Bitcoin is no longer merely that taboo thing your techie uncle awkwardly brings up at family gatherings.



Well, maybe the asset is only that for you — but if so, you’re in the minority at this point. 



Whether you believe in bitcoin or not, it has increasingly perforated traditional finance in recent years and months. Institutions can gain exposure to crypto through a regulated liquid derivatives market, and more recently via bitcoin ETFs.



While some traditional finance bigwigs still criticize the asset (at least publicly), large financial companies are waking up to the potential of BTC, as well as blockchain tech more broadly.



“Before, people had to buy coins,” said Lucas Kiely, chief investment officer at Yield App. “Now they can trade on [traditional finance] markets which means big market players can get involved.”



The increased market participation around bitcoin is one reason the asset has become more correlated to global markets — a fact that could spur investor concern in an environment like this one. 



That’s because a range of macro factors are set to continue tussling with post-halving bitcoin price rally expectations in the coming months, industry watchers say.



Bitcoin halvings — when per-block rewards for mining bitcoin are reduced every four or so years — have historically helped catalyze crypto bull markets. 



Read more: With halving just hours away, bitcoin price predictions proliferate 



Such events prior to the latest one last month have propelled BTC to new highs between 12 months and 18 months after the halving.



Before then, the macro environment this time around may push BTC downward.



Macro headwinds lingering



Though bitcoin has rebounded from its recent stint below $57,000, “investors should be wary of being lulled into a false sense of security,” Kiely noted.



The asset’s price hovered around $63,000 at 4 pm ET Tuesday — down 9% from a month ago, but up nearly 7% in the last five

Macro headwinds could spur a ‘boring’ bitcoin summer — or something worse

Forget the halving. Don’t mention ETFs. What then is arguably the most important narrative in crypto?



Memecoins.



Yes, that often-cringeworthy menagerie of anime, animalia and animations collectively are the primary on-ramp into crypto for new users. People are always asking, “Where are the next billion users going to come from?” 



The answer is pretty clear — the only remaining question is whether the dog will be wearing a hat or not.



Before fans of self-custody, real-world assets and DeFi (and I’m certainly among them) turn up their noses in disdain, let’s consider some of the very valid reasons for the persistent popularity of memecoins and their kissing cousin, airdrops.



First up is entertainment. People love to be entertained, and they don’t mind spending money on it. The global entertainment and media market is valued at well over $2 trillion, according to analysts from PwC, on par with the overall market cap for all cryptocurrencies. What’s the utility of $DOGE, $PEPE or $BONK, compared to governance tokens or stablecoins? Entertainment in itself is a utility.



People are also attracted to risk. The global casino industry alone is worth more than $150 billion and is growing, according to a ResearchAndMarkets.com report. That doesn’t include sports betting, lotteries or all the other ways that people put down relatively small amounts of money in hopes of winning relatively large amounts of money. (In investment lingo, “asymmetric opportunities.”) Obviously, buying a memecoin carries a lot of this type of risk, but putting in time, resources and energy into a potential airdrop event — where the amount and timing of the reward is uncertain — is an experience undeniably tinged with the thrill of the gamble as well.



Read more from our opinion section: Memecoin mania can teach us something



Organizations and builders support memecoins and airdrops because they can bring liquidity to an ecosystem. They also help capture

The most important trend in crypto? It’s always been memecoins

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler says that the agency is just a “cop on the beat” when it comes to policing the crypto industry. 



Gensler spoke to CNBC a day after Robinhood disclosed that it received a Wells notice from the US securities regulator. 



“We have a really important responsibility as being a cop on the beat and ensuring that people that are asking you to put your money into buy or sell securities are following the law so you get disclosures, that you get certain protections,” Gensler said when asked about the notice. 



The crypto industry, Gensler argued, comprises an array of digital assets that constitute securities “under the law of the land, as interpreted” by the Supreme Court. He also said that he doesn’t believe that investors are receiving all of the “information” in crypto. 



Read more: Is the SEC weighing a lawsuit against Consensys?



“Everybody’s asking about what’s the earnings release and how many companies are beating earnings or falling behind and so forth. Where’s the disclosures from these crypto tokens similar to these season earnings releases?” Gensler asked, comparing tokens to publicly traded stocks.



Gensler added that he “genuinely think[s] they’re not getting that in crypto. And if they are a crypto security, it’s required and needed.”



He didn’t directly address the allegations that Consensys made against the SEC in a lawsuit filed last month, and also avoided addressing the alleged investigation around ether, Ethereum’s native token. 



Read more: Empire Newsletter: A busy crypto lawsuit season looms



When asked Tuesday, Gensler just said that the “intermediaries in the center of this rather centralized market generally are conflicted and doing things we would never allow the New York Stock Exchange to do. The New York Stock Exchange is not allowed to trade against the investors.”



In its lawsuit, Consensys claimed that the SEC served the

SEC’s Gensler calls for more crypto disclosures for investors

The advent of bitcoin ETFs came only after a legal victory over the Securities and Exchange Commission.



A similar action could be what it takes to get US spot ether ETFs over the finish line, law professionals told Blockworks.



And let’s not forget Consensys’ lawsuit against the US securities regulator, which they added could play a role in helping sort out the ether ETF question.



Bitcoin ETFs born from a legal victory



In a world where the SEC and crypto companies constantly appear to be at odds, the courts have been able to offer some clarity. 



Judges in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last August that the SEC’s decision to deny the conversion of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) to an ETF, but allow bitcoin futures ETFs, was “arbitrary and capricious.”



SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said in a January statement that approving bitcoin ETFs was “the most sustainable path forward” given that court decision. He added that the regulator “acts within the law and how the courts interpret the law.”



Enter: proposed funds that would directly hold ETH — the second-biggest crypto asset by market capitalization. 



Investment firm VanEck first filed for a spot ether product in 2021. The company, along with Ark Invest and 21Shares, renewed the efforts last September. BlackRock and Grayscale were among those to follow suit.  



The SEC, as expected, delayed its decision on Monday for a spot ether fund filed by Invesco and Galaxy Digital. A ruling on other similar planned offerings by Ark Invest, VanEck, Grayscale, BlackRock and others is expected by the end of the month.Various segment observers have said they don’t expect the US regulator to approve them. This is due to concerns over the liquidity of ETH's spot and futures markets and the question of its status as a security or commodity.



Read more: Ether ETFs coming in May? Here’s why many are bearish



The “cleanest path” for the SEC to deny the spot ether ETFs would be

Court decision could be only way US spot ether ETFs see light of day

Polygon, an Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution, has recently launched its Miden Alpha Testnet,  a zero-knowledge rollup solution designed for private, high-throughput applications.



Miden enables its users to generate proofs for their own state transitions without revealing the state to the wider network. The network will only track commitments, meaning users can transact privately.



Some features that will be unlocked with Miden include the ability to create private accounts and private notes, though it will still be possible to create public accounts and public notes. Additionally, the Miden client will enable parallel transaction execution and client-side proving. 



“For builders, that means designing self-sovereign and high-throughput applications. With Miden’s zk-powered rollup, you can build what’s currently not feasible on EVM-chains,” Polygon wrote in a post on X. 



Read more: ‘Big Four’ accounting firm EY to use Polygon PoS for business contracts



According to Polygon Miden documents, there are currently three different types of smart contracts available on Miden. These include a basic wallet contract for sending and receiving tokens and assets and fungible and non-fungible faucet smart contracts, which are used to mint and burn different assets.



Polygon Miden is not the only rollup solution that is hoping to innovate in the zk rollup space. Competitors include StarkWare and Matter Labs, the team behind zkSync, who are similarly hoping to bring new possibilities to blockchain scaling.



There has been little price action following the announcement of Miden. The price of Polygon’s native token (MATIC) is trading at $0.7153, down by 0.9% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko.







Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.

Polygon zk-based Miden Alpha Testnet is now live 

Another one bites the dust



And then there were three. 



Robinhood has become the latest company to receive a crypto-related Wells notice from the Securities and Exchange Commission.



If you don’t know what a Wells notice is, you might be new to crypto. The notice is basically a heads-up given to a company that the SEC completed an investigation and may pursue an enforcement action against them. 



The notice doesn’t always mean that legal action will play out, but this is crypto.



This time last year, for example, we were playing the waiting game after Coinbase was served with a Wells notice in March. The SEC then filed a suit against the exchange company in June. 



As I previously reported, if that timeline holds, we could be looking at a summer legal action — similar to what we saw with Coinbase. 



So if things head to court, what happens exactly?



Robinhood, as part of its disclosures, said the SEC alleged that it violated 15(a) and 17A of the Securities Exchange Act. If that rings a bell, it’s because both Coinbase and Binance were hit with similar charges. 



17A focuses on clearing agencies and 15(a) centers around broker-dealer registration. It’s unclear if the SEC will seek charges regarding tokens it believes are securities, like we’ve seen in other cases. 



For its part, Robinhood has tried to stay out of the SEC’s spotlight by delisting tokens that the regulatory agency has targeted, such as Solana’s SOL, Polygon’s MATIC, and Cardano’s ADA. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like any company offering crypto services can avoid Gensler’s ire.



“​​The potential action may involve a civil injunctive action, public administrative proceeding, and/or a cease-and-desist proceeding,” Robinhood warned in its disclosure. 



Putting aside the potential charges, let’s talk about Robinhood’s chief legal and compliance officer, Dan Gallagher. 



Gallagher is actually no stranger to the SEC, having served as a

Empire Newsletter: A busy crypto lawsuit season looms

On Monday, the experimental currency Ore won $50,000 from a Solana Foundation-supported hackathon focused on identifying Solana’s “next wave of high-impact projects.”



“High-impact” presumably refers to Ore’s potential for making a positive change to Solana’s adoption figures. But so far, Ore’s impact has been more like a gut punch: The project halted mining in mid-April after the avalanche of network usage from mining the currency made it difficult for Solana users to get their transactions included in blocks.



Ore is an experiment in using the proof-of-work security mechanism on the Solana blockchain. PoW systems essentially pay miners native currency rewards in exchange for computing power that makes blockchains difficult to attack. Bitcoin is secured in this fashion, in contrast to Solana, which combines a system called proof-of-history with proof-of-stake, Ethereum’s chosen consensus mechanism. 



Read more: Solana price falls further as Ore suspends mining on the network



Ore rewrote a more egalitarian version of the Bitcoin protocol as a Solana smart contract, the project’s pseudonymous creator Hardhat Chad explained in a demo video. Unlike Bitcoin, which gives 3.125 bitcoin to the fastest miner to return a certain cryptographic hash every ten minutes, Ore is set up where multiple miners can win a sliver of the network’s block rewards. An average of one ORE is created every minute, split between successful miners.



For many in Solana’s speculation-loving ecosystem, the idea of “Bitcoin on Solana” was simply too juicy to pass up, and Ore mining transactions drove up activity and soon clogged the network. One miner posted about “blindly sending millions” of transactions every second in hopes that some would land.



Amid the flurry of usage, Solana users saw more and more of their transactions being dropped rather than included in blocks, and Solana developers rushed to patch the overloaded network. Perhaps mercifully,

Solana congestion culprit Ore wins $50K from hackathon

A crypto bull market, coupled with the still-uncertain regulatory environment is going to create the perfect storm for increased enforcement actions, US Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Rostin Behnam said. 



“We find ourselves with a growing market, growing capital [and] investments, growing market capitalization, and I think a renewed interest by a lot of the entrepreneurs,” Behnam said Monday during a discussion at the Milken Institute’s Global Conference in Los Angeles. 



“From my standpoint, as a regulator, we're going to probably see in the next six to 18 months or six to 24 months another cycle of enforcement actions.” 



Without action from Congress and increased regulatory transparency, Behnam added, agencies are going to lean more heavily on lawsuits. 



Read more: Bank Secrecy Act vs crypto: A new DOJ lawsuit revives old tactic



“If you actually count the number of [Congressional] working days between now and the election…it’s really not that much time,” Behnam said when asked about the odds of any of the crypto-related bills making it to the floor for a vote in the House and Senate. 



“Getting legislation done these days is difficult,” he added, but noted that there is “momentum” and “desire” from lawmakers to close some of the regulatory gaps around crypto, particularly with regards to stablecoin legislation. 



Behnam’s comments come days after retail trading platform Robinhood announced it received a Wells notice from the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Securities regulators plan to proceed with an enforcement action relating to cryptocurrencies traded on the exchange, Robinhood said in a filing Saturday. 



“After years of good faith attempts to work with the SEC for regulatory clarity including our well-known attempt to ‘come in and register,’ we are disappointed that the agency has decided to issue a Wells Notice related to our US crypto business,” Dan Gallagher, Robinhood’s

CFTC’s Behnam warns crypto industry that more enforcement actions are coming 

Hong Kong’s newly launched spot crypto ETFs might help us predict what ether ETF demand could look like in the US. 



Or not. 



Either way, the new funds offer a jumping-off point, so to speak, for considering the current differing investor appetites for ETH and BTC and how that could evolve.



The Securities and Exchange Commission approving spot bitcoin ETFs in January offered exhilaration during a month often marred by the holiday hangover. 



Many wondered what the demand for these long-awaited products would amount to out of the gate, and long-term. Another common question after the industry’s regulatory victory: When will we see spot ether ETFs? 



After all, ether is the second-biggest crypto asset by market capitalization, with its $370 billion market cap nearly a third of bitcoin’s $1.25 trillion. US issuers started trying to launch spot ETH products as far back as 2021.



Not to mention ether has a regulated futures market, and (whaddya know) the SEC already approved ETFs that hold ETH futures contracts. Those launched last October.



Though the regulator is set to rule on spot ether products sometime this month, it remains unclear when the SEC could ultimately allow those to trade. 



Read more: Ether ETFs coming in May? Here’s why many are bearish



But aside from the launch timeline, the other question is what demand will be if and when they do debut. 



Between ether futures ETF asset bases, US spot bitcoin fund flow data and the seed capital for Hong Kong bitcoin and ether offerings, perhaps we start to paint a picture. 



Or maybe crypto-related fortune telling — even with data inputs — is a fool’s game.



Trying to make sense of the numbers anyway 



Hong Kong’s six new spot crypto ETFs — three bitcoin funds and three ether funds — opened $292 million worth of seed capital, according to Farside Investors data.   



The bitcoin funds attracted significantly more of the initial capital, with ether ETF day one assets

What Hong Kong crypto ETFs may tell us about US ETH fund appetite

The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) converted to an ETF nearly four months ago. 



It took that long for the fund to see its first day of net inflows. 



That unprecedented event occurred on Friday, when GBTC saw $63 million in net money enter the ETF, according to Farside Investors data. 



Read more: Why tracking bitcoin ETF flows matters. And why it doesn’t.



GBTC had suffered net outflows for 78 days before that — piling up to equal $17.4 billion.



Just don’t expect the GBTC inflows to become a regular thing, one segment observer says.



“It’s difficult to discern what might be behind the flows into GBTC,” said Nate Geraci, president of The ETF Store. “ETF buyers are an extremely diverse group with varying motivations. That said, I would be surprised if the inflows become a trend.”



Part of the reason it will have a hard time consistently attracting new money? Its cost, Geraci noted.



Industry watchers have attributed GBTC’s constant asset spillage to the fund’s fee of 1.5% — a much higher level than its 10 competitors in the US. 



Beyond the fee, bankrupt lender Genesis was among those offloading its GBTC holdings, contributing to the asset exodus from the fund.   



And still, Grayscale holds the assets under management lead in the category. GBTC manages roughly $18.1 billion in assets, while BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) is close behind with about $16.9 billion.



Grayscale has defended its higher fee, previously pointing out GBTC’s “market-leading liquidity, tight spreads, high trading volumes and a decade-long track record of operational success.”



“While GBTC can still hang its hat on ample liquidity and tight spreads, there are now competing products which can boast the same,” Geraci told Blockworks. 



The crypto asset manager also filed to set up the Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust (BTC), which would cost a fraction of GBTC’s price. The company has not yet revealed a final proposed expense

Bitcoin ETF snapshot: GBTC surprise helps end sector’s seven-day outflow run

Take it to court!



Crypto’s long been regarded as the “Wild West” and one of the biggest reasons that the comparison still sticks — despite how far the market has come since Satoshi’s days — is because of the regulation via enforcement approach that some government bodies have taken (looking at you, Gary Gensler).



But now it looks like the Department of Justice is trying to join the Securities and Exchange Commission’s ranks, at least when it comes to unlicensed money transmission. 



The DOJ is alleging, in two separate cases, that wallet developers should be charged with the violation. 



As CoinCenter’s Peter Van Valkenburgh pointed out last week, this approach marks a change for the DOJ. Since roughly 2013, the stance from other arms of the government had been that developers and users of non-custodial wallets weren’t transmitters. 



But it looks like the DOJ has changed its mind, at least in the Tornado Cash and Samourai Wallet cases.



Read more from our opinion section: Samourai Wallet matters more than your memecoins



CoinCenter broke down the historical context, highlighting that FinCEN — the Treasury’s financial enforcement bureau — said in 2013 that crypto could be a value “that substitutes for currency” but that it’s not inherently a currency or “funds.”



FinCEN’s 2019 guidance also backed this up. 



“The person participating in the transaction to provide additional validation at the request of the owner does not have total independent control over the value,” the agency wrote at the time.



Van Valkenburgh said the Tornado Cash developers — the DOJ is taking aim at Roman Storm and Roman Semenov in this case — and the Samourai Wallet founders didn’t have “any actual control over the cryptocurrency that users of the tool owned.”



Read more: Tornado Cash arrests spur privacy debate



“Under clear and long established FinCEN guidance and under any common sense reading of the underlying

Empire Newsletter: The DOJ's about-face on money transmitters

… independent investment advisory firm.






Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.