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

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.

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.  

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 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).

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.

Dr. Paul Dylan-Ennis is Lecturer/Assistant Professor in the College of Business, University College Dublin. He is the author of the forthcoming book “The Absolute Essentials of Ethereum” with Routledge. 

Payal Shah serves as CME Group’s Director of Equity and Cryptocurrency Research and Product Development. She is responsible for leading the development of new and innovative products across the crypto, equity and alternative investment markets. This includes a comprehensive suite of futures and options contracts on key benchmark indices such as the S&amp;P 500 and NASDAQ-100, as well as international access through regional indices. Since joining the company in 2016, Shah has been heavily involved in the crypto space and has helped with the creation of CME Group’s more than 50 cryptocurrency reference rates, including Bitcoin and Ether futures and options contracts, Micro contract suite and event-driven markets. She serves on the CME CF Cryptocurrency Oversight Committee.


Before joining CME Group, Shah was an ETF Specialist at MSCI and held trading roles within the Equity Derivatives Group at Morgan Stanley.


Pedro Gomes is the CEO and founder of WalletConnect, a communications protocol and developer tooling provider that connects 3,000+ leading apps to 500+ wallets, enabling millions of users to better access the world of web3. Pedro has spent many years contributing to developments across the web3 landscape, including contributions to a number of widely adopted EIPs and CAIPs, like EIP-1193, EIP-1271, EIP-3085, CAIP-2, and CAIP-10. Along with his team at WalletConnect, Pedro hosted the world’s first wallet-dedicated conference this year – WalletCon 2023 – where the long-awaited ERC-4337 was unveiled.

Pedro is a Chilean freelance journalist who has been covering the crypto space since 2019. Along with his Latin American finance newsletter called La Cadena, Pedro has written for Decrypt, Bitcoin Magazine, Finder, Sin Permiso, El Mostrador, and a variety of other publications.

Perianne Boring is the Founder and CEO of The Chamber of Digital Commerce, the world’s largest trade association representing the blockchain industry. The Chamber’s mission is to promote the acceptance and use of digital assets and blockchain-based technologies. Working with policymakers, regulatory agencies and industry, The Chamber advocates for a pro-growth policy environment that fosters job creation, innovation, and investment.

 

Perianne was named one of “America’s Top 50 Women in Tech” by Forbes and one of the “10 Most Influential People in Blockchain” by CoinDesk. She appears regularly in the financial media to share insights on digital asset and blockchain innovations and public policy discussions. Prior to forming The Chamber, Perianne served as a television anchor for an international finance program that ran in more than 100 countries and reached over 650 million viewers. She began her career as a legislative analyst in the U.S. House of Representatives, advising on finance, economics, tax, and healthcare policy.

Peter is currently working to advance responsible rules of the road for the digital asset &amp; web3 industries as Associate Director for State &amp; Local Government Affairs at the Crypto Council for Innovation.


Ralf Usbeck is a German entrepreneur, founder, and chief executive of Chain4Travel, his latest venture in shaping the global travel industry with innovative travel technology. As founder of Peakwork, TravelTainment (sold to Amadeus in 2006), Vtours, and Weekend.com, he has successfully built and exited companies in a 3-digit million volume. In 2013, Ralf Usbeck received an international award as 'Serial Innovator of Travel Technology' at the World Travel Market in London. Today, he is pioneering the adoption of blockchain technology in travel with Chain4Travel, founded in 2021. The Swiss start-up has initiated the L1 "Camino Network" for the global travel industry,  enabling the next iteration of technology and the Web 3.0 age. More than 150 travel companies worldwide already support Camino Network.

Jack Kubinec

Ernst &amp; Young revealed an enterprise contract management service that would let clients put contracts on a public blockchain while keeping business information private through zero-knowledge circuits. The firm markets its OpsChain Contract Manager as running on Ethereum, although it currently runs on Polygon proof-of-stake (PoS).



The accounting firm — one of the “big four” alongside Deloitte, KPMG, and PwC — has been toying with business implications for zk proofs since at least <a href="https://www.ey.com/en_it/news/2019/04/ey-releases-zero-knowledge-proof-blockchain-transaction-technology-to-the-public-domain-to-advance-blockchain-privacy-standards">2018</a>. The announcement may show another concrete step toward the institutional use of public blockchains, a month after asset management giant BlackRock <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240320771318/en/BlackRock-Launches-Its-First-Tokenized-Fund-BUIDL-on-the-Ethereum-Network">launched</a> a tokenized fund on Ethereum.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/blackrock-tokenized-fund-trading-circle-usdc">Circle debuts way to trade BlackRock tokenized fund shares for USDC</a>



In a press release, EY <a href="https://www.ey.com/en_gl/newsroom/2024/04/ey-launches-opschain-contract-manager-solution-to-support-secure-private-business-agreements-on-public-ethereum">said</a> the service would bring business agreements to <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ethereum">Ethereum</a>, but this isn’t exactly the case. Nightfall, the zero-knowledge <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/zero-knowledge-rollup">rollup</a> EY developed to do things like manage business contracts, actually runs on Polygon PoS, an independent blockchain.&nbsp;



EY Blockchain plans to move Nightfall to Ethereum mainnet and to a layer-3 in Nightfall’s next upgrade, Paul Brody, who has led EY’s blockchain arm since 2016, said.&nbsp;



Brody, reached through a spokesperson, added that Nightfall was developed on Ethereum and is deployed to Ethereum’s test network, but so far, EY’s industrial users have been drawn to <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/polygon">Polygon</a> for its low transaction costs.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Private blockchains aren’t private</h2>



In a prior career stop, Brody was partly responsible for building IBM’s first blockchain based on the alpha version of Ethereum with the help of Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Brody told Blockworks in an interview.



Using blockchain technology for enterprise is not a new idea. In earlier days of Bitcoin and blockchain, groups like the Distributed Ledger Group <a href="https://www.ofnumbers.com/2017/02/27/a-brief-history-of-r3-the-distributed-ledger-group/">sprang</a> up to find ways for businesses to make use of distributed ledger technology, often using private blockchains.&nbsp;



This era of so-called enterprise blockchain has mostly fallen out of focus for crypto’s leading edge. Brody said a future for blockchain applications for big business will lie on public blockchains like Ethereum.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/goldman-sachs-future-public-blockchains">Goldman Sachs head of digital assets: The future is on public blockchains&nbsp;</a>



“The problem with private blockchains is they don&#8217;t actually provide privacy,” Brody said. “People jumped into this without really understanding the technology, and it was only after they got into it that it&#8217;s like, ‘Oh, everybody in the private chain can still see everything.’”



Private blockchains kept rivals from working together partly because they would reveal sensitive information like, for instance, the quantity and prices of a business&#8217;s purchases, Brody explained.



Alongside Nightfall, EY also created Starlight, a zero-knowledge <a href="https://blockchain.ey.com/uploads/Starlight_Application_Brief.pdf">compiler</a> that takes existing smart contracts and privatizes them with hashing.



With these tools, EY will start letting businesses execute business contracts using Polygon’s smart contracts. Nightfall is only accessible to enterprises. The testnet is free, and the full product is priced by EY, Brody said, adding that using a public blockchain makes the deployment cost cheaper for enterprise purposes, since the underlying infrastructure is already built.



A promotional document for the contract manager says EY’s product “revolutionizes how enterprises help manage their contracts by harnessing privacy-enabled blockchain technology to streamline processes and enhance transparency.”



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



Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.

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

Jim Myers

We’re just days away from the next <a href="https://flipsidecrypto.xyz/flipsideteam/bitcoin-halving-PDnIDK">Bitcoin halving</a>, and on-chain activity leading up to the event points to a cycle unlike any other.&nbsp;



As public trust in Bitcoin surges, we&#8217;re seeing transaction volumes surpass previous cycles and more gradual but consistent price growth. This combination of record-high transactions and relative price stability suggests a milder halving event followed by a more sustained growth cycle in the coming months.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Record-high transactions</h2>



The industry has experienced a sustained increase in BTC transactions leading up to every consecutive halving, with 2024 seeing the highest daily transaction volume and more extreme spikes in activity compared to previous run-ups. And while an increase in transaction volume is to be expected with every new cycle, this year’s activity appears to buck several trends.



Skyrocketing transaction volume



For instance, while daily transaction volume fluctuated similarly during the leadup to the 2016 and 2020 halvings, it skyrocketed this year. On average, the volatility of day-to-day transaction volume in the past three months is double that of the 2020 run-up, whereas the previous run-up only saw a moderate uptick relative to the 2016 cycle. At the same time, overall transaction volume has rarely dipped to levels seen in previous cycles as the market experiences a period of volatile, but elevated, activity.&nbsp;&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/_NaN_LkgXj2aQYr9waNM2hs3xfWC88-5tPpzwhWnw4u-S-_6JhK8CDAZ1Z6QIDQGesBCtvYmHYLysZjt3OESFsAgpliKlncV74U23pFs7K1fOg0OEEt9LqpV4vX2slnhRLuunA_Cs7o060GsykA92Ks" alt=""/></figure>



<a href="https://flipsidecrypto.xyz/flipsideteam/bitcoin-halving-PDnIDK"></a>Trend reversal in BTC transfers



Additionally, this year’s daily transferred volume is similar to that of the 2020 run-up in terms of BTC — but the actual dollar value of these transactions is multitudes higher given BTC’s price appreciation. This contrasts with the past trend, when BTC transfers dropped between 2016 and 2020. A growing daily transferred volume suggests growing user engagement and comfort with significant value transfers on the Bitcoin network as we approach this 2024 halving.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Sustained optimism and price support</h2>



On-chain activity from the past three months also shows more consistent price support for BTC this time around, relative to any other recent cycle.&nbsp;



Low price volatility and consistent growth



Leading up to the 2024 halving, BTC exhibited smaller price swings relative to every run-up since 2012, with a standard deviation of 2.2 (compared to 4.3 in 2020 and 2.9 in 2016).&nbsp;



This reduced price volatility — combined with the second-highest average BTC daily price increase of any halving run-up (0.56% daily growth vs. a 0.01% daily drop in the 2020 runup) — points toward a growing public confidence in the Bitcoin market. This holds true even when accounting for BTC’s recent price drop, and the fact that prices are twice as stable as the previous run-up and more consistently positive bodes well for the industry.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/gDhqOCpSdhEuQeRHZ7lGwze4mZx_16zxj3NfBg1pcNVe0uem69tlNcFywT9P2cRsa-smdBM4Tek05er9hT739eV3e-gzGw2h_ZwEdQ_oXhAfE_BtskDJPg8NtjkLXgvwV3ou0Xeko-Qyysz9Cagu6uo" alt=""/></figure>



<a href="https://flipsidecrypto.xyz/flipsideteam/bitcoin-halving-PDnIDK"></a>BTC’s gradual, sustained price growth is especially remarkable given the heightened, volatile transaction volume in recent months, which is usually accompanied by erratic price movements. This consistent price support suggests that investors are increasingly viewing BTC as a more stable asset, contributing to a more mature, self-reinforcing Bitcoin ecosystem.&nbsp;



Record whale wallet inflows



Bitcoin’s outlook looks even more optimistic when considering that net flows reached a record-breaking 2.3 million BTC over the past three months among wallets that hold at least 1 BTC — a 45% increase over the previous cycle. While BTC whale inflows dropped 15% between the 2016 and 2020 cycles, 2024 has not witnessed any major sell-off events. Instead, 2024 is setting multiple new records in single-day BTC whale inflows, which is a strong indication of Bitcoin’s continued deep-pocketed support.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Increasing user sophistication</h2>



Unlike the frenzied new user activity that propelled the previous cycle, we are seeing signs that this year’s pre-halving activity has a higher rate of participation among more experienced existing BTC holders.



Heightened activity among existing users



As expected, the number of active daily addresses has increased relative to 2020, though not as significantly as the jump between 2016-2020. However, the number of new BTC addresses created leading up to the halving is lower than in 2020, which suggests that current market activity is largely driven by existing participants rather than new entrants.&nbsp;



Read more from our opinion section: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-different-institutions-investors">This Bitcoin halving will be different — the institutions are here</a>



The argument that existing BTC holders are deepening their engagement seems especially true given the trend-defying surge in transaction volume in recent months, relative to the number of BTC addresses created this year.



More balanced exchange net flows



It’s also worth noting that net BTC outflows from centralized exchanges (CEXs) are down 13% compared to the 2020 run-up, although this run-up is still seeing significant net outflows of BTC from exchanges. Net outflows are often interpreted as a bullish signal, as more BTC is transferred to private wallets and sell pressure drops as the supply of tradable BTC decreases.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/CkwnIVsr41S8pUGq6hXgz0BW4g87F1hDANzXstCoNI5Cj2yx7u5XEl5zQdTCfOll1Vf3tVd7KMmLAKZru7Awwf714mm542wUrSsf3bN0GVyU1uocR14Yw5FrjXGAtFprLCZBhFiqXFM-x-PcHumNTcg" alt=""/></figure>



<a href="https://flipsidecrypto.xyz/flipsideteam/bitcoin-halving-PDnIDK"></a>And while 2024 also logged the highest single-day inflow of BTC of any halving run-up, this may simply indicate more nuanced market behavior as market participants split between holding and trading.&nbsp;



All of which is to say, the fact that net BTC flows to and from exchanges have not skewed excessively one way or another, relative to past cycles, indicates a more balanced, moderate investor sentiment as we approach the next halving.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Slow and steady wins the race</h2>



A significant cohort of the crypto community expected a massive pre-halving dump leading up to this year’s halving, but these fears appear to be overblown. While BTC&#8217;s value has trended down in recent days, this is still the first cycle to see a new all-time-high in BTC&#8217;s value pre-halving, and the 2024 run-up still appears to exhibit the most consistently positive growth of any recent cycle.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



From this perspective, the fact that BTC’s value has not experienced any massive upwards swings recently may be taken as a positive sign. Rather than undergoing seismic price shifts and frenzied sentiments, we may be witnessing the beginning of a new phase in Bitcoin’s history — one characterized by gradual but consistent growth, sustained market confidence and more balanced user behavior.&nbsp;



In contrast to the dramatic ebbs and flows of some other crypto sectors, this even-keeled growth may be exactly what the industry needs.&nbsp;



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


<div class="wp-block-post-author-biography">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&#8217;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.</div>


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



Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.

Bitcoin’s most promising, least dramatic halving is almost here

Ben Strack

BlackRock continues to attract assets to its bitcoin ETF daily, even as its competitors see inflows into similar funds stall.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



The asset management giant’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) has been a flow-gathering standout since US spot bitcoin ETFs launched on Jan. 11.&nbsp;



It so far has tallied more than $15.3 billion of net inflows — ahead of the $8 billion or so notched by the next-best Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC).



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/blackrock-q1-earnings-bitcoin-fund-inflows">BlackRock bitcoin fund accounts for 20% of the firm’s Q1 ETF net inflows</a>&nbsp;



Grayscale Investments’ Bitcoin Trust ETF (<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/gbtc">GBTC</a>) has kept a slight assets under management edge over IBIT for now — at about $19.4 billion to $17.1 billion, respectively, as of Tuesday. However, GBTC started with about $28 billion in assets upon converting to an ETF in January and has endured nearly $16.5 billion of net outflows.&nbsp;



Youwei Yang, chief economist at BIT Mining said <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/blackrock">BlackRock</a>’s strong brand, competitive fee structure and extensive distribution helps the firm’s bitcoin ETF appeal to <a href="https://twitter.com/EricBalchunas/status/1780249379091198042">institutional</a> investors.



Given the growing institutional interest in crypto, IBIT is well-positioned to surpass GBTC in AUM and “potentially maintain long-term leadership in the digital asset management space,” he added.



“This is the ‘winners take all’ scenario where it’s a positive spiral — the more inflows the more liquidity, and thus less fees and then more inflows,&#8221; Yang told Blockworks.&nbsp;



While IBIT quickly proved to be a leader in the space, its consistent net inflows — particularly of late — have once again highlighted its unique status compared to competitors.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/blackrock-bitcoin-etf-battle">Is it too soon to name BlackRock the bitcoin ETF segment winner?</a>



Nine US spot bitcoin ETFs saw zero inflows on both April 12 and April 15, according to Farside Investors <a href="https://farside.co.uk/?p=997">data</a>. IBIT’s net inflows amounted to $111 million and $73 million on those days, respectively.&nbsp;&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">Okay too many questions about <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Bitcoin?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Bitcoin</a> ETFs and zero flows &#8212; a few quick thoughts: 1. On any given day, the vast majority of ETFs will have a flow number of ZERO &#8212; this is very normal. There are ~3,500 ETFs in the US. Yesterday 2,903 of them had a flow of exactly zero&mdash; James Seyffart (@JSeyff) <a href="https://twitter.com/JSeyff/status/1780243642851995735?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 16, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



ETF.com analyst Sumit Roy in January called the BTC fund asset race between BlackRock and Fidelity <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/blackrock-fidelity-etf-flows-race">“a heavyweight fight that could go either way.”</a> Fast forward more than two months, and IBIT’s net inflows stand at nearly double those of FBTC.&nbsp;



The lack of inflows for Fidelity Investments’ bitcoin fund on April 12 snapped a 63-day streak for the offering.&nbsp;



Meanwhile, IBIT’s run of days with net inflows continues, standing at 66 days after welcoming $26 million of investor assets on Tuesday.&nbsp;



The streak is unprecedented for a new ETF and very rare for such a fund of any age.&nbsp;



The BlackRock bitcoin ETF passed the 65-day inflow streak set by iShares MSCI USA Min Vol Factor ETF (USMV), according to <a href="https://twitter.com/EricBalchunas/status/1779841828239323330">data</a> posted by Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Eric Balchunas. IBIT could tie a 67-day run set by the Vanguard FTSE Developed Markets ETF (VEA) if it sees net inflows Wednesday.



BlackRock likely “ticks the most investor due diligence boxes” of the spot <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/bitcoin-etf">bitcoin ETFs</a> given its competitive fee, large asset base, liquidity and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/wealth-manager-bitcoin-etfs-allocators">availability on platforms</a>, according to CoinShares research head James Butterfill.



IBIT is positioned to be the long-term asset leader in the bitcoin ETF space, he added.&nbsp;



“Being issued by the largest asset manager in the world gives it a lot of credibility in the eyes of investors,” Butterfill told Blockworks. “It has been very successful in other markets in the same way too.”



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



Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.

BlackRock extends bitcoin ETF inflows lead as category demand slows

Michael McSweeney

The price of bitcoin dipped below $60,000 during Wednesday’s afternoon trade as the crypto market continued to showcase its trademark volatility.&nbsp;



BTC’s price has hit a local low of $59,658, TradingView data shows, though the price has recovered somewhat to trade around $60,600.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1630" height="1192" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/BTCUSD_2024-04-17_12-31-35.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-84376" style="width:702px;height:auto" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/BTCUSD_2024-04-17_12-31-35.png?w=1630 1630w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/BTCUSD_2024-04-17_12-31-35.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/BTCUSD_2024-04-17_12-31-35.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/BTCUSD_2024-04-17_12-31-35.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/BTCUSD_2024-04-17_12-31-35.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/BTCUSD_2024-04-17_12-31-35.png?w=351 351w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/BTCUSD_2024-04-17_12-31-35.png?w=357 357w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/BTCUSD_2024-04-17_12-31-35.png?w=299 299w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/BTCUSD_2024-04-17_12-31-35.png?w=80 80w" sizes="(max-width: 1630px) 100vw, 1630px" /></figure>



Bitcoin (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/btc">BTC</a>) last traded below $60,000 on March 5, an event which occurred before the cryptocurrency surged to new all-time highs in the following days. BTC hit an all-time high of $73,780 on March 13 and has seen continued volatility since that time.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-all-time-high">Bitcoin price surges past $69K to hit new all-time high</a>



Some market-watchers have <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/empire-newsletter-start-to-bitcoin-halving-week">pointed to macroeconomic factors</a> for the volatility around bitcoin, like persistent inflation in the United States. Traditional equities, too, are in the red today, <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/market-data">according</a> to MarketWatch, with the S&amp;P, Dow and Nasdaq trading down as of 12:25 pm ET.&nbsp;



As Blockworks’ Casey Wagner reported in today’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Empire newsletter</a>, the macro picture is a complicated one —&nbsp;and will likely remain so given that Fed Chair Jerome Powell has indicated that long-signaled rate cuts will take longer than anticipated.&nbsp;



“The recent data have clearly not given us greater confidence, and instead indicate that it’s likely to take longer than expected to achieve that confidence,” Powell said Tuesday during a press conference.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-slip-powell-delay-rate-cuts">Cryptos slip as Powell doubles-down on delaying rate cuts</a>



The timing of today’s price decline is also notable because bitcoin is set to undergo a transaction reward <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-grayscale-interview">halving</a> this weekend. The number of new bitcoins produced per block will fall from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC. The halving is expected to occur late Friday or early Saturday ET, according to estimates. 



Ethereum’s native asset (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/eth">ETH</a>) accompanied bitcoin in its own brief dip below a key level. According to TradingView, ETH dropped to a local low of $2,914 before recovering somewhat. At the time of writing, ETH is trading at around $2,965.



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



Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.

Bitcoin dips below $60K as pre-halving volatility reigns

Following the Bitcoin halving, some mining behemoths appear poised to take a more aggressive approach than others when it comes to acquiring machines, properties and even companies.



A number of segment companies have <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/mining-firms-prepare-for-bitcoin-halving">touted their preparedness ahead of the halving</a>, an event after which per-block mining rewards go lower.



After the halving — expected to hit on April 19 or 20 — miners will collect 3.125 BTC for each block it mines, down from the current level of 6.25 BTC.



Industry watchers expect the per-block reward reduction to spur pain for miners, particularly ones with less capital to deploy and higher energy costs.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-crypto-miner-consolidation">Bitcoin miner consolidation appears imminent as halving looms</a>



While there is little doubt consolidation across the space will take place, the specific shape those mergers and acquisitions (M&amp;A) will take — and who will be on each side of the deals — remains up in the air.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Those poised to acquire&nbsp;&nbsp;</h2>



The best positioned acquirers appear to be the ones with the biggest balance sheets.&nbsp;



Enter Marathon Digital and <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/riot-blockchain">Riot Platforms</a>, which each had more than $1 billion worth of combined cash and BTC at their disposal as of March 31.



<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/marathon-digital">Marathon Digital</a> executives said it would <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/marathon-digital-2023-q4-earnings">use the “dry powder” on its balance sheet</a> to help it roughly double its hash rate to 50 exahash per second (EH/s) by the end of 2025.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The company has already started, buying <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-mining-giant-gets-bigger">two facilities in Texas and Nebraska</a> — before then purchasing another facility owned by Applied Digital for $87 million in cash.&nbsp;



Adam Swick, the Florida-based miner’s chief growth officer, told Blockworks last week that Marathon could step in after the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/bitcoin-halving">halving</a> to buy machines and sites from industry peers who “stumble” — or potentially purchase companies outright.&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>



Riot Platforms has focused on buying new mining machines, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/riot-plots-hash-rate-growth">ordering 66,560 MicroBT machines</a> for $290.5 million in December and 31,500 more miners in February.



The company noted in a news release earlier this month that it intends to deploy these miners in its facilities throughout 2024 and 2025, ultimately raising its self-mining hash rate capacity to 41 EH/s. It also continues to <a href="https://www.riotplatforms.com/bitcoin-mining/corsicana/">expand</a> upon its facility in Navarro County, TX.&nbsp;



A Riot spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment on the company’s post-halving <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/m&amp;a">M&amp;A</a> strategy.&nbsp;



But more machine buys are very likely for Riot given that it had an option to purchase up to 265,000 more MicroBT miners after its 66,000-plus machine order in December. That would bring its self-mining capacity to 100 EH/s over the long-term, the company has said.&nbsp;



CleanSpark has been vocal about its acquisition intentions, noting it plans to be an active buyer within the post-halving M&amp;A market.&nbsp;



The Las Vegas-based company, like Marathon, has bought sites ahead of the halving, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/cleanspark-site-acquisition-bitcoin-halving">purchasing three facilities in Mississippi</a> for $19.8 million. CleanSpark had about $300 million in cash and 5,021 BTC — worth about $310 million on Tuesday at 12 pm ET — as of March 31.



“We are now looking beyond halving and expect to be highly active over the coming months given that we have the balance sheet and capital tools to make us one of the most aggressive acquirers in the industry,” CEO Zach Bradford said in a statement.



<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/core-scientific">Core Scientific</a>, a mining giant that emerged from bankruptcy in January, is set to be more “pragmatic” when considering infrastructure growth via M&amp;A, CEO Adam Sullivan said last month.



“We’re going to be much more opportunistic on the machine purchase side…in not only 2024, but 2025, because our opportunity to grow our exahash is really within our existing facility base,” he added.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/adam-sullivan-core-scientific-bitcoin-halving">Core Scientific CEO: Machine buys, deleveraging key around Bitcoin halving</a>



As for <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/hut-8">Hut 8</a>, CEO Asher Genoot said last month the company <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/hut-8-growth-bitcoin-halving">does not plan on growing “at all costs”</a> — noting that the decision to build scale or buy scale will depend on the price.&nbsp;



“We’re very active in the M&amp;A markets, but we’re also very cost-conscious,” Genoot noted at the time. “We’re not going to overpay because we know what the cost is to develop ourselves as well, so we’re running both in parallel very aggressively.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Who could be a seller post-halving?</h2>



Applied Digital agreed to sell its facility in Garden City, TX to Marathon last month for $97.3 million as part of a shift in focus to building out its high-performance computing data centers.



A company spokesperson declined to comment about whether it could look to sell more assets or properties after the halving.&nbsp;



Another pre-halving seller is Greenidge Generation, which agreed to sell to NYDIG roughly 25 acres of land and 44 megawatts (MW) of <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/mining">mining</a> capabilities in Spartanburg, SC. The deal closed in November. The deal helped the company reduce its debt by about $85 million in 2023.&nbsp;



But Greenidge has also built its power capacity through acquisitions and development, noted CEO Jordan Kovler. It most recently purchased 12 acres in Mississippi with 32.5 MW of mining capacity.



Kovler added that the company could look to buy private miners and additional properties after the halving.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



“We continue to evaluate potential M&amp;A and partnership opportunities, especially those that will help us make progress against our key <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/artificial-intelligence">AI</a> initiatives to expand data center capacity and further grow Greenidge’s access to low-cost power,” he said.



When asked about potentially being a seller, Kovler added: “We are always open to discussing any transaction — [whether] it is a specific site or a merger with another company — provided that the transaction has financial merit and will create value for Greenidge’s shareholders.”



Compass Point Research &amp; Trading analyst Joe Flynn said in an April 9 research note that Stronghold Digital’s debt and limited access to capital markets puts it at a disadvantage to some peers. The company could benefit from selling its “valuable” infrastructure, he added.&nbsp;



Stronghold CEO Greg Beard told Blockworks that if Stronghold is deemed an attractive M&amp;A target by an industry peer, such a deal would be “something to consider.”&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-outlook-for-public-miners">Financial trouble for bitcoin miners: A look back, and ahead as the halving looms&nbsp;</a>



Argo Blockchain said in December 2022 <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/argo-bankruptcy-still-on-the-table">it was looking to avoid bankruptcy</a> despite having “insufficient cash” to sustain operations for much longer.



The company last month closed on the sale of its facility in Mirabel, Quebec — using the $6.1 million in proceeds to pay the remaining mortgage on the facility and reduce its outstanding debt to Galaxy Digital.



Argo Blockchain declined to comment on potential further sales.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Big deals between public miners could be sparse&nbsp;</h2>



Elliot Chun, a partner at crypto advisory firm Architect Partners, previously told Blockworks he expects “meaningful” mining-related M&amp;A in the second half of 2024 and into next year — noting “a much healthier buyer set.”&nbsp;&nbsp;



But Chun said he doesn’t expect any large publicly traded bitcoin miners to join forces around the halving — barring a play to diversify geographically.



“If you made it through this last cycle, I think you have confidence that [your] growth strategy, as well as your operating acumen, is very high,” he said.



Galaxy analysts wrote in a February <a href="https://www.galaxy.com/insights/research/bitcoin-big-halving-year/">report</a> that the better capitalized miners and more liquid miners with low debt levels are more likely to scoop up smaller miners. Private miners that are vertically integrated, or those with low valuations, may be attractive targets as well, they said.



Matthew Schultz, executive Chairman of CleanSpark, said during a Tuesday X Space that “ongoing discussions” have taken place between public mining companies in recent months.



“The issue is when you look at consolidation, the point is to grow and benefit from scale,” he added. “The only reason that a company would be acquired rather than be the acquirer is if they have a less efficient fleet.”



A number of <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-impact-on-at-home-miners">smaller and less efficient miners</a> will be forced to unplug post-halving. While that could present opportunities for consolidation as larger miners look to buy those companies’ data center space, the value of such a firm could extend only to its infrastructure.



“As far as a headline-grabbing transaction, there might be one or two,” Schultz said. “But I think for the most part the majority of the [larger public miners] are well-positioned for halving.”



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



Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.

Buyers and sellers: How bitcoin miners are thinking about post-halving M&A

The iris-scanning identification platform Worldcoin plans to launch a layer-2 later this summer, the project announced Wednesday morning.&nbsp;



Currently, Worldcoin runs on the popular Ethereum rollup Optimism. Worldcoin’s layer-2, named World Chain, will be built using Optimism’s software set, the OP Stack. World Chain will use its proof of personhood technology alongside financial incentives to try making it harder for bots to turn a profit.



Worldcoin is a Sam Altman-backed startup using biometric data to, in the project’s telling, distribute a universal currency and verify humanness in the age of AI. Worldcoin <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/worldcoin-not-in-us">launched over the summer</a> and just recently <a href="https://worldcoin.org/blog/announcements/tfh-world-app-passes-10-million-users">surpassed</a> ten million users on its World App wallet.&nbsp;



<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/worldcoin">Worldcoin</a> says with the growing usage, its current blockchain home is getting a bit cramped. Tiago Sada, the head of product, engineering and design at Worldcoin developer Tools For Humanity, <a href="https://dune.com/queries/3251203/5440632?Chain+List_e71750=OP+Mainnet&amp;Summary+-+Trailing+Num+Days_n26d66=14">told</a> Blockworks that approximately 43% of all activity on Optimism is currently related to Worldcoin.



In an interview with Blockworks, <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/optimism">Optimism</a> Chief Growth Officer Ryan Wyatt said Worldcoin migrating from Optimism to the OP stack “builds on the momentum” the software has seen with partners also including Base and ZORA. Projects built with the OP Stack share 2.5% of sequencer revenue with the Optimism Foundation, Wyatt added.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/evm-smart-contract-deployments-optimism">Two-thirds of EVM smart contract deployments in 2024 are from Optimism: Report</a>



There are many <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/layer-2-2">layer-2s</a> at this point, but Worldcoin thinks it can distinguish itself by prioritizing human transactions over bots. Bots and World Chain “power users” will pay&nbsp; slightly more in gas fees to subsidize gas for casual users, most of whom only transact on-chain a couple of times per month, Sada said.&nbsp;



Trading bots are popular in crypto for things like executing trades faster or carrying out automated strategies. A slew of DEX bots tracked by a Dune <a href="https://dune.com/whale_hunter/dex-trading-bot-wars">dashboard</a> did $131 million in daily volume over the past seven days.&nbsp;



Bots can make blockchains less workable for human users though. Bot-related spam is partially <a href="https://x.com/0xMert_/status/1776023674098754014">culpable</a> for Solana’s recent congestion woes, for example.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-network-congestion-transaction-volume">Solana’s cheap fees are turning out to be a curse — for now</a>



The Worldcoin Foundation, a non-profit supporting Worldcoin’s development, will collect the higher gas fees from bots and redistribute them to humans, Sada noted.&nbsp;



“It&#8217;s not even a fair competition,” Sada said of bots trading against humans. “All blockspace goes to bots and then just the [leftovers] can go to humans, and so we want to flip that.”



On World Chain, humans will not only pay less in gas fees but will also be “prioritized for faster confirmation times,” according to a press release.&nbsp;



Worldcoin hopes its bot disincentivization will drive more organic usage on its layer-2. Iris-scanned World App users get WLD airdropped to them every two weeks — and WLD will be used as a gas token on World Chain. Worldcoin’s core team will focus on developing an ecosystem of real-world apps focused around things like payments, stablecoins and identity, Sada said.&nbsp;



Still, Worldcoin’s anti-bot focus could strip the layer-2 of a large driver of trading volume on blockchains.&nbsp;



Bots can create a revenue stream that Worldcoin might lose, Wyatt conceded, but he noted: “If you think about Worldcoin prioritizing humans and actually having ten million users, it&#8217;s not crazy to see them get to 100 million, 300 million users in the future.”



“Maybe there&#8217;s short term opportunities that they miss out on revenue, but you&#8217;ve got to play the long ball here and they are well positioned to do so,” Wyatt said.&nbsp;



WLD tokens currently <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/worldcoin">trade</a> at around $4.94, per CoinGecko. The project’s idea of a universal basic income may be seeing some promising early returns: One user recently used his WLD to <a href="https://x.com/tiagosada/status/1775646587857039662">buy</a> himself a goat. 



But it hasn’t been all sunshine and farm animals in Worldcoin land. The platform continues to face regulatory scrutiny over its data collection methods. Worldcoin is <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/worldcoin-taking-legal-action-against-spain">battling a temporary block</a> on its data collection in Spain. Portugal similarly issued a temporary <a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/currencies/sam-altmans-worldcoin-ordered-stop-data-collection-portugal-2024-03-26/">halt</a> on Worldcoin data collection late last month. <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/worldcoin-kenya-regulators">Regulators in France, Germany, and Kenya</a> have also expressed concerns about Worldcoin.



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



Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.

Worldcoin teases ‘World Chain’ layer-2

Casey Wagner

Bitcoin’s next halving event, where the reward for miners is cut in half, is slated to come any day now.&nbsp;



Historically, halving events have been followed by new all-time high prices for bitcoin, so traders are optimistic. But given bitcoin’s recent run, escalating geopolitical tensions, and an increasingly uncertain macroeconomic outlook, analysts say this time could be different.&nbsp;



Blockworks sat down with <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/grayscale">Grayscale</a> researcher Michael Zhao to discuss the possible outcomes and get tips on what investors should be watching.&nbsp;



Keep reading for excerpts from Blockworks’ interview with Zhao.



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



Blockworks: What does history tell us about halving cycles and pricing?



Zhao: While there have only been three halvings in the past, there tends to be a price increase after the halving after a few months. Given there’s a sample size of only three previous events, it&#8217;s hard to say that the price increase is due to the halving. The halving itself is already known to all market participants, so something like a decrease in issuance that’s already well-known theoretically shouldn’t impact the market at all.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Blockworks: What is different, if anything, about this <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/bitcoin-halving">halving</a>? What impact will this have on pricing?&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/state-of-bitcoin-development-ahead-of-halving">Here’s what the current state of Bitcoin development looks like ahead of the halving</a>



Zhao: The halving means the Bitcoin protocol is working exactly as it was programmed to. I think the only difference between this halving and the last halving is the different market dynamics between one: ETF flows representing a counter to an even lower issuance [and] two:<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/binance-ends-support-for-bitcoin-nfts"> increased activity around ordinals</a> and excitement surrounding Runes.&nbsp;



ETF flows seem to be a pretty straightforward story that’s been covered extensively; reducing the inflation rate by halving brings down potential sell pressure. While 3.125 BTC per block might seem like a small number, assuming there are around 52000 BTC produced annually post halving, at a price of $70,000, that’s $3.6 billion of potential sell pressure that is reduced annually. It adds up.&nbsp;



<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ordinals">Ordinals</a> and the Runes launch (Runes are essentially another standard for a fungible token on <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/bitcoin">Bitcoin</a>) will probably spike transaction fees on the day of the halving and will continue to see more and more interest from the crypto native crowd. I’m unsure if this will cause anything significant for price, but this activity will be beneficial for miners, who will see increased transaction fees.



Blockworks: We&#8217;ve seen increased institutional and retail interest in recent years, especially <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-approves-bitcoin-etf">with the launch of bitcoin ETFs</a>. How are these investors thinking going into the halving?&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/etfs-helped-legitimize-bitcoin-halving-cme">ETFs helped ‘legitimize’ bitcoin ahead of halving: Q&amp;A</a>



Zhao: I think broadly that others think that price will increase post-halving, given what they’ve read or seen. I think they are probably right. I would caution them that they should study both the crypto and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/empire-newsletter-start-to-bitcoin-halving-week">macro environments surrounding</a> each of the previous halvings and understand how those factors might have had a larger impact on Bitcoin’s price, more so than the halving itself.&nbsp;



Blockworks: The narrative around the halving seems to be price-positive, but are there potential downsides?



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-outlook-for-public-miners">Financial trouble for bitcoin miners: A look back, and ahead as the halving looms&nbsp;</a>



Zhao: It might be a stretch, but there seems to be a competition between the miners right now, where some players are trying to crowd out other players by increasing hash rate, selling bitcoin etc., making it less profitable to mine. While miners have become a smaller and smaller source of Bitcoin volume over time, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-btc-price-implications">the price of bitcoin could be impacted</a> by this sort of internal competition amongst miners. However, I expect that this won’t be that big of a deal long-term.



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



Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.

Q&A: What to watch ahead of the bitcoin halving 

David Canellis

Katherine Ross

<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The great monolithic hope</h2>



As Solana users wait to see whether a new patch makes it any easier for transactions to go through, it’s clear there’s a lot riding on it.



Besides Bitcoin, Solana is arguably the poster-boy for monolithic blockchains. Much of Solana’s thesis rests on the notion that it’s decentralized to the point that it can’t be easily compromised, while being fast and cheap enough to handle everything that degenerates can throw at it (like memecoins).



If Solana can do all that without suddenly becoming hyper-expensive — as has been the case with Ethereum and Bitcoin when onchain activity is high — then it must be valuable.



Solana Labs wants to achieve that while keeping the overwhelming majority of transactions entirely on mainnet. Co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko has been <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/lightspeed-yakovenko-layer-2-scaling">outspoken</a> about the importance of doing so from a user experience perspective.&nbsp;



The thinking goes like this: Why risk fragmenting Solana’s user base — and all that liquidity — by spreading them across multiple blockchains, each with their own set of apps and risk profiles? It’s not like that turned out <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/noble-solve-cosmos-liquidity">great for Cosmos</a>.



Scaling by tinkering with the base layer may be more effective in the long run. One part of this week’s v1.17.31 <a href="https://github.com/solana-labs/solana/commit/3a7c03365262bb6907505deaa3eb61c4c9d7e02f">patch</a>, for instance, aims to make it easier for high-quality Solana validators — those with more SOL staked than others — to post transactions by penalizing low-quality validators, or those with ultra-low SOL stakes.&nbsp;



The apparent idea is that largely ignoring low-quality Solana validators might allow the larger network to prioritize legitimate users, namely over the memecoin-trading arbitrage bots that have <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-network-congestion-transaction-volume">flooded the network</a> these past few months.



Tracking the efficacy of the new update is difficult, as is the impact of transaction-heavy projects like Ore <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-price-falls-ore-mining">suspending operations</a> as fixes take shape. The number of failed transactions in each block is more-or-less <a href="https://dune.com/ilemi/solana-compute?hours_t66b1c=120">steady</a>, but that doesn’t at all reflect Solana’s actual congestion.



Solana’s spam problem can only really be measured by the number of transactions that are “dropped,” or ones that are submitted for validation but never actually reach the chain. Only the individuals running validator nodes themselves have that data — and few if any actively report those figures. All other evidence is anecdotal, and there’s still the odd X post indicating some degree of dropped transactions.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1387" height="1003" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/image.png" alt="" class="wp-image-84349" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/image.png?w=1387 1387w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/image.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/image.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/image.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/image.png?w=355 355w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/image.png?w=361 361w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/image.png?w=303 303w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/image.png?w=80 80w" sizes="(max-width: 1387px) 100vw, 1387px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Solana, in orange, took over a decent chunk of the blockchain fee market as memecoin mania set in</figcaption></figure>



Perhaps tracking fees paid to use the Solana network offers some insight into how users operate. During the first week of the year, Solana raked in less than 3% of the total fees across 11 major blockchains, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Polygon PoS, Tron and BSC, as well as layer-2 networks Base, Arbitrum and Optimism.



During the third week of March, when peak memecoin mania reigned, Solana users paid almost $24.4 million to transact — more than 14% of all fees brought in by the analyzed blockchains. Only Ethereum and Tron generated more fees in that week.



Solana’s share of those fees has shrunk ever since — now down to 8% after falling to $13.75 million last week. Tron and Bitcoin, meanwhile, are seeing comebacks.&nbsp;



Overall, users of these networks have paid more than $2.42 billion in fees in 2024 so far, according to Token Terminal data.&nbsp;



Crypto moves fast, and Solana has indeed moved quickly to mitigate the poor user experience.&nbsp;



But if it can’t stick the landing soon, its share of those fees may very well diminish, alongside the monolithic thesis.



—- David Canellis



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



<ul>
<li>Out of the blockchains above, Solana is so far fourth for fees generated in 2024, with $129.9 million leading into this week.</li>



<li>Ethereum, Tron and Bitcoin are leading, with $1.32 billion, $440.6 million and $342.25 million, respectively.</li>



<li>Ether is again slightly <a href="https://ultrasound.money/">inflationary</a>, adding 1,617 ETH ($4.92 million) to the supply over the past seven days.</li>



<li>Uniswap, Lido and PancakeSwap are the top three <a href="https://defillama.com/">protocols</a> for fees this week, with $32.5 million, $23.7 million and $11.8 million, per DeFiLlama.</li>



<li>More than $6 billion in fresh stablecoins have been added onchain in April, adding up to a total $156.92 billion.</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">No pain, no gain</h2>



The halving is set to take place this weekend, dropping mining rewards down to 3.125 BTC per block.



In 2020 — the last time bitcoin underwent the quadrennial event — the price dropped nearly 20% right before the rewards were lowered, falling to $8,106 from a top of $9,876 in the halving run-up.



Obviously, this <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/history-of-bitcoin-halvings-2">halving looks quite different</a>. Not only did bitcoin carve out new all-time highs, but newly launched spot ETFs opened new doors. Global events are impacting bitcoin’s price, too — just last weekend, Iran attacked Israel and bitcoin dropped nearly 10% before slightly regaining.&nbsp;



Before this month, bitcoin notched a seven-month streak of gains. But as Hashdex CIO Samir Kerbage points out, “corrections are part of the process of recovery and bull market cycles.”



Kerbage thinks that bitcoin could see a pullback to the mid-$50,000 range, which would fall in line with past halving cycles. Bitcoin’s previously seen mid-cycle corrections of 30%.&nbsp;



The range given by Kerbage is slightly more positive than other potential outcomes. JPMorgan analysts, for example, believe that bitcoin could drop to around $40,000 post-halving.



The pullback could “point to a very bullish consolidation after a huge leg up over the past two quarters, similar to what BTC experienced from April to September of last year,” Kerbage said.



A correction now doesn’t change an overall positive outlook for bitcoin through the end of this year, Kerbage added, echoing what other analysts have called for. Standard Chartered, for example, believes bitcoin could top $150,000 by the end of this year.&nbsp;



— Katherine Ross



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Trading like a tech stock&nbsp;</h2>



You’re probably focused on this week’s Bitcoin halving. But keeping an eye on the macro landscape isn’t a bad idea right now.&nbsp;



Stocks and cryptos may have recovered from Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-slip-powell-delay-rate-cuts">market-moving comments yesterday</a>, but we are not out of the woods when it comes to macro headwinds.&nbsp;



The Dow, S&amp;P 500 and Nasdaq indexes were all in the green during pre-market trading this morning after a disappointing close. Equities took a turn yesterday afternoon after Powell once again indicated that persistent inflation means any and all interest rate cuts will have to be put on the back burner.&nbsp;



“The recent data have clearly not given us greater confidence, and instead indicate that it’s likely to take longer than expected to achieve that confidence,” Powell said.



Crypto traders didn’t seem to like the comments either. But as of this morning, <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/btc">bitcoin</a> and <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/eth">ether</a> had posted modest recoveries. Bitcoin is still hovering around $63,000, though; it has a long way to go to reach the new all-time high that bulls are hoping will come after the halving.&nbsp;



March’s CPI print last week showed inflation is still elevated, coming in at 3.5% year over year. It’s a far cry from the 2% target central bankers want to see. Plus, a remarkably healthy labor market and retail sales show the US economy is on solid ground.&nbsp;



A booming economy isn’t bad news — unless you were betting on interest rates coming down. If things keep up, we won’t see a rate cut until the fall, if we even get one this year.&nbsp;



Powell, never one to spook markets if he can help it, hasn’t totally abandoned his earlier outlook that a couple rate cuts will come this year. But markets are increasingly thinking we’ll only see one decrease before 2025.&nbsp;



Central bankers will meet six more times before the end of the year, with the next meeting scheduled for May 1.&nbsp;



CME fed futures data shows a 2% chance of a rate cut in May, which is actually up from the estimate yesterday afternoon of a 0.4% chance.&nbsp;



— Casey Wagner



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



<ul>
<li>The SEC is <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-16/sec-targets-its-own-staff-s-texting-nixes-whatsapp-on-agency-s-mobile-phones?utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&amp;utm_content=crypto&amp;utm_medium=social">blocking</a> third-party messaging apps such as WhatsApp and iMessage for employees.&nbsp;</li>



<li>NFTs are <a href="https://www.paypal.com/us/legalhub/upcoming-policies-full?locale.x=en_US&amp;v=1&amp;utm_source=unp&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=RT002546&amp;utm_unptid=c09814e8-fbef-11ee-b99a-3cecef476576&amp;ppid=RT002546&amp;cnac=US&amp;rsta=en_US%28en-US%29&amp;cust=&amp;unptid=c09814e8-fbef-11ee-b99a-3cecef476576&amp;calc=62d42c0952025&amp;unp_tpcid=online-user-agreement-change-email&amp;page=main%3Aemail%3ART002546&amp;pgrp=main%3Aemail&amp;e=cl&amp;mchn=em&amp;s=ci&amp;mail=sys&amp;appVersion=1.246.0&amp;tenant_name=PayPal&amp;xt=145585%2C104038%2C124817&amp;link_ref=ua_upcoming-policies-full">getting the boot</a> from PayPal’s purchase and seller protection programs starting May 20.&nbsp;</li>



<li>One US senator wants to <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-16/stablecoin-law-push-gets-surprise-boost-from-crypto-skeptic-sherrod-brown">combine</a> stablecoin rules with marijuana banking regs, according to Bloomberg.&nbsp;</li>



<li>Snap is adding a <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/17/snap-plans-to-add-watermarks-to-images-created-with-its-ai-powered-tools/">watermark</a> to AI-generated images on its platform, TechCrunch writes.&nbsp;</li>



<li>New Zealand’s central bank is <a href="https://consultations.rbnz.govt.nz/money-and-cash/digital-cash-in-new-zealand/">undertaking</a> a public consultation on CBDCs as part of a “multi-year” digital cash project.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>



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



What do Norway and Arkansas have in common?



If you guessed “looming restrictions on the bitcoin mining industry,” congrats!&nbsp;



Norway’s government is developing data center-centric legislation that would allow them to potentially push crypto mining facilities out of the country, according to Norwegian media outlet <a href="https://www.vg.no/nyheter/i/9zgyxq/regjeringen-slaar-ned-mot-krypto-datasenter-uoensket-i-norge">VG</a>.&nbsp;



Terje Aasland, the country’s energy minister, reportedly believes that crypto miners are an “unwanted” energy consumer.&nbsp;



Down in Arkansas, meanwhile, legislators are responding to what appears to be local backlash around crypto mining. Specifically, there’s heartburn over a law passed last year that, according to critics, shielded mining firms from local regulations.&nbsp;



Allegations that industry essentially crafted its own rules abound, the <a href="https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2024/04/16/eight-resolutions-on-crypto-mines-advance-out-of-house-committee">Arkansas Times</a> writes, spurring a new round of lawmaking in the state legislature to rework or repeal that earlier measure.&nbsp;



Let’s hope those mining firms have their houses in order ahead of the halving.&nbsp;



— Michael McSweeney



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



Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.

Empire Newsletter: Solana patch targets congestion woes

<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Party pooper in chief</h2>



There are concerns over whether the SEC’s targeting of Uniswap Labs will rain on DeFi’s parade heading into the next potential phase of the current bull market.&nbsp;



Gensler’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-issues-uniswap-wells-notice">legal threats</a> may chase innovators offshore and trigger a Web3 brain drain. Or perhaps crypto projects, which may have launched in the US, simply won’t debut at all, for fear of a Wells notice — or worse.&nbsp;



Uniswap Labs CEO Hayden Adams <a href="https://twitter.com/haydenzadams/status/1778126466984575166">swore</a> to fight any lawsuit that comes its way, but the market has still sharply reacted. <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/uni">UNI</a> — the native crypto of the Uniswap exchange which doubles as a DAO governance token — sank as much as 45% after the notice was disclosed last week and has barely bounced back.



UNI’s losses were enough to pull the DeFi sector below centralized finance (CeFi) in terms of market dominance for the first time in over three years, per data from The Tie.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/tqGk2qmKe5FIzgdPYhKw066Gs1zBzQYxTAZpD-0l_Lx4fveVmJGViUbCLg84jFQPNecE3Yn8oFy5Yf1CMG9WXajnlS4MQswzGR7jzYDtITODJNwYJen0Mna6MMOtjJ3knGPe12-_kLvdiLjN3mFB55g" alt=""/></figure>



Each line shows indexed market dominance for different sectors, based on capitalizations of cryptocurrencies related to those segments. CeFi consists of native tokens for exchanges including OKX’s OKB and Bitfinex’s LEO, alongside those for centralized lending platforms like Nexo, and many more.



DeFi is otherwise made up of cryptocurrencies tied to DAOs and protocols including Uniswap, Maker, Athena, and Aave, among others. CeFi is currently about 4.3% of the total crypto market while DeFi represents nearly 3.6%.



Despite their outsized mindshare, memecoins are only 2% of crypto. Memecoins held practically the same dominance in April 2021, as bitcoin neared its first major peak of that year. So, memecoins aren’t exactly bigger today than during the last bull market.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/QrVehrHCT6h5lJKJDvBsehzWBNYU-GR2h8WMSQWBUPQVXMt8hNBgvZyWtTRnXcIscQZEfqGFUcdjNSbLi5EwRwzJgD2y6yTlL_EQw3YM88DG28LjrG--n8C8Vn95ZTjYG_wFuSi9xBk1V8se1P_dfJY" alt=""/></figure>



Dogecoin’s lackluster performance against bitcoin is largely to blame for the segment lagging behind. A raft of new memecoins have indeed exploded in value, but that hasn’t been enough to make up for dogecoin’s underperformance.



Other big plays of this cycle — DePIN, real-world assets and decentralized social media — are seeing varied success. DePIN’s dominance has actually been cut by more than half over the past three years, from 1.85% to 0.72%.&nbsp;



But again, a segment leader has dragged the rest down with it, with filecoin (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/fil">FIL</a>)’s bitcoin ratio collapsing by more than 65% over the past year. Render, which powers the decentralized computing marketplace of the same name, is now practically tied with FIL for largest DePIN cryptocurrency by market cap, after its bitcoin ratio more than doubled in the past year.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/7FceuAy24HvH_KrxqSJ9x_8ATbK7WeQIbK73TJ65d3OoIlTKZXw69bdsvDnszjidQY3KexU1leluCMqfzQAd3CNPi6cGrl5ybNeny07EysyRVDO-4fvOKu-dXB_P_FgtOH5SsGkXT63xzlZtoIrE2v4" alt=""/></figure>



SocialFi has meanwhile tripled its market dominance in three years, from 0.03% to 0.09%. Tokens tied to real-world asset platforms like Centrifuge, Goldfinch and Ondo have gained even more, blowing past SocialFi, as well as last cycle’s favorites move-to-earn and fan tokens.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/socialfi-web3-social-media">What is SocialFi? Unpacking crypto’s answer to social media</a>



All this goes to show that finding success in crypto markets isn’t just about picking the next big narratives. It also takes backing the right horses in each race, with age seemingly often working against former front-runners.



The same can’t be said for bitcoin. Its market dominance is near its three-year highs, now 54%, as rival <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/layer-1">layer-1s</a> lose ground on the whole.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-us.googleusercontent.com/rvlhyyh7sB2wwXhReMia4fnTetY1449uT1hy_oyULjyzt4RrInIl4_CZizHyzRCn8b7PE4dZoBZA2fVQTr4BpnU-0NzqOYBqFHdqa7on2mYPE1cQN6AEv91GQIOJFI9OIuoGA82vlHFyjoQI9SlOmDk" alt=""/></figure>



— David Canellis



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



<ul>
<li>The total ETH locked in Ethereum mainnet DeFi is up to 16.32 million ETH ($48.62 billion), the most in over a year. SOL in Solana DeFi has so far <a href="https://defillama.com/chain/Solana?currency=SOL">stayed</a> flat in April.</li>



<li>Meanwhile, nearly 21,909 validators are <a href="https://www.validatorqueue.com/">queued</a> to join the Ethereum blockchain — a six-month high.</li>



<li>Base now has more native <a href="https://defillama.com/stablecoins/chains">stablecoins</a> than Avalanche: $2.05 billion to $1.72 billion. Most of it is USDC, after a recent pledge to move Coinbase customer deposits to the network.</li>



<li>Margin.fi’s <a href="https://defillama.com/protocol/marginfi?tvl=true&amp;medianApy=false&amp;denomination=SOL">bleeding</a> has slowed since its founder quit. It lost one-third of its total SOL stake in the days following, dropping from around 4.4 million SOL to 2.84 million SOL.</li>



<li>$256.6 million in longs have been <a href="https://www.coinglass.com/LiquidationData">liquidated</a> on centralized exchanges in the past 24 hours.</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">All aboard the ETF train</h2>



It’s 13F szn.&nbsp;



The SEC’s 13F form requires institutional investment managers to disclose their holdings quarterly if they manage over $100 million in assets.&nbsp;



Throughout our reporting since January, multiple analysts and experts have highlighted the 13F filing because this batch is our first look at who’s investing in the newly launched funds on an institutional level.&nbsp;



On the other hand, it’s still early for a lot of institutional investors. So we may not see a lot of funds with a lot of assets under management (AUM) disclose holdings in a spot bitcoin ETF…yet.&nbsp;



Valkyrie’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/valkyrie-bitcoin-etf-wallet-address">Steven McClurg told Blockworks in February</a> that the firm had spoken to financial advisers and “overwhelmingly, the response is that they’re not ready yet.”



Because the quarter only ended last month, it’s still early for some of these firms to file their 13Fs, and many of the larger positions will likely be reported closer to May. But the early bird gets the worm, right?&nbsp;



So who is already in this space? There are a lot of smaller financial planner offices with exposure to various bitcoin ETFs. One of the first such firms to disclose holdings was Burkett Financial Services, which holds roughly 600 shares of BlackRock’s IBIT.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-interview-bitgo-ceo">Despite bitcoin ETF approval, institutions are on the sidelines: BitGo CEO</a>



Then you have firms like <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1729677/000108514624001693/xslForm13F_X02/infotable.xml">LexAurum</a>, which holds nearly 12,000 shares of IBIT worth roughly $430K at current prices.&nbsp;



Brookstone Capital Management owns 85,000 shares of Fidelity’s bitcoin ETF and roughly 9,000 of Bitwise’s ETF, according to SEC <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1599584/000106299324008407/xslForm13F_X02/form13fInfoTable.xml">filings</a>.&nbsp;



These numbers may not be flashy or as big as some in crypto want. But they show that institutions are slowly entering the market and, if this trend continues, the appetite for <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/bitcoin-etf">bitcoin ETFs</a> — and potentially other crypto-based ETFs — is poised to grow.



— Katherine Ross



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Tax man inbound&nbsp;</h2>



Hopefully everybody filed their taxes yesterday, or at least sought an extension. The <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/irs">IRS</a> is betting a lot of crypto players probably didn’t, however.&nbsp;



Guy Ficco, the IRS’s chief investigating officer, said over the weekend that the agency is preparing to battle more crypto tax crimes this year.&nbsp;



2024 may be one of the final years under the current US crypto-tax policy framework. In March, the Department of Treasury released its 2025 revenue proposals, including new ideas on how to cash in on crypto trading and related activities.&nbsp;



The IRS says it&#8217;s finally time to bring all digital assets under existing wash trading rules, a change that, if passed, would nix a popular — and oftentimes lucrative — trading strategy already banned in equity markets.&nbsp;



The Department wants to add a 30% excise tax on electricity used for any companies that mine crypto. If the proposal is adopted, miners would be required to report the amount and type of electricity used and the cost, when purchased externally.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/us-treasury-2025-greenbook-crypto-taxes">US Treasury once again proposes new crypto tax rules to “modernize” code&nbsp;</a>



Miners that lease equipment would also be responsible for reporting electricity values and firms that use off-grid power would have to pay 30% of estimated costs.&nbsp;



The Biden Administration first proposed excise taxes — along with a slew of other crypto tax rules — on miners last year, citing environmental concerns.&nbsp;



The plans haven’t gotten off the ground yet, so no need to rush to learn any new rules. In the meantime though, there are some things you can do now to make next April 15 a little easier.&nbsp;



<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/taxable-crypto-events-usa-2024">Keep a record of everything</a>. If you made a trade (even if it’s crypto to crypto) it’s probably a taxable event, so write it down. Airdrops have a tax burden, too, so don’t forget to record the initial value of whatever you received. There’s no such thing as free money!



— Casey Wagner



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



<ul>
<li>The Bank of England still hasn’t made up its mind on whether to <a href="https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/britcoin-hold-bank-of-england-blockchain-tech-152500661.html">issue</a> a CBDC, Yahoo Finance writes.&nbsp;</li>



<li>Franklin Templeton’s crypto team <a href="https://twitter.com/fti_da/status/1779979775651561691?s=46">explored</a> Runes, the upcoming token standard built on Bitcoin.&nbsp;</li>



<li>A group of banks and payment firms are <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-15/barclays-citi-are-among-banks-testing-tokenized-deposits-in-uk">testing</a> tokenized deposits in the UK, according to Bloomberg.&nbsp;</li>



<li>Microsoft <a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/microsoft-invest-15-bln-emirati-ai-firm-g42-new-york-times-reports-2024-04-16/">bought</a> a $1.5 billion stake in G42, an AI startup based in the UAE, Reuters reports.&nbsp;</li>



<li>Sullivan &amp; Cromwell may <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-15/ftx-controversy-derails-top-law-firm-s-bid-for-binance-role?utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&amp;utm_content=markets&amp;cmpid%3D=socialflow-twitter-markets&amp;utm_medium=social">lose</a> out on a job working with the DOJ on Binance oversight because of the law firm’s work for FTX, per Bloomberg.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>



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



Leave it to <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ftx">FTX</a> to generate some bipartisan unity in Congress.



Senators <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/elizabeth-warren">Elizabeth Warren</a>, D-Mass., and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, are about as far apart politically as two lawmakers in Washington can get.&nbsp;



But when it comes to <a href="https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2024.04.12%20Letter%20to%20CFTC%20re%20FTX.pdf">prying</a> details out of the CFTC on their meetings with disgraced FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, it’s time to link arms.&nbsp;



Specifically, the pair want to know what was said between SBF and agency Chair Rostin Behnam, who reportedly messaged directly with the recently convicted crypto mogul.



Warren (perhaps rightfully) is <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/legislation-crypto-greatest-enemy">viewed as an enemy of crypto</a>. But digging into possible coziness between the US government and one of the industry’s most infamous scammers? Sounds good to me.&nbsp;



— Michael McSweeney



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



Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.

Empire Newsletter: Uniswap’s SEC woes drag DeFi below CeFi

Andreessen Horowitz raised $7.2 billion, co-founder Ben Horowitz disclosed in a new blog post on Tuesday.&nbsp;



The funds were raised for five of their “venture strategies” including American Dynamism, Games, Apps, Infrastructure and Growth. The largest raise was for growth, coming in at $3.75 billion. Games and American Dynamism each raised $600 million.



While it’s not clear how the freshly raised funds will be used, the firm’s Games venture has previously expressed interest in Web3 <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/gaming">gaming</a>.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/a16z-2024-ideas-list">A16z’s crypto ideas list for 2024 spotlights AI, gaming</a>



“Games are also driving innovation across the entire consumer ecosystem, pioneering best-in-class mechanisms for user engagement, retention, and monetization, such as microtransactions, battle passes and Web3 tokens,” the venture’s page <a href="https://a16z.com/games-fund-one-building-the-future-of-games/">said</a>.&nbsp;



Crypto was not among the initial raises, though Bloomberg <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-16/andreessen-horowitz-raises-7-2-billion-plans-more-for-2025">reported</a> that the firm is “still on track to raise additional funds” next year, citing people familiar.&nbsp;



“This marks an important milestone for us,” Horowitz <a href="https://a16z.com/new-funds-new-era/">said</a> in a blog post.&nbsp;



Last fall, Axios <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/a16z-venture-capital-crypto-fundraise">reported that the venture capital firm</a> was eyeing $3.4 billion for some of its funds.&nbsp;



The report from last October backs up Bloomberg’s reporting from earlier today, stating that the new investing vehicles could come in 2025.&nbsp;



<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/a16z">A16z</a>, in late March, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-startup-accelerators-growing">announced that it picked 25 start-ups</a> for its spring 2024 crypto startup accelerator.&nbsp;



The firms received a $500,000 investment in exchange for a16z receiving 7% equity.&nbsp;



Outside of its accelerator, the VC firm has been actively investing and leading rounds in the crypto world. It led a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/espresso-shared-sequencers-funding-a16z">Series B funding round</a> for Espresso Systems.&nbsp;



“At its core, crypto is a technology movement that builds tools for better human cooperation at a larger scale — especially when the cooperating parties mutually distrust one another,” Ali Yahya, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, <a href="https://a16zcrypto.com/posts/article/investing-in-espresso/">said</a> in a post at the time.



In February, a16z announced that it was <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/a16z-series-b-eigenlayer-investment">investing $100 million in Series B</a> funding for EigenLayer.



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



Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.

A16z raises $7.2B

New television spots by crypto stalwarts Coinbase and Grayscale are set to air during NBA and NHL playoff games, the companies told Blockworks.



The commercials come around the highly anticipated bitcoin halving — slated to occur on April 19 or 20 — when per-block mining rewards are set to drop from 6.25 BTC to 3.125 BTC.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The Coinbase commercial, posted on X Monday, shows a spotlighted motorbike in a warehouse-type setting apparently used for pizza deliveries.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“Over time, your money gets you less,” a voice states. “Does bitcoin?”&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">Food for thought: What if money was designed to get you more over time, not less?<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Bitcoin?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Bitcoin</a> <a href="https://t.co/z8eHF8JltQ">pic.twitter.com/z8eHF8JltQ</a>&mdash; Coinbase 🛡️ (@coinbase) <a href="https://twitter.com/coinbase/status/1779902729860591745?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 15, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



The commercial shows how much pizza a person could have bought with one bitcoin in 2012, as one box appears on the back of the bike. A stack of boxes is added to show how much 1 BTC was worth in 2016.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-different-institutions-investors">This Bitcoin halving will be different — the institutions are here</a>



By 2020, the flood of boxes knocks over the bike. Cardboard rains down further to quantify the 2024 value of a bitcoin in pizza terms.&nbsp;



“Roughly every four years, the future supply of bitcoin is reduced,” the spot states. “So historically, you get more. Not less.”&nbsp;&nbsp;



The ad is set to start airing Wednesday on TNT, ESPN and ABC during NBA playoff games, a <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/coinbase">Coinbase</a> spokesperson told Blockworks. It will run through April 22.&nbsp;



Grayscale Investments’ ad, published to YouTube on Monday, touts the company’s standing as the world’s largest crypto asset manager. The firm’s Bitcoin Trust ETF (<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/gbtc">GBTC</a>) holds roughly $20 billion in assets under management <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/gbtc-net-outflows-etf">despite consistent net outflows</a> in recent months.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



“Sometimes investing feels like you’re going at it alone, especially when it comes to adding crypto to your portfolio,” the ad states as a man tries to row a racing boat and hang a painting by himself. “But it doesn’t have to be that way.”



<iframe loading="lazy" width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OLcEYi7Ov4M?si=RgylABhg930iTG44" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>







It ends with the tagline: “Crypto investing begins here.”



In addition to appearing online, the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/grayscale">Grayscale</a> spot will air on CNBC, CNN, Golf Network, News Nation and NHL Network, a spokesperson told Blockworks — including during the NHL playoffs.



The upcoming crypto commercials during popular sporting events come after companies in the segment opted not to advertise during the Super Bowl in February.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-firms-super-bowl-advertising">Crypto players skip Super Bowl ads, plot other marketing opportunities</a>



Coinbase is not new to getting out its message during the NBA playoffs, launching a <a href="https://twitter.com/coinbase/status/1648043528797278215">campaign</a> focused on updating the financial system for last year’s postseason games.&nbsp;



The crypto exchange was one of the crypto companies to advertise during the 2022 Super Bowl. It more recently ran a television spot in February featuring a sad Abraham Lincoln on a penny, and the tagline: “Money is happier when it’s digital.”



Grayscale ads have <a href="https://twitter.com/Grayscale/status/1773741995087053057">appeared</a> in various <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-must-advertise-airports">airports and train stations</a> for years.



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



Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.

Coinbase and Grayscale unveil new TV spots in time for bitcoin halving 

Macauley Peterson

Crypto exchange OKX released the public mainnet of its zkEVM rollup, X Layer, late Monday.



This new platform integrates with the OKX Exchange and OKX Web3 Wallet, enabling users to bridge assets easily, similar to Coinbase’s Base optimistic rollup and Bybit’s Mantle Network spin off.



The major difference is X Layer’s use of the Polygon zkEVM CDK, which has been live on testnet since November.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/okx-launching-l2-polygon">Centralized exchange OKX launches decentralized L2 with Polygon CDK</a>



This makes it part of the so-called “<a href="https://blockworks.co/podcast/lightspeed/e14b89fa-e5f0-11ee-94eb-d754c5abecb8">Aggregation Layer</a>” (or AggLayer), Polygon’s bid to address UX-pain points like liquidity fragmentation among Ethereum layer-2 networks, Polygon CEO Marc Boiron said.



The platform is expected to quickly host a wide array of dapps, including well-known DeFi offerings like Curve and QuickSwap, <a href="https://www.okx.com/learn/x-layer-mainnet">according</a> to a blog post by Chief Marketing Officer Haider Rafique, published Tuesday.



“The impressive roster of talented developers who have already started to build on X Layer is a testament to the potential of the network,” Boiron said.



The AggLayer currently consists of the Polygon zkEVM and Astar Network, but asset transfers between them are not yet available, an <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/okx">OKX</a> spokesperson told Blockworks.



X Layer cuts down on transaction fees by using an alternative to Ethereum for data availability (DA), technically making it a validium rollup, similar to Polygon’s plans for <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/polygon-pos-to-validium">upgrading its own PoS chain</a>.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/layer-2-secured-by-ethereum">So your layer-2 is ‘secured by Ethereum’ — what does that mean?</a>



The exchange’s token <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/okb">OKB</a> serves as a gas token, so the chain is tailor-made for users branching out from the exchange experience to Web3. Otherwise, using the chain requires bridging OKB from another chain, like Ethereum. An OKX spokesperson told Blockworks that an OKB faucet was not currently available on mainnet.



<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/polygon-zkevm-post-mortem">Polygon’s zkEVM</a> uses ETH, as do most rollups, but does not yet make use of <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-improvement-proposal-4844">Ethereum’s blob space</a> created following the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-dencun-upgrade-mainnet">recent Dencun upgrade</a>. So it will be a few weeks before Polygon’s own chain sees the benefit of cheaper alternatives to Ethereum call data.



Crypto.com also has a zkEVM-based rollup in development — Cronos Chain — that uses rival zkSync’s rollup tech stack.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-rollups-using-zkstack">Cronos broadens scaling roadmap from Cosmos to Ethereum</a>



Looking ahead, X Layer aims to enhance wallet services, improve transaction speeds and provide comprehensive support and documentation for developers, Rafique wrote.



OKX has increasingly taken an “ecosystem” approach, including the launch of its own Web3 wallet that competes with MetaMask.



The exchange is a contributor to the Polygon CDK and plans to “provide an advanced tech-stack for builders in collaboration with Polygon Labs, according to Rafique.



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



Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.

OKX turns on its L2 mainnet, joining the exchange chain club

Cryptocurrencies extended their decline Tuesday while stocks posted a modest rebound following Monday’s stronger-than-expected retail sales data.&nbsp;



Bitcoin and ether slid around 3% each Tuesday, erasing Monday’s slight gains. Bitcoin hovered around $62,400 at time of publication. The largest cryptocurrency looks poised to enter its next halving — expected to happen late this Friday — in the red.&nbsp;



While some traders are betting on the halving being bitcoin’s next catalyst for a run, researchers warn that the event is likely already priced in.&nbsp;



“The halving itself is already known to all market participants, so something like a decrease in issuance that’s already well-known theoretically shouldn’t impact the market at all,” Michael Zhao, researcher at Grayscale, said.&nbsp;



Equities on Tuesday inched into the green. The S&amp;P 500 and Nasdaq Composites gained about 0.1% by mid-way through the trading session.&nbsp;



US retail sales in March increased 0.7%, according to data released by the Commerce Department Monday. Analysts had expected a 0.4% rise. The report, coupled with last week’s hotter-than-expected inflation data, has traders skeptical that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates before this summer.&nbsp;



A healthy consumer market, as good as it may seem, is not boding well for the interest rate cutting schedule. CME futures <a href="https://www.cmegroup.com/markets/interest-rates/cme-fedwatch-tool.html?redirect=/trading/interest-rates/countdown-to-fomc.html">data</a> show a 0.4% chance of a rate cut in May and a 19% chance central bankers will slash rates in June.&nbsp;



“More recent data show solid growth and continued strength in the labor market, but also a lack of further progress so far this year on returning to our 2% inflation goal,” Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said Tuesday during a panel discussion at the Washington Forum on the Canadian Economy.&nbsp;



Rates are going to have to stay higher for longer, he added, confirming the widespread market sentiment.&nbsp;



“Fed Expectations has hopes for a June rate cut dashed by the hot CPI report and now the market must deal with the possibility of just two — or even fewer — rate cuts in 2024,” Tom Essaye, founder of Sevens Report Research, said. “Remember the market started the year expecting seven cuts.”



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



Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.

Cryptos slip as Powell doubles-down on delaying rate cuts

Jeff Albus

One key driver behind Solana’s current congestion issues is giving the network a break.



Hardhat Chad, the pseudonymous creator of the Ore project, has <a href="https://x.com/HardhatChad/status/1780249831207837726">announced</a> the project will suspend all mining activities, effective immediately. This decision comes just weeks after Ore&#8217;s launch, amid growing pains for the Solana network that have included severe congestion issues and network instability.



Ore’s price more than <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/ore">tripled</a> on news that the token’s supply would be paused, from around $93 before the announcement to over $300 shortly after, before drawing down to around $215, according to CoinGecko. Solana extended its bearish week even further, falling roughly from $131 to $127.



Ore is a blockchain-based project that implemented a proof-of-work (PoW) token distribution mechanism on the Solana network to explore a possibly more engaging and equitable way of distributing cryptocurrency.



Since Ore began trading earlier this month, the network’s diehards have flocked to what some <a href="https://x.com/odai_0x/status/1776079833484640715">dubbed</a> Bitcoin on Solana.&nbsp;



Bitcoin uses a PoW mechanism to distribute new coins and validate transactions. While secure, this system has been known to result in high energy consumption and slow transaction times.



The Solana blockchain, which has high throughput and low transaction costs, operates differently. It uses a proof-of-history (PoH) consensus combined with proof-of-stake (PoS), which significantly speeds up transactions and reduces costs.



Ore was introduced as an experiment to explore how proof-of-work could be implemented on Solana as a fun and fair token distribution mechanism. It aimed to merge the security and distribution model of PoW with Solana&#8217;s high-speed transaction capabilities.



Shortly after launch, Ore became the most active program on Solana by transaction count, according to the project&#8217;s creator.&nbsp;



Amid the deluge of transactions, as many as 75% of non-vote Solana transactions were not going through in early April, according to a Dune Analytics <a href="https://dune.com/scarn_eth/solana-tx-fail-rate">dashboard</a>. That figure is closer to 60% now.



While colloquially referred to as “failed” transactions, Solana’s <a href="https://solana.com/docs/core/transactions/retry">problem</a> is actually that the network is failing to schedule some transactions effectively. That means they’re dropped from the network before ever being included in a block. Regardless, to the end user, a frustrating fraction of on-chain actions are failing to land.&nbsp;



Ore highlighted how Solana’s low fees can actually work against the network when the transaction cost isn’t high enough to discourage spam.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-network-congestion-transaction-volume">Solana’s cheap fees are turning out to be a curse — for now</a>



This realization has led to the current pause in Ore mining activities, allowing Hardhat Chad and their team to redesign the Ore contract for a Version 2 (v2). The next iteration aims to optimize the existing system, address inefficiencies that gave some miners an asymmetric advantage, and introduce structural incentives for holding the token, which were previously lacking.



“Welcome back, Solana,” one industry watcher <a href="https://x.com/AuronnBE/status/1780260014034153735">wrote</a> on X.&nbsp;



As Solana continues to deploy patches like v1.17.31 to improve performance and manage congestion, Ore&#8217;s v2 is being developed to better align with these network upgrades. All existing Ore tokens will be upgradable one-for-one into the new v2 token, ensuring fairness and continuity for current participants.



The mining halt is only temporary, as Ore hopes to bring its PoW concept back to Solana under more favorable conditions.



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



Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.

Solana price falls further as Ore suspends mining on the network

Zack Shapiro

The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether the Ethereum Foundation’s sale of ETH since the September 2022 “Merge” constitutes an unregistered securities offering in violation of US law, according to <a href="https://fortune.com/crypto/2024/03/20/sec-gary-gensler-ethereum-security-commodity-crypto-foundation/">Fortune</a>.



If the reports are true, then this investigation — just ahead of the SEC’s May deadline for a decision on an Ethereum spot ETF (more on that later) — raises the question: Did Ethereum’s switch to proof-of-stake transform it into a security?&nbsp;



The short answer is “no.”&nbsp;



The slightly longer answer is “still probably no.”



ETH tokens are not, in and of themselves, “securities” in the way that stocks or bonds are. They do not confer legal ownership of any business entity or contractual rights to any kind of payments — they are just code in a decentralized database.&nbsp;



When we talk about ETH “being a security,” we are instead actually asking whether the offer and sale of ETH tokens (in a particular context, between a particular buyer and seller) constitutes an “investment contract” under the dreaded Howey test. Under the Howey test, the offer and sale of an asset like ETH constitutes an investment contract if (1) someone invested money, (2) in a “common enterprise,” (3) in the expectation of profit and (4) where that expectation is based on the “essential managerial efforts of particular others.” 



The four Howey “prongs” have already been discussed and debated to death in the crypto space, so I’ll avoid beating a dead horse here. But if you look closely at the language from Howey, I think two things quickly become apparent about the sale of ETH tokens over time:



First, the sale of pre-mined ETH tokens to investors in Ethereum’s 2014 ICO sure looks a lot like an “investment contract.” ICO participants invested money (BTC) in order to receive their allocation of ETH (Howey prong #1). That BTC was pooled to fund a common effort led by Vitalik and the Ethereum Foundation to develop the Ethereum blockchain and produce the ETH tokens (Howey prong #2). Given that the Ethereum blockchain “pre-launch” at the time of the ICO, the only plausible motivation to take part in the ICO was to make money on the price appreciation of ETH (Howey prong #3). And, at the time of the ICO, if Ethereum was going to succeed as a protocol and ETH was going to succeed as an asset, Vitalik and his developers were going to have to roll up their sleeves and put in some good old “managerial efforts” to make the tokens worth anything (Howey prong #4).



Had the SEC brought suit around the time of the Ethereum ICO, they would have almost certainly won in court, and that may well have been the end of ETH.&nbsp;



However, the SEC didn’t bring suit, and the statute of limitations for such a claim (typically five years) would have run out in 2019. And importantly, the Ethereum ecosystem has evolved in ways since its ICO that make current sales of ETH tokens look less like an investment contract than they once did.&nbsp;



For one thing, the proliferation of applications (think DeFi and NFTs) utilizing ETH for “gas” provides a &#8220;consumptive utility&#8221; for ETH tokens that challenges the notion that current-day purchases of ETH are solely, or even mainly, based on profit expectation.&nbsp;



Even more important, however, is the so-called “<a href="https://www.sec.gov/news/speech/speech-hinman-061418">Hinman speech</a>” delivered in 2018 by Bill Hinman, then the director of corporation finance at the SEC, where he proposed that a digital asset’s classification under Howey could evolve over time.&nbsp;



According to Hinman’s logic — to the extent that Ethereum’s success no longer hinges on the efforts of a particular entity, like Vitalik or the Ethereum Foundation — the sale of ETH tokens would no longer fulfill the requirement of the final Howey prong that there be “particular others” upon whose efforts a buyer would rely for their profits. 



Read more from our opinion section: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/staking-eth-no-security">Staking or not, ETH is no security</a>



Therefore, regardless of the legally dubious nature of the ICO, the Ethereum network (at least from 2018 onwards) has become “sufficiently decentralized.” This means that its native token constitutes a digital commodity like bitcoin, rather than an investment contract, subject to SEC jurisdiction.



Since the Hinman speech, the securities law status of ETH has been at a bit of a stalemate. The SEC has never explicitly endorsed the notion that ETH (even pre-merge) is a digital commodity — which they readily concede with regard to bitcoin. And Gary Gensler regularly<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIcNGfF8FDA"> ties himself in knots</a> before Congress trying to evade questions about his view on ETH’s current legal status.&nbsp;



But the fact remains that (at least until now) the SEC has never brought an action specifically alleging that primary or secondary sales of ETH constitute investment contracts under Howey (like they did with over a dozen other tokens in the Coinbase, Binance and Kraken lawsuits). The SEC even went as far as to approve the listing of ETFs based on ETH futures contracts that trade on the CME, which would be hard to understand if the Commission felt that ETH tokens traded as unregistered securities.



But what about Ethereum’s migration to proof-of-stake? Does the fact that ETH tokens can be staked for “yield” change the legal situation and turn either (A) current-day sales of ETH, or (B) the act of staking ETH into securities offerings under Howey?&nbsp;



In my opinion (and I spend an unhealthy amount of time thinking about crypto securities law), no.



With regard to present-day sales of ETH tokens — whether directly from the Ethereum Foundation or on the secondary market — I don’t think ETH’s staking functionality makes much of a difference under Howey. That is, the ability to stake does not make ETH tokens any less useful for individuals who might buy them for their consumptive utility (i.e. gas fees).&nbsp;



And while the Ethereum Foundation does indeed still hold a large supply of ETH tokens, there is no reason to think that the introduction of staking makes the foundation’s “managerial efforts” “essential” to the financial success of ETH in some way that was not the case at the time of the 2018 Hinman speech.



The question of whether the act of staking ETH in order to receive “yield” in the form of staking rewards constitutes an investment contract under Howey is more nuanced — but properly understood, the answer should still be no.&nbsp;



Read more from our opinion section:&nbsp;<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ether-commodity-or-not" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Ether is the Schrödinger’s cat of crypto</a>



When you run a validator node and stake 32 ETH tokens in exchange for rewards, what you are actually doing is providing a service to the Ethereum network and getting paid for that service. You only get the reward if you honestly validate blocks, and you stand to lose your stake to “slashing” if you attempt to validate dishonestly.&nbsp;



This is very different from the type of passive “yield” you might expect to receive from holding a bond or a dividend-paying stock or real estate asset (which rewards ownership and not activity). Unlike with these traditional financial instruments, you are not relying on “managerial efforts” of other people in order to profit when you stake ETH directly, but rather on your own skill and honestly as a validator.



This question becomes trickier, however, when we move from direct proof-of-stake validation to “staking services” such as those run by exchanges like Coinbase and collaborative staking protocols like Lido and Rocketpool.&nbsp;



At one end of the extreme, you could see an argument for how custodial staking services could look quite security-like under Howey (given how reliant depositors would be on the staking service provider’s efforts in order to earn yield).&nbsp;



At the other end of the spectrum, you could imagine a purely on-chain tool that allowed users to jointly stake their ETH in collective, automated, validator nodes with clearly defined behavior looking much more like direct staking than an investment contract.&nbsp;



Where the specific services by Coinbase, Lido and Rocketpool fall on this continuum is very much an open legal question — and one that in Coinbase’s case is being actively litigated in federal court in the Southern District of New York.&nbsp;



But none of this makes ETH itself, even when being used for staking purposes, an investment contract and therefore none of this seems to justify the SEC’s new investigation.



Why, then, might the SEC be pursuing this type of weak claim about Ethereum?&nbsp;



Observing the success of the Bitcoin ETF — and the SEC&#8217;s dissatisfaction with its launch — suggests that the investigation into Ethereum might be a pretext to deny the upcoming spot ETH ETF application.&nbsp;



Moreover, acknowledging Ethereum’s transition to a commodity despite its seemingly illegal ICO genesis could concede a legal strategy meant to apply to other token projects that the SEC believes aiming to circumvent securities classification (in other words, creating a loophole).&nbsp;



The SEC’s actions could be seen as a strategic move to maintain regulatory leverage over the crypto market, rather than a clear-cut determination of Ethereum’s status as a security.



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


<div class="wp-block-post-author-biography">Zack Shapiro is the Managing Partner at Rains and leads the law practice. Previously, he was co-founder and general counsel of BZR, a startup backed by Founders Fund, Greycroft, and Abstract Ventures. Zack is a graduate of Williams College and Yale Law School, and started his legal career clerking in the federal courts for the S.D.N.Y. and the 2nd Circuit, and at Davis Polk &amp; Wardwell. Zack serves in various advisory roles in the crypto industry, including as a member of the Pleb Lab Accelerator advisory board, and as a Legal Fellow at the Bitcoin Policy Institute.
</div>


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



Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.

No, ETH isn’t suddenly a security now

It appears ever more likely that fund issuers will launch crypto ETFs in Hong Kong very soon. This move could catalyze acceptance of such funds elsewhere, with some speculating that other regulators in Asia could be next to follow suit.



In the US, the Securities and Exchange Commission had held out on approving spot bitcoin ETFs for years, restricting investors from engaging with cryptocurrencies through regulated financial avenues. This barrier prevented the broader financial adoption and accessibility of blockchain assets.



That all changed in January when the SEC <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-approves-bitcoin-etf">approved 10 spot bitcoin ETFs for trading</a> on US exchanges. This approval not only marked a significant shift in policy but also led to approximately $12.5 billion in net inflows to these funds, demonstrating a robust market appetite.



Fast forward just weeks after the US bitcoin ETF approvals, to when the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/london-stock-exchange-crypto-etn-proposals">United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority said it would support</a> “recognized investment exchanges” listing physically backed bitcoin and ether exchange traded notes (ETNs) for professional investors.



The London Stock Exchange indicated that such listings <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/london-stock-exchange-crypto-exchange-traded-notes">could be expected by the end of May</a>.



Now in <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/hong-kong">Hong Kong</a>, fund issuers have indicated in recent days that they are looking to launch spot bitcoin and ether funds soon.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/hong-kong-reportedly-looks-to-approve-crypto-etfs">Hong Kong could green light spot bitcoin and ether ETFs next week: Report</a>



HashKey Capital and Bosera International noted in a Monday <a href="https://group.hashkey.com/en/newsroom/bosera-hashkey-co-launch-spot-etfs">post</a> they had gained approval from Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission to offer crypto-related asset management services.&nbsp;



A HashKey spokesperson declined to comment further.



A representative for Hong kong-based China Asset Management said the firm is planning to launch a spot bitcoin ETF and a spot ether ETF.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Still, issuers do not appear to have official approval to launch such funds. An SFC spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.&nbsp;



“Regarding the approval progress, we are currently not in a position to provide comment, as it is the decision of SFC,” the China Asset Management spokesperson told Blockworks in an email.&nbsp;



<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/uk-crypto-regulation-panel-das">Developments in the UK</a> and Hong Kong “reiterate the global ripple effect of the spot ETF approvals in the US,” according to Tim Bevan, CEO at crypto ETP issuer ETC Group.



Michael Silberberg, head of investor relations at Alt Tab Capital, added in a statement that the Hong Kong move was likely to attract more institutional investors. He believes that this would result in more liquidity and better price discovery.



“As other jurisdictions observe Hong Kong’s approach, it will likely encourage similar regulatory frameworks worldwide, further legitimizing bitcoin as an investable asset class and driving more growth in BTC and across the market,” Silberberg said.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Who’s next to approve such products?</h2>



While the US became the latest to approve spot <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/bitcoin-etf">bitcoin ETFs</a>, other countries had beat them to it.



Canadian fund group Purpose Investments launched its spot bitcoin ETF on the Toronto Stock Exchange in February 2021 — the world’s first bitcoin ETF backed by physically settled bitcoin.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-etf-fee-level">Purpose Investments, Grayscale defend their higher fees as outflows continue</a>



QR Asset Management <a href="https://blockworks.co/brazil-bitcoin-etf-follows-similar-launches-in-canada">launched Latin America’s first spot bitcoin ETF</a> in Brazil in June 2021.



<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/us-europe-spot-bitcoin-etf">Europe’s first spot bitcoin ETF</a> went live on Euronext Amsterdam last year, though crypto ETNs — debt instruments typically collateralized by the underlying exposure — had existed there for years prior. &nbsp;&nbsp;



Karim Saber, a research associate at crypto ETP issuer 21Shares, said Asia appears poised to take the lead in approving new spot bitcoin ETFs given higher-than-average crypto adoption rates in countries like South Korea, Japan and Singapore.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/apac-web3-2023">The future of Web3 lies in the Asia-Pacific</a>



“The victory of the bitcoin-friendly South Korean opposition party in April&#8217;s election enhances the likelihood of the country approving BTC spot ETFs in the near future,” he told Blockworks.&nbsp;



The winning party had pledged to prioritize offering investors access to such products, Bloomberg <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-05/south-korean-party-pledges-access-to-us-bitcoin-etfs-in-race-for-votes">reported</a> earlier this month.&nbsp;



While South Korea’s recent political shift could lead to regulators approving a bitcoin ETF as soon as this year, Saber noted, Japan and Singapore might not be far behind.&nbsp;



The Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) of Japan said last month it was <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/japan-pension-fund-considers-bitcoin">considering investing in “illiquidity assets” like bitcoin</a>.



That came about a month after the Japanese government advanced a proposal that would allow investment limited partnerships to acquire and hold crypto assets.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/japan-crypto-policy-step-forward">Japan’s crypto policy takes a positive step forward</a>



A March <a href="https://www.independentreserve.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Independent-Reserve-Cryptocurrency-Index-Singapore-2024.pdf">survey</a> of Singaporeans by Independent Reserve found that one-third of respondents would consider investing in an overseas spot bitcoin ETF.



While the Monetary Authority of Singapore has expressed <a href="https://www.zaobao.com.sg/finance/singapore/story20240117-1462706">concerns</a> about retail access to spot ETFs, crypto adoption is evolving in the country.&nbsp;



Singapore app Grab, for example, allowed users to start making payments in BTC, ETH and stablecoins last month. The move highlights “the growing integration of cryptocurrencies into mainstream commerce,” Saber said.



“Therefore, we anticipate Singapore and Japan to increasingly pursue regulatory approval following South Korea,” he added. “The approval in Hong Kong could catalyze discussions this year as Asian countries vie for prominence as the next financial center for innovation.”



Bevan said he expects Japan and South Korea could approve such products in the next six to 12 months — noting that while timelines are hard to predict, “they are all playing catch-up with the US.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Progress in the UK and Australia</h2>



The <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/fca">FCA</a>’s change of stance related to United Kingdom-listed crypto ETNs currently applies to products accessible only to professional investors.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



But the regulator’s cautious “phased approach” is likely a step toward retail access once it assesses the products’ impact with that “more informed participant base,” Mandy Chiu, head of financial product development at 21.co, previously told Blockworks.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-etfs-in-uk">After US bitcoin ETFs, the UK fights for retail to have the same freedom</a>



Over in Australia, additional spot bitcoin ETFs could soon be available as well.



The Global X 21Shares Bitcoin ETF (EBTC) launched on Cboe Australia in May 2022. The fund provides holders an interest in bitcoin held in cold storage by Coinbase.



Asset manager Monochrome last year <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/australian-spot-bitcoin-etf">applied for Australia’s first fully-licensed spot bitcoin ETF</a> under new regulatory guidelines. Monochrome CEO Jeff Yew previously told Blockworks that the proposed fund would be uniquely authorized under the country’s “crypto asset” licensing category, which allows the fund to hold bitcoin directly on the fund level.&nbsp;



It is unclear whether this distinction will attract investors to such a fund. The Global X fund has $93 million in assets under management after about two months on the market — a far cry from several of the much-younger US spot bitcoin ETFs.&nbsp;



“Monochrome expects to receive a positive response for the Monochrome Bitcoin ETF (IBTC) within a matter of weeks, not months,” Yew said.



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



Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.