Casey Wagner

<div id="highlights-block_617c3ad4a2a5d" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Valkyrie withdraws leveraged bitcoin futures ETF three days after filing </li>
 <li>The SEC has instructed issuers with these types of applications to withdraw, according to a source familiar with the matter</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



Three days after filing the first leveraged bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund, Valkyrie has withdrawn its application at the Securities and Exchange Commission’s request, according to a source familiar with the matter.&nbsp;



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">“This strikes me as inconsistent and somewhat problematic,” said Nate Geraci, president of the ETF Store. “The SEC has blessed CME bitcoin futures from a regulatory perspective by allowing bitcoin ETFs to come to market.” </blockquote>



The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has asked other issuers to pull any applications that differ from the already approved structure of investing in bitcoin futures contracts, the source said. 



“Historically, they have allowed leveraged and inverse ETFs to exist in markets they have deemed acceptable,” said Geraci. “For example, the SEC recently greenlit leveraged and inverse VIX ETFs. I’m not sure why bitcoin futures would be any different.”&nbsp;



The Valkyrie XBTO Levered BTC Futures ETF <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001877493/000183988221015489/valkbtfx-485apos_102621.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">was first filed</a> on Tuesday morning. The fund, which intended to <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/valkyrie-files-for-leveraged-bitcoin-futures-etf/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">trade under the ticker BTFX</a>, would have provided 1.25x exposure to the bitcoin reference rate and hold futures, swaps, options and forwards. The application was withdrawn Friday, according to the <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001877493/000138713121010552/valk-aw_102921.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">filing</a>. 



Investors are now watching to see if Direxion, <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/proposed-direxion-etf-would-offer-short-exposure-to-bitcoin-futures/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">which filed for an ETF</a> that would allow investors to systematically short bitcoin futures on Tuesday, will also withdraw. A Direxion spokesperson declined to comment.



The news came as investors and analysts continue to wait for <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/vaneck-ready-to-launch-delayed-bitcoin-futures-etf/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">VanEck’s bitcoin futures ETF</a> to launch. The fund was expected to begin trading this week given their <a href="https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/0001137360/000113736021000971/ck0001137360-20201231.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">post-effective filing</a> was released Wednesday. 



Bitcoin futures-based ETFs began trading last week with the launch of ProShares’ Bitcoin Strategy Fund launched October 19. Valkyrie’s BTF made its Nasdaq debut three days later.



After filing for bitcoin futures ETFs, VanEck and ProShares had also revealed plans in August to launch <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/vaneck-and-proshares-apply-for-ethereum-futures-etfs/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Ethereum futures products</a>. Both fund managers subsequently <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/vaneck-proshares-seek-to-withdraw-requests-to-launch-ethereum-etfs/">withdrew the applications</a> for those proposed ETFs. 



Industry professionals said at the time that the SEC may have told the firms that these ETFs are unlikely to be approved anytime soon.



SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/grayscale-urging-sec-to-approve-bitcoin-spot-futures-etfs-at-same-time/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">previously said</a> in an interview with Blockworks that though she couldn’t comment on exactly why ProShares and VanEck withdrew the filings, the SEC is focused on bitcoin-based products.

Valkyrie Pulls Leveraged ETF Application At SEC’s Request

Shalini Nagarajan

The stage is set for Wyoming to officially adopt a stablecoin — if it so desires — after its Republican governor Mark Gordon signed off the Wyoming Stable Token Act.



The bill enables creation of a specialized stablecoin commission with authority to issue them. It also seeks to employ staff to manage the project with a $500,000 administration budget.



Gordon advised the stablecoin commission be properly set up before it proceeds to mint any tokens. He unspecifically pointed to recent tumult across the crypto sector that should serve as a guide “for what can befall a poorly thought through build-it-and-they-will-come scheme.”



Other aspects, such as qualifications an executive director must have, the type of staff needed, their responsibilities and other financial considerations, should be looked into, he said.



He added that he wasn’t sure whether a robust market for a Wyoming stablecoin exists given the current climate.



Lawmakers first proposed the act last year but were cut short after Gordon exercised his veto authority. Gordon said he was concerned that not all stakeholders had been consulted on the matter. 



He also said there wasn’t enough time to consider the potential impact and that he didn’t want the state to be a first mover without having recognised associated risks.&nbsp;



In a <a href="https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23720110/sf0127_letter_3_17_23.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">letter</a> sent to Wyoming’s Secretary of State Chuck Gary last Friday, Gordon said the state’s legislature worked to improve the act and put forth a “better piece of legislation” than the one he saw last year. 



Gordon highlighted that some concerns still remain, but “enough improvements have been made to the legislation that I have decided to allow the Stable Token Act to become law without my signature.”



He still has some doubts about the impact that the stablecoin act may have on the state’s reputation as a leader in the crypto ecosystem. But he admitted that it needn’t be perfect in order to go forward.



“Innovation does not always wait for the perfect, rather it emerges, is refined, and eventually becomes established. Still, first movers are not aways rewarded. They are, however, vital to progress.”



Wyoming is seen as a friendly state for crypto companies, investors and even DAOs. If the initiatives outlined in the legislation are successful, the state could become a role model in stablecoin territory.



The state&#8217;s stablecoin development comes as two city-endorsed cryptocurrencies — MiamiCoin and NYC Coin — have been effectively snuffed out, although they weren&#8217;t dollar-pegged tokens. 



OKX, the main exchange that listed them, <a href="https://blog.okcoin.com/weve-suspended-trading-for-nyccoin-and-miamicoin/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">suspended</a> their trade earlier this month, citing limited liquidity and potential price manipulation.



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Wyoming Could Be First US State to Issue Official Stablecoin

Sebastian Sinclair

Macauley Peterson

Increased use of digital assets could help to improve the quality of life for society, but they also present challenges to the banking sector, the US Treasury said Wednesday.



Private digital assets, such as stablecoins issued by banks, as well as public central bank currencies, could harm financial stability, increasing the likelihood of sector-wide crises, according to a <a href="https://www.financialresearch.gov/working-papers/files/OFRwp-23-01_digital-currency-and-banking-sector-stability.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">report</a> published by the US Treasury Department&#8217;s Office of Financial Research (OFR).



Their proliferation could make it harder for banks to recapitalize following losses due to digital assets’ ability to depress spreads, meaning the difference between interest rates that banks charge for loans and the interest rates they pay to depositors.



The irony of the well-worn narrative is not lost on market observers, who witnessed a historic run on Silicon Valley Bank earlier this month, despite most of its issues stemming from poor risk management <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/dont-blame-crypto-for-banking-problems">and not its exposure</a> to the nascent asset class.



The OFR report sidesteps the contribution digital assets or CBDCs may make to bank runs and the disintermediation of bank deposits. The focus, instead, is on cases of systemic deleveraging and requisite financial fragility resulting from low levels of bank equity.



The adoption of digital assets can increase household welfare “significantly despite the decrease in financial stability,” the authors wrote — but only up to a point, after which financial instability can become harmful.



“The welfare-maximizing level of digital currency may be less than what would be provided by profit-maximizing issuers in a competitive market,” the report reads. It suggests regulation or other policy interventions may be necessary to square the interests of issuers with what’s best for society.



For instance, the authors caution, if digital assets move closer to a “perfect substitute” for deposits, their issuance is more likely to lead to welfare declines.



On average, digital currency issuance leads to an increase in asset prices and a decrease in their volatility, the report concludes.



In other words, the authors write, financial markets improve even as the financial sector suffers.



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Digital Assets May Be Good for Households But Bad For Banks

In the first crypto-related US Supreme Court appearance, justices appear split over whether to freeze Coinbase customer lawsuits while the exchange awaits appeals decisions.



Coinbase is trying to push two lawsuits into arbitration, seeking Supreme Court intervention after lower courts allowed the cases to proceed.



While Coinbase is separately dealing with a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-serves-coinbase-in-latest-alleged-crypto-securities-violation" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">legal threat</a> from the Securities and Exchange Commission over some of its products, the cases before the Supreme Court have more to do with legal procedure than with digital assets themselves.&nbsp;



<a href="https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-cand-3_21-cv-07478/pdf/USCOURTS-cand-3_21-cv-07478-0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">One</a> was brought forward by a California-based plaintiff who argues a scammer pretending to be a PayPal representative scored remote access to his Coinbase account.&nbsp;



Their digital wallet was said to have been eventually drained of more than $31,000, after which they encountered a “customer-service nightmare.” The victim tried to use Coinbase’s live chat to seek help, but they said they were consistently met with a bot providing futile responses.&nbsp;



The plaintiff later sued Coinbase for violations against the Electronic Funds Transfer Act by not reimbursing him for the loss.



A second case was brought by Coinbase users who claimed the firm violated California’s False Advertising Law by allegedly duping them into a pay-to-play sweepstakes for Dogecoin prizes in 2021.



Coinbase’s user agreement, like some <a href="https://www.ibanet.org/stop-scrolling-read-Ts-Cs-arbitration-agreements-in-crypto-disputes" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">other</a> crypto firms, requires disputes to be resolved by arbitration. Arbitration is primarily a faster and cheaper route than court litigation, which can carry the burden of heavy damages and higher legal fees.&nbsp;



But plaintiffs in both lawsuits bypassed Coinbase’s user agreement and went straight to California courts, which agreed to hear the disputes.



Coinbase immediately requested the court of appeals to block the litigations from moving ahead until a ruling on the matter is finalized.



So, is it right for these cases to proceed before the appellate court’s ruling? Even top court officials aren’t sure. 



<h2>Coinbase Supreme Court ruling could impact big tech</h2>



Six circuit courts maintain that appeals should result in mandatory stays, but three others, including the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals, refused requests to put further litigation on hold.



During arguments, justices shared divided opinions over Coinbase’s wrangling. Others showed they were concerned about the consequences of companies looking to arbitrate customer lawsuits, as this technique generally favors the company over users.



Justice Brett Kavanaugh reportedly questioned the downside for Coinbase — and other companies in the same position — if litigation were permitted to continue before a decision on arbitration could be made.



Kavanaugh pointed out that Coinbase could be forced into “massive settlements” without the appellate court deciding on whether arbitration is the “appropriate forum,” <a href="https://www.law.com/2023/03/21/justices-appear-divided-in-crypto-arbitration-dispute/?slreturn=20230222164131" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Law.com</a> reported.



Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson indicated she didn’t agree with Kavanaugh’s position, saying defendants given the ability to appeal aren’t really forced into settling. “That seems like a pretty significant arrow in their quiver to not settle because they’re about to go to the appeals court, and hopefully the appeals court will move quickly and resolve this in their favor,” she said.



Coinbase’s current situation is notable not only for crypto. The Supreme Court’s decision is relevant to tech companies that also use arbitration agreements when faced with lawsuits (Blockworks has reached out to Coinbase for comment).



Peter Rutledge, dean at the University of Georgia School of Law, reportedly said the court was “closely divided.” He expects most of the justices will eventually be in favor of a default mandatory stay order, which means judicial proceedings could be temporarily stopped.



A trial judge in the Dogecoin sweepstakes lawsuit decided to halt the case until the end of March, after Coinbase moved the Supreme Court to hear the case, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-supreme-court-weighs-coinbase-arbitration-dispute-2023-03-21/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Reuters</a> reported.



The Supreme Court is expected to rule by June end.



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Coinbase Fronts Supreme Court Over User Lawsuits in Crypto First

Despite the world’s second-largest digital asset lagging bitcoin’s performance recently, developments across Ethereum’s ecosystem continue unabated while macro headwinds persist.



With the Shanghai-Capella upgrade <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-set-date-for-eth-withdrawals">slated for April 12</a>, industry participants and investors are now bracing for the initial impact from validators seeking to withdraw and sell their locked-up ether (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/eth">ETH</a>).



ETH fell 4.7% Wednesday as part of a broader market sell-off following US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s press briefing of <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/federal-reserve-interest-rate-25-bps-march">the Fed’s latest interest rate hike</a> and news of <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-sues-justin-sun">SEC enforcement actions against Justin Sun</a> and Tron-affiliated groups and individuals.&nbsp;



Ether remains about 46% higher on a year-to-date basis compared to bitcoin’s (<a href="https://blockworks.co/price/btc">BTC</a>) 65% at $1,750 and $27,700 respectively.



Ether has seen its performance stumble behind bitcoin, which research firm BitOoda attributes in part to the “looming staking withdrawal effect,” according to its latest research note.



Bitcoin’s dominance, measuring its relative market share compared to other digital assets, rose to a nine-month high last week as fears over the global banking sector took hold.



But ether holders depositing their ETH to new validators or liquid staking pools is at all-time highs.



“Ethereum&#8217;s Shanghai upgrade has generated divided opinions on its bullish or bearish impact, and ETH lacks a strong presence in the financial collapse hedging narrative,” Xavier Ekkel, founder of DeFi trading platform prePO said.



The upgrade will induce short-term ETH volatility but “ultimately prove long-term bullish,” he said. “Once staking and unstaking activity becomes more predictable, which might happen sooner than we think, worries about the upgrade will likely dissipate.”



Total ETH staked edged slightly higher last week from 17.6 million ETH to 17.8 million ETH, data from <a href="https://etherscan.io/address/0x00000000219ab540356cbb839cbe05303d7705fa#analytics" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Etherscan shows</a>, while the fees garnered from annualized staking yields dropped by 1.3%, BitOoda said.



That comes as the total supply of ether has <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-deflationary-2-months">decreased for more than two months</a>, which, squared with locked tokens, can lead to an increase in value if demand remains the same or increases.



<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"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ethereum?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ethereum</a> has been deflationary for over 2 months now! <a href="https://t.co/7WnO9lJn1Q">pic.twitter.com/7WnO9lJn1Q</a>&mdash; Lark Davis (@TheCryptoLark) <a href="https://twitter.com/TheCryptoLark/status/1638658463638380544?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 22, 2023</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



BitOoda also estimates roughly 5 million ETH, worth some $8.6 billion at current prices, could be sold off, over time, following withdrawals next month.



However, the exit queue for withdrawals has limitations in place to prevent the entire validator set from leaving, Blockworks <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/effect-ethereum-shanghai-upgrade-price">previously reported</a>, meaning the timeframe for those sales could be up to two years.



Other analysts, including Arcana’s CEO Rich Falk-Wallace, believe roughly 0.2% of ether’s total supply, roughly 245,000 ETH — worth some $427 million — would make its way to exchanges, leading to sell-side pressure over the first few days that withdrawals are enabled.



The impact on price is predicted to be minimal.



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Bitcoin Outshining Ether as Shanghai Looms

The SEC served Coinbase with a Wells notice Wednesday over concerns about alleged securities violations, according to a filing.&nbsp;



The Wells notice, which precedes an enforcement action, states that the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/sec">SEC</a> will be targeting Coinbase’s spot market, staking service, Coinbase Prime and Coinbase Wallet. The agency moves forward with a Wells notice after it has determined laws have been violated through an investigation.&nbsp;



The exchange in response on Wednesday <a href="https://www.coinbase.com/blog/we-asked-the-sec-for-reasonable-crypto-rules-for-americans-we-got-legal">said</a> it has “produced documents and provided two witnesses for testimony, one on the basic aspects of our staking services and one on the basic operation of our trading platform.”&nbsp;



The SEC declined to comment, and Coinbase pointed to its public statements and declined to comment further.



“We are confident in the legality of our assets and services, and if needed, we welcome a legal process to provide the clarity we have been advocating for and to demonstrate that the SEC simply has not been fair or reasonable when it comes to its engagement on digital assets,” <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/coinbase">Coinbase</a> said in its response statement on Wednesday.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The exchange said it’s “confident in the legality of our assets and services, and if needed, we welcome a legal process to provide the clarity we have been advocating for.”



The SEC “simply has not been fair or reasonable when it comes to its engagement on digital assets,” according to the exchange, which added that the company “provided multiple proposals to the SEC about registration over the course of months, all of which the SEC ultimately refused to respond to.”



The Wells notice, Coinbase said, relates to an “unspecified portion” of its listed digital assets, which the company says are not securities. Even so, exchange representatives said there’s still no clear “regulatory path” toward industry compliance with the “current U.S. crypto regulatory confusion.”



“We spent millions of dollars on legal support to build these proposals and repeatedly asked for the SEC’s feedback,” Coinbase said. “We got none.”



Coinbase has met with the SEC on numerous occasions, claiming to have interacted 30 times in more than nine months — without much to show for it, in the exchange’s estimation.



<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">This is a perfect ex: &#8211; CB has 30+ meetings with SEC &#8211; Spends millions drafting a registration proposal despite that literally being the SEC&#39;s job &#8211; Gets ghosted by SEC for 9+ mo &#8211; Promised meeting for clarity with SEC cancelled on 1 day notice &#8211; CB sued for being a bad actor??? <a href="https://t.co/IsNFvmp4tK">pic.twitter.com/IsNFvmp4tK</a>&mdash; Collins Belton (@collins_belton) <a href="https://twitter.com/collins_belton/status/1638662815886999552?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 22, 2023</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



“Regulatory uncertainty in the crypto industry is getting worse,” Coinbase said. “Instead of developing a regulatory framework for crypto, the SEC is continuing to regulate by enforcement only.”



The publicly traded US company said potential enforcements could incur injunctive relief, disgorgement and civil penalties, per the filing.&nbsp;



The notice marks the SEC’s second regulatory action against the crypto industry on Thursday. Earlier in the afternoon, the agency <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-sues-justin-sun">charged Tron network’s Justin Sun</a> with alleged securities violations.



Updated March 22, 2023 at 7:15 PM ET: Additional context and quotes throughout.



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SEC Serves Coinbase in Latest Alleged Crypto Securities Violation

Ben Strack

Notional open interest on the largest centralized crypto derivatives exchange hit a record high Wednesday, with demand for bitcoin options leading the way amid a turbulent time for the traditional finance industry.



Deribit’s notional open interest on the platform exceeded $20 billion Wednesday, according to the company. Most of that was attributed to $11.7 billion from bitcoin options — also an all-time high — and $6.9 billion from ether options.&nbsp;



The record comes after <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/silvergate-collapse-not-crypto-problem">the fall of Silvergate Bank</a>, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/silicon-valley-bank-meltdown-has-little-to-do-with-crypto">Silicon Valley Bank</a> and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/signature-possession-nothing-to-do-with-crypto">Signature Bank</a> in recent weeks, which some said has shaken trust in financial institutions.&nbsp;



“The first cause of it all could be that BTC is finally acting as a hedge for the traditional financial and especially banking system,” said Luuk Strijers, Deribit’s chief commercial officer. “Bitcoin has failed to meet expectations as an inflation hedge in the past but is finally acting as it was intended to do, triggering an elevated level of interest.”



Derivatives exchange CME Group has also seen consistent volume and open interest growth in its crypto futures and options products.&nbsp;



Its average daily bitcoin options open interest in 2023 is up an all-time record of 140% — a notional value of $936 million, a company spokesperson told Blockworks. CME bitcoin options hit record daily open interest on Tuesday, reaching a value of $1.55 billion.



A potential end to rate hikes could also be causing more interest in all risk assets, including bitcoin, Strijers told Blockworks. The <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/federal-reserve-interest-rate-25-bps-march">Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 25 basis points</a> Wednesday, continuing a trend of slower-paced increases after previous bumps of 0.5% and 0.75%.



Luke Hoersten, founder and CEO of bitcoin derivatives exchange Bitnomial, argued bitcoin has emerged as a safe store of value as people realize putting their money into US Treasury-backed cash deposits can be risky. Traders are moving money into bitcoin, he added, and using futures and options to protect themselves from price changes.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“Some traders are worried about synthetic cash-settled exposure because it can debase or de-peg as the environment becomes uncertain and more volatile,” Hoersten said. “Physically settled futures and options are a better choice because they give people native exposure to both cryptocurrency and fiat currency.”



CK Zheng, co-founder and chief investment officer of crypto hedge fund ZX Squared Capital, said he believes bitcoin is “starting a new cycle” after reaching a bottom following the bankruptcy of crypto exchange FTX last November.&nbsp;



He agreed the current banking crisis further validates bitcoin’s thesis as a digital gold of sorts against government money printing, and offered other reasons for the increased open interest in crypto derivatives.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“There are not many natural sellers, like crypto miners, who need to get rid of BTC, [and] the leverage in the crypto industry is no longer a great threat to this ecosystem,” Zheng explained. “The next BTC halving is coming early next year, which is very bullish given the design of the halving process.”



The halving refers to the bitcoin mining reward being reduced from 6.25 <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/btc" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">BTC</a> per block to 3.125, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-halving-a-year-out">anticipated to take place in April 2024</a>.



No matter the exact cause of the Deribit notional open interest record high, Strijers said, increased volatility implies investor interest in instruments that enable them to benefit from protecting themselves from the consequences.



“For us, this implies higher option volumes, an increase in the number of contracts outstanding, and more call buying to position for possible upside,” he said. “Now that the price has increased, we are also seeing some more put activity demonstrating clients&#8217; interest in potentially hedging downward risk,” he said.&nbsp;



The majority of Deribit’s bitcoin options contracts are for the strike price of $30,000. The strike price of an option is the level at which an investor can buy the underlying security in the case of a call, or sell it in the case of a put, before the contract expires.&nbsp;



Bitcoin’s price was roughly $28,100 at 3:00 pm ET — up 13.1% from seven days ago.&nbsp;



“$30,000 is the next resistance level,” Zheng said. “If BTC breaks this level convincingly, it will be very bullish for the near term.”



Updated March 22, 2023 at 5:05 pm ET: Added information about CME Group&#8217;s bitcoin options open interest.



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Deribit Bitcoin Options Open Interest Hits All-time High

The SEC is going after the Tron network’s founder for allegedly selling unregistered securities in the latest action taken by US regulators against crypto industry players.



<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/justin-sun" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Justin Sun</a> orchestrated the “unregistered offer and sale, manipulative trading, and unlawful touting of crypto asset securities,” according to an SEC <a href="https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-59" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">press release</a> and legal documents filed Wednesday in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.



The SEC’s probe extended beyond Sun, however, considering the regulator said it reached a settlement with eight celebrities, ranging from&nbsp;Lindsay Lohan to “Soulja Boy,” for allegedly promoting the tokens in question.&nbsp;



Sun founded the Tron network in 2017. The network launched its mainnet the following year and became a <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/daos" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">DAO</a> in 2021.



The SEC alleges that starting in about August 2017, Sun distributed billions of <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/trx" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">TRX</a> and <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/btt" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">BTT</a> tokens to the public while creating secondary markets on which these assets could be traded.&nbsp;



Because Sun sold these as securities, the commission alleges, he was obligated to register these sales with the SEC, but never did.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The agency is also accusing Sun of “fraudulently manipulating the secondary market for TRX through extensive wash trading,” according to the press release. He allegedly accomplished this through the Tron network, as well as the BitTorrent Foundation, which owned accounts used in the trading, and Rainberry — whose employees transferred funds to facilitate the trading, the lawsuit claims.



The <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/tron" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Tron</a> network did not immediately comment on the charges. Sun did not immediately return multiple requests for comment, but <a href="https://twitter.com/justinsuntron/status/1638742625003130881" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweeted</a> Thursday that the &#8220;complaint lacks merit.&#8221; 



“While we’re neutral about the technologies at issue, we’re anything but neutral when it comes to investor protection,” Gurbir Grewal, director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, said in a statement. “As alleged in the complaint, Sun and others used an age-old playbook to mislead and harm investors by first offering securities without complying with registration and disclosure requirements and then manipulating the market for those very securities.”



An SEC spokesperson did not immediately return a request for further comment.&nbsp;



Including Soulja Boy (DeAndre Cortez Way) and Lindsay Lohan, a total of eight celebrities have found themselves in the crosshairs of regulators. The SEC additionally charged the following for allegedly illegally promoting TRX and/or BTT without disclosing a paid partnership: Jake Paul, Austin Mahone, Michele Mason (Kendra Lust), Miles Parks McCollum (Lil Yachty), Shaffer Smith (Ne-Yo), and Aliaune Thiam (Akon).



Each of the above individuals, with the exceptions of Cortez Way and Mahone, has settled with the SEC for $400,000, the agency said.&nbsp;



It’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ripple-counsel-crypto-usa">not the first time the SEC has targeted a crypto company</a> for issuing a token it deems a security. Ripple has been battling with the agency in court for more than two years over its XRP token, which the vast majority of exchanges delisted when the lawsuit began in 2020.&nbsp;



Sun’s charges may be settled before going to trial.&nbsp;



Updated March 22, 2023 at 7:26 PM ET with additional context and quotes throughout, and March 23, 2023 at 9:25 am ET with Justin Sun&#8217;s comment.



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SEC Sues Tron Network Founder for Allegedly Selling Securities

Michael Bodley

With US single-family home values hovering in a middle-of-the-road range on a year-over-year basis, crypto companies are looking to carve out a slice of the US real estate pie — even as digital assets themselves remain deeply depressed over that same period.



In the latest instance, fintech and single family-focused sales company Roofstock has sold off a Georgia home to RealT via a tokenized Ethereum-based NFT, representatives for both companies told Blockworks on Tuesday. It marked the first collaboration between the two companies.&nbsp;



The first round of the transaction was <a href="https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0xf928d6285b8a4f9ac5a640ae598d7399c331cea7/1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">facilitated</a> by OpenSea, with RealT imposing “heavy restrictions” around the float of the initial fractionalization offering, according to Remy Jacobson, the co-founder at RealT and one of two chief executives at the businesses. A second round will follow later.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/real-estate-investing-guide">The Crypto Native’s Guide to Real Estate Investing</a>



It’s not the first such instance of an <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/nfts" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">NFT</a>-enabled property sale for Roofstock, which has a Web3-focused division that aims to make inroads into the property sector.  



The process is similar to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/roofstock-sells-property-via-nft">Roofstock’s previous tokenized real estate sale</a> of a home in Alabama last month.&nbsp;



“RealT acquires properties sourced by Roofstock into C-Corps which then sell tokenized shares to investors,” the spokesperson said in an additional statement. The idea is to use the tokenized equities originated in the US to provide blockchain-based exposure to investors in other countries.&nbsp;



A spokesperson disclosed metrics behind the fractionalization of the NFT by RealT:&nbsp;



<ul>
<li>670 unique token holders snapped up a total of 722 orders</li>



<li>The blockchain transaction process took two minutes and 46 seconds&nbsp;</li>



<li>The average <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/eth" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">ETH</a>-based purchase equated to about $298.</li>
</ul>



The partnership relies upon creating a separate Wyoming LLC tied to each single-family asset the company has available for sale in its inventory, which acts as a shell for a corresponding wallet holding the buyer’s NFT on <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ethereum" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Ethereum</a> “that has [its] token ID associated with the smart contract,” said Sanjay Raghavan, vice president of Web3 initiatives at Roofstock.   



“The property in question can then be bought and sold on various NFT marketplaces, resulting in instantaneous sale and settlement,” the statement said.



Each buyer holds a “soulbound” NFT, according to Raghavan, a non-transferrable token, meaning that the underlying blockchain mechanics are permissioned in nature.



Each property NFT, as a result, “gets marked with a KYC flag,” Raghavan said, and the prospective owner “can go to OpenSea or any other marketplace where the asset is listed and purchase the NFT.”&nbsp;



Ether collected through RealT’s tokenization offering this week partially divides ownership of the property acquired for 218,000 <a href="https://blockworks.co/price/usdc" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">USDC</a> on OpenSea.



The process facilitating the sale of the Atlanta-area home — which has two bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms and a total of 1,524 square-feet — is being billed as the beginning of a partnership between the two companies, which is kicking off at a time when US regulators are keeping a close eye on crypto. And when murmurs of a real estate bubble waiting to burst have been percolating.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1022" height="680" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/image-7.png" alt="" class="wp-image-49841" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/image-7.png?w=1022 1022w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/image-7.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/image-7.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/image-7.png?w=386 386w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/image-7.png?w=392 392w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/image-7.png?w=329 329w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/image-7.png?w=80 80w" sizes="(max-width: 1022px) 100vw, 1022px" /></figure>



Both executives said they’re putting in place measures to ensure compliance with the relevant US authorities as the outlook for digital asset oversight remains largely mixed.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“Blackrock is saying tokenization is the future, and you can be sure the SEC is listening,” Jacobson said.



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Atlanta Home Tokenized on Ethereum, Nets $214,882 in Under 3 Minutes

Max Thake

Let’s set the scene: The year is 2030, and the Internet of Things has become ubiquitous. Sensors are everywhere, everything’s outfitted with a chip, and you’ve already interacted with twenty IoT service providers before you brushed your teeth this morning without even knowing.&nbsp;



After your morning cup of coffee, dutifully prepared for you by the smart machine that knows your taste better than you do (it also knows your daily routines and may or may not be selling this info), you head for the hairdressers. Via an app, you find and unlock the nearest shared electric vehicle and hit the road as it happily sells off more of your data to Big Tech.



An hour later, as stylish as ever, you head back for the vehicle — only to find that it rejects all of your attempts to get in. You try to hop on the bus, using your phone to pay, but the transaction doesn’t go through. Even a nearby vending machine refuses to sell you your now much-needed emotional support chocolate bar.



<h2>The pieces moving today</h2>



All of the things that you tried to do during your hypothetical day in 2030 relied on transactions involving devices. These devices were leveraging central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), controlled by that self-same central bank. And your friendly central bank was only happy to help when the local authorities, upset by your involvement in some recent protests, wanted to teach you a lesson. The rest is history.



The above scenario may feel far-fetched,&nbsp;but my humorous hyperbole reflects the worst possible future scenario imagined by CBDC critics. The number of connected devices is <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1183457/iot-connected-devices-worldwide/">growing fast</a>, both in business inventories and on the consumer market. The rise of artificial intelligence — yes, that includes ChatGPT, which Twitter can’t get enough of these days — and the way the technology enables connected devices to be <a href="https://www.infoworld.com/article/3663017/how-ai-is-changing-iot.html">more efficient</a> means that more processes will be automated. And this doesn’t just go for things like smart factories: Amazon’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/25/amazon-go-grocery-supermarket-seattle-technology">autonomous shop</a> and the fully-automated <a href="https://metro.co.uk/2022/12/26/mcdonalds-opens-first-restaurant-thats-not-fully-run-by-humans-17996648/">McDonald’s in Texas</a> are both harbingers of just how much automation we will be dealing with daily. And it’s worth noting that my scare tactic of a morning routine is already more or less approaching the status quo in <a href="https://worldcrunch.com/culture-society/china-surveillance-cameras">China</a>.



The fact of the matter is, we are relying on connected devices in more daily activities. It’s not the problem, really; the real problem is the digital infrastructure that the apps — and thereby the increasingly intelligent vehicles, machines, and robots — run on. That’s why the paradigm of machine and human economic relations we are fast heading into needs to run on Web3 rails, with everyone in charge of their own data and assets. The machines are not the enemy, but our legacy methods of running them are.



The interactions between all of these internet-connected devices and the wide world out there include a transactional component. Sometimes it’s about <a href="https://www.consumerreports.org/privacy/connected-devices-share-more-data-than-needed-study-says-a7015033345/">selling your data</a>, and sometimes, it’s more direct, like when you’re using your phone to pay at the grocery store (which is becoming <a href="https://fintechmagazine.com/digital-payments/75-of-consumers-now-using-mobile-wallets-survey">ubiquitous</a>). In today’s world, most of these transactions involve a traditional banking account at a certain point, either the user’s own or an omnibus held by a specific platform for its business needs. In the future, though, these accounts could instead be virtual wallets with CBDCs, digital tokens issued and managed by central banks.



And as wonderful as that might sound, CBDCs and their inherently centralized design enable the issuer to directly control your spending behavior. Digital currencies are programmable, malleable, which makes any sort of control possible. You can set limits on how much a person can keep in their account in order to stimulate economic activity by forcing purchases and investment. You can limit their ability to purchase non-eco-friendly goods, or build carbon offsets into transactions. Oh, and only one plane flight per year. For some, all of this may still sound appealing, but this slope is oh so slippery. Why not just ban everyone you don’t like from buying food?&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



Recent years already saw cases where governments sought to hamper citizens’ ability to transact as a punitive measure, like China’s <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/china-social-credit-system-punishments-and-rewards-explained-2018-4">social credit system</a>, for example, or Canada’s <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/canadian-banks-restrict-funds-to-trucker-protest-groups-11645115277">action</a> against trucker protests. You may feel differently about the people involved, but the mechanisms at play are similar in their logic. We enact our financial freedom by choosing what we purchase and from whom. If this freedom depends on the goodwill of a third party, it’s no freedom at all, and being excluded from the real-world economy is a direct threat to one’s livelihood.&nbsp;



Take these trends, put them together, let them simmer for a bit, and there we are — that doomsday scenario is looking way more realistic. You may have heard about the <a href="https://www.thesocialdilemma.com/">Social Dilemma</a>, where tech experts from Silicon Valley sounded the alarm in an hour-and-a-half long informative yet dystopian documentary about the dangerous impact of social networking’s manipulative underbelly, “brought to you by Big Tech.” We’re next heading towards what you may call “the connected dilemma,” where we either leverage the Internet of Things at the cost of giving away even more intimate data about even more aspects of our lives, or keep some slither of privacy but remain in the Stone Age, comparatively speaking.&nbsp;



But IoT apps don’t have to be built on centralized Big Tech — they can be built on Web3 instead. IoT-specific decentralized applications (dapps) enable any user, whether human or machine, to securely interact and transact with others in a peer-to-peer manner. They can do so with full sovereignty and ownership over their identities and their data, meaning user surveillance becomes a thing of the past. On an even better note, if the currencies we choose to use are built on decentralized tech, the potential for monetary censorship then stays in the past too. And so, this leaves us with a choice, not a dilemma. It’s no longer a case of ‘choose privacy, but live in the Stone Age, or ‘choose the latest tech but give up your most intimate data.’ It’s a case of choosing to build and use apps which run on decentralized foundations. On Web3, not Big Tech. If we get that right, we can have our cake and eat it too.&nbsp;



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


<div class="wp-block-post-author-biography">Max Thake is an entrepreneur, writer, and co-founder of peaq, a blockchain network powering the Economy of Things, and EoT Labs, a software development and incubation organization supporting open-source projects focused on the Economy of Things. peaq empowers people to manage and earn from vehicles and devices as they provide goods and services to people and other machines. Max has built multiple organizations, teams and brands during his years in the blockchain space. He operates at the intersection between the humanities and sciences and enjoys explaining technological complexity in simple terms and using it to solve problems.</div>


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For the Internet of Things, It’s Either Web3 or 1984

Bessie Liu

The Arbitrum ARB governance token airdrop is one day away and will mark the beginning of its transition into decentralization.



Prior to its token launch, the Ethereum layer-2 network had been governed by New York startup <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/offchain-labs" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Offchain Labs</a> — the developer behind the protocol. 



Arbitrum is an <a href="https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/scaling/optimistic-rollups/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">optimistic</a> rollup scaling solution on Ethereum. Scaling solutions are designed to ease congestion and prices of gas fees on the Ethereum network.



Rather than executing a transaction on Ethereum, the transaction is instead sent to Arbitrum, whose throughput capacity is seven to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/arbitrum-optimism-exceed-ethereum">10 times greater than that of Ethereum</a>.&nbsp;



Following Arbitrum’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/arbitrum-upgrades-to-nitro-ahead-of-ethereum-merge">Nitro upgrade</a>, there has been an <a href="https://dune.com/blockworks_research/l2-comparison-dashboard" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">uptick</a> in transactions on-chain, recently <a href="https://dune.com/queries/1873519/3083010" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">overtaking Ethereum</a> in daily transactions.



There’s currently $2 billion locked inside Arbitrum-powered protocols compared to Optimism’s $1 billion, per <a href="https://defillama.com/chain/Arbitrum" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">DeFiLlama</a>. Decentralized derivatives platform GMX and exchange Uniswap command the most value. Ethereum native dapps Aave and Curve have also launched on the network, among others. 



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1600" height="760" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/unnamed-1.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-49814" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/unnamed-1.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/unnamed-1.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/unnamed-1.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/unnamed-1.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/unnamed-1.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/unnamed-1.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/unnamed-1.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/unnamed-1.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/unnamed-1.png?w=80 80w" sizes="(max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



Rising usage only amplifies the need for decentralization. According to <a href="https://www.blockworksresearch.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Blockworks Research</a>, ARB will allow for decentralized governance over the Arbitrum protocol, similar to Optimism’s OP token. 



ARB holders will vote on all aspects of the protocol including upgrades, inflation adjustments, as well as capital allocations (including grants).&nbsp;



Almost 12% of the total airdrop supply will be distributed to Arbitrum users and a tad over 1% of will be given to <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSSAzkIIJqw4WGKCF9gXFUkQojTt6weQTExZYmp3YRIR2TUjir9N8nh8xg7gQ2wuPA8mJKL2neL--to/pubhtml#" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">DAOs</a> building on top of the network.



<ul>
<li>43% to the Arbitrum DAO treasury overseen by the protocol’s community governance.&nbsp;</li>



<li>27% to the Offchain Labs team and future advisers.</li>



<li>17.5% to Offchain Labs investors.</li>
</ul>



A security council will also be established to make swift decisions when a normal governance process may be too slow.&nbsp;



“The security council, while removing some element of decentralization, is meant as a backstop in case of emergencies,” Blockworks Research said. “Since Arbitrum, and rollups in general, are still in their infancy it&#8217;s not enough to say they are truly 100% secure especially as new upgrades get added.”



Token holders will elect two groups of six security council members (totaling 12) every six months, each who will have private keys to a multsig that will control the protocol’s primary smart contract.



An eligible candidate for the council must be a member of the DAO and receive support from 0.2% of votable tokens. Chosen members will receive a $5,000 stipend in the form of ARB tokens.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1600" height="819" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/image-6.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-49810" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/image-6.png?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/image-6.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/image-6.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/image-6.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/image-6.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/image-6.png?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/image-6.png?w=470 470w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/image-6.png?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/image-6.png?w=80 80w" sizes="(max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /></figure>



<h2>How much trust is baked into Arbitrum?</h2>



Main trust <a href="https://l2beat.com/scaling/projects/arbitrum" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">concerns</a> around Arbitrum are in its state validation and upgradability. Arbitrum did not respond to Blockworks’ request for comment.



State validation refers to the proofs used or how the network decides which transactions (network state) are valid.



“In Arbitrum&#8217;s case, they have fraud proofs enabled, but only by whitelisted validators and used interactive proofs which take many transactions to solve,” Blockworks Research said.



Although enabling fraud proofs is much better than having none at all — as in the case of Arbitrum’s competitor Optimism — it would be more ideal to have permissionless proofs. 



Another risk is the upgradability of Arbiturm’s smart contract, as seen with Jump Crypto’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/jump-crypto-wormhole-hack-recovery">counter-exploit of the Wormhole hacker</a> last month. A smart contract is considered to be most secure if it can not be upgraded, which is not the case for both Arbitrum and Optimism.



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Arbitrum Airdrop: What You Need To Know About This Ethereum Layer-2

In a widely anticipated move, the Federal Reserve moved to bump interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point Wednesday, extending a series of what markets hope will be continued slower-paced increases.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The US central bank ongoing geopolitical tensions, persistent, although hopefully plateauing, inflation and a need to reach maximum employment as reasons for a repeat 25 basis point increase.&nbsp;



The move marks the Fed’s ninth <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/cryptos-stocks-rally-on-fourth-straight-0-75-interest-rate-increase">consecutive</a> rate increase, a strategy it hopes will curb the highest inflation the country has seen in more than four decades, but markets fret over whether a soft landing is achievable&nbsp;&nbsp;



“The Committee will closely monitor incoming information and assess the implications for monetary policy,” Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) members wrote in a statement at the end of their two-day policy meeting Wednesday. 



“The Committee anticipates that some additional policy firming may be appropriate in order to attain a stance of monetary policy that is sufficiently restrictive to return inflation to 2 percent over time.”&nbsp;



Bitcoin and ether were mixed on the news, with bitcoin gaining more than 1%, extending its banking-crisis fueled run, and ether losing 1.1%.&nbsp;



The S&amp;P 500 and Nasdaq Composite indexes rallied slightly after the decision, rising about 0.4% and 0.5%, respectively, likely because markets had predicted the rate increase.



Recent stress in the banking sector has central bankers rethinking policy, Powell said during a press conference Wednesday.&nbsp;



“What I heard was a significant number of people saying that they anticipated there would be…some tightening of credit conditions and that would really have some effects on our policy,” Powell said. 



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
“Remember, this [happened] 12 days ago… we&#8217;re trying to assess something that just is so recent, and it&#8217;s very difficult, there&#8217;s so much uncertainty.”
</blockquote>



Fed Chairman Jerome Powell may be feeling better about another rate increase because the KBW Bank Stock Index, which tracks the 24 largest firms in the US, has been relatively stable over the past few days, Noelle Acheson, author of Crypto is Macro Now and former head of market insights at Genesis, said.&nbsp;



“Some are interpreting this as greater reassurance that there won’t be ripple effects, but I disagree — the fact that the index is not going up could hint at a ‘wait and see’ stance, with ripple effects already priced in after the brutal drop so far this month,” Acheson said. 



Another option for the Fed is to leave rates as they are for some time. Powell gave few hints as to his expectations, but he did say that market participants pricing in rate cuts this year are likely wrong, noting that FOMC participants “don’t see rate cuts this year,” and stressing twice in response to questions, “that’s not our expectation.”



As to the probability of a so-called “soft landing” for the economy, Powell said it was too early to say if there’s any change to his assessment. “I do still think, though, that there’s a pathway to that,” he said.



“That pathway still exists, and we’re just trying to find it.”



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Fed Bumps Interest Rates By 25 Basis Points, Markets Jump 

Bankrupt cryptocurrency lender Celsius has received formal approval to let custody account holders receive more than 72% of their holdings.



US bankruptcy judge Martin Glenn granted a settlement agreement stating custody account holders will have to sign an opt-in form to receive the settlement payment, a <a href="https://cases.stretto.com/public/x191/11749/PLEADINGS/1174903212380000000219.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">filing</a>, released Tuesday, showed. 



They can claim up to 72.5% of their assets “free and clear,” which will be divided into two settlements of 36.25% each. The first settlement should be paid out by June 11, while the second should be made by Dec. 31 this year. The opt-in form must be signed by April 24 at 5:00 pm ET.



<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/celsius" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Celsius</a>, the committee of unsecured creditors and the custody ad hoc group were parties to the agreement. 



The entry of the settlement approval order includes a requirement that settling custody account holders won’t pursue litigation, “including seeking relief from the automatic stay, turnover, or their claims or causes of action.”



Holders of custody accounts held assets that “were never in the Earn program or Borrow Program and were transferred directly into the Custody Program,” Celsius has <a href="https://celsiusnetwork.medium.com/custody-account-withdrawal-faq-1c714e4979ae" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">said</a>.



Present or former employees, as well as insiders, are not allowed to partake in the settlement agreement, according to the filing. The meaning of the term “insider” derives from the description under <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/definitions/uscode.php?width=840&amp;height=800&amp;iframe=true&amp;def_id=11-USC-1957244918-71777986&amp;term_occur=20&amp;term_src=" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Section 101(31)</a> of the US bankruptcy code.



Glenn <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/celsius-bankruptcy-return-50m">ordered the return of crypto worth $50 million to Celsius customers</a> in December. “I want this case to move forward,” he reportedly said, adding that he wanted creditors to recover “as much as they possibly can as soon as they possibly can.”



Last month, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/celsius-selects-novawulf-to-help-felled-lender-navigate-bankruptcy">Celsius chose NovaWulf</a> Digital Management — after screening more than 130 bids — to help close out its restructuring scheme. Celsius estimates that more than 85% of its customers will be able to recover 70% of their claims in liquid crypto under the NovaWulf deal.



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Celsius To Return 72% of Crypto to Custody Account Holders

David Canellis

On the romance front, SynFutures’ new NFT trading app, NFTures, probably can’t help. But its interface is no doubt familiar to anyone who’s been unlucky enough to use dating apps like Tinder and Hinge.



Swipe left to short the CryptoPunk. Swipe right to go long — with up to three times leverage either way.&nbsp;



It’s a hilariously degenerate way to think about NFTs. But it moves to reinforce personal taste at a time when NFT marketplaces are catering to high-volume traders.



Instead of gamifying speculation with impersonal aggregators, low fees and zero royalties, NFTures places the actual imagery tied to NFTs front and center.&nbsp;



Just like how potential dates instantly determine date-ability with one glance at a profile picture, traders can immediately wager whether a blue-chip profile picture NFT is overvalued or undervalued, with all bets collateralized and settled in ether (ETH), all on-chain via browser wallet MetaMask, among others.



<a href="https://www.nftures.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">NFTures</a> (a portmanteau of “NFT” and “futures”) is currently in alpha, and went live this morning for a portion of SynFutures’ waiting list. The list has so far garnered around 14,000 signups, chief marketing officer Mark Lee told Blockworks, with a few thousand now able to start swiping.



Users won’t be longing or shorting fully-fledged NFTs, which in the case of Bored Apes and CryptoPunks cost upwards of 58 ETH ($100,000). NFTures instead offers exposure to a basket of floor price CryptoPunks via a SushiSwap price oracle.


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="alignright size-large is-resized"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/nftures.jpg?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="nftures nft trading app" class="wp-image-49776" width="257" height="370" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/nftures.jpg?w=950 950w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/nftures.jpg?w=208 208w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/nftures.jpg?w=711 711w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/nftures.jpg?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/nftures.jpg?w=178 178w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/nftures.jpg?w=181 181w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/nftures.jpg?w=152 152w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/nftures.jpg?w=56 56w" sizes="(max-width: 257px) 100vw, 257px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Are you into this CryptoPunk? Click the heart to go long | Source: SynFutures</figcaption></figure></div>


The basket of CryptoPunks is an NFTX treasury filled with 135 NFTs, all equally valued. The treasury is effectively a floor-price CryptoPunk index fund.&nbsp;



Users deposit their NFTs in return for an ERC-20 vToken, PUNK, which represents claim on a random NFT contained within the treasury. Those tokens can then freely be exchanged, or even used to access a special Curve pool for further leverage.



By indexing those CryptoPunks, NFTX offers an alternative to floor prices (the lowest-valued NFT in a collection). Floor prices can be easily gamed: wash trading far below the lowest going price can immediately tank them, opening up all sorts of concerns for leveraged positions.



PUNK, on the other hand, trades on decentralized exchanges SushiSwap and Uniswap, allowing better price discovery on that particular collection. SynFutures new app offers exposure to that spot price, rather than transacting any individual CryptoPunks.



SynFutures plans to add more NFTs treasuries in the future, with Bored Apes and Pudgy Penguins and other top-10 collections floated as potential candidates.



<h2>Ethereum for NFT derivatives, Polygon for crypto</h2>



Another advantage of offering exposure on an index, rather than actual NFTs, is that it opens markets up for smaller bids. Trading CryptoPunks directly demands six-figure capital, but NFTures allows much smaller positions to be taken.



There are other concerns. Positions are all settled on Ethereum, which has recently experienced an uptick in usage, translating to increased transaction fees.&nbsp;



Trades on the app cost around $10 in gas fees right now and, to begin with, the app only allows users to take a fully-collateralized position worth up to 0.1 ETH ($168), eating into potential upside.



“It’s important for us to increase the position size. If the position size is too small, there’s just not enough financial incentive for someone to pay these fees,” SynFutures’ Lee said.



Liquidity can also be a problem on DEXs, especially for more exotic derivatives like these, resulting in unavailable trades and slippage.&nbsp;



Similar to SynFutures’ primary protocol, which supports futures trading for certain cryptocurrencies, NFTures is bootstrapped by capital provided by some of SynFutures’ strategic partners. The two platforms are completely separate, with separate liquidity pools, but NFTures does use SynFutures’ trading infrastructure.



“It all comes down to demand, which is why we&#8217;re doing it in phases. If we opened it up for everyone and there wasn&#8217;t enough liquidity, that would be an issue,” Lee said. “So we just want to make sure we monitor our liquidity, make sure it&#8217;s able to support the demand that comes in.”



Lee noted that as more demand comes into the app, the firm will expand liquidity either internally or through some of its external partners. The first couple of thousand on the waitlist have been given access first, and every week SynFutures will continue to open access.



SynFutures opted for Ethereum rather than its native Polygon to power its NFT app, despite the fees, as it doesn’t anticipate people coming in and out of positions too much, unlike actual crypto derivatives, which demand higher volume.



“All of the popular NFT collections — the major ones that actually have enough liquidity and market depth — also happen to be on Ethereum,” Lee said.



<h2>Tinder for NFT leverage, a gateway to DeFi</h2>



Lee expressed that NFT trading isn’t meant to be like crypto derivatives trading, which at the top end is typically earmarked by high volume.&nbsp;



By creating a trading platform in the style of modern dating apps, SynFutures hopes to attract a wider audience than only seasoned NFT traders (SynFutures&#8217; <a href="https://www.synfutures.com/terms" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">terms</a> prohibit a number of jurisdictions, though, including the US and UK).



“NFT prices don’t change that much anyway, so this is really more a mid-term bet that you’re making. You’re saying: ‘Okay, I think in the next month or two, I see CryptoPunks dropping, so I’ll open a position here,” Lee said.



Other startups are building NFT derivatives products, too. NFTPerps is currently in private beta on Ethereum Layer-2 network <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/arbitrum" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Arbitrum</a>, for one, but that’s pitched towards more crypto native speculators.



Lee sees NFTures serving a different purpose: introducing the broader NFT collector audience to the idea of DeFi. That means making them comfortable with the idea of speculating on NFTs in other ways than by simply buying and holding them.



“If you&#8217;re holding a piece and you don&#8217;t necessarily want to get rid of it, you could open a short position to cover some of your downside risk,” Lee said. “We call NFTs a gateway into crypto, we want this product to be a gateway into DeFi.”



Then again, some NFT collectors are in love with their JPEGs. Shorting them would just be rude.



Updated Mar. 22, 2023 at 2:21 pm ET: Added terms and conditions.



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Swipe Left To Short, Right To Long: Tinder for NFT Leverage Goes Live

Crypto media company Blockworks has launched a platform to track crypto bounties, grants and requests for proposal (RFPs) as a means to connect grantees to grantors and their funding opportunities.



Blockworks <a href="https://blockworks.co/grants">Grantfarm</a> organizes and tracks a list of programs and available RFPs. Individual and team users can filter results based on grant type, ecosystem and reward size.



The platform is free, and additional features are planned in the coming months.&nbsp;



&#8220;It&#8217;s our goal to provide a comprehensive public good that proactively tracks all grants programs,&#8221; Blockworks co-founder Jason Yanowitz said. &#8220;We believe this is an enormous value-add to our space, and we look forward to working with programs directly to keep their entries current over time.&#8221;



Blockworks’ director of grants and governance, who goes by the name Sov, joined the company in January to lead the effort.&nbsp;



Though sites such as <a href="https://sovs.notion.site/The-Common-Good-5f456493a9c44474a054d3d82c19ab56" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Common Good</a> and <a href="https://wiki.defillama.com/wiki/LlamaoGrants" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">LlamaoGrants</a> were well received by the community, Sov said, Grantfarm seeks to differentiate itself by including grant programs, as well as individual RFPs and bounties — and by allowing “dynamic search.”



One can narrow a search by selecting from five grant types: analytics, community, content, development or other. Project category buckets on the site include artificial intelligence, DeFi, centralized exchanges, NFTs, oracles, stablecoins and more than a dozen others.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" width="1600" height="900" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/grantfarm_programs-1.jpg?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-49682" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/grantfarm_programs-1.jpg?w=1600 1600w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/grantfarm_programs-1.jpg?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/grantfarm_programs-1.jpg?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/grantfarm_programs-1.jpg?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/grantfarm_programs-1.jpg?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/grantfarm_programs-1.jpg?w=428 428w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/grantfarm_programs-1.jpg?w=464 464w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/grantfarm_programs-1.jpg?w=389 389w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/grantfarm_programs-1.jpg?w=80 80w" sizes="(max-width: 1600px) 100vw, 1600px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Screenshot of the Grantfarm database</figcaption></figure>



In addition to providing a place for these listings, Blockworks intends to feature content for grant programs on its website, including research, reports, and announcements from active programs in the sector.



“By providing a comprehensive, evolving list of grants, we can help give clarity to applicants and greater visibility and awareness to grant programs,” Sov said.&nbsp;



The launch comes 10 months after Blockworks <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/blockworks-unveils-new-research-offering">unveiled a new research offering</a> during its inaugural Permissionless event in Palm Beach, Florida.



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New ‘Grantfarm’ Platform to Track Crypto Grants

MetaMask Institutional is launching a marketplace to streamline staking for companies.



The marketplace, a bridge between institutions that are interested in staking and providers of staking, will go live on March 27. Initial partners on the marketplace include Allnodes, Blockdaemon and Kiln.



Following <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ethereum-merge" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the Merge</a>, which moved the Ethereum network from <a href="https://www.blockworksresearch.com/glossary#proof-of-work-pow" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">proof-of-work</a> to <a href="https://www.blockworksresearch.com/glossary#proof-of-stake-pos" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">proof-of-stake</a> last year, institutions have shown greater interest in staking, MetaMask institutional product lead Johann Bornman told Blockworks.



“We’ve observed a real shift in interests from institutions into staking, particularly over the last six months,” Bornman told Blockworks. “With the important fork upgrade that’s happening with Shanghai and Capella, I think these are two very key landmark moments that are driving more institutional interest.”



Sharing Bornman’s sentiment, Tim Ogilvie, CEO of Staked, a non-custodial staking platform <a href="https://www.kraken.com/press/releases/kraken-acquires-staked-to-support-growth-and-resilience" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">acquired</a> by Kraken in December 2021, also notes that <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-set-date-for-eth-withdrawals">the upcoming Ethereum upgrade on April 12</a> is likely going to usher in more institutional investors into the staking space.



“You’re going to see a lot of people coming in and staking, so the net of that will drive a lot of long-term staking demand,” Ogilvie said.



<h2>So why a marketplace?</h2>



Bornman tells Blockworks that existing institutions are bound to providers selected by their custodians, and this latest marketplace aims at providing companies with more choices for their staking provider.



It also plans to standardize reporting, he said.



“What we want to do is make it very easy for institutions to not to just take but also understand the rewards they’re receiving, what they are, what they look like across different time horizons,” he said.



MetaMask’s institutional staking marketplace could be a good first step in offering a simplified staking solution to institutional players, <a href="https://www.blockworksresearch.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Blockworks Research</a> analyst <a href="https://www.blockworksresearch.com/research?author=ren" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Ren Yu Kong</a> said. 



“I expect to see further integrated service offerings through MetaMask Institutional as the space grows so that the full range of an institution&#8217;s needs are fulfilled within one platform,” Kong said.



<h2>What are institutions staking?</h2>



Different institutions have different reasons to participate in staking.



For decentralized hedge funds — or crowd-sourced hedge funds — many of its staking initiatives are focused on liquid staking derivatives (LSDs) Bornman said.



In the case of Staked, many of its institutional clients include large venture funds, such as Pantera and Multicoin, asset managers such as Brevan Howard who are often running a fund strategy, and Wealthsimple, which runs different accounts for broader sets of individuals.&nbsp;



“Venture funds are making early investments in promising Layer-1’s that use staking as a security layer, and in those cases, they are looking to support a nascent investment,” Ogilvie said. “Asset managers [might] put assets into Ethereum because [they] have conviction around the story there.”



Ogilvie is optimistic that staking will eventually replace bonds as a large allocation in institutional portfolios.



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MetaMask Wants To Streamline Institutional Staking

Japanese electronic giant Fujitsu has filed a trademark application for a broad range of financial services — including crypto trading.



A US Patent and Trademark Office <a href="https://tsdr.uspto.gov/documentviewer?caseId=sn97842910&amp;docId=APP20230320124101#docIndex=1&amp;page=1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">filing</a> last week showed the tech firm exploring services such as money and crypto exchange, digital asset management, brokerage services for crypto trading, payment transaction processing and securities trading.&nbsp;



The development was first <a href="https://twitter.com/KondoudisLaw/status/1638127134836244482" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">shared</a> by Mike Kondoudis, a USPTO licensed trademark attorney, on Twitter.



Fujitsu also seems to be interested in real estate, as the same trademark application included services for leasing or renting buildings and the purchase and sale of land.&nbsp;



The firm, which describes itself as the top digital services company in <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/japan" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Japan</a>, was originally established in 1923 as a joint venture to boost the production of equipment like generators and electric motors in Japan.&nbsp;



Fujitsu eventually became a pioneer of Japan’s telecommunications infrastructure, having built the country’s first computer and providing products like servers, PCs, laptops, tablets, storage hardware and air conditioners. It’s now a global brand.



The full extent of Fujitsu’s potential crypto ambitions aren’t known outside of the trademark filing. Blockworks has reached out to learn more. But the firm has dabbled in blockchain before, developing <a href="https://www.fujitsu.com/global/about/resources/news/press-releases/2019/0704-01.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">digital identity technology</a> in 2019 which relies on a distributed ledger to examine legitimacy during online transactions.



Fujitsu is also among other prominent Japanese companies that recently announced their intention to create a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/japan-metaverse-economic-zone">metaverse project called Ryugukoku</a>. It includes the creation of a Japan Metaverse Economic Zone, which would integrate various metaverse platforms to support interoperability.&nbsp;



The idea is essentially meant to gamify Japan’s business ecosystem, where respective companies will bring in their unique talents to develop features. The concept is the brainchild of Hajime Tabata, a Japanese game director who previously worked for Square Enix.



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Japan’s Fujitsu Files Trademark for Crypto Services

EffortCapital

COSMOS

Mars Protocol: Cosmos' DeFi Superapp

Digital Asset Summit (DAS) is returning March 2024.



This year&#8217;s event will be held in our nation’s capital, where industry leaders, policymakers, and institutional experts will come together to discuss the latest developments and challenges in the ever-evolving world of cryptocurrency.



What you can expect:



<ul>
<li>Insights on the impact of regulatory implications and the need for realistic policy</li>



<li>Access to institutional dinners and exclusive networking events,</li>



<li>Unparalleled insights from industry leaders</li>
</ul>



And more! Don’t miss out on the opportunity to be in the room when the future of crypto is decided.



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March 18-20 | Washington, D.C.

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Digital Asset Summit 2024 | Washington, D.C.

Permissionless is the brainchild of Blockworks and Bankless. Over 5,500 people attended the inaugural event in 2022, making Permissionless the world’s largest DeFi conference.&nbsp;



What sets Permissionless apart? It’s a crypto native’s paradise, crafted specifically for both builders and investors who are dedicated to scaling the industry.&nbsp;



Permissionless is headed to Austin in 2023, and you know what they say… Everything is bigger in Texas.&nbsp;



Permissionless 2023 will feature the biggest names in Web3, a gargantuan exposition hall filled with the top brands in the space, an awe-inspiring NFT Gallery, inclusive, community-focused parties and events, metaverse experiences, and so much more.



See you in Paradise.

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Presenting Sponsor 

Speakers

Erik Voorhees

Mary-Catherine (MC) Lader is the Chief Operating Officer of Uniswap Labs, a developer of foundational web3-based products and applications. In this role, she oversees the company’s growth efforts, strategic initiatives, and operations. Previously, she held various leadership roles at BlackRock, including as the Global Head of the firm’s digital sustainability business, Chief Operating Officer of the firm’s digital wealth business, and leader of the firm’s strategic fintech investments and blockchain activities. MC began her career as an investor in Goldman Sachs’ Special Situations Group. She received her J.D. and M.B.A. degrees at Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School, respectively, and her B.A. at Brown University.

Mary-Catherine Lader

Zaki Manian is a Co-Founder of Sommelier, the most powerful coprocessor yet for DeFi traders and Liquidity Providers. He’s also a Co-Founder of iqlusion, which provides infrastructure like a data center and a Cosmos validator for next-gen crypto technologies. Previously, Zaki helped build the Cosmos ecosystem, including launching the first public Cosmos testnet, and served as a director of Tendermint. Zaki has been a leading developer in the blockchain space since 2014, when he taught himself cryptography and began contributing to projects including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Zcash, and Tendermint. Having studied history of science at the University of Pennsylvania, Zaki’s skill sets in software engineering, programming, and computer science are largely self-taught.

Zaki Manian

Justin Drake

At Alluvial, Chief Growth Officer Mara Schmiedt focuses on advancing industry participation and adoption of Liquid Collective, seeking out world-class partnership opportunities, and overseeing Business Development, Sales, and other strategic functions. Mara recently joined Alluvial as Chief Growth Officer from Coinbase, where she served as the Head of Sales for Coinbase Cloud, the leading developer platform for blockchain-based infrastructure products and APIs. She expanded Cloud's staking business, supporting large-scale organizations, enterprises, and institutional investors. Prior to joining Coinbase, she managed Business Development at Bison Trails, a leading provider of blockchain-based infrastructure acquired by Coinbase in February 2021. Mara also served as Strategy Manager at ConsenSys, where she supported the strategic development of Codefi, the blockchain application suite for Web3 Commerce and Finance.



Mara is passionate about open-source technology and has published multiple research reports and papers on liquid staking, such as <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/13-s15SvCIUBukhSZiNkpd0sTff3izQ5G/view">The Internet Bond</a> and <a href="https://consensys.net/insights/eth-2-staking-ecosystem-report/">Ethereum 2.0 Staking Ecosystem Report</a>.&nbsp;



Additionally, she has led various industry initiatives, including leading the working group with the Ethereum Foundation that developed the Ethereum Launchpad and the first distributed validator technology (DVT) PoCs. Mara's deep experience in bringing technology and blockchain-based products and services to market — as well as her track record of building world-class business and sales organizations — bolsters Alluvial's support of Liquid Collective.

Mara Schmiedt

Stani Kulechov

Hasu

Christine is a Partner and Head of Digital Asset Strategy at Apollo Global Management, Inc. In this newly created position, Christine leads digital asset strategy across the firm, exploring more ways to apply blockchain technologies to Apollo’s business. She also plays a key role in Apollo’s strategy to invest in some of the most innovative digital asset companies and founders, with a specific focus on those transforming the financial services sector where Apollo can serve as a validator and enabler of new technologies. Previously, she was a Managing Director at J.P. Morgan and led its Blockchain/Crypto/Metaverse program through initiatives in digital assets, tokenized payments, internet of-things, decentralized identity, NFTs, and virtual worlds. She is a graduate of Brown University. Christine was named in Fortune’s The Ledger 40 Under 40 list of “the most impressive, young superstars transforming business at the leading edge of finance and technology.”

Christine Moy

Santiago Roel Santos (CryptoPunk #9159) is an investor focusing at the intersection of DeFi and the Web3 metaverse (NFTs/gaming). Most recently was a Partner at ParaFi Capital, one of the largest crypto funds specializing in DeFi. Prior to that, he was at Sageview Capital investing in Internet and software and, before that, at JP Morgan investment banking. Santiago began investing in crypto in 2012.

Santiago Roel Santos

Michael Anderson is the co-founder of Framework Ventures, one of earliest and largest VC firms to enter the “DeFi” or Decentralized Finance industry. With over $1B in AUM, the firm has since expanded into additional maturing verticals like blockchain gaming and social crypto. Prior to Framework, Michael and his co-founder Vance Spencer launched Hashletes, a digital collectible startup with official licensing from the NFL. Before entering crypto, Michael served as a product manager at both Snapchat and Dropbox, where he helped build out their monetization platforms.

Michael Anderson

Soona Amhaz is founder and GP of Volt Capital, a venture firm that focuses on pre-seed and seed companies in the digital assets space. Soona is also an advisor to On Deck, Forbes 30 under 30 in VC, and an alum from the University of Michigan School of Engineering.

Soona Amhaz

Colleen Sullivan is Co-Head of Ventures at Brevan Howard Digital. Prior to joining Brevan Howard Digital, Colleen co-founded and served as CEO of CMT Digital, where she was also a partner with the broader CMT Group and commenced activities in the crypto industry in 2013. Prior to starting CMT Digital, Colleen co-founded Sullivan Wolf Kailus, a boutique law firm that specializes in hedge fund, private equity, venture capital, digital assets, and other alternative investment products. Colleen also previously practiced law in the Investment Funds and Derivatives group at Sidley Austin LLP and, at age 25, co-founded a company called iOptions Group LLC, which developed hedging and monetization strategies for holders of employee stock options. Ms. Sullivan currently serves on the Advisory Board of the Chamber of Digital Commerce.

Colleen Sullivan

Tarun is an alumni of D. E. Shaw Research (DESRES), Vatic Labs, an HFT firm, and Cornell. He fell into the blockchain world in 2011, when he was working on ASICs at DESRES and observed Bitcoin ASIC mining rigs substantially delay DESRES’s ASIC production. He has spent the last seven years working on simulation-based R&amp;D at the intersection of high-performance computing and AI and is applying this knowledge to the blockchain ecosystem.

Tarun Chitra

Kevin Owocki is the founder of Gitcoin.co — Where builders &amp; funders come together to build the open web.  Gitcoin has delivered <a href="http://gitcoin.co/results">$50mm worth of value</a> to OSS devs in the last several years. He has a BS in Computer Science, 15 years of engineering leadership experience in Open Source Software and Web Startups. Kevin is a community organizer in the Boulder Colorado Tech Scene.

Kevin Owocki

Meltem Demirors is Chief Strategy Officer of CoinShares, a publicly listed investment firm that manages over five billion in digital assets on behalf of a global investor base, and is a trusted partner to investors and entrepreneurs navigating the digital asset ecosystem.



 An established veteran of digital asset investing, Meltem draws on her substantial experience and widespread influence to accelerate growth and acceptance of the asset class. Prior to joining CoinShares, Meltem helped build and grow Digital Currency Group, raising capital from the world’s largest corporations and managing a portfolio of 120 companies and 4 subsidiaries. Before she was bitten with the bitcoin bug, Meltem worked in the Oil &amp; Gas industry in trading, corporate treasury, and M&amp;A roles. 



Meltem has been recognized for her personal contributions to the industry and serves as an outspoken advocate. She is a founding member of the World Economic Forum Blockchain Council. Meltem teaches at her alma mater MIT as well as Oxford, and is passionate about privacy and civil rights.

Meltem Demirors

Vance is the co-founders of Framework Ventures, a thesis-driven venture capital firm whose team of technologists, researchers, and investors partner with founders and teams to build token-based networks and develop the requisite cryptoeconomics, governance, and community to scale.

Vance Spencer

Jim Bianco is President and Macro Strategist at Bianco Research, L.L.C. Since 1990 Jim’s commentaries have offered a unique perspective on the global economy and financial markets. Unencumbered by the biases of traditional Wall Street research, Jim has built a decades long reputation for objective, incisive commentary that challenges consensus thinking. In nearly 20 years at Bianco Research, Jim’s wide ranging commentaries have addressed monetary policy, the intersection of markets and politics, the role of government in the economy, fund flows and positioning in financial markets.



Jim appears regularly on CNBC, Bloomberg and Fox Business, and is often featured in the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, Grants Interest Rate Observer, and MarketWatch. Prior to joining Arbor and Bianco Research, Jim was a Market Strategist in equity and fixed income research at UBS Securities and Equity Technical Analyst at First Boston and Shearson Lehman Brothers. He is a Chartered Market Technician (CMT) and a member of the Market Technicians Association (MTA). Jim has a Bachelor of Science degree in Finance from Marquette University (1984) and an MBA from Fordham University (1989).

Jim Bianco

Mr. Forman is the Founder and Managing Partner of ParaFi Capital. ParaFi is a leading investment firm focused on the blockchain and digital asset markets, and an early pioneer in decentralized finance (“DeFi”). ParaFi is one of the largest investors, users, and governance participants within the DeFi ecosystem, spanning the full network lifecycle from pre-launch to full decentralization. Mr. Forman serves as the Chief Investment Officer across the firm’s strategies, which include investing in public and private cryptoassets, systematic credit and market neutral DeFi strategies, and blockchain-focused venture capital and growth equity investing.



Prior to founding ParaFi in 2018, Mr. Forman spent 10 years at leading alternative investment managers, including KKR and TPG. While at KKR, Mr. Forman served as a Director in the Credit business, investing across a wide array of industry sectors and strategies, including distressed special situations, private credit, and opportunistic and liquid credit. Prior to KKR, Mr. Forman served as a Vice President with TPG’s former credit business, Sixth Street Partners, as one of the first investment professionals to join the platform, helping scale its private credit vehicle, TPG Specialty Lending, which listed publicly in 2014. Earlier in his career, Mr. Forman worked in private equity at Littlejohn &amp; Company and investment banking at Rothschild &amp; Co. Mr. Forman graduated with a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, magna cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania.

Ben Forman

Haseeb is a Managing Partner at Dragonfly. He was previously a partner at Metastable Capital, and has a background in software engineering at Airbnb and Earn.com (acquired by Coinbase).

Haseeb Qureshi

Vanessa Grellet is a Managing Partner at Aglaé Ventures. Vanessa is a Global Executive with over 20 years of expertise in the Financial Services and Tech industry. At Aglaé Ventures she manages the Web 3 focused fund. Prior to joining Aglae she has Head of Portfolio growth at CoinFund and Executive director at ConsenSys where she focused on driving adoption for Ethereum based products,  Strategic initiatives, Alliances and Channels.  She was involved in setting up the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), the Accounting Blockchain Coalition (ABC) and the Blockchain for Social Impact Coalition (BSIC). Prior to ConsenSys she was a Strategy Executive at NYSE focused on investments and M&amp;A and a key member of PwC’s global wealth management team. Vanessa is a Founding Board member of AABC focused on Blockchain and Art, a member of the Advisory Council of ConsenSys, a Milken Institute Associate, a contributor to the  World Economic Forum Digital Future Council and part of <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/top-people-in-crypto-and-blockchain-2022/vanessa-grellet">Cointelegraph’s list of 100 most influential people for 2022</a>. Mrs. Grellet graduated Cum Laude from Law School (Paris II Assas) and Business School (HEC).

Vanessa Grellet

Mihailo Bjelic received his MSc in CS from the University of Belgrade. Prior to entering Web3/blockchain industry, he co-founded an AI/ML-powered platform for automotive industry and several other smaller startups and side projects. In 2017, he decided to join the Web3 movement full-time, primarily as a researcher interested in Ethereum scaling and multi-chain paradigms. In parallel with his work, he became one of the prominent Ethereum proponents and community members. In 2019, he started working on Polygon and conceptualized its architecture, vision and brand. In 2020, he joined hands with the Matic Network team and they have been working together on Polygon since then.

Mihailo Bjelic

Ben is a co-founder of Optimism, a leading Ethereum L2 ecosystem. He served as Chief Scientist before becoming a director at the Optimism Foundation. In his free time, he makes Ethereum-based parody songs under his stage name, Weird ETH Yankovic.

Ben Jones

Kristin is the CEO of the Blockchain Association, the Washington, D.C.-based trade association representing more than 100 of the industry’s leading companies. She also serves as a board member of the Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web. 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 U.S. She is also a leading, public voice advocating for the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry through top-tier media interviews, op-eds and letters to the editor, and global speaking engagements. Kristin is a renowned voice for the industry, having been featured on Fortune’s 2020 40 under 40 list, CoinDesk’s 2021 50 people who defined the year in crypto, and CoinTelegraph’s 2022 top 100 Influencers in Crypto and Blockchain. Prior to leading the Blockchain Association, Kristin helped blockchain and technology companies achieve their public policy objectives in Washington. She served as a Senate and congressional aide on Capitol Hill for nearly ten years, much of which was spent focusing on technology policy.

Kristin Smith

Avichal is a successful entrepreneur with executive experience at Google and Facebook, which acquired his previous company. As an angel investor, Avichal has invested in 15 unicorns and 5 decacorns including Airtable, Boom Supersonic, Color Genomics, Cruise, Deel, Figma, Newfront Insurance, Notion, Nova Credit, Pulley, and others. He co-founded Electric Capital in 2018 and has grown it to one of the largest crypto venture firms globally. Electric is an investor in many of the leading web3 protocols and companies such as Bitwise, Bitnomial, dYdX, Frax, Kraken, Magic Eden, NEAR, and Solana.

Avichal Garg

Matt Hougan is one of the world’s leading experts on crypto, ETFs, and financial technology. He is Chief Investment Officer for Bitwise Asset Management, a pioneer in cryptoasset index funds with more than $1.2 billion in assets under management. He was previously CEO of ETF.com, where he helped build the world’s first ETF data and analytics system, the leading ETF media site, and the world’s largest ETF conference, Inside ETFs. Hougan is co-author of both “A Comprehensive Guide to Exchange-Traded Funds” and “Cryptoassets: The Guide to Bitcoin, Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies for Professional Investors” from the CFA Institute’s Research Foundation. He is a crypto columnist for Forbes, and a three-time member of the Barron’s ETF Roundtable.

Matt Hougan

Li Jin

Ethan is the co-founder of the Cosmos network and serves as the CEO of Informal Systems. Informal Systems is a member-driven worker’s cooperative building software that enables trustworthy relationships between protocols and people to flourish. Ethan also serves as the President of the Interchain Foundation which funds and coordinates development of public goods in the Cosmos ecosystem. Ethan sees local money systems as the basis for self-sufficient local economies to prosper. With a background in cell biology, neuroscience, mathematics, machine learning, and distributed systems, his goal is to build systems that encourage humans to work cooperatively through methods of self-organization. He is currently focused on blockchain technology as a means to bring greater political and economic sovereignty to local communities around the globe. Prior to Informal Systems, Ethan co-founded the Tendermint and Cosmos projects, and served as CTO of Tendermint Inc. Today, dozens of projects are adopting technology conceived in the original Cosmos whitepaper, including the Inter-Blockchain (IBC) Communication protocol – an industry-standard for permissionless communication between sovereign blockchains. Today, the Cosmos ecosystem continues to pioneer technological paradigms for building interoperable application-specific blockchains.

Ethan Buchman

Tyrone leads J.P. Morgan’s Blockchain team and is responsible for creating innovative Web3-focused products &amp; solutions for J.P. Morgan’s businesses and clients, and for engaging with the industry at large in order to provide a holistic blockchain strategy for the firm. Tyrone is also the Head of Onyx Digital Assets, a multi-asset tokenization platform that enables the exchange of value for various types of digital assets. Tyrone was previously a Senior Blockchain Product Manager in J.P. Morgan’s Blockchain Center of Excellence and was also the Head of Product for Quorum, an open-sourced Ethereum-based blockchain platform built for Enterprise use. Prior to moving into the blockchain industry in 2015, Tyrone was a software engineer within J.P. Morgan's Credit Markets business, and before that he spent several years in Product transformation, managing and delivering large strategic programs across various businesses within J.P. Morgan, across Front, Middle and Back Office risk and trading systems. Tyrone sits on the Board of Directors of The Enterprise Ethereum Alliance and The Hyperledger Foundation.

Tyrone Lobban

Rich is a Co-Founder and President of GSR and leads the group across strategic initiatives and growth. He began his career at Goldman Sachs where he spent 11 years between New York and London in commodities trading as a Managing Director and Global Head of Crude Oil and Derivatives Trading. Prior to joining GSR, he spent a few years on the buy-side, running energy trading teams at two New York-based hedge funds. Rich earned a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from Columbia University.

Rich Rosenblum

Kain Warwick is an Australian cryptocurrency entrepreneur most-known as the founder of Synthetix protocol. Synthetix is a financial primitive that enables the creation of synthetic assets, offering unique derivatives and exposure to real-world assets on the blockchain.&nbsp;In 2020, Kain popularised the concept of yield farming that sparked the 2020 DeFi boom, earning the moniker: ‘the father of modern agriculture.

Kain Warwick

Brian Quintenz is the Head of Policy for a16z crypto, where he helps to translate between the crypto and policy communities.



Brian has long stood out as an innovative thinker in crypto and DeFi and was one of the earliest leaders in Washington to recognize the value of crypto. Brian initially joined a16z crypto as a senior advisor. In December 2022, he moved to the full-time role leading its policy team.



Prior to joining a16z, he was nominated by both Presidents Obama and Trump to serve as commissioner of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and, in August 2017, was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate. He also led the agency’s Technology Advisory Committee, which hosted the most comprehensive set of public crypto-related policy discussions and briefings of any federal financial regulator. During his service, the CFTC oversaw the listing of the first U.S. regulated Bitcoin and Ether futures contracts on derivatives exchanges, and the rapid expansion of DeFi. All the while, he was a champion for tailored, risk-calibrated regulation.



Prior to his appointment to the CFTC, Brian was the Founder and Managing Principal of Saeculum Capital Management, LLC where he developed and implemented Saeculum’s long term, momentum-based investment process for both traditional discretionary accounts as well as a managed-futures, commodity pool hedge fund.



Brian began his career on Capitol Hill, where he worked for 6.5 years and served as senior policy aid to a Member of Congress. He received his B.S. from Duke University and M.B.A. from Georgetown University.

Brian Quintenz

Robby Yung, Animoca Brands’s CEO of Investments, partner at Animoca Capital, a leader in digital entertainment, blockchain, and gamification with a portfolio of products and games including the REVV and SAND tokens, as well as investment and partnerships with companies like Axie Infinity,  OpenSea, Dapper Labs, and Alien Worlds and subsidiaries like The Sandbox, Gamee, Quidd, and Lympo. Robby has been in gaming since 2012 and blockchain gaming since 2018. He served as the first CEO of Animoca Brands after taking the group public in 2015. Prior to that, he cofounded magazine publisher, One Media Group, which he listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. He also founded Chinese television and outdoor media concern, Redgate Media Group, which was acquired by  Inno-Tech Holdings . He began his career in technology, building wireless telecom networks in China and Indonesia with Metromedia.

Robby Yung

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<h2>Why Sponsor Permissionless 2023?</h2>
If you’re serious about crypto, you have to be at Permissionless. Permissionless brings together DeFi builders, DAO participants, protocol developers, crypto companies, funds and institutions, and more. It’s a true crypto-native’s paradise, where you’ll have the opportunity to showcase your offerings and form lasting connections with the community.
We’ll work with your team to define the perfect sponsorship opportunity that best fits your needs and budget. Want to do something completely revolutionary? Our team can help design a bespoke package that brings your vision to life.
Get in touch with us at <a href="mailto:sales@blockworks.co">sales@blockworks.co</a>
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