Inspector Gary 🔎🪨🖼️

Valko

Inspector Gary 🔎🪨🖼️Valko

Specs’ Insights

Ethereum Foundation under investigation by a 'State Authority'

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

⌐◪-◪ → Looks like Gary Gensler and the SEC want to classify Ether as a security and have already put the Ethereum Foundation under investigation + subpoenaed related firms.

This move has caused a lot of confusion considering Gary has previously asserted that Ether is not a security.

Furthermore, when the SEC allowed ETH Futures ETFs on its regulated security exchanges, it explicitly acknowledged that ETH was not a security and was outside of its jurisdiction — a decision that came well after ETH’s PoS switch.

So, if ETH was a security, then the ETH Futures ETF is an illegal instrument that the SEC approved for national exchanges.

I’m not all that worried though. Realistically our worst-case scenario is that:

The SEC considers the Ether presale a securities offering but not the underlying asset itself, Ether. Read more here.
It further delays the spot Ether ETF approvals, which may have low sentiment at the moment, but will ultimately get passed IMO (Coinbase’s CLO agrees).

If things somehow get approved in May, Ethere might god candle to $10k. Or as DCinvestor said, “straight green dildo to $10k”. Lol.Let me know what you think in Specs Chat!

BlackRock Unveils ‘BUIDL’ Tokenized Asset Fund on Ethereum—With $5 Million Buy-In - Decrypt

”We are focused on developing solutions in the digital assets space that help solve real problems for our clients,” the firm said.

⌐◪-◪ → Yesterday BlackRock announced their USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund and immediately seeded it with $100M USDC on the Ethereum network. Go see for yourself.

But there’s more to the story…

They also announced the $BUIDL token (BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund) which will be pegged to $1 per token and pay daily accrued dividends directly to investors every month.

The fund will invest 100% of its total assets in cash, US Treasury bills, and repurchase agreements.

BlackRock is putting their money where their mouth is with regards to tokenized securities being the future of finance — and paving the way for everybody else on Wall Street.

Brace yourself for more tokenized securities.

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CryptoPunk sells for $16.42M, becomes 2nd largest punk sale ever

⌐◪-◪ → Another Alien CryptoPunk just sold for over $16M, becoming the second largest CryptoPunk sale of all time.

For context, the largest sale was $23.7M in Feb 2022 for Punk #5822, another Alien. For those who don’t know there are 10,000 CryptoPunks and only 9 Aliens, making it the most rare attribute.

It’s pretty incredible to see CryptoPunks do two $16M+ sales in the last 16 days, a testament that they’re the holy grail of NFTs.

This Punk has a special history too, owned by the iconic Peruggia, who wrote a short farewell tweet to the Alien, saying that he finally “found the right buyer with the right vision”.

Nobody knows who the buyer is yet — and we’ve given up on it being Alexandre Arnault after he trolled us last alien sale.

Head over to CryptoPunks.eth (our sponsor) to shop the entire collection!

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Everything Else

⛓️ Crypto & DeFi

Vitalik Buterin highlights steps to combat ETH centralization risks
Coinbase transactions are failing due to congestion on Base
Ethereum devs want to raise gas limit, reducing fees 15-33%
Coinbase to launch futures trading for DOGE, LTC, BCH in April
Robinhood rolls out crypto wallet to Android users globally
Conflux aims for Q2 launch of HKD-pegged stablecoin with AnchorX
Backpack appoints Stripe banking veteran as CFO
NBA all-star Tyrese Haliburton talks ETH and taking salary in crypto
Bitcoin halving event is 1 month away, expected to occur on 4/20
Base daily volume sees 51% surge to $365M amid memecoin mania

🏦 Wallstreet & VC

Grayscale ETH Trust discount drops to -20% amid ETH ETF delays
Kraken institutional platform debuts custody service, Kraken Custody
Anchorage co-founder Diogo Mónica joins Huan Ventures as GP
Tensorplex Labs raises $3M seed fund to decentralize AI
Morph raises $20M from Dragonfly and Pantera for ETH L2
Berachain’s crypto aggregator Ooga Booga raises $1M
Bi.Social raises $3M for decentralized social trading protocol

🏛️ Legal & Regulatory

Fed Chair Powell reiterates there is no ’secret lab’ brewing a CBDC
Rep. Patrick McHenry says House has 'workable' stablecoin bill
SEC subpoenas firms that worked with the Ethereum Foundation

🌎 Rest of the World

UN says 50% of North Korea’s foreign currency gains are from hacks
Do Kwon's appeal of South Korea extradition rejected by Montenegro

🖼️ NFTs & Metaverse

‘Notcoin’ game hits 30M Telegram players as airdrop nears
XAI partners with Media Indie Exchange (MIX)
Coachaella’s $1.2k NFT pass only mints 3% of supply in 2 weeks
'Shrapnel' adds in-game marketplace on Epic Games store
$SMOLE hits $200M mcap, presale investors haven’t received airdrop
Pudgy Penguins flip BAYC again at 14.39 ETH
XCOPY’s new project MUTATIO mints out in minutes

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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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