BlackRock Is Evolving 🗿🤡💰

Valko

BlackRock Is Evolving 🗿🤡💰 Valko

Specs’ Insights

BlackRock to launch tokenized investment fund with Securitize

BlackRock is launching a tokenized private equity fund in tandem with financial services firm Securitize as the company deepens its foray into digital assets.

⌐◪-◪ → BlackRock just announced a new Institutional Digital Liquidity fund in collaboration with Securitize.

This isn’t some pretend blockchain theatre either. BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, just put $100M USDC on the Ethereum blockchain. Pretty crazy.

This is Larry Fink putting his money where his mouth is with regard to his newfound belief that the future of finance is the tokenization of financial assets (stocks, bonds, etc).

Seeing one of the world’s most influential financial leaders/players adopt crypto so directly and with such conviction is more than promising.

This move is also a testament that Larry will do whatever it takes to get the Ethereum ETFs approved.

Also, note that they launched on Ethereum, not Solana.

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Solana Meme Coin Presales Have Raised $150 Million—What Could Go Wrong? - Decrypt

The increasingly prevalent practice, fueled by meme coin FOMO, is incredibly risky and already drawing red flags due to legal and ethical questions.

⌐◪-◪ → The memecoin presale meta continues to rage on with over $150M raised on Solana alone over the last week.

For those who don’t know, the “presales” are an increasingly common and dubious practice where traders blindly send millions to strangers’ wallets in hopes of getting in early on the next memecoin.

The problem is, besides these memecoins having absolutely zero value/purpose, there is no guarantee the strangers don’t just take the money and run — which many have already done.

For example: Yesterday 0xNibba stole 6 figures with a presale and then rebooted his Twitter account as @richmoneysol to attempt another presale scam.

If you’re curious, check out ZachXBT’s breakdown to better understand the anatomy of these presale scams.

I love me a good memecoin, but this is getting out of hand and is frankly destroying the Solana ecosystem. It’s so bad that one of Solana’s co-founders tweeted “Stop doing this."

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Ethena Labs $USDe is now a top 5 stablecoin, $1.17B market cap

⌐◪-◪ → $USDe is now a top 5 stablecoin with a market cap of $1.17B. While they’re still very far behind Tether ($103.43B) and USDC ($29.64B) they are doing pretty good considering they launched 1 month ago.

The platform currently offers yields up to 60.9% with 66.21k users thanks to their unique pegging mechanism.

Instead of keeping dollars in the bank on a 1:1 basis (like Circle’s $USDC), they use a combination of Ethereum collateral and perpetual contracts to create a delta-neutral position against Ethereum’s price.

This means that the value of the synthetic position stays the same regardless of ETH’s price. The long ETH deposits are offset against short ETH perpetuals.

For a more detailed breakdown, check out Cygaar’s thread!

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Everything Else

⛓️ Crypto & DeFi

Starknet’s 2024 roadmap includes parallel transactions
3AC co-founder Kyle Davis won’t apologize for 3AC going bankrupt
OP Mainnet tests “fault proofs” to strengthen network security
LQWD partners with Amboss as key lightning network liquidity provider
Soroban smart contract network finally arrives on Stellar network
Human Rights Foundation grants $500k to 14 Bitcoin projects
Solana co-founder warns against presales in tweet

🏦 Wallstreet & VC

MicroStrategy holds 1% of BTC supply after recent $600M purchase
Record ETF outflows of $326M, Grayscale bleeds the most
Grayscale adds ETH staking to its ETH ETF application
Immutable, Polygon, and King River raise $100M web3 gaming fund
Sygnum tokenizes $50M of Fidelity International Fund
Coinbase CEO says they custody ~90% of spot BTC ETF assets

🏛️ Legal & Regulatory

Pro-Crypto Republican Bernie Moreno wins Ohio Senate Primary
SEC delays decision on Hashdex and Ark Ethereum ETFs
Coinbase pushes for SEC to write rules, lobbying groups support
Bankrupt Genesis to pay $21M to settle SEC charges

🌎 Rest of the World

Lithuania crypto bank Meld to offer tokenized RWAs to retail investors
Netherlands alleges Alexey Pertsev laundered $1.2B via Tornado Cash

🖼️ NFTs & Metaverse

XCOPY drops open edition mint on Base called MUTATIO
Portal staking opens this Thursday, provides access to mints/pre-sales
Polygon Labs paid $4M to host Starbuck’s failed NFT-loyalty program
Rug Radio introduces Content+ rewards platform

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Specs Chat is more than just a group chat, it’s a community designed to help you become a better crypto investor and operator.

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