CFTC Weighs Enforcement Action Against Former Voyager Digital CEO (1 minute read)
Former Voyager Digital CEO, Stephen Ehrlich, could face enforcement by the CFTC for breaching derivatives regulations. The potential action follows an investigation that ended after Voyager's bankruptcy declaration in July 2022 due to the crypto market crash. This is yet another potential fight with regulators as Voyager has already drawn the Federal Trade Commission's ire for misleading crypto marketing.
|
Ostium Labs Bringing DEX Perpetual Swaps to Oil and Gold (4 minute read)
Crypto startup Ostium Labs came out of stealth and announced it is aiming to combine traditional commodities trading with the world of crypto by developing a protocol for digitized commodity perpetual swaps. The protocol will offer traders a transparent and flexible alternative to traditional derivatives platforms and will initially support trading in commodities like oil and Bitcoin along with forex pairs. The platform aims to improve accessibility and transparency in tangible asset trading.
|
Backed Launches Tokenized Blackrock ETF on Base Network (2 minute read)
Backed Finance has successfully launched a tokenized government bond auction for a BlackRock ETF on L2 network Base. The protocol allows companies to digitize assets like equities, commodities, art, or collectibles without going through traditional finance rails or their own legal processes. There has been increased interest in non-USD-denominated short-term bonds with high interest rates and low crypto prices. However, U.S. investors are currently blocked from trading any of Backed's tokenized offerings.
|
Protocol and Staking Pool Changes That Could Improve Decentralization and Reduce Consensus Overhead (13 minute read)
Ethereum's two-tiered staking model, comprised of node operators and delegators, is facing issues of centralization risk among node operators and unnecessary consensus layer burden. To address this, Vitalik Buterin is proposing the role of delegators could be expanded through more competition between pools, improved voting tools, and enshrined delegation. Alternatively, delegators could be given a lighter role in consensus. These tweaks may reduce the number of signatures the Ethereum consensus layer has to process, improving decentralization and user participation in the staking process.
|
Overview of On-Chain RWAs and the Forces Propelling their Growth (15 minute read)
The fastest-growing category in DeFi in 2023 has been RWAs, reaching a TVL of $2.5 billion. The growth has been driven by a surge in interest rates and the crypto bear market, which has served to attract crypto-natives to traditional yield-generating instruments such as U.S. Treasuries. Since getting direct access to U.S. Treasuries is not always easy, especially if you are moving those funds from your crypto portfolio, demand for crypto-based U.S. Treasury investments has skyrocketed, causing many firms to start offering these RWAs on-chain.
|
The FTX Jury Suffered Through a Code Review (10 minute read)
In a recent testimony, FTX co-founder Gary Wang suggested that more significant control than previously known was held by Sam Bankman-Fried. According to Wang, FTX gave special advantages to Alameda Research, enabling negative balances and faster trading order placement. These changes allegedly stemmed from instructions from Bankman-Fried himself. However, it was Wang who oversaw their implementation, ultimately leaving him vulnerable to criminal charges as well.
|
Double Happiness: Another Arthur Hayes Essay (28 minute read)
In this essay, Arthur Hayes lays out a thesis for a crypto bull market fueled by fiat liquidity and AI commercialization enthusiasm, a "Double Happiness" for investors. Hayes anticipates that fiat liquidity will surge due to the major global central banks printing significant amounts of money to bolster their respective nations' bond markets, creating the most significant two-to-three-year fiat increase in history.
|
We help cutting edge companies hire world class technical talent through our job listings. If you're hiring in crypto, click here to learn more.
|
If your company is interested in reaching an audience of crypto investors and builders, you may want to advertise with us.
If you have any comments or feedback, just respond to this email!
Thanks for reading,
Daniel Fritsche
|
|
|