holds backgrounds from financial institutions, pension funds, large investment companies to consulting, technology and audit firms, such as Accenture, Deloitte, PwC as well as blockchain and crypto projects e.g. DAI Foundation (MakerDao), Ethereum and L1/L2s. 

Prior to NORTHSTAKE, Jesper held leadership positions with Accenture Strategy and Deloitte Consulting advising clients in heavily regulated industries to implement new technologies and drive business transformation. He holds a MBA from Copenhagen Business School and a B.Sc. in International Business. 

Jess Sun is an independent writer and content strategist. She loves bringing good ideas to light, helping the people behind them shine, and bridging gaps in understanding. Follow her on Twitter or LinkedIn. Go to her website to learn about working with her.

Jim Myers is an engineer, early-stage investor, and the CTO &amp; Co-Founder of Flipside Crypto, a leading blockchain data analytics and business intelligence platform. Prior to co-founding Flipside, Jim developed the core technology that took products from 0 to 1 at companies such as Mylestone, Pluralsight, and Smarterer. Jim’s journey into the crypto industry began in 2015, eventually co-founding Flipside Crypto in 2017 to help empower crypto communities to create and share data-driven insights on the projects they care most about. Jim's passion for building extends to the broader startup community via his developer event series, Stack Dive, and as an angel investor to several local Boston-area startups, including AdHawk and LinkSquares. In a previous life, Jim developed advanced models to quantify risk and abnormal returns in the market for Financial Transmission Rights, a type of energy derivative.

JJ is an advisor, mentor and co-founder working across Bitcoin, mining and web3. He currently mentors for Outlier Ventures new Bitcoin Base Camp program and has co-founded a new protocol operating in stealth mode.

Joeyz Yu is an entrepreneur with over 18 years of experience in product design and development. He co-founded Sending Labs to revolutionize communication protocols and social applications for Web3, leading the development of their flagship products SendingMe and SendingNetwork. Previously, Joeyz co-founded MoboTab, where he created the Dolphin Browser, used by over 200 million users and later acquired by ChangYou. Joeyz's passion for empowering users and building exceptional teams drives his mission to shape the future of the internet. 

John is the Editor of Evergreen Content at Blockworks. Before Blockworks, he was the producer and founder of an explainer studio called Best Explained. As Evergreen Editor, he manages the production of explainers, guides and all educational content for anything crypto related. He is passionate about making digital asset education more accessible for degens and fence-sitters alike. Contact John at john@blockworks.co

John Wu is President of Ava Labs, an Andresseen Horowitz backed technology company building the next-generation blockchain platform: Avalanche. John’s objective is to open up financial services and products to all. In this role, he leverages his expertise from over 20 years as a fintech executive and technology investor to create a blockchain-enabled solution for originating, issuing, and trading financial assets.  

Jonathan currently serves as the Global Head of Growth at the Web3 ecosystem, Elastos, overseeing marketing, business development, investment and ecosystem strategies. With a background in corporate communications and technology marketing from roles at Edelman, Weber Shandwick, and Burson-Marsteller, Jonathan has transitioned to focus on Web3 innovation in his recent positions at Elastos and CreDA.

Joseph Schiarizzi is the Founder of Open Dollar, a lending protocol built on Arbitrum and has been a blockchain developer for 7 years. Before Open Dollar, Joseph worked at ConsenSys and later led Developer Relations for Gitcoin. He has contributed to impactful DAOs including Meta Cartel and Raid Guild, and is also the chair of the environmental sustainability council for Falls Church, VA. $5B+ has gone through smart contracts Joseph has contributed to. 

Julian Deschler is the Co-Founder of Elusiv, a universal encryption layer for Web3 powering the decentralized world. Elusiv went live on Solana Mainnet in March 2023 following a $3.5 million seed round in November. Julian started carving out his entrepreneurial path during his studies. Involved in the startup world as a board member of START Munich, a member of Sigma Squared, and a scholarship holder from UnternehmerTUM, he brought this wealth of experience to the Web3 landscape. With past roles in TradFi &amp; several Web3 companies, including Staking Facilities, Julian drives the business strategy of Elusiv. His extensive speaking participation at numerous Web3 conferences further underscores his dedication to fostering the future of privacy in Web3. 


Justin Banon is a thought leader and advocate for Web3 technologies, as well as being co-founder of Boson Protocol — a decentralized commerce protocol enabling the tokenization and trade of physical assets without intermediaries.


Katherine is a news editor based in Austin. She worked as a senior producer and correspondent at TheStreet prior to joining Blockworks. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree with a focus on journalism from Sarah Lawrence. Contact Katherine via email at katherine@blockworks.co.

Kevin is the co-founder and CEO of Keyrock. Before founding Keyrock in 2017, Kevin worked at Roland Berger, where he spent a few years as a consultant and started investigating the expanding cryptocurrency market in 2014. With a background in Business Engineering and International Management, Kevin is an entrepreneur at heart passionate about using innovative technologies to build efficient markets and increase financial inclusiveness. 

Kristin is the Executive Director of the Blockchain Association, the Washington DC-based trade association representing more than 80 of the industry’s leading companies. Kristin serves as a liaison between policymakers and the cryptocurrency industry to assist in the creation of legislation and regulation that promotes the growth of the cryptocurrency ecosystem in the US.

Lasha Antadze is the co-founder of Rarilabs (formerly Rarify Labs), a company advancing Rarimo, a layer for universal access and verification for digital identities. In 2022, Rarilabs received US$10 million in a Series A funding round from Pantera Capital at a $100 million valuation.

As a serial founder, Lasha has close to a decade of experience in the blockchain industry. Prior to Rarilabs, Lasha co-founded decentralized auction platform Shelf Network. This was recognized by the 2018 Frontier Innovations Awards as the best blockchain use-case for the real world. It was acquired by the Aurora Group in 2022.

As early as 2015, Lasha led the world’s first government blockchain initiatives as a part of the anti-corruption reform for state property auctioning in Ukraine. Prior to this, he worked on the Ukrainian government’s e-identity and digitalization reform and EU's Stork 2.0 digital signature standardization, placing him in a distinctive position at the intersection of identity and Web3.

Laura is a digital assets policy expert, and serves as the UK Policy Lead for Crypto Council For Innovation (CCI). CCI is the premier global alliance for advancing innovation, which believes in leading with a global view, advocating for inclusive regulation, and developing evidence-based insights to support government and business leaders.  

Leo Li is the Chief Growth Officer of CARV, spearheading operations, strategy, and outreach across departments. At CARV, a leading data-sharing protocol and AI-powered gaming super app, Leo oversees more than 600 onboarded games and 1.5 million users. His leadership ensures the seamless integration and utilization of CARV's suite of tools for user acquisition, onboarding, and management.

Before joining CARV, Leo held key roles as a publishing producer and operations manager at Electronic Arts, Garena, and Tencent. His extensive background includes the global publishing of popular titles including FIFA Online, Apex Legends Mobile, Arena of Valor, and more.

Leo Mizuhara is the Founder and CEO of Hashnote, a fully regulated, institutional-grade investment management platform for DeFi, seamlessly merging the advantages of traditional finance with the innovation of decentralized finance. Leo’s leadership and passion for fintech stems from his successful career, including previously running Systematic Trading for FICC Options at DRW for five years, and a 12-year tenure at Bank of America as a managing director and senior portfolio manager in the Corporate Investments Group in New York. His vision for Hashnote is to create the future of finance – one that integrates the best of both traditional and DeFi systems.

Leroy Hofer is the CEO and Co-Founder of ELOOP, a Vienna-based carsharing provider and blockchain startup. He graduated from the Commercial Academy Bregenz before studying Business Administration at the University of Vienna, from which he soon switched to the field of Journalism and ultimately completed his education with a Bachelor's degree. Together with his roommate Nico Prugger, Leroy Hofer developed the idea for ELOOP. In the company founded in 2019, he is primarily responsible for the areas of vision, business development, and legal matters.

Macauley is a Senior Editor based in Germany. He was an editor and content creator in the pro chess world for 14 years before an interest in crypto led him to Bucerius Law School (MLB 2020), a thesis on stablecoins, DeFi and CBDC, and a career change. He also holds an MA in Film Studies; film credits include Associate Producer of the 2016 Netflix feature documentary, "Magnus" about World Chess Champion Magnus Carlsen. Contact: macauley@blockworks.co

Marc Taverner is the CEO and co-founder of XEROF, a leading Swiss financial services provider specializing in cryptoassets. He has more than 30 years of experience in the technology industry and now pioneers the use of cryptoassets for liquidity and efficiency in financial services worldwide.

Previously, Marc founded InComm Conferencing, a company focusing on detailed events ranging from large-port calls, operator-assisted conferences, webcasts, medical education events, investor relations calls, and onsite production. He successfully sold the company to join the C-suite of the leading European Bitcoin and blockchain firm, Bitfury. Marc then directed INATBA, one of the largest multi-stakeholder blockchain trade associations in Europe, backed by the European Commission and Abu Dhabi Global Market. During his tenure, he led the multi-stakeholder response to the EU cryptoasset regulation MiCA. Marc is also an angel investor and advisor to several web3 and crypto companies.

Mariana Krym, COO of VSC, a HealthFi ecosystem that leverages Web3 technology to promote positive lifestyle habits through anonymized health data monetization. Mariana has also worked as a crypto trader for close to a decade and is a veteran media consultant expert, having worked with such notable companies as Waze (now Google), Twitter, Spotify, Snapchat, and LinkedIn.

Mark Hendrickson is a product leader who lives in Barcelona, Spain having previously grown up in Menlo Park, California, studied at Bowdoin College, and started his technology career in San Francisco. He has extensive experience leading product strategy, management, design, development, and marketing efforts at early-stage software startups such as Hiro, TechCrunch, Plancast, Lift, and KITE. He currently serves as the general manager for Leather, the Bitcoin and Stacks wallet.

Mark Long is CEO of Shrapnel, a AAA first-person extraction shooter, with a creator ecosystem that empowers players to own their creations and shape the future of the game. A former head of Xcloud at Microsoft and publishing at HBO, he is a 27-year game industry veteran who has produced more than 32 titles on every platform from SEGA Genesis to Oculus Rift. Established across many media forms, Mark is also a member of the Producers Guild and a New York Times bestselling graphic novel author.

Dr. Markus Franke is an economist who has been working at the intersection of economics and technology in TradFi (J.P.Morgan, Merrill Lynch, Allianz), as a post-doc researcher (including the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Columbia Business School in New York and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology), and in Web3 (on Celo, as a board member of cLabs, founder of Mento Labs, and advisor of many projects in the EVM space).  

Markus Infanger joined Ripple in January 2019 and currently is the SVP of RippleX, a business unit supporting partnerships and developer growth around the XRP Ledger. Prior to Ripple, Markus was in banking for over 20 years leading global teams in Foreign Exchange. He is currently also completing an Executive MBA with TRIUM (LSE, NYU, HEC Paris). 

Martin Derka, Ph.D., is the Head of New Initiatives at Quantstamp, a web3 security company. He has years of experience in the development of smart contracts and platforms built on Ethereum, specializing in DeFi security and economic manipulations. At Quantstamp, Martin assists with both securing projects prior to deployment, and crisis management in the aftermath of an exploit.

Martin Goycoolea Scott is the Product Lead &amp; Builder of Zeal. His journey into the crypto space began in 2017, via a drive to make personal finance approachable and user-friendly. Since then, Martin has spent his time focused on making personal finance and payments easier and friendlier. Martin has a wealth of experience in tech, working as Head of Growth at Mach, Office Lead at Revolut, Head of Product and Growth at EdTech firm Eedi.

Matan Almakis, Head of Protocol at DOP, is actively contributing to the wave of data ownership in Web3. With a background in driving growth at Lamina, Matan now leads DOP's product architecture, giving Web3 users the power to share their data exactly how and with whom they prefer. He believes that encrypting sensitive financial information on chain is a fundamental human right and affirms that data ownership is crucial for the mass adoption of Web3. Matan is dedicated to leveraging blockchain technology to address real-world challenges with a human-centered approach.


Matthew is a brand strategist and Web3 product builder. He is the co-founder &amp; COO of Mojito, the first company to spin out of Serotonin. Mojito is a Web3 platform for NFT commerce that powers Sotheby’s dedicated NFT marketplace, Sotheby’s Metaverse, where Matthew currently serves as Managing Director. Previous to his work at Serotonin, Matthew founded the blockchain-for-journalism startup Civil, which was acquired by ConsenSys, one of the most important companies in the Ethereum blockchain ecosystem. Before entering the world of decentralized technology, Matthew led Nine Lines, a prominent marketing agency where he worked with 40+ consumer startups over 6 years, and he co-created the digital marketing course for General Assembly. 

Mauricio is the co-founder of Ledn, a digital currency lending company that prioritizes transparency and client control through new, innovative products such as DCNs, Growth Accounts, and Custodied loans. Ledn was the crypto industry's first digital asset lending company to complete a Proof-of-Reserves.  Since its inception in 2018, Ledn has originated over $635M (USD) retail loans and over $4B in institutional loans.

Mauricio experienced the impacts of hyperinflation in Venezuela and saw how quickly money can lose all its value. In hopes that he could provide for his family in the future, he escaped the economic catastrophe through Bitcoin and went on to earn his MBA at Western University in Canada.

Views are my own. The author is a co-founder of 21 Technologies Inc. (Ledn). Read Ledn’s disclaimers at https://ledn.io/legal/disclaimers and risk disclosure statement at https://ledn.io/legal/risk-disclosure-statement.

Michael Bodley is a US-based senior editor (investigations) at Blockworks, where he focuses on the intersection of Wall Street and digital assets. Before that, he worked for TheStreet.com and institutional newsletter Hedge Fund Alert. His work has been published in outlets including The Boston Globe and The Washington Post. Contact Michael at michael.bodley@blockworks.co

Michael McSweeney has worked in crypto media since 2014, including editorships at CoinDesk and The Block. In his spare time, he writes fiction and plays disc golf. Contact Michael at michael.mcsweeney@blockworks.co.

Misha Komarov, founder of =nil; Foundation, a leading developer of zero-knowledge infrastructure and Ethereum scalability such as =nil;’s native circuit compiler zkLLVM, Proof Market, ‘Placeholder’, and the self-titled zkSharding rollup, =nil;. Misha is a leading developer of infrastructure for effective zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) generation. He is a researcher and developer in the fields of cryptography and database management systems (DBMS), developing vital infrastructure within zero-knowledge technology such as =nil;’s native circuit compiler zkLLVM, Proof Market, and ‘Placeholder’.

Mitch Kochman is Director of Platform Sales at BitGo, where he manages BitGo’s premier client relationships with exchanges, miners and payments platforms. He is predominantly focused and passionate about the Bitcoin-only ecosystem. Mitch has been with BitGo since 2022 and previously spent 11 years at IBM as a sales executive leading global software strategy at several major banks, the last of which being J.P. Morgan Chase. Mitch graduated from University of Maryland with a B.S. in Information Systems and Accounting.


Mo Shaikh is the Co-Founder &amp; CEO of Aptos Labs. He is a 3x founder with over a decade of blockchain/crypto and multinational financial services experience—including a stint on the alternative assets team at Blackrock.

Molly Jane Zuckerman is the opinion editor at Blockworks. She previously led educational content at CoinMarketCap and ran the news desk at Cointelegraph. Molly Jane is now based in New York after almost a decade in Russia, and can talk your ear off about Russia lit and detective novels. Contact Molly Jane: molly@blockworks.co

Nicky is the Senior Partner at XReg Consulting, a boutique public policy and regulatory affairs consultancy specializing in cryptoassets. A former regulator with 15 years of experience in the crypto and financial services industries, Nicky leads the development of XReg’s presence in the Americas, with a strategic focus on Latin America, the Caribbean and North America.

Since founding XReg, Nicky has supported governments and international public bodies with the development and implementation of risk-based, outcomes-oriented cryptoasset regulatory frameworks and strategies that mitigate risk and leverage smart innovation.

He also provides strategic regulatory advice to some of the largest crypto businesses in the world and has successfully secured licenses and authorisations for clients in Europe, Gibraltar, the Caribbean and Asia. As the co-chair of the Global Digital Finance (GDF) AML working group, he helps shape global cryptoasset regulatory standards that mitigate risk and encourage innovation.

Prior to founding XReg, Nicky spent over nine years at the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission (GFSC) as the Head of Risk and Innovation, where he was part of the team that led the design and implementation of the world’s first bespoke regulatory framework for firms using Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT).

Nse Barna is the Chief of Staff at the Aleo Network Foundation, where she oversees the company’s strategic planning and execution. She has a rich history of orchestrating major political campaigns across California. Committed to advancing diversity and inclusivity in tech, Nse leverages her Political Science and International Relations degree from The University of Texas at San Antonio. She champions the widespread use of blockchain and zero-knowledge technology in emerging markets, viewing technology as a powerful tool for empowerment and social change.

Ogle has been an active investor in cryptocurrencies since 2012. He stays busy building different products to benefit the space, including his upcoming networking marketplace Shibuya. He is also building a new blockchain called Glue which focuses on addressing security risks and lack of good user experience in the crypto space. In the meantime, he chases down cybersecurity criminals via his cybersecurity company, Ogle Security Group.

Ornella Vallana aka OrnellaWeb3, is the Marketing &amp; Community Lead at Bankless Academy, a free and interactive open-source web3 education platform that provides the essential tools and knowledge needed to ‘go bankless’. She also hosts DAOnboarding, a podcast sharing stories of contributors in web3. With a diverse background of over 15 years in community building, marketing, and branding across fields such as science, music, and now web3, she is focused on democratizing access to blockchain knowledge, particularly through multilingual education. 

Ornella champions the idea that everyone, even those from the most diverse fields or skill sets, can learn about web3, discover their Ikigai, and become a BUIDLer in the space. Her commitment to decentralization and inclusive education drives her to change the narrative around crypto and blockchain, emphasizing its potential as a public good and fostering community-led initiatives that can bring a new future for younger generations.

Pat White is the co-founder and CEO of Bitwave, the leading enterprise accounting platform for digital assets. Bitwave helps enterprise accounting and finance professionals mitigate digital asset complexities with services for crypto accounting, tax tracking, bookkeeping, DeFi ROI monitoring, and crypto AR/AP.  Pat is a recognized software engineering leader with over ten years of experience building enterprise software at Intuit, Microsoft, Five9, and Fortify Software (now HP Security). Pat launched an enterprise software consulting firm (Ally Software) in 2009, which he ran for three years before creating Synata, an enterprise search engine that Cisco acquired in 2016. He has contributed code to Bitcoin, Ethereum, and several other cryptocurrency projects. He is a co-host of The DeFi Daily podcast and a University of Southern California graduate.

Jack Kubinec

Two more restaking-related protocols announced funding rounds this week, as venture investors look to gain exposure to EigenLayer’s burgeoning ecosystem.



Aligned Layer announced a $20 million Series A led by Hack VC. The round also drew participation from a spate of smaller crypto-focused venture firms.&nbsp;



Aligned Layer plans to launch as an actively validated service (AVS) on EigenLayer. AVSs are products secured via EigenLayer’s restaking, which is a means of putting staked ether to use outside of securing Ethereum, drawing an extra layer of usage out of the capital providing Ethereum’s security.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/renzo-liquid-staked-eth">What was behind the run on Renzo’s liquid restaked ETH?</a>



AVSs can be any kind of blockchain-related protocol or service, and the few already live on EigenLayer’s mainnet <a href="https://www.blog.eigenlayer.xyz/avs-launch/">encompass</a> things like data availability, rollup creation and oracle data. Notably, these AVSs have struggled to turn a profit so far, as <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/eigenlayer">EigenLayer</a> is yet to enable in-protocol payments.



Aligned Layer is an EigenLayer-secured protocol for verifying zero-knowledge proofs, which are cryptographic proofs showing a statement to be true without revealing the contents of the statement.&nbsp;



Aligned Layer hopes to make zero-knowledge proof verification cheaper. In a blog post explaining its decision to invest, Hack VC <a href="https://blog.hack.vc/announcing-our-investment-in-and-alignment-with-aligned-layer/">likened</a> Aligned Layer to a data availability provider for zero-knowledge proofs.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/0g-labs-fundraise-data-availability-layer">0G Labs raises $35M for data availability, spurring competition with Celestia, EigenLayer, others</a>



Also this week, Othentic <a href="https://twitter.com/0xOthentic/status/1782378684369739781">announced</a> $4 million in seed funding led by Finality and Breyer Capital. Othentic <a href="https://mirror.xyz/0x09f1eF3b4F2E80638Ea664f32DF7E9921b999C56/WmsfRPgOK5VQvgcMh0MQv6_Qx-TP_2dMLX28jVDJ4us">offers</a> a software stack that helps AVS developers spin up a distributed system based on EigenLayer’s shared security model.



Othentic “simplifies AVS development on EigenLayer with pre-built components, reduced engineering overhead and a faster time to market,” Nader Dabit, the director of developer relations at Eigen Labs, <a href="https://x.com/dabit3/status/1783200838585823575">said</a> on X.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Movement Labs raises $38M for Facebook’s coding language</h2>



This week’s largest fundraise came from Movement Labs, which <a href="https://x.com/movementlabsxyz/status/1783511681928175791">raised</a> a $38 million Series A led by Polychain.&nbsp;



Movement Labs is launching a layer-2 named Movement which makes use of the Move software stack developed by Facebook as part of its ill-fated blockchain push. The programming language Move is used today by layer-1 blockchains Aptos and Sui. Movement will be Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible, meaning programs written for Ethereum can be deployed on the layer-2.&nbsp;



Of note, Movement Labs is run by zoomers. Its founders are 21 and 24 years old, CoinDesk <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/04/25/movement-labs-raises-38m-for-rollup-based-on-facebooks-move-language/?utm_source=twitterx&amp;utm_campaign=coindesk_main&amp;utm_content=editorial&amp;utm_term=organic&amp;utm_medium=social">reported</a>.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Other notable funding news</h2>



<ul>
<li>Turnkey <a href="https://x.com/turnkeyhq/status/1782757851787825163">raised</a> $15 million for a wallet infrastructure service. &nbsp;</li>



<li>Pantera is looking to raise $1 billion for a new crypto fund, Bloomberg <a href="https://news.bloomberglaw.com/crypto/pantera-capital-seeks-to-raise-1-billion-for-a-new-crypto-fund">reported</a>.</li>



<li>Founders Fund <a href="https://x.com/alliancedao/status/1783137165397934581">revealed</a> an investment in the Alliance crypto accelerator.</li>



<li>Prime intellect <a href="https://x.com/PrimeIntellect/status/1782772983712379328">unveiled</a> a $5.5 million raise for decentralized AI development infrastructure.</li>



<li>The Shiba Inu memecoin raised $12 million via a token sale with non-US VCs, The Block <a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/290068/shiba-inu-funding-treat-token-new-blockchain">reported</a>.</li>



<li>Carv <a href="https://x.com/carv_official/status/1783487274703028256">raised</a> $10 million led by Tribe Capital and IOSG Ventures for a modular data layer.</li>
</ul>



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Funding Wrap: Investors place more EigenLayer bets

Bezalel Eithan Raviv

The huge sums of money lost to crypto scams and frauds is probably the biggest financial looting in the history of the USA. 



The FBI <a href="https://www.ic3.gov/Media/PDF/AnnualReport/2023_IC3Report.pdf?trk=public_post_comment-text">recorded</a> losses over $12.5 billion in 2023, 22% more than the previous year. The agency’s Internet Crime Center received a record 880,418 complaints from Americans about potential crypto and online thefts. Considering that most of the targeted individuals do not report their cases to law enforcement, these statistics imply an even more chilling reality.&nbsp;



We need collective action to resolve this situation, from robust security solutions to innovative regulatory and policy frameworks. It’s the only way out — and many already affected are on borrowed time.&nbsp;



We call upon community leaders, politicians and policymakers to step up and protect vulnerable communities. The present circumstances necessitate proactive and enduring measures from them. This is a battle between good and evil, where regulators and crypto innovators should be allies, not adversaries.&nbsp;



Whether one likes it or not, crypto is here to stay: but it cannot persist in its current form. We must prioritize accountability and transparency to enable this groundbreaking technology to thrive and ensure that more people prosper in a secure financial landscape.



Let’s make crime illegal again.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Strategic interventions are mission-critical</h2>



Washington DC must urgently take decisive action to protect consumers from the rampant frauds plaguing the crypto realm.&nbsp;



With another <a href="https://www.grayscale.com/research/reports/anatomy-of-a-bitcoin-bull-market">bull cycle underway</a>, the influx of new users and capital only heightens the risk.&nbsp;



The US, the biggest financial superpower, is in dire need of a robust and unambiguous regulatory framework to effectively combat crypto-related crimes. The current lack thereof has left investors, traders and consumers vulnerable to significant risks. The fragmented oversight by agencies like the SEC, CFTC and IRS has created loopholes ripe for exploitation by hackers. Enforcing anti-money laundering laws in this chaotic landscape is an uphill battle.



Read more from our opinion section: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/legislation-crypto-greatest-enemy">Petty legislation is crypto’s greatest enemy</a>



In addition to comprehensive policies, legislators must establish rigorous reporting and examination standards for both enforcement agencies and crypto businesses. This will enable stakeholders to swiftly identify and thwart illicit activities, providing real-time protection to potential victims.



Prevention must take precedence over reaction. Implementing deterrent measures that render attacks economically futile is imperative. Furthermore, equipping local enforcement agencies and security personnel with adequate training and education is crucial in effectively combating crypto crimes, both proactively and reactively.



By laying down the groundwork, legislators will pave the way for innovators and entrepreneurs to develop solutions that address security concerns at both protocol and user levels. With the technological landscape evolving rapidly, it&#8217;s paramount to instill confidence in the crypto ecosystem.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">From cryptocurrencies to Ponzi schemes</h2>



Technology is inherently neutral; its morality is determined by its application in a specific context, just as with atomic reactors and quantum computers.



According to the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/04/21/americans-view-cryptocurrency-unreliable/">Pew Research Center</a>, more than 43% of crypto investors expressed doubts about security in the crypto industry in 2023. This statistic underscores the urgent need for legislative intervention. The devastating consequences of losing fortunes to hacks and scams affect individuals from all walks of life, including fathers, single mothers, college students, older adults and practically anyone involved in cryptocurrency investment.



Data from the <a href="https://www.ic3.gov/Media/PDF/AnnualReport/2023_IC3Report.pdf">FBI</a> indicates that consumers suffered losses exceeding $29 billion between 2021 and 2023. Unfortunately, many of these incidents went unreported due to insufficient infrastructure, societal stigma and a lack of confidence in the effectiveness of retributive measures.



The escalating utilization of cryptocurrencies in various illicit activities such as financial crimes, money laundering, trafficking and terrorist financing adds another layer of complexity to the situation.&nbsp;



Malicious actors leverage highly sophisticated technologies and methodologies, often staying two steps ahead of law enforcement. Tracing their actions and holding them accountable has become exceedingly challenging, demanding specialized skills and resources.&nbsp;



Since 2017, North Korean hacker groups, for example, have stolen tokens worth $3 billion, according to the UN Security Council’s <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/cybersecurity/un-experts-investigate-58-cyberattacks-worth-3-bln-by-north-korea-2024-02-08/">estimates</a>. North Korea was possibly involved in 17 crypto-related thefts and hacks in 2023 alone, draining over $750 million — roughly 50% of the nation’s foreign currency earnings.&nbsp;



Beyond North Korea, Iranian and Russian groups have also extensively used private crypto-assets to launder stolen funds, purchase illegal weapons, evade sanctions and so on.



Every month, thousands of new Ponzi trading platforms also surface, targeting individuals through platforms like Twitter, Facebook groups and TikTok. They entice people from social media into a trap, often starting with a seemingly harmless interaction that transitions to a communication platform like WhatsApp.&nbsp;



Once engaged, the scam begins, manipulating victims through various senses and emotions. What starts as a small investment can swiftly escalate, potentially devouring entire savings like a 401K in a matter of weeks. Victims are relentlessly pushed to invest more, with cryptocurrencies often used as an anonymous conduit, exacerbating the complexity and severity of the scam.&nbsp;



Law enforcement will issue a report on the case, but by the time they come to any sort of conclusion, the wallet will have long been emptied.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Crafting new policy frameworks for emerging challenges</h2>



Cryptocurrencies present unique challenges. Outdated one-size-fits-all approaches are inadequate for enhancing security and protecting users in this rapidly evolving industry.



Mere compliance is insufficient. Regulators must also uphold market integrity, demand that cryptocurrency exchanges and wallet providers enhance protections for investors&#8217; capital, inspire confidence among investors, foster innovation through awareness and safeguard the entire ecosystem. Balancing security and innovation is paramount. Overemphasizing either aspect risks undermining progress.&nbsp;



Despite the challenges, the US as a regulatory leader possesses the capacity to navigate this landscape effectively.&nbsp;



American households urge Congress to act swiftly and decisively to address the crisis by implementing strict regulations for cryptocurrencies. Entrepreneurs are ready to help.&nbsp;



If we can&#8217;t help protect people&#8217;s finances in 2024, what does that mean for the future of our financial systems?



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>


<div class="wp-block-post-author-biography">Bezalel Eithan Raviv, an ex-member of IDF Cyber Unit 8200, is a seasoned entrepreneur with deep expertise in technology and innovation. He now leads Lionsgate Network, a blockchain analysis firm specializing in professional money recovery services for digital asset investors in the +$2.5 trillion market. Prior to this role, Bezalel founded an investment banking firm supporting AI startups and developed Halleluiah, a pioneering web3 migration pattern for global music copyrights.</div>


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Crypto crime is too easy

Katherine Ross

On Thursday, Consensys — the company behind MetaMask — filed a lawsuit against the Securities and Exchange Commission and its Chair, Gary Gensler.&nbsp;



There was a lot to digest in the 34-page complaint, which revealed that the SEC is looking into ether’s status and whether or not it should be considered a security.&nbsp;



However, another newly revealed detail was hidden in the complaint: The SEC served Consensys with a Wells Notice earlier this month. The Notice tells the receiver that the regulator is looking to bring an enforcement action against them, and outlines what the charges could be.&nbsp;



“This is just the latest example of aggressive SEC regulatory overreach into sectors far beyond US capital markets: the SEC has decided to regulate environmental policy and corporate governance (boards of directors), and now wants to regulate the technological evolution of the Internet,” Consensys said in a blog post Thursday.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/consensys-files-lawsuit-against-sec">SEC seeks to regulate ETH as a security, Consensys alleges in lawsuit</a>



The SEC also sent <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-issues-uniswap-wells-notice">Uniswap a Notice earlier this month</a>. Last year, it served Coinbase just a few months before filing its official suit against the exchange — notably, right after it served Binance.&nbsp;



So, based on the timeframe in Coinbase’s case, <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/consensys">Consensys</a> could be served later this summer if the SEC is considering a case against the company.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What charges could the SEC bring against Consensys?</h2>



Focusing just on the Wells Notice, Consensys said the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/sec">SEC</a> alleges that it violated securities laws through MetaMask Swaps and MetaMask Staking.



“In a telephone conference that same day, the SEC staff stated its view that Consensys, by operating the MetaMask Swaps software, is an unregistered broker-dealer,” which would violate the Exchange Act, Consensys said.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/us-states-are-going-after-coinbase-following-sec-lawsuit-heres-how">US states are going after Coinbase following SEC lawsuit — Here’s how</a>



The Staking program, the regulatory agency allegedly claimed, violates the Securities Act by offering and selling unregistered <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/securities">securities</a>.



“Like the rest of the MetaMask wallet software, the MetaMask Staking feature is entirely non-custodial; at no point does Consensys come into possession, custody or control of a user’s tokens, nor can it alter in any way the user’s transaction instructions to the protocol,” Consensys wrote, pushing back against the claims.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What the SEC alleged in other cases&nbsp;</h2>



Similarly to Consensys, the SEC alleged that Coinbase’s Staking offering violated the Securities Act.&nbsp;



In the original suit against <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/coinbase">Coinbase</a>, the SEC alleged that “the Staking Program includes five stakeable crypto assets, and the Staking Program as it applies to each of these five assets is an investment contract, and therefore a security.”



A court, last month, mostly sided with the SEC in denying a motion to dismiss from the crypto exchange.&nbsp;



Specifically, Judge Katherine Polk Failla <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-dismissal-denial-staking-and-securities">found that the SEC</a> “sufficiently alleged that Coinbase offers and sells the Staking Program as an investment contract,” which could open the door for the SEC to push forward with the allegation against a firm such as Consensys.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-binance-suits-different">‘Fundamental difference’ between SEC’s Binance, Coinbase suits</a>



And Coinbase wasn’t the only firm to be targeted for its staking program. Last June, the SEC also alleged that <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/binance-changpeng-zhao-face-sec-charges">Binance US’s staking program constituted an investment contract</a>.&nbsp;



In the original complaint, the SEC wrote that Binance and BAM Trading, which oversees Binance US, “have engaged and continue to engage in unregistered offers and sales of crypto asset securities, effecting unregistered crypto asset securities transactions on the Binance Platforms.”&nbsp;



The SEC and Consensys did not immediately respond to requests for comment.



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Is the SEC weighing a lawsuit against Consensys?

Macauley Peterson

Liquid staking protocol Renzo experienced explosive growth in 2024, rocketing to a peak of just over 1 million ether in deposits worth about $3.3 billion.



As with many protocols spinning up around EigenLayer, the surge in deposits was driven by points incentives, not only for depositing ETH directly with Renzo but including more speculative opportunities.



Partnerships with other DeFi protocols encouraged holders of Renzo’s ezETH liquid staking token (LRT) to boost their points via leveraged vaults, for instance with Morpho and Gearbox.



Since ezETH and ETH are typically correlated, the assets can theoretically be &#8220;looped&#8221; by depositing ezETH, borrowing ETH and restaking it to acquire more ezETH. This process is then repeated multiple times in order to maximize returns.



But when ezETH experienced a sudden rush of sellers <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/research/issue/post_4da9ff56-c3bc-44a1-8a12-b4bc9805bbf0">following a perceived misstep</a> in the release of upcoming airdrop allocations earlier this week, that correlation broke down, causing liquidations.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/risks-restaking-overrated-ethereum">The risks of restaking are extremely overrated</a>



Some users lost millions.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">&quot;our users are responsible and will manage their own risks&quot; the users: <a href="https://t.co/hOkB2iX1tC">pic.twitter.com/hOkB2iX1tC</a>&mdash; Togbe (@Togbe0x) <a href="https://twitter.com/Togbe0x/status/1783115291192361330?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 24, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Morpho’s ezETH TVL at the time was <a href="https://x.com/0xrooter/status/1783171607059734793">sitting</a> above $700 million.



Gearbox co-founder Ivan GBI, on an X space about the incident, <a href="https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1YqGoDggBOAJv">noted</a> that anyone with over about 6x leverage got liquidated.



The issue was not one of insolvency, but illiquidity. Every ezETH is backed by 1 ETH staked with a validator and restaked with <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/eigenlayer">EigenLayer</a>, but unwinding those staking operations takes time, and in Renzo’s case is not yet even possible — the protocol has yet to enable withdrawals.



The only way to access the underlying ETH quickly was to sell using on-chain liquidity pools. As it turns out, it doesn’t take much of a push to unbalance those pools enough to cause a panic, according to Mike Silagadze, co-founder of LRT protocol EtherFi.



“Even with one in a thousand users wanting to go in and redeem their tokens, that was sufficient to cause the peg to move a little bit,” Silagadze <a href="https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1YqGoDggBOAJv">said</a>.



“This was not some crazy wild or unusual thing it was actually perfectly predictable expected user behavior,” he said, referring to the end of Renzo’s initial points program.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">How could it have been avoided?</h2>



The biggest problem was the lack of withdrawals, which are expected to go live next month.



As of today, a team member in the project&#8217;s official Discord wrote they did not have “an exact date but very soon,” mentioning “early May” as likely, <a href="https://x.com/RenzoProtocol/status/1783027587406516556">following</a> the completion of audits and other code reviews.



That uncertainty makes it tricker for prospective arbitragers to estimate their opportunity cost by buying up the discounted staking derivative tokens and restoring the balance.



As of now, 1 ezETH trades about 1.7% below 1 ETH.



Even in the best of times, there will be a week-long delay unstaking from EigenLayer, so one could imagine an illiquidity discount being the norm, all else being equal.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Even if there is redemption, will still need to wait for the escrow period, the exit time selling through DEX pool will be much shorter The depeg risk will be lower but non-negligible&mdash; Tommy (@0xtommy_eth) <a href="https://twitter.com/0xtommy_eth/status/1783126312359784738?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 24, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Of course, ongoing incentives in the form of points and future tokens weighs into each individual trader’s decision.



The situation is not unlike the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/signs-of-next-crypto-depegging">deviation from target price that struck Lido’s stETH</a> in May 2022, prior to Ethereum’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/shanghai-upgrade">Shapella upgrade</a>, which made it possible to withdraw staked ether for the first time.



In contrast, EtherFi has always had the ability to redeem eETH for ETH, so only the potential withdrawal delay is a consideration.



The protocol maintains a “liquidity pool reserve” but EtherFi’s withdrawal user interface warns users, “if there is not enough ETH in the liquidity pool reserve to fulfil your request, the protocol will need to exit validators in order to complete this transaction.”



EigenLayer itself also has a roughly 7 day withdrawal period.



Read from our opinion section: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/restaking-ticking-time-bomb-eth">Restaking is a ticking time bomb</a>



Under normal circumstances, the liquidity pool reserve should allow for 1:1 redemption of eETH in 4-12 hours, Silagadze said.



“After our [token generation event] back in mid-March, EtherFi did have a pretty large amount of withdrawals,” he recalled, but with withdrawals enabled, “when people were looking to exit the protocol, rather than sapping on-chain the majority of people just went directly to the protocol and requested withdrawals.”



That feature, combined with about $30 million in on-chain liquidity, prevented any issues with its convertibility back into ether. Today, eETH to ETH liquidity has more than tripled to $100 million.



Alternative LRT protocol Swell enabled withdrawals of its liquid staked swETH token in February and allows conversion between its EigenLayer restaked version rswETH and swETH through its app.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/swell-launches-layer-2">Swell launches its own layer-2 for restaking with Polygon CDK</a>



Another difference Silagadze flagged is that a much lower percentage of eETH was in use in leveraged loops, compared to other LRTs.



He called the use of leverage “a very problematic behavior that we see with LRTs, which are very complex assets.”



Even a small breakdown on the order of 1-2% can provoke a liquidation cascade as the leverage protocols are forced to sell the LRT, further destabilizing it. And it can happen fast, without much warning. The initial ezETH crash occurred in less than 20 minutes — so without automated processes in place to detect trouble and repay debt or add collateral, points farmers can easily find themselves wiped out while they sleep.



The Renzo team has not directly addressed the deviation of ezETH through its Discord announcements or X channels, but has <a href="https://x.com/RenzoProtocol/status/1783277589525594231">revised</a> its planned airdrop in response to criticism. The token distribution of 7% of the total supply is now set to begin Tuesday, April 30.



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What was behind the run on Renzo’s liquid restaked ETH?

Molly Jane Zuckerman

<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="256" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-60166" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Off-Topic-with-Molly-Jane_20230616a-1.png?w=80 80w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure>



Anyone who says that cryptocurrency is useless needs to spend $50 in crypto to buy a goat in Kenya.



All the talk about creating a new type of finance — throwing off the shackles of Wall Street once and for all — boils down to how easy crypto has made it to sit in my apartment in New York City, push a few buttons on my phone, and name a goat after a post-Impressionist painter.



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Vincent van goat is here <a href="https://t.co/RsDAVgY4hl">pic.twitter.com/RsDAVgY4hl</a>&mdash; richard opany (@OpanyRichard) <a href="https://twitter.com/OpanyRichard/status/1783204330511745049?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 24, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



But the story of Vincent Van Goat starts much earlier than that.



At the beginning of April, Twitter user Richard Opany <a href="https://twitter.com/OpanyRichard/status/1774741973389148252">responded</a> to a Worldcoin promotional tweet with an interesting bit of information: “I use the coins to buy myself a goat during this Easter.” He then <a href="https://twitter.com/OpanyRichard/status/1774728635145965672">posted</a> a picture of said goat, adding “thanks.”



Crypto Twitter was tickled by the idea of someone using what aims to be the future currency of a universal world income for its intended use case. Twitter personalities Nic Carter and Zack Voell responded to Opany with queries about how to buy more goats, and the goat race was on.



By checking the crypto wallets that Opany has posted to solicit goat donations, he seems to have received about $2,900 in 15 different tokens so far. That would break down to about 58 goats, if he had unlimited space in his goat house. To be clear, we don’t know that he doesn’t, as he recently shared that only 30 goats can be safely housed in his new, expanded <a href="https://x.com/OpanyRichard/status/1779694956304638068">goat enclosure</a>.&nbsp;



But who exactly is Richard Opany, crypto’s newest goat maven?



While the expected goat-themed memecoins have popped up around Opany’s goat business, he had <a href="https://twitter.com/OpanyRichard/status/1781986735343186206">maintained</a> that he had no affiliation with any goat coins up until yesterday, when he <a href="https://x.com/goatbasetoken/status/1783325152459002167">shared</a> his new role as marketing director at Goat Dzaddy, which, worriedly for Vincent Van Goat, has a GOAT MEAT token affiliation.



Speaking to Opany via DM, the most important thing that I wanted to get straight was the specifics of his new crypto goat business. A quick search showed that goat meat is very much a staple food item in Kenya, so I needed to know: Would Vincent Van Goat end up on someone’s dinner plate someday?



Opany said no. These goats were meant neither for meat nor for milk, but instead for “rearing them incase [sic] they multiply [sic] in future.” This begs the question: With these goats named after some big crypto names like “Cobie” and “CZ,” could these crypto monikers end up as very unusual parental pairings?



Because at the time of writing this article, Opany appears to have purchased at least 22 goats with a variety of unusual crypto names. I’ve reached this number by counting how many different goat photos with unique names he has posted, but I haven’t done the full due diligence of comparing each of their coats and coloring to make sure he’s not double spending any goats.&nbsp;



Because, hey, at the heart of this crypto goat story is trust.



There are established charitable organizations that let you buy animals for farmers in third-world countries or support environmental causes. I believe I’ve even purchased a sheep or two as Hanukkah gifts. These charities are organized to track everything, sometimes to the extent that your animal has a GPS-enabled chip or collar so you can watch them frolic around their habitats.



Opany’s crypto goat business is very much not that.&nbsp;



Instead, you have to trust that the man running this X account will take your $50 in crypto and actually purchase a goat with it. There’s no way to check that he actually purchases said goat, no structures in place for visiting your goat in Kenya and no guarantee that he will even honor your name choice.&nbsp;



Buying a goat from Richard Opany is almost a bastardization of the trustless nature of cryptocurrencies. Instead of a financial transaction with no trust involved, you use crypto in pure blind faith that you will get a goat at the other end.&nbsp;



And I think it’s one of the best uses of crypto that I’ve ever seen.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



I don’t care much about tech, I don’t care a whole lot about finance, either. I care about writing stories and watching weird things unfold. And that’s why I’ve ended up in crypto. But because I’m missing that passion for what crypto and blockchain are all about — finance, tech, privacy, yadda yadda — I’m going to write instead about what I am actually interested in. Everything about crypto that has very little to do with crypto. That’s what this column will be about. All the tangential stories that come out of the blockchain and crypto space, what I think about them, and how I navigate it all as a skeptical former Russian literature major. It’s precisely my perch as an outsider that lets me do what I do: Opine on all sides of any crypto issue, no strings attached, no skin in the game. If you want to talk crypto with me, let’s go off topic.



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Crypto’s best use case? Buying goats on Twitter

It’s a sleepy Thursday morning in the West Village as I slip into Fairfax, a corner restaurant and bar where taxidermied game adorns the walls and patrons pick at $18 egg sandwiches.&nbsp;



But instead of pulling out my credit card, I pull up my Blackbird Breakfast Club NFT and tap my phone on a small black device sitting next to the register to claim my free coffee.



The restaurant doesn’t serve drinks to go, so I sit alone with my laptop at a table set for two, working on an article as a server periodically refills my water glass. After finishing my coffee, I leave without paying, offering the wait staff an awkward smile in parting.



This may be the groundwork for mass crypto adoption.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/nfts-cookies-web3-loyalty-programs">NFTs are the new cookies</a>



Blackbird is a blockchain-enabled restaurant loyalty app. Conceived by Resy co-founder Ben Leventhal, the app offers “airline points, but for restaurants” through its native token, FLY. FLY is generated when patrons do things like check into restaurants or pay their bill. FLY emissions are split 50/50 between the diner and the restaurant.



The tokens can currently be used like regular restaurant points for things like redeeming free appetizers, but Blackbird wants to “eventually allow users to take the points they earn anywhere they go on public blockchains.” When reached for comment on its plans to release a token amid the US’ fraught regulatory climate, Blackbird said it would be updating its white paper to address FLY’s utility “in the coming months.”



Blackbird <a href="https://x.com/blackbird_xyz/status/1709562317615063465">raised</a> $24 million in Series A funding led by a16z in October.&nbsp;



In March, Blackbird began selling memberships to its so-called Breakfast Club. For $60, the pass, among other things, promised free coffee for a year (albeit only until 11 am ET) at a half-dozen Blackbird-enabled restaurants in New York City, with the promise of more locations to come.



Never one to pass up a good deal, I snagged a Breakfast Club membership before they sold out the next day. In the month since, I’ve more than recouped my investment in VC-subsidized coffee. As a user, I’ll say the app is pretty slick — an embedded map shows me the nearest coffee club venue, and Blackbird’s check-in “pucks” only require a second or two to log my visit and add FLY tokens to my account.



The Breakfast Club membership is sealed by an NFT minted on the layer-2 Base, which is <a href="https://www.blackbird.xyz/faqs">held</a> in a non-custodial wallet provided by user-friendly wallet provider Privy. FLY appears to live off-chain for now. Overall, Blackbird’s crypto bits mostly live behind the scenes.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/privy-web3-onboarding-wallets">Privy launches to ease onboarding to consumer crypto apps</a>



I’m yet to encounter other Breakfast Club members in the wild, but the membership is trendy in New York’s crypto scene. Members of a Breakfast Club X group chat <a href="https://x.com/BobbyThakkar/status/1781058299367993496">send</a> pictures of their coffee alongside the customary crypto greeting “gm.” One anonymous X user began <a href="https://x.com/HoeResearch/status/1772678323002294745">posting</a> check-in figures at the different Blackbird coffee shops.



Various crypto VCs are members. A16z partner Carra Wu <a href="https://x.com/carrawu/status/1775966287996362974">posted</a> about meeting five new friends at Fairfax, a big haul for the self-professed introvert.&nbsp;



I spoke with William Patterson from Third Earth Capital, who said he now starts his mornings by going to the Breakfast Club spot near his home before walking to a second location 15 minutes away.&nbsp;



Patterson is an avid collector of FLY, and he explained at length his process for maximizing his tokens during Blackbird visits. But regardless of what FLY ends up being worth, its value to restaurants will come from the token’s ability to bring in new patrons, he told me.



“Traditionally, you&#8217;re spending dollars to tens of dollars to acquire customers in ad spend, for example. Well, now you can print a token for free,” Patterson said. Patterson is not an investor in Blackbird nor involved with the company outside of being a user.&nbsp;



Sam Rahim is a Blackbird Breakfast Club member who works at pickup soccer app Street FC. He found the coffee deal on X and gets his fix at Canal Street Market, which is right near his office. Rahim also went to a non-Breakfast Club Blackbird restaurant in Nolita, where he used his FLY points to get a free drink.



“Ironically, I’m not really into crypto,” Rahim told me, adding that the free coffee was what sold him on joining Blackbird.&nbsp;



As with all benefits of the millennial lifestyle subsidy, Blackbird’s Breakfast Club <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/06/uber-ride-share-prices-high-inflation/661250/">can’t</a> last forever in its current form — but free coffee or not, it’s a compelling consumer crypto app. Blackbird uses blockchain rails to help restaurants connect with customers, but the technical complexity is abstracted away.&nbsp;



Importantly, blockchain is part of Blackbird’s infrastructure, but it’s not the whole point of the app. One small feature I enjoy has nothing to do with smart contracts: The check-in puck instantly gives the cashier my information, so some Breakfast Club spots will greet me by name.



Updated Friday, April 26 at 1:02 pm ET: Modified headline.



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I bought an NFT and all I got was free coffee for a year

Casey Wagner

US equities bounced Friday as positive big-tech earnings reports outweighed a disappointing inflation print that showed higher prices are proving more persistent than the Federal Reserve had hoped. Cryptocurrencies were little changed.&nbsp;



The Fed’s preferred inflation measure showed prices increased 2.7% year-over-year in March. Analysts had called for a 2.6% increase. Excluding food and energy, the personal consumption expenditures price index showed a 2.8% annual increase last month, the Commerce Department reported Friday.&nbsp;



The S&amp;P 500 and Nasdaq Composite indexes were trending 1% and 2% higher, respectively, midway through Friday’s session. Analysts say big tech stocks were the market’s saving grace as solid earnings reports from Alphabet and Microsoft had shares up 10% and 3%, respectively.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/federal-reserve-holds-interest-rates">Federal Reserve holds interest rates, expects three cuts by end of year&nbsp;</a>



“The share price reaction, although relatively muted, isn’t to be sniffed at,” analysts at Hargreaves Lansdown wrote in a note Friday on Microsoft stock.&nbsp;



“The recent GDP reading from the US was bleaker than expected, and didn’t lend itself well to growth-stock sympathism,” Hargreaves Lansdown analysts added. “To that end, the market’s reaction to these results mean more than in usual times.”



Tech and growth stocks have underperformed recently and yields have increased, Tom Essaye, founder of Sevens Report Research said, so a correction was due.&nbsp;



Cryptocurrencies, on the other hand, moved sideways Friday after a fairly tumultuous week. Bitcoin (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/btc">BTC</a>) was trending 0.4% higher to sit around $63,600 at time of publication while ether (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/eth">ETH</a>) dipped 0.3% lower to $3,100, per Coinbase.&nbsp;



Bitcoin, which hit as high as $67,200 earlier in the week, is now down about 1.5% in the first <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-market-response">week since the halving</a>. Ether on the other hand has managed to stay in the green, gaining just under 1% in the past seven days.&nbsp;



Traders are looking ahead to next week’s rate decision from the Fed, which will be announced on Wednesday. With the latest inflation numbers, Fed fund futures are showing a 3% chance of a rate cut, down from the 6% odds recorded on Thursday, <a href="https://www.cmegroup.com/markets/interest-rates/cme-fedwatch-tool.html?redirect=/trading/interest-rates/countdown-to-fomc.html">according</a> to data from CME Group.&nbsp;



“While the March PCE report was only slightly higher than expectations on a year-over-year basis, inflation is proving to be stickier than expected and the idea of ‘reflation’ is taking hold,” Bret Kenwell, US investment analyst at eToro, said. “That doesn’t mean inflation will surge, but it’s one more argument to hold off on rate cuts.”



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Stocks bounce, cryptocurrencies trade sideways despite disappointing inflation data 

Michael McSweeney

David Canellis

<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Take it to the courts&nbsp;</h2>



Headlines about yesterday’s legal salvo by Consensys against the SEC focused on what the tech firm’s complaint said about Ethereum.&nbsp;



But the lawsuit has two major claims:&nbsp;



<ol>
<li>Consensys wants a ruling that ETH is not a security and an injunction that says the SEC has to leave it alone when it comes to any ETH-as-a-security-related claims and charges; and&nbsp;&nbsp;</li>



<li>Consensys wants a ruling that its MetaMask product is not a broker-dealer.&nbsp;</li>
</ol>



The complaint further confirmed a few things the industry has been speculating about for months:



<ol>
<li>The SEC served <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/consensys">Consensys</a> several subpoenas in 2023 relating to ETH and the company’s involvement in improvement proposals and Ethereum’s shift to proof-of-stake, known as the Merge.&nbsp;&nbsp;</li>



<li>Consensys received a Wells notice stating the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/sec">SEC</a> wanted to pursue an enforcement action against them for alleged securities law violations via its MetaMask Swaps and Staking products.&nbsp;</li>
</ol>



The Wells notice, according to the complaint, didn’t seem to mention any charges against Consensys relating to ETH specifically. It begs the question, which I posed to X yesterday: why?&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">q for the legal minds&#8230; we know the SEC likes to name some tokens as securities in separate lawsuits (like SOL in the Binance and Coinbase suits) if they really are targeting ethereum, as Consensys and others say, why not name ETH?&mdash; Casey Wagner (@caseywagnerr) <a href="https://twitter.com/caseywagnerr/status/1783572448014725144?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 25, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



As some pointed out, the SEC in 2018 said ETH was a commodity. (<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-emails-highlighting-alleged-conflict-of-interest-set-to-take-center-stage-in-ripple-trial">Thanks, Hinman</a>.) In its complaint, Consensys said they planned their entire business strategy based on this “regulatory consensus” (excellent word choice.)&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/consensys-files-lawsuit-against-sec">SEC seeks to regulate ETH as a security, Consensys alleges in lawsuit</a>



But since then, Gary Gensler has been coy. He refused to give a “yes” or “no” when asked point-blank if ETH was a security during a 2023 hearing before Congress.&nbsp;



Another person chimed in that the statute of limitations on ICO charges — five years — has long passed for ETH. Plus, the Binance and Coinbase suits were brought in the summer of 2023, before the SEC’s ETH probes began to really pick up steam, at least publicly.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ether-commodity-or-not">Ether is the Schrödinger’s cat of crypto</a>



It’s a case to watch. The SEC has thus far declined to comment, but keep an eye on PACER — their response will no doubt be coming soon.&nbsp;



— Casey Wagner



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Data Center</h2>



<ul>
<li>ETH is trading around $3.1K, holding following the Consensys news.</li>



<li>Fidelity’s bitcoin ETF recorded outflows for the first time, with $23 million moved out of the fund Thursday.</li>



<li>CryptoPunk #635 sold for 4,000 ETH or $12 million, <a href="https://www.cryptoslam.io/cryptopunks/mint/635">according</a> to CryptoSlam.</li>



<li>Despite pressure from economic data Thursday, bitcoin’s trading steadily around $64K, up 0.34% Friday morning.</li>



<li>The Core PCE price index — the Fed’s preferred way to track inflation — came in at 2.8% year-over-year in March, slightly higher than expectations of 2.7%.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">A nice thought</h2>



Here’s one for the hopium addicts.



Bitcoin is tracking way ahead of where it was around the previous two <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/bitcoin-halving">halvings</a>. In fact, it’s more in line with the monumental 2012 halving cycle than 2020’s or 2016’s, even with yesterday’s correction.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-2024-occurs">Bitcoin’s block reward slashed by 50% following 2024 halving</a>



Tracking prices starting 200 days out from each halving shows bitcoin (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/btc">BTC</a>) jumping up to 165% leading into the most recent event last Friday — from $27,430 in early October to $73,737 last month, a new record.



In 2016, bitcoin had risen 55% in the six and a half months leading up to that year’s halving, and in 2020 had managed just 25%.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/qgI2Sb0MynHhhDuyD7A8X-Ed3-8E5PqoiehJbQTxvo79b40srZiRDfK6hJDUsFr0hDIwdPALzYxIqU7jeRiDzVR73IRFK3cq4G1YWxx5op2JT81R216sOodAeIznRNuo3029GktfjjUZuSIPjQHigcA" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">If you liked these lines, wait ‘til you see what 2012 looks like</figcaption></figure>



Granted, there’s a certain amount of time bias here. It turns out that 200 days before this year’s halving coincided with the local bottom. The timing also lined up with what many considered to be the home stretch for <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-approves-bitcoin-etf">SEC approval of spot ETFs</a> on US markets.



Still, the fact that bitcoin in 2024 — with a $535 billion market cap — outperformed pre-halving ghosts from previous cycles is notable. Bitcoin’s market cap was less than $150 billion in the leadup to its 2020 halving, and under $7 billion prior to 2016.



Read from our opinion section: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-price-value-nonsense-fiat">Don’t let bitcoin be defined by its price</a>



Shows what nearly a decade of pent up ETF demand will do to a new asset class.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/6XbndRe80IswSDNuQ1z4xLdeFWt75RDkOexJODoSSA73EYxytiuknYUtzyicpia6t5__rTVmAtoA_I1M80K_2EYmnAbNqpBB7wr2x9CZnVyDvI1-y60ba63nIiBeJettYSR1H8S0U_vCSR2cxNoyCYc" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">In the 400 days surrounding the previous two halvings, bitcoin has finished the period having just more than doubled in price.</figcaption></figure>



Comparing bitcoin markets in 2012 to 2024 is largely pointless. Let’s pretend it’s not: Bitcoin was valued at about $150 million and rallied 152% in the months before the November halving, matching what happened this year.



The price of bitcoin went on to multiply 30 more times over the next four months. That’s probably unlikely. But here’s hoping.



— David Canellis



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Not going anywhere</h2>



The lack of regulatory clarity isn’t just a point of frustration for crypto startups. Big companies like Cboe are also feeling the effects.&nbsp;



Just yesterday, <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/cboe">Cboe</a> announced changes to its digital assets business. Namely, that it will wind down its Digital Spot Market, a digital asset trading platform, later this year.&nbsp;



Cboe said the changes were made following a “strategic review,” and they took “the lack of regulatory clarity in the digital space” into consideration.&nbsp;



The derivatives and securities exchange network isn’t the first company to raise concerns about the ongoing lack of clarity in the space, either. That’s been one of Coinbase’s top talking points as they battle the SEC in the courts.&nbsp;&nbsp;



And it doesn’t look like regulatory clarity is happening anytime soon, with SEC Chair Gary <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-2023-crypto-enforcement-actions">Gensler’s current regulation-by-enforcement strategy</a> leaving many unknowns up to the courts.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-delays-bitcoin-etf-options-proposals">SEC postpones decisions on bitcoin ETF options proposals</a>



Focusing on the data: Cboe saw average daily notional value of $154 million traded on its digital asset exchange. Compared to other segments, that’s not a huge sum. In fact, Cboe said that the wind-down will have an “immaterial impact” on net revenue this year.&nbsp;



The other changes, like transitioning bitcoin and ether futures contracts to the Futures Exchange from the Digital Exchange, and moving the digital assets derivatives business under its Global Derivatives and Clearing arm is, overall, a net positive.&nbsp;



Cboe global president David Howson <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cboe-global-markets-realigns-digital-asset-business-leveraging-strength-and-expertise-in-derivatives-and-clearing-302127227.html">noted</a> that the company “expects to see greater demand for exchange-traded derivatives to help manage crypto exposures.”



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/cboe-president-etf-comments">CBOE Digital president says a spot bitcoin ETF approval will promote derivatives growth</a>



Even as the company raises concerns about the lack of clarity in the US, the restructuring shows that Cboe is invested in digital assets. Moving products — take, for example, the cash-settled bitcoin and ether futures contracts — under larger business umbrellas will allow for more support on distribution and market structure.&nbsp;



Concerns aside, Cboe’s restructuring shows a specific focus on the strategy, which CEO Fred Tomczyk thinks will “enable greater optimization.”



Fun fact: Cboe was the first large US exchange to <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/04/cboe-announces-it-will-launch-bitcoin-futures-on-dec-10.html">offer</a> bitcoin futures in 2017. They’ve been in the space for a while, and it doesn’t look like they’re planning to exit anytime soon.&nbsp;



— Katherine Ross



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Works</h2>



<ul>
<li>Pantera has <a href="https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/pantera-capital-buys-another-trove-of-solana-tokens-from-ftx-auction-1.2065368">bought</a> more discounted SOL tokens from the FTX estate, according to Bloomberg.&nbsp;</li>



<li>Speaking of Pantera: Bloomberg also reported that the investment firm is <a href="https://news.bloomberglaw.com/crypto/pantera-capital-seeks-to-raise-1-billion-for-a-new-crypto-fund">eyeing</a> a new fund worth $1 billion.&nbsp;</li>



<li>Yao Qian, a key government official on China’s CBDC project, is <a href="https://twitter.com/WuBlockchain/status/1783765731710230693">said</a> to be under investigation.</li>



<li>The government of Quincy, Massachusetts, has <a href="https://twitter.com/EricJamesMason/status/1783548229688148338">sold a digital bond</a> on JPMorgan’s Onyx blockchain, the city’s CFO said on X.</li>



<li>Saudi Arabia is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/25/technology/to-the-future-saudi-arabia-spends-big-to-become-an-ai-superpower.html">investing heavily</a> in AI, according to the New York Times.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Morning Riff</h2>



Mother’s Day is right around the corner.&nbsp;



So naturally, the denizens of the crypto world are choosing which NFT to purchase as a gift, right?&nbsp;



Enter former First Lady Melania Trump and a rather unimpressive-looking $245 necklace. The gist is, buy the necklace, and you’ll get an NFT as well —&nbsp;a Solana-based NFT, to be exact, per <a href="https://melaniatrump.com/faq">the terms</a>.&nbsp;



What else is there to say, when NFTs have joined steaks, ties and other Trump memorabilia? I suppose I could say “caveat emptor” but maybe that’s pretty self-evident. One wonders how much of the proceeds from the necklace will be devoted to the black hole of Trump legal defense monies.&nbsp;



Then again, maybe the new Solana NFT is yet another sign that crypto has “made it” —&nbsp;that is, joined the utility belt of those in the real world trying to score an easy buck. Only in America.&nbsp;



— Michael McSweeney



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Empire Newsletter: Unpacking the Consensys legal salvo

Ben Strack

Bitcoin miner Marathon Digital is ahead of schedule on its growth plans after a halving event that is expected to highlight segment winners and losers.&nbsp;



The Florida-based company’s energized hash rate stood at 27.8 exahash per second (EH/s) on March 31.&nbsp;



Executives had said in February that Marathon intended to grow its hash rate by about 35% in 2024 and reach 50 EH/s by the end of 2025.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/marathon-digital-2023-q4-earnings">Marathon Digital ready to deploy ‘dry powder’ in push to double hash rate</a>



But that 50 EH/s target could be attainable by the time 2024 wraps up, Marathon CEO Fred Thiel said in a Thursday statement.



The amended growth projection timeline is a result of its capacity boost via acquisitions, the chief executive noted. The company also has access to hash rate through current machine orders and options.&nbsp;



“With our current liquidity position, this growth target is also fully funded and there is no need for us to raise additional capital to achieve our objective,” Thiel added in a statement.&nbsp;



Marathon had $324 million in cash and 17,381 BTC on its balance sheet at the end of March. The company’s BTC stack was worth about $1.1 billion based on Friday morning’s bitcoin price.



The miner <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-mining-giant-gets-bigger">finalized the purchase of two mining facilities in Texas and Nebraska</a> earlier this year before then buying an additional Texas site owned by Applied Digital for $87 million in cash.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/marathon-digital-outlook-bitcoin-halving">Miner Marathon poised to acquire, expand after Bitcoin halving, exec says</a>



Thiel said that as the company grows to 50 EH/s, it expects to improve its fleet efficiency to 21 joules per terahash (J/PH).&nbsp;



Gaining scale and improving efficiency have been <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/mining-firms-prepare-for-bitcoin-halving">top of mind for miners around the bitcoin halving</a>, which occurred last week. The event resulted in a reduction of per-block mining rewards from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC.



Industry watchers have said they expect less efficient miners with higher power costs and less access to capital to struggle in the weeks and months following the halving, with <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-crypto-miner-consolidation">segment consolidation likely</a>.



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A bitcoin mining giant is ahead of schedule on its post-halving expansion

A choice of programming language is not the be-all and end-all of smart contract development. But it does influence the security, efficiency and accessibility of blockchain applications.



Each language comes with its own set of capabilities and limitations that can impact how contracts are executed, the potential for vulnerabilities, and the ease of finding and fixing errors.&nbsp;



Algorand is becoming the first layer-1 blockchain to adopt Python as its canonical language, in what the Algorand Foundation Chief Technology Officer John Woods calls a “seismic change.”



&#8220;Python is a massive step forward on the roadmap towards removing all barriers to entry for developers,&#8221; said Woods.



With over 10 million developers worldwide, it’s perhaps surprising that the language has been historically overlooked by <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/smart-contracts">smart contract</a> platforms, given that the total pool of specialized smart contract developers remains relatively tiny.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/web3-developers-on-the-rise">Electric Capital finds veteran Web3 devs are on the rise</a>



Mariano Dominguez, software developer at Vestige.fi, an Algorand-based DeFi dapp, told Blockworks there are a few reasons for this.



For one, “most chains that have a smart contract execution layer operate in a resource constraint scenario that isn&#8217;t typical in modern development environments,” Dominguez said. “Because of this, it&#8217;s oftentimes easier and cheaper to build a Domain Specific Language (so Solidity, PyTEAL/TEAL, or Move for example), than it is to integrate a &#8220;normal&#8221; language since you can exercise these limitations from the get go.”



TEAL was <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/algorand">Algorand</a>’s earlier smart contract language and PyTEAL was a mechanism to call TEAL instructions from a Python file.



The difference now, the Foundation told Blockworks, is that native Python is compiled to the bytecode of the Algorand Virtual Machine (AVM), making it compatible with Python-native tooling, including testing suites.



That sets it apart from both PyTEAL and languages like Vyper for the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/evm">EVM</a>, which are only “Python-like.”



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/research/issue/post_e0869453-1d0b-43d4-91ed-67db7ebf37a2">Move Chains are making moves</a>



However, Dominguez added, Python’s “simplistic nature…makes it hard to adapt to a blockchain context.”*



That simplicity is a double-edged sword, agreed Deian Stefan, co-founder and chief scientist at Cubist, a developer of hardware-backed, non-custodial key storage and signing infrastructure.



“I think it&#8217;s fair to say the barrier to entry for the average Python developer is lower,” Stefan told Blockworks. However, he added, “from our experience working with different teams in the ecosystem: It&#8217;s not [yet] clear that the barrier is the language so much as everything around it.”



Stefan finds technical factors related to core platform performance, the ease of end-user onboarding, as well as non-technical factors like liquidity and network effects as being more significant.



While Algorand offers technological advantages like high throughput and low transaction fees, the network has historically struggled to attract a critical mass of compelling use cases and dapps, despite its strong roots in foundational cryptography and theoretical computer science.



Algorand’s latest effort, AlgoKit 2.0, is an attempt to “build tools that meet devs where they are,” Dominguez said, estimating that for a skilled Python dev, time needed to make the jump to writing smart contracts would shrink from “weeks” to “a matter of hours.”



It also helps Vestige’s own business, enabling the dapp to integrate a new dex written in Python for Algorand within days, or even quicker with access to the source code, he said.



“At the end of the day, the faster you can go from idea to product, the more things you can try out and the more innovation can occur,” Dominguez said.



But will it be safe?



Dean Tribble, CEO of smart contract platform developer focused on Javascript, Agoric OpCo, has his doubts.



“It’s a non-starter from a security perspective,” Tribble told Blockworks, citing technical reasons that Python is widely used for data analysis by the likes of Google, but not for applications managing trillions of dollars.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solving-web3s-developer-problem-web2">Solving Web3’s developer problem: Web2 remains hesitant</a>



“We’ve already paid $10 billion dollars in losses for the current Solidity DeFi contracts that have been battle tested and survived,” Tribble said. “This is not to suggest we should be afraid to use contracts out there — they’ve paid the price (and it’s a steep check!) — but doing new, innovative work is very dangerous.”



For both adoption and security, the ability to use existing libraries and design patterns like battle-tested OpenZeppelin contracts in Solidity is key to the success of any language, Cubist’s Stefan said, noting that nuts and bolts factors like securely managing cryptographic keys, testing infrastructure deployments and executing upgrades are more important in practice.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/stellar-soroban-smart-contract-update">Stellar sparks smart contract upgrade — and it’s not an EVM</a>



AlgoKit 2.0 ships with a new templating system, a comprehensive library of smart contract templates, and all necessary infrastructure to run applications locally, according to the Algorand Foundation.



The hope is to court a range of developers, from students fresh out of computer science classes to advanced AI and machine learning researchers.



For dapp users, the chain, programming language or other technical factors shouldn’t matter, according to Dominguez. What does is “that the app they&#8217;re using solves the need that they have.”



“I think with Algorand the type of products and solutions that can be built are on par, and in some cases even better, than those that employ legacy systems,” Dominguez said, pointing to real estate tokenization platform Lofty as an example, where “people can invest in individual properties that they proceed to own as a legal DAO, without going through a custodian.”



Customers of these dapps will care about security, whether or not they understand the technical underpinnings. There, Tribble was skeptical.



“It is not likely to me that Python will ever be a language that you could run robustly on a blockchain,” the Agoric CEO said.



As for the number of Python developers? It’s a non-issue, he said: “Most Python developers already know JavaScript!”



Updated Friday, Apr. 26, 2024 at 5:20 am — Clarification on the work of Cubist.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



*Such as the lack of <a href="https://www.techopedia.com/definition/22321/statically-typed">static typing</a> and uint math — arithmetic operations using unsigned integers to avoid negative numbers.



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Algorand courts Python devs in ‘seismic change’

Bessie Liu

Decentralized Physical Infrastructure (DePIN) project MapMetrics will leave the Solana ecosystem and migrate to peaq, a layer-1 solution designed specifically for DePIN and Machine real-world assets (RWAs).



MapMetrics is a drive-to-earn project that rewards users with tokens and NFTs for providing anonymous live traffic and map data. Similar to DePIN project <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-depin-projects-with-real-world-utility">Hivemapper</a>, the team hopes to create a decentralized global map using Web3 technology.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/drive-to-earn-app-dynamic-maps-crypto-rewards">‘Drive-to-earn’ app aims to bootstrap ‘dynamic maps’ with crypto rewards</a>



Brent van der Heiden, co-founder at MapMetrics, told Blockworks that the decision was made as peaq offered a variety of modular DePin functionality.



“Peaq ID, a decentralized multi-chain machine identity, enables the network to prioritize real machines in times of high load,” Heiden said. “The Modular Functions, such as the DePIN data verification framework, will also help us further expand our DePIN&#8217;s own features.”



Additionally, Heiden notes there are a handful of potential synergies in the wider peaq ecosystem, including with other DePINs and its enterprise partners, which may enable the team to secure new partnerships to build out demand for the project.&nbsp;



“Peaq&#8217;s community includes thousands of DePIN enthusiasts, which will help us grow, and the Machine Composability that comes with using the same identity standard across the ecosystem will help us tap into the pool of devices already on peaq,” Heiden said.



The transition process will be completed over multiple phases, beginning with smart contract deployments on peaq, followed by moving core business logic over to the layer-1. Afterwards, native token minting will also be available on peaq, and a bridging option will be available to existing holders.&nbsp;



Despite MapMetric’s decision to leave the Solana ecosystem, the blockchain remains a popular home for many DePIN projects today. 



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-depin-projects-with-real-world-utility">DePin projects have gained momentum on Solana blockchain</a>



Natix, another DePIN mapping project, <a href="https://twitter.com/NATIXNetwork/status/1783533073000288341">revealed today</a> that it will be launching its native token on the Solana blockchain, while continuing to collaborate with the peaq network.



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MapMetrics ditches Solana blockchain for peaq

Consensys, the company behind MetaMask, filed a lawsuit against the Securities and Exchange Commission in a Texas court on Thursday.



The complaint alleges regulatory overreach by the SEC.



“The US Securities and Exchange Commission seeks to regulate ETH as a security, even though ETH bears none of the attributes of a security — and even though the SEC has previously told the world that ETH is not a security, and not within the SEC’s statutory jurisdiction,” Consensys wrote in the filing.&nbsp;



The SEC, under Chair Gary Gensler, is allegedly attempting to make a power grab, the company argued.&nbsp;



“In August 2021, within months of becoming the SEC’s Chair, <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/gary-gensler">Gensler</a> vowed to ‘take [the agency’s] authorities as far as they go’ in pursuit of crypto. Soon thereafter, the SEC doubled the size of its crypto enforcement unit and ramped up investigations of participants in the digital asset market,” Consensys said.



Read more:<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ether-commodity-or-not"> Ether is the Schrödinger’s cat of crypto</a>



The SEC, <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/consensys">Consensys</a> continued, already declared that ETH was not a security in 2018. At the time, then-SEC employee William Hinman gave a speech that clarified ETH didn’t constitute a security under the regulator’s rules.



“Recognizing Ethereum’s lack of any centralized managing authority, the SEC’s director of corporation finance stated that ‘current offers and sales of Ether are not <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/securities">securities</a> transactions,’” the suit said.&nbsp;



“Hinman’s representations about ETH reflected the considered judgment of the SEC and its leadership,” the suit claimed.



The Texas suit also reveals that Consensys was served with a Wells Notice earlier this month, revealing that the agency could take potential action against the company at a later date.



“On April 10, 2024, the SEC staff sent Consensys a ‘Wells Notice’ stating its intent to imminently recommend that the Commission bring an enforcement action against Consensys for violating the federal securities laws through its MetaMask Swaps and MetaMask Staking products,” the filing said.



The SEC has already taken action against a number of other crypto firms including Binance, Terraform, Ripple and Coinbase, among others.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ripple-counters-sec-penalties">Ripple proposes ‘no more than $10M’ in penalties after SEC seeks $1.9B</a>



The lawsuit also reveals that the SEC has issued a number of subpoenas to Consensys, including one issued “just last month.”&nbsp;



While parts of the filing are redacted, it reveals the company was also issued three subpoenas in 2023 which sought information on the “role of Consensys, including its software developers, in a host of Ethereum Improvement Proposals related to the Ethereum Merge, the transition from a proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake validation mechanism.”



“Despite requests for clarification, the staff has declined to explain why the SEC believes Consensys’s sales of ETH may violate securities law or why the agency believes it now has jurisdiction over ETH,” the filing alleged.



The filing is the latest in a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/cftc-ether-security-commodity-conflict">series of developments</a> around the SEC potentially looking into ether. Earlier this year, Prometheum said it planned to launch a custody service with ether as its first asset, kicking off the potential debate.



Consensys founder Joseph Lubin, in a blog <a href="https://consensys.io/blog/consensys-suing-sec-to-defend-ethereum-ecosystem">post</a>, said that the SEC “only has jurisdiction over securities and up until recently has declared that ether is not and should not be treated as a security.”



An SEC spokesperson declined to comment on the suit.



In March, Fortune <a href="https://fortune.com/crypto/2024/03/20/sec-gary-gensler-ethereum-security-commodity-crypto-foundation/">reported</a> that the SEC was probing crypto companies over Ethereum.



At the time, the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/cftc">CFTC</a>’s Rostin Behnam, said, “how this plays obviously is very critical…the issue is if we do have any action by the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/sec">SEC</a>, essentially validating [Prometheum’s] decision constituting ether as a security it will then put our registrants or exchanges who list either as a futures contract sort of in non-compliance of SEC rules as opposed to CFTC rules.”



Read more:<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/cftc-alleges-eth-as-commodity-kucoin-lawsuit"> CFTC calls ETH a commodity in KuCoin complaint</a>



Consensys, in March, filed a letter to the regulatory agency, urging it to approve to spot ether ETFs.



“We urge the SEC to recognize the advanced safeguards inherent in Ethereum’s design, which not only meet but exceed the exemplary security and resilience safeguards underlying Bitcoin-based ETPs that have previously been approved by the SEC,” the firm wrote.



This is a developing story.



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SEC seeks to regulate ETH as a security, Consensys alleges in lawsuit

Global payments company Stripe announced that it was going to start allowing crypto payments on Thursday at the company’s Global Internet Economy conference.&nbsp;



Speaking at the final keynote, titled the Future of Payments, Stripe’s president John Collison,&nbsp; said, “our history with crypto goes back a long time.” He <a href="https://stripe.com/blog/ending-bitcoin-support#:~:text=Therefore%2C%20starting%20today%2C%20we%20are,transactions%20on%20April%2023%2C%202018.">cited</a> the company’s now-defunct bitcoin support back in 2018 because it wasn’t being used.&nbsp;



“We&#8217;re excited to announce that we&#8217;re bringing back crypto as a way to accept payments, but this time with a much better experience,” he <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnSlQz-14JY">announced</a>.



Due to the fact that crypto has more use cases and, as Collison’s presentation said, “crypto’s back,” Stripe decided to bring back crypto payments.&nbsp;



“Crypto is finding real utility,” Collison said. “With transaction speeds increasing and costs coming down, we’re seeing crypto finally making sense as a means of exchange.”



The feature, he added, will be available later this summer.&nbsp;



The company hasn’t made any crypto-centric announcements since last year.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/payment-company-stripe-enables-crypto-payouts-in-usdc">Payment company Stripe enables crypto payouts in USDC</a>



Collison told <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/05/11/stripes-crypto-strategy">Axios</a> last spring that the company saw potential in crypto, though it wasn’t going to switch its strategy to focus more on the space.



Collison said at the time that, despite the fact that some of their early crypto products faced a lack of demand, the company was still interested in the role crypto could play in the future.



Just last May, Stripe debuted a fiat-to-crypto onramp.



“The embeddable onramp is helpful for <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/web3">Web3</a> companies that want to fully customize the branding and customer experience, while the Stripe-hosted option provides an even easier way for users to get started,” the company said in a press release at the time.



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Stripe to bring back crypto payments in the next few months

Cryptocurrencies and US equities slipped Thursday morning as economic data fueled concerns of stagflation.&nbsp;



Gross domestic product (GDP), which broadly measures goods and services produced in the first quarter, increased at 1.6% year-over-year, missing analysts’ expectations of 2.4%, data from the Commerce Department showed. This latest reading is a sharp decline from the fourth quarter of 2023, which showed GDP increased 3.4%.&nbsp;



Consumer spending also trended lower, increasing 2.5% between January and March, a decline from the 3.4% gain posted in the last quarter of 2023.&nbsp;



Bitcoin (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/btc">BTC</a>) and ethereum (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/eth">ETH</a>) dipped on the report, losing as much as 2% each in the hour after the release. Stocks similarly declined, with the S&amp;P 500 and Nasdaq Composite indexes trading 1.3% and 1.7% lower, respectively.&nbsp;



“The GDP miss likely took investors off-guard — particularly with how solid some of this year’s economic reports have been and with strength in the labor market,” Bret Kenwell, US investment and options analyst at eToro, said. “It’s not necessarily a report to panic over, but it’s one to pay attention to.”



Traders are now looking ahead to Friday’s Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCE) index, which is the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/federal-reserve">Federal Reserve</a>’s preferred inflation gauge. Expectations are that the headline index will increase 0.3% month-over-month, the same change clocked in February.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/binance-us-board-taps-ny-fed-compliance-chief">Former NY Fed compliance chief joins Binance US board</a>



Year-over-year core PCE inflation is supposed to dip slightly from 2.8% to 2.6%. Another disappointing surprise, though, is not unlikely. The Cleveland Fed’s <a href="https://www.clevelandfed.org/indicators-and-data/inflation-nowcasting?utm_source=substack&amp;utm_medium=email">model</a> is showing real-time inflation is closer to 3%.&nbsp;



Central bankers are not looking terribly optimistic; they opted to increase their economic projections in March to put core PCE annual growth for 2024 at 2.6%, up from their previous prediction of 2.2%.&nbsp;



“Even the Federal Reserve, yes, they of the ‘transitory’ camp, see no change in core PCE inflation for the rest of this year,” Noelle Acheson, author of the ‘Crypto is Macro Now’ newsletter, said. “What’s more, the messaging from officials recently has been largely along the lines of ‘we need more evidence’ before cutting rates.” 



The Federal Open Markets Committee’s next meeting is scheduled for the end of this month. Fed fund futures show around a 6% chance of a rate cut in May, <a href="https://www.cmegroup.com/markets/interest-rates/cme-fedwatch-tool.html?redirect=/trading/interest-rates/countdown-to-fomc.html=">according</a> to CME Group.



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Cryptocurrencies, equities slide on slowing economic growth 

A federally chartered bank is now offering settlement of US dollars and crypto assets for buy- and sell-side institutions.&nbsp;



Crypto-focused Anchorage Digital unveiled its new settlement network, called Atlas, in a Thursday announcement. Atlas has already settled hundreds of millions of dollars in crypto since its “early access launch” earlier this year, the company said.



Atlas users can access counterparties that include clients of Anchorage Digital and its Singapore subsidiary. On-chain settlement ensures the assets are not commingled and don’t leave on-chain addresses until settlement occurs, according to the bank.



“Atlas participants are not reliant on settlement providers’ books,” a spokesperson told Blockworks. “Our regulatory status and security profile represent a major unlock for institutions, with Atlas advancing a new era for safe and secure settlement across the industry.”&nbsp;



Initial users of the network include venture capital firm CoinFund and the clearinghouse affiliate of <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/tradfi-launches-crypto-exchange">institution-focused crypto exchange EDX Markets</a>, as well as crypto brokerage firm Nonco.



CoinFund President Chris Perkins said in a statement that the network mitigates counterparty risk while “cultivating deep, liquid and accessible markets.”



“Atlas offers the greatest level of security, paired with the best speed and efficiency,” EDX Clearing CEO Tony Acuña-Rohter added. “These features allow us to minimize delivery risk for time-sensitive transactions.”&nbsp;



<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/anchorage-digital">Anchorage Digital</a> became a bank chartered by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) in January 2021 — a distinction the company’s executives and users of the bank have highlighted in recent months.



Anchorage meets the Securities and Exchange Commission’s definition of a “qualified custodian,” CEO Nathan McCauley has said — a term included in the regulator’s February 2023 <a href="https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-30">proposal</a> that would “entrust safekeeping of client assets” to such entities.&nbsp;



Anchorage launched custody and settlement services for registered investment advisers (RIAs) in November and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/block-trading-ria-crypto-access">partnered with crypto wealth platform Onramp Invest</a> in January. McCauley noted at the time that the company wants to be a “regulatory solve” for RIAs with mandates to hold crypto assets with a qualified custodian.&nbsp;



Bitcoin miner Marathon Digital, which held 17,381 BTC as of March 31, added Anchorage as one of its custodians in December. The company’s chief financial officer noted Anchorage’s “well regarded” regulatory status in a statement.



The launch comes after BitGo and Copper partnered in November to expand their off-exchange settlement networks.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitgo-crypto-cold-storage-custodian">BitGo wants to be ‘exchange agnostic’ as a qualified custodian</a>



The combination of BitGo’s Go Network and Copper’s ClearLoop was done to de-risk trading market infrastructure after the collapse of FTX and others.



BitGo CEO Mike Belshe said at the time the companies’ partnership allowed them to settle assets “safely and securely without direct exposure to exchanges.”



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Crypto-focused federal chartered bank intros settlement network

<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Last Samourai</h2>



The government continues to wage a battle against crypto mixers.



The DOJ targeted Samourai Wallet’s co-founders for creating a so-called “haven” for criminals because of the privacy-focused nature of its product.



Users of Samourai Wallet could obscure bitcoin transactions, helping to hide the source of funds.&nbsp;



The DOJ <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/doj-arrests-founders-samourai">claimed</a> that CEO Keonne Rodriguez and CTO William Lonergan Hill operated a crypto “mixing service” that executed over $2 billion in unlawful transactions while laundering around $100 million in “criminal proceeds.”



Some of those funds allegedly came from the Hydra Market and Silk Road.



The two execs could each face up to 25 years in prison after both were charged with one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and one count of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/doj-arrests-founders-samourai">DOJ arrests founders of privacy-focused crypto wallet Samourai</a>



If these allegations sound familiar to you, it’s because the charges are similar to those made <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/roman-semenov-tornado-cash-ofac-list">against the co-founders</a> of Ethereum crypto mixer Tornado Cash last year.&nbsp;



The government conducted a lengthy probe of <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/tornado-cash">Tornado Cash</a> before opting to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/roman-semenov-tornado-cash-ofac-list">target</a> Roman Semenov and Roman Storm, though the two were also accused of sanctions violations — a charge notably missing from the Samourai case.



Some of the same law enforcement agencies played a role in arresting the co-founders, namely the criminal divisions of the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/irs">IRS</a> and the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/fbi">FBI</a>.&nbsp;



But the US wasn’t the only country to take action against both Hill and Rodriguez. Europol, the Icelandic police, and the judiciary police of Portugal took part.



Anyone who tries to visit the Samourai domain is now greeted with a seizure notice, decorated with the badges of the relevant law enforcement agencies. A creepy outline of a person adorns the background.&nbsp;



In the indictment, the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/doj">DOJ</a> uses X screenshots in what they say is clearly Hill and Rodriguez operating “accounts that encouraged and openly invited users to launder criminal proceeds through Samourai.”&nbsp;



One such post, from 2022, shows Samourai’s official account welcoming “new Russian oligarch Samourai Wallet users.”



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Welcome new Russian oligarch Samourai Wallet users <a href="https://t.co/WBhB6J89SR">https://t.co/WBhB6J89SR</a>&mdash; Samourai Wallet (@SamouraiWallet) <a href="https://twitter.com/SamouraiWallet/status/1542533704635015168?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 30, 2022</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



The post was in response to a series of tweets from Ernest Urtasun, a former European Parliament member. Maybe not such a good look for Samourai on paper, though — in the lens of Crypto Twitter — it’s obviously not trying to be serious.&nbsp;



In another tweet, part of a thread focused on the long-running feud between Samourai and Wasabi, an account under the handle Samourai Dev (which the DOJ alleges was run by Hill) said that Europol labeled Samourai an emerging “top threat” and added: “Do you see us shitting in our pants?”



Europol’s label wasn’t the first time that Samourai was noticed — not in a good way — by authorities. The UK’s National Crime Agency noted in 2022 that the service could be utilized by criminals.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/tornado-cash-privacy-debate">Tornado Cash arrests spur privacy debate</a>



The two co-founders, the DOJ alleged, “possessed and transmitted to potential investors marketing materials that discussed how Samourai’s customer base was intended to include criminals seeking privacy or the subversion of safeguards and reporting requirements by financial institutions.”



In January, just a few months before the arrests, Samourai <a href="https://twitter.com/SamouraiWallet/status/1749784171239657472">penned</a> a letter to <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/fincen">FinCEN</a> in which the wallet service pushed back on the proposed crypto mixing rules, claiming that they “infringe upon the legitimate financial privacy interests of cryptocurrency users.”



The DOJ, it seems, doesn’t feel the same way.



— Katherine Ross



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Data Center</h2>



<ul>
<li>Restaking protocol EigenLayer has <a href="https://defillama.com/protocol/eigenlayer?denomination=ETH">attracted</a> nearly 5 million ETH ($15.27 billion), up 14% since Monday.</li>



<li>Bitcoin fees have normalized after the Runes halving debut, <a href="https://mempool.space/">now</a> $4.56 for a high-priority transaction and down from record highs above $100.</li>



<li>There are 17,000 validators <a href="https://www.validatorqueue.com/">queuing</a> to join the Ethereum network. Last week, 22,300 were waiting in the queue.</li>



<li>Base has had more daily active <a href="https://app.artemis.xyz/chains">addresses</a> than Arbitrum for most of this month, and could soon surpass Ethereum mainnet: currently 352,000 vs. 379,000.</li>



<li>After shedding supply since November, Maker has issued an <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/dai">additional</a> $840 million DAI in the past seven weeks, equal to nearly 20% growth.</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">CZ’s final plea&nbsp;</h2>



Prosecutors want Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao to serve 36 months in prison for violating the Bank Secrecy Act. Zhao’s team argues that probation alone — ideally with conditions that allow him to return to his home in the UAE — is appropriate.&nbsp;



It’s now up to presiding judge Richard Jones, who has almost 500 pages of memos to sort through —&nbsp;450 of which were submitted by the defense — before next Tuesday’s sentencing.&nbsp;



The government says that <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/changpeng-zhao">CZ</a> “willfully” and strategically defied US laws to “line his pockets” and grow his crypto exchange. His negligence threatened the security of the US, and he therefore deserves an “above-Guidelines” sentence of three years behind bars, prosecutors wrote in their memo Tuesday.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/government-alleges-cz-threatened-us-security">Government says CZ threatened US security, recommends doubling Guideline sentence</a>



The defense even hired a private firm to create a home security plan that could be used if CZ is placed on home confinement, AKA house arrest. The plan suggests a 10-person guard team, new fencing around CZ’s home, and new locks for all doors, among other things. I guess sacrificing landscaping is a small price to pay to avoid prison.&nbsp;



CZ’s plea agreement, which he signed in November, stipulates that he will pay $50 million. The parties also agreed to a guideline sentencing range of 12-18 months, but they couldn’t get on the same page when it came to enhancements and adjustments. That’s where things get tricky.&nbsp;



The government says CZ should be penalized for knowing that people used Binance to facilitate unlawful activity. He also posed a threat to national security, and an example needs to be made, prosecutors say.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/binance-changpeng-zhao-deal-unpacked">Here are the details of Binance and Changpeng Zhao’s plea deal</a>



The defense, obviously, argues the opposite. CZ took responsibility and admitted fault, they say, so leniency is in order.&nbsp;



This part is murky. Yes, CZ took the plea, but there’s a lot we don’t know. The UAE doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the US, so it makes you wonder what exactly the DOJ had on CZ to get him to come to the negotiating table in the first place.&nbsp;



— Casey Wagner



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The crypto must flow</h2>



Slowly, and then all at once.&nbsp;



That’s how believers of hyperbitcoinization say BTC will consume the world.&nbsp;



Nigeria reckons something similar has happened to its local currency — and it’s all <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/binance">Binance</a>’s fault.



<a href="https://bitcoinmagazine.com/hyperbitcoinization">Hyperbitcoinization</a> will supposedly go like this: As crypto adoption increases and global inflation goes parabolic, fiat currencies will rapidly depreciate against bitcoin to the point of worthlessness, and everything with value is priced in ultra-expensive BTC.



Let’s set aside seemingly spurious allegations of money laundering and tax evasion directed at two Binance executives. Bayo Onanuga, special advisor to the president, has claimed Binance fixed exchange rates for the naira pairs on its platform — which only the central bank can legally do.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/binance-ends-support-nigeria-naira">Binance ends Nigerian naira services in wake of scrutiny</a>



The naira, alongside the Nigerian economy, has spiraled since the 2008 global financial crisis. The COVID pandemic and its negative impact on global oil prices have exacerbated the issue more recently, with <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-68272830">inflation</a> up to 30%.



<img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/yyTMPeANLZYmv21ExVIPxbOcOmTQvDp3N2C2Ju_iBvn6u2jJATVchtDsmAIHBCYDg8ICgzb16oGKnxAVjsMHS2dimSQzEansvUatH-SSIwI2Kk_UeN0taRnYgFs3D9XxflmVP6sqihx97z8-kd2I2Oc" width="624" height="449.2826184695621">



The naira has lost 72% of its value against the US dollar since 2019



Onanuga was quick to <a href="https://twitter.com/aonanuga1956/status/1760304339988484297">blame</a> Binance, though earlier this year, the central bank governor <a href="https://www.pulse.ng/news/local/cardoso-blames-increase-in-nigerian-students-studying-abroad-for-economic-woes/nzjdbet">blamed</a> Nigerian students who study abroad.



But the central bank had placed strict controls on foreign exchange in a bid to stave off the naira’s outright collapse, including caps on US dollar trade volumes, <a href="https://nairametrics.com/2024/04/25/new-data-reveal-forex-supply-shortage-at-official-window-as-exchange-rates-plunged-in-2023/">reportedly</a> $9.8 billion for the entirety of 2023, and in October, none at all. Nigeria has coincidentally <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-68451238">sought</a> $10 billion in damages from Binance, according to the BBC.



Those caps led to an artificial supply crunch for US dollars, hindering price discovery on official markets. At the same time, discrepancies widened on parallel markets like the ones found on Binance, a crypto-only exchange for years, with stablecoins USDT and FDUSD largely serving as substitutes.



Binance’s naira pairs were for years <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-27/crypto-trades-contribute-to-naira-s-dive-in-unauthorized-market">reportedly</a> so popular that local operators regularly cited those prices when conducting broader business, rather than official central bank rates. Parallel markets showed 34% lower prices for Naira-USD trades at the end of last year, according to <a href="https://nairametrics.com/2024/04/25/new-data-reveal-forex-supply-shortage-at-official-window-as-exchange-rates-plunged-in-2023/">Nairametrics</a>, although it’s unclear whether that includes prices found on Binance.



In any case, Binance didn’t set its market rates for the naira. Crypto traders did that.&nbsp;



Crypto trades around the clock, and much of its promise lies in its power to attract liquidity. There are no capital controls in crypto; hypothetically, if all of crypto wanted to swing trade the naira, it could, as long as they had a Binance account.



Nigeria’s beef with Binance is really about it supplying a fiat offramp as the naira tanked. Whether that amounts to market manipulation is a matter for Nigerian courts, which have an unfortunate <a href="https://worldjusticeproject.org/news-year-impact-transparencit-nigeria-corruption">reputation</a> for corruption.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/binance-executive-escapes-nigerian-custody">Binance ‘made aware’ of executive who fled Nigeria</a>



Hyperbitcoinization may not happen. But perhaps hypertetherization could strike inflation-weary economies — a rapid unsanctioned flight from local currencies to crypto-dollars, like what Nigeria believes occurred.



If that happens, then the operation of exchanges in places that need crypto the most will quickly become one of the most dangerous jobs in finance.



— David Canellis



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Works</h2>



<ul>
<li>Jack Dorsey’s Square will let its merchant users <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/24/block-now-lets-square-merchants-convert-a-part-of-their-daily-sales-to-bitcoin/">convert</a> a portion of their sales into bitcoin, according to TechCrunch.&nbsp;</li>



<li>Mark Zuckerberg’s <a href="https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2024/Meta-Reports-First-Quarter-2024-Results/default.aspx">metaverse plans</a> are making “steady progress” according to the latest quarterly report from Meta.&nbsp;</li>



<li>Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., told Bloomberg a long-in-the-making stablecoin bill is <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-24/key-democrat-touts-progress-on-stablecoin-marijuana-legislation?sref=3REHEaVI">nearly ready</a>.</li>



<li>“Crypto con man” Jay Mazini AKA Jebara Igbara was <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/instagram-influencer-known-jay-mazini-sentenced-84-months-prison-overlapping-fraud-0">sentenced</a> to 84 months yesterday.</li>



<li>The “Buy Bitcoin” sign held up behind Janet Yellen in 2017 has sold at <a href="https://scarce.city/auctions/buy-bitcoin">auction</a> for 16 BTC, or $1 million.</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Morning Riff</h2>



Gauntlet CEO Tarun Chitra is in <a href="https://variety.com/2024/digital/news/crypto-chopping-block-tarun-chitra-lee-reiners-hollywood-use-case-1235980304/">Variety</a> this week, making the case for Hollywood to adopt crypto.



And sure, crypto definitely has the power to crowdfund cool projects, and blockchain can square the kinds of information asymmetry that results in unfair deals for creators and artists.



But let’s not forget how this has played out before. In 2022, actor-producer Seth Green bought a Bored Ape with a mind to turn the ape avatar into a TV star.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/killer-whales-crypto-reality-show">‘Killer Whales’: Crypto finally gets its own ‘Shark Tank’</a>



Except hackers linked to a multimillion-dollar scam ring stole Green’s Bored Ape before the show could debut, putting the entire project in jeopardy.&nbsp;



Did Green hold the copyright if the NFT was no longer in his crypto wallet? Could he be sued by the hacker for copyright infringement?&nbsp;



It appears Green later <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgp8kd/seth-green-nft-theft-part-of-multi-million-dollar-scam-campaign-investigator-says">forked</a> out $260,000 in ETH — $100,000 more than he paid for it — to the hacker in return for the Bored Ape, and nothing has been heard about the show since.&nbsp;



Crypto might be ready for Hollywood. But I doubt Hollywood is ready for crypto.



— David Canellis



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