1. MicroStrategy has acquired an additional 1,045 BTC link
On April 5, MicroStrategy announced that it had once again purchased 1,045 BTC at an average price of $28,016, totaling $29.3 million. As of April 4, MicroStrategy held 140,000 BTC with an average purchase price of $29,803, which is equivalent to $4.17 billion.
2. Cash App founder Bob Lee dies after San Francisco stabbing link
According to Sfgate, Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App, was stabbed to death in San Francisco in the early hours of April 4. Lee’s death was confirmed on Nostr by Jack Dorsey, founder of Block.
Surveillance footage reviewed by The Standard shows Lee walking up Main Street away from the Bay Bridge at around 2:30 a.m. Lee crosses the intersection at Harrison Street and walks up to a parked white Camry with its hazard lights flashing. Lee then lifts his shirt and falls to the ground after the car drives away. He gets up and walks back toward the Bay Bridge before falling to the ground again. Lee made a call at 2:34 a.m. and police arrived on the scene less than six minutes later. His death has triggered a flurry of outrage from the tech industry over the state of public safety in San Francisco.
3. Dogecoin drops after Elon Musk’s Twitter stops using its dog logo link
On April 4, the Twitter icons of some users changed from the blue bird logo to the DOGE coin logo. This was due to a meme tweet from Elon Musk, which caused DOGE to rise to $0.095, with a 24-hour increase of 20.5%. The Twitter icons have been restored and DOGE has dropped by about 8% to a low of around 8.5 cents.
4. US Treasury releases the 2023 DeFi Illicit Finance Risk Assessment link
On April 7, the U.S. Department of the Treasury published the 2023 DeFi Illicit Finance Risk Assessment, the first illicit finance risk assessment conducted on DeFi in the world. It required that the private sector should be in line with AML/CFT regulations and sanctions obligations, to prevent illicit actors from abusing DeFi services.
Treasury is working to improve the overall effectiveness of the AML/CFT regulatory framework and sanctions compliance programs in the virtual asset space and will engage with the private sector to support responsible innovation in the DeFi space. U.S. Department of the Treasury: Money laundering, proliferation financing, and terrorist financing most commonly occur using fiat currency or other traditional assets as opposed to virtual assets.
5. Binance’s weekly summary
a. Binance Fan Token launches FC Shakhtar Fanverse link
On April 4, Binance Fan Token has partnered with Ukraine’s #1 football club FC Shakhtar to launch FC Shakhtar Fanverse. Binance users can make game predictions to get USDT rewards.
b. Binance founder’s adopted home Dubai tightens crypto scrutiny link
Dubai is requesting additional information from applicants like Binance. Officials at Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority have in recent weeks asked Binance to provide more information on its ownership structure, governance and auditing procedures, said the people, who requested anonymity to discuss private deliberations. VARA is requesting similar information from all international companies seeking permits.
c. Binance Australia cancels its derivatives licenselink
On April 6, ASIC cancelled the Australian financial services licence held by Oztures Trading Pty Ltd trading as Binance Australia Derivatives (Binance). With effect from 14 April 2023, clients will not be able to increase derivatives positions or open new positions with Binance; Binance will require clients to close any existing derivative positions before 21 April 2023. CZ responded by saying that Binance Australia voluntarily requested to cancel its derivatives license. As of April 5, the platform had only 104 users. Binance Australia will continue to operate spot trading in Australia.
6. Huobi’s weekly summary
a. Bloomberg: Justin Sun holds talks about stake sale in Huobi Global link
Crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun has held talks about selling a stake in digital-asset exchange Huobi Global. Sun has sounded out potential investors in past weeks. Justin Sun denied the news to Bloomberg. Sun paid about $1 billion to acquire a controlling stake in Huobi through Hong Kong-based asset manager About Capital in November.
b. CoinDesk: Binance rejected Justin Sun’s offer to buy his Huobi stake link
On April 6, according to CoinDesk, Binance recently turned down an offer to acquire Justin Sun’s ownership stake in rival exchange Huobi. Justin Sun responded that Huobi had not even been discussed with CZ in the last week.
7. ETH block trades accounted for 40% on April 6 link
On April 6, ETH block trades accounted for 40%, with the main trades concentrated at the end of the month, clearly a big bet on Shanghai upgrade. Calls are now trading in majority, especially during yesterday’s pump, buy-calls were traded hotly, pushing up IVs across major maturities.
8. Hidden inside MacOS, the Bitcoin white paper link
On April 6, tech blogger Andy Baio discovered that the Bitcoin whitepaper can be found on any Mac running the latest version of macOS. According to CoinDesk, someone has hidden the Bitcoin white paper inside every copy of MacOS shipped since 2017. Hidden within Virtual Scanner II is a nondescript image of a bay in San Francisco, and a PDF copy of the Bitcoin white paper.
9. MEV’s weekly summary
a. MEV bots attacked by malicious attacks, losing about $25 million link
On April 3, there may be malicious Ethereum verifiers who attack some MEV bots transactions in the block, invalidate the MEV Bots transactions and replace them with their own transactions. Related MEV bots have lost about $25 million. The attacker has become a validator 18 days ago and prepared the relevant token, and the relevant source of funds was from the privacy protocol Aztec. The malicious validator who drained the MEV bots has been slashed by the protocol.
b. More than 30 Ethereum projects cooperate to launch MEV Blocker RPC link
On April 5, CoW Swap, Balancer, 1inch and more than 30 Ethereum projects have cooperated to launch MEV Blocker RPC, a tool designed to protect users from various types of MEV attacks. MEV Blocker works by routing all transactions through a network of searchers that is structured to block frontrunning and sandwich attacks.
10. MetaMask’s weekly summary
a. MetaMask empowers ssers with NFT features in latest update link
On April 5, MetaMask announced that in its latest version of extension, all ERC-721 and 1155 tokens should appear as long as automatic NFT detection is enabled. v10.28 will bring an NFT view into the MetaMask Browser extension. With this update, people can send ERC-721 tokens.
b. MetaMask to alarm users about scams link
On April 6, MetaMask announced a partnership with OpenSea and Blockaid to warn users when interacting with known scams; users who choose to use the feature will benefit from OpenSea’s blacklist of known scams, as well as Blockaid’s analysis of malicious behavior.
Fundraising
- LayerZero raises $120M in Series B funding at a $3B valuation, with participation from a16z Crypto, Sequoia Capital, Circle Ventures, etc link
- Multichain liquidity and data gateway provider Li.Fi has raised $17.5 million in a Series A fundraise co-led by crypto-native investment firms CoinFund and Superscrypt link
- Polyhedra Network, a startup that provides Web3 infrastructure backed by zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs, has raised $15 million in a pre-Series A funding round led by Polychain Capital link
- Delphi Labs, the incubation arm of Delphi Digital, has raised $13.5 million in its first external funding round led by P2P link
- DeFi hub Nibiru Chain has closed an $8.5 million seed funding round at a $100 million valuation that was co-led by NGC Ventures, etc link
- Modular blockchain Astria has raised $5.5 million in seed funding led by Maven 11 link
- DeFi platform M^ZERO has raised $22.5M in seed funding led by Pantera Capital link
Learn more, check out crypto-fundraising.info.
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