The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s recent warning to Americans from using unregistered cryptocurrency money-transmitting services might be aimed at smart-contract-driven privacy tools, according to a crypto lawyer.

In an April 25 public service announcement, the FBI urged Americans only to use registered Cryptocurrency Money Services Businesses that comply with existing Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) laws.

The FBI warned Americans against using unlicensed money-transmitting services. Source: FBI

In its announcement, the FBI wrote that it had recently conducted law enforcement operations against cryptocurrency services that were not licensed in “accordance with federal law,” adding that anyone using unlicensed services could “encounter financial disruptions” during law enforcement actions, particularly if the money is intermingled with illegally obtained funds.

Michael Balcina the Digital Asset Partner at Piper Alderman lawyers told Cointelegraph that the FBI’s announcement seemed to be directed at warning users against using crypto mixing services but noted that the “broad” warning missed much of the finer details.

“While this appears an attempt to warn consumers away from smart-contract driven privacy tools like Samouri or Tornado Cash, it’s a very broad warning which misses a great deal of nuance in how decentralized systems operate.”

“The sooner fit-for-purpose regulation and clear guidance for cryptocurrency replaces regulation by enforcement, the better the outcomes for consumers will be,” Bacina added.

On April 25, the co-founders of Bitcoin wallet and crypto mixing service Samourai Wallet were arrested on charges of money laundering.

Samourai Wallet CEO Keonne Rodriguez and CTO William Hill were charged with money laundering and operating an unlicenced money-transmitting business, and currently face a maximum sentence of up to 25 years in prison.

Several other commentators on X also noted the hazy definition of what could potentially be considered an MSB and questioned what it could mean for crypto service providers.

Related: Crypto market stumbles amid arrest of Samourai Wallet founders

Describing the FBI’s announcement as “eerie,” Bankless co-founder Ryan Sean Adams, drew attention to what kind of services would technically fall under the designation of an MSB in an April 25 post to X. 

“Oh and is your code or wallet a MSB? maybe, maybe not — but we're arresting privacy devs right now & calling them MSBs so…”

These developments come amid a broader escalation of legal tensions between crypto firms and regulators in the United States.

On April 25, Ethereum development firm Consensys sued the SEC, alleging the regulator had orchestrated a campaign to “seize control over the future of cryptocurrency” with enforcement actions aimed at deeming Ether (ETH) as a security.

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Institutional investors appear to be “broadening their exposure to altcoins” including Solana (SOL), which has seen a “dramatic increase in allocations” from wealth managers and hedge funds, says CoinShares.

“Investors are more optimistic for Solana,” the asset manager’s head of research, James Butterfill, wrote in an April 24 report based on its survey of 64 investors with a combined $600 billion in assets under management.

Nearly 15% of surveyed investors said they had invested in SOL, a significant bump from CoinShares’ January survey which showed none of the respondents had any investment in the altcoin.

Crypto investments in January (black diamonds) compared to April (blue). Source: CoinShares

Butterfill noted XRP (XRP) had seen a “significant decline, with none of the survey respondents holding it now" compared to the January survey.

Despite the surveyed institutions not holding XRP in this survey, investment products for the cryptocurrency do see allocations, with CoinShares’ report showing minor inflows of $1.3 million to XRP products for the week ending April 19.

Meanwhile, Solana was third when ranked by the “most compelling growth outlook” with just under 15% of respondents agreeing — a bump up from over 10% from the same survey in January.

Bitcoin (BTC) however, remained in investors’ top spot with 41% agreeing it had the best growth potential.

Ether (ETH) was runner-up with just over 30% of respondents bullish on its growth. Butterfill noted that “investor appetite has waned since January” with ETH’s score dropping from around 35%.

Cryptocurrency ranked by growth outlook. Source: CoinShares

The survey also found the percentage of cryptocurrency in investors’ portfolios rose to 3% compared to 1.3% in January which Butterfill said was “the highest weighting since the survey began in 2021.”

“Unsurprisingly, some of the largest contributors to this were allocation from institutional investors who finally had the ability to gain exposure to Bitcoin via the U.S. ETFs,” Butterfill wrote

Equities — stocks — were still the most weighted asset class at over 55%.

Institutions were second behind individual investors for being the most positioned in crypto. Source: CoinShares

Exposure to distributed ledger technology was the main reason investors bought digital assets and despite most cryptocurrencies rising in price since January the percentage that said they are “good value” jumped from under 15% to over 20%.

“Client demand has risen too, as is often the case during positive price momentum,” Butterfill added.

Crypto still has “significant barriers to entry”

While the overall data trended positive toward crypto, wealth managers and institutional investors, in particular, reported there were “significant barriers to entry to the asset class.”

Of the respondents that didn’t have crypto in their portfolio “regulation remains stubbornly high” as a reason preventing them from crypto investments, Butterfill noted.

“Although this maybe due to corporate restrictions and the way in which regulatory guidelines are interpreted,” he added.

Related: 12 Solana presale memecoins abandoned after just a month

As for investors who had crypto investments, regulations and politics were the top perceived risks to crypto, rising from the January results.

Investor beliefs on key risks to crypto. Source: CoinShares

Butterfull said it was encouraging that volatility and custody concerns “continue to diminish.”

Magazine: Blockchain detectives: Mt. Gox collapse saw birth of Chainalysis

Bitcoin mining firm Marathon Digital has announced it is increasing its 2024 hash rate target from 35-37 exahashes per second to 50 EH/s, citing expanded capacity after recent acquisitions.

“Given the amount of capacity we have available following our recent acquisitions and the amount of hash rate [...] we now believe it is possible for us to double the scale of Marathon’s mining operations in 2024,” explained Marathon’s CEO Fred Thiel.

Thiel said its target would be “fully funded” as there is no need for the firm to raise additional capital to achieve its new target hash rate.

Source: Marathon Digital

The firm’s recent acquisitions include a 200 megawatt Bitcoin mining center purchased from Digital Applied for $87.3 million in March and two additional mining sites, totaling 390 megawatts from Generate Capital for $179 million last December.

Marathon currently boasts a hash rate of 24.7 EH/s for its Bitcoin mining endeavours, with Core Scientific and Riot Platforms filling out the podium at 16.9 EH/s and 12.4 EH/s respectively, according to Hashrate Index.

If Marathon reaches its 50 EH/s target, it would mark more than a 100% increase in the firm’s hash rate since the start of 2024.

Marathon’s (MARA) stock fell 0.42% to $19.01 on April 25 but has rallied 4.5% in after-hours trading following the announcement, according to Google Finance.

Change in MARA’s share price over the last trading day. Source: Google Finance

Marathon has increased more than 15% since the fourth Bitcoin halving event occurred at block 840,000 on April 20 — an increase consistent with other miners in the industry.

Related: Jack Dorsey’s Block announces development of ‘full Bitcoin mining system’

While the block subsidy halved to 3.125 Bitcoin — worth $200,000 at current prices — miners benefitted from a record-setting $128 average transaction fee on the halving day, earning more than they usually were pre-halving.

Much of the initial demand at block 840,000 came from memecoin and nonfungible token enthusiasts competing to inscribe and etch “rare satoshis” via the Runes protocol.

However, transaction fees have since fallen to $28.20, according to YCharts, citing April 24 data.

Magazine: Get Bitcoin or die tryin’: Why hip hop stars love crypto

Bored Ape co-founder Wylie Aronow also known as Gordon Goner online struggled through a decade afflicted by an autoimmune disease before recovering to launch the worlds hottest NFT project three years ago this week.

After hitting stratospheric heights of money and success, with BAYC being feted by major celebrities like Paris Hilton and Snoop Dogg, Aronow came crashing back to earth after being diagnosed with a heart failure condition in January 2023.

Being in your mid-30s and being told you have a condition that 50% of people pass away from within five years is hard to comprehend. Aronow has drawn upon his spirituality to help with the gravity of the situation he faces.

Its a very personal thing, if Im being honest, but I was a practicing Hindu for many years. I grew up next to an ISKCON temple, which is like Krishna consciousness, he says.

Id had this deep spiritual side to me that I dont talk about very often, and then later, I became a Buddhist.

When youre told you might die soon, youre just thinking about death a lot. The hard part is confronting that moment, its only going to happen once. Like you are going to die, and most people, until youre told youre going to die, dont have to think about it.

Confronting death is on my mind a lot. I cant say Im in a great place with it, but Im better than I was when I first got told the news. Its a very deep, personal, weird spiritual journey that I think is just going to be different for everybody.

But in a positive development, he reveals that the condition has responded well to an experimental new stem cell treatment, even if healing “hasn’t been a straight line.”

Aronow says that having to face his mortality was probably behind his November 2023 NFT shopping spree that lit up social media. He purchased a Zombie CryptoPunk for 600 ETH and NFTs from collections such as Cool Cats, Mocaverse, World of Women, Doodles, Meebits, Chromie Squiggles and more.

Bored Ape Beginnings

Bored Ape Yacht Club this week notches up the third anniversary of starting its mint on April 23, 2021.

The NFT Ape pics entered the global zeitgeist at a pace never seen before. Even today, if you ask a regular person on the street what an NFT is, chances are high theyll respond with a Bored Ape.

From Steph Curry to Eminem, Jimmy Fallon to Elon Musk, Bored Apes were celebrated by some of the worlds biggest influential personalities. But it was always developed as a counter cultural and irreverent brand targeted at a small niche community of crypto natives. 

Had you minted a floor Ape at 0.08 ETH (around $220) and collected all the airdrops and benefits that came your way, you would have seen the investment skyrocket to around $1 million if you had sold even remotely close to the top when the floor price peaked at 150 ETH in April 2022. 

Bored Ape Yacht Club Origin Story

Aronows health battle forced him to step back from Yuga Labs, the company behind BAYC. Prior to Bored Apes, hed spent a decade fighting an autoimmune disease. 

I was really ill for 10 years and had been bed-bound for a lot of it. I had to drop out of college my senior year just to be a sick guy. I was traveling around the country, going to different doctors, trying to fix my autoimmune disease, which at the time was really extreme. I was having a lot of intestinal blockages, which were extraordinarily painful, and I had really severe colitis, on top of a couple other conditions, so my life was over for like 10 years, says Aronow. 

I didnt do anything but read books, watch movies, play video games, and meditate. It was just nothing, just pure nothingness. But then I kind of miraculously had gotten better, which put me in a position for Bored Apes to be born. 

Despite Aronows health situation not being widely known for much of BAYCs existence, it was central to its origin story as childhood friend Greg Solano aka Garga reached out about an idea. 

I found the right combination of medicines and lifestyle modifications that got me better. Then, literally, a month later, Im trying to figure out how to pay off my extraordinary medical debt and my incredible student loan. Im $80,000 in the hole, and I havent had a job since I was 16 years old, working at a retail store. Greg texts me, and he goes, Lets make an NFT, says Aronow. 

I dont know if Ive ever shared what I said in response to that, but my response to his text was, What the fuck is an NFT? That was the real response. Then I remembered pretty much instantly what an NFT was because I remembered CryptoPunks.

Aronow and Solano observed the minting and early formation of Hashmasks but didnt love the community aspect, as the Discord group was full of holders dunking on and trying to outtrade one another. 

BAYC #1 owned by Gordon Gonor, who displays it as his PFP.

There was very little communal feeling to it, and we just set out to come up with the idea that would eventually be Bored Ape Yacht Club. 

The first idea was actually Crypto Girlfriends when the four of us were brainstorming, and we posed the question, What do all these crypto bros need and my answer was girlfriends. My own girlfriend, who Im still with today, wasnt a fan [laughs], and it did feel off to us it didnt feel like it had a lot of staying power. 

Aronow recalls getting Ozone IV treatments for his health condition, colitis, in Knoxville, Tennessee and having a huge wave of creativity and consciousness that would eventually give birth to the name and concept of the Bored Ape Yacht Club. 

I was feeling really terrible at night, and I couldnt sleep because of the treatments. I was up for 24 hours, and I sent Greg this fucking essay about all the things that I thought were cool. It centered around two things, one of which is this place that weve gone to growing up called Church Hills Pub in Miami, which is a very infamous punk club going back 30 years in Miami and then the CBGBs bathroom. 

The Swamp with Curtis from LowFi Hip-Hop Mix

The first idea for utility centered around the idea of that bathroom. It was like, What if you could drop a pixel? What if buying this NFT gave you access to this club where you could drop a pixel and contribute to a collective art experience? and were kind of off to the races after that. 

Id given Greg a ton of different names for what we could call it, including Bored Ape Yacht Club, and he woke up in the morning to this giant stream of consciousness, and anyone whos ever worked with me knows that thats how I work. But when Greg read Bored Ape Yacht Club, he said thats the thing. I knew it right away, and it just felt kismet. 

The early magic and experimentation of Bored Apes

To say Bored Ape Yacht Club bottled magic would be an understatement, particularly in its first year when the brand could do almost no wrong. Even those sidelined with no exposure to the BAYC ecosystem watched the emergence of a cultural phenomenon in awe. 

Its hard to capture all the moments in the mania that was BAYCs first year or so, but heres a walk down memory lane and a reminder of how instrumental the project was as infinite copycat projects tried to roll out their own version: 

BAYC minting out / Roadmap 2.0 / Treasure Hunt / J1mmy.eth and Pranksy mint a huge amount of Apes / Elons seems kinda fungible tweet after momentarily changing his PFP to a collage of Bored Apes.

Bored Ape Kennel Club surprise drop / Meebits v Apes with Beeple’s art /Apes flipping Punks / the Fuck It. Mutants Saturday iconic tweet / Yacht Club / IP rights gifted to holders in the wild, including Bored & Hungry, Tyrese Haliburton shoes in NBA and Snoop Dogg with Dr. Bombay Ice Cream.

Ape Fest / Celebs jumping on board, including Paris Hilton, Jimmy Fallon, Steph Curry, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Timbaland, Justin Bieber, Madonna, Josh Hart, LaMelo Ball / the BAYC mural during the Australian Open tennis / Otherside trailer / and plenty more, too.

How Bored Apes avoided Von Dutching themselves?

BAYC was hardly short of oh shit moments in its first 12 months of existence, but Aronow recalls Paris Hilton on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon showing off her Ape as one of the biggest moments in terms of how much BAYC had captured mainstream culture. 

Pretty much every celebrity interaction with BAYC I did not know was going to happen beforehand. Someone DMd me and said Paris Hilton is on the Tonight Show talking about her Bored Ape, and theyre showing it, says Aronow. 

She had the one with an S&M hat, and Im sitting back, thinking, I know where I took inspiration for that variable. Thats from underground sex clubs in New York City, he explains. Thats where I was inspired by that variable. Is she aware of that?I know shes a smart person, so Im sure she is, but I remember thinking, Thats a little risque.

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But while, on one hand, he couldnt believe how successful it was becoming, he was worried about Bored Apes getting co-opted by the mainstream.

I called up Greg right after that happened, in my exact words, and Ill never forget; were like, How do we not Von Dutch ourselves? I began to become concerned that this was jumping the shark. 

I said this project was meant for a niche crypto community. Now its as mainstream as you can get. Paris Hilton on the fucking Tonight Show Dont get me wrong, I love Paris Hilton… I have a lot of respect for her. 

They talked it out and ultimately agreed the only solution was to stay authentic no matter what. If we can just try and be a little subversive or a little bit irreverent and stay crypto native, he says.

But that ultimately became very hard as the company grew and as our ambition scaled to match. It became very hard to stay crypto-native. I think were back on track now, but it took a while to get us there.

Paris Hilton on The Tonight Show Aronows creativity like a Hot Wheels track 

The magic of BAYC was in giving the impression they were just making things up on the fly, but behind the scenes, much of it was very deliberate. The catch cry Fuck Doing Expected Things was one of Aronows memorable tweets that doubled as a mission statement.

Aronows creativity in drumming up anticipation in an industry where anticipation is often referred to as the oxygen of the space cant be understated. Behind the social media shitposting and regular banter with Solano is a very deep curiosity about the creative process and writing. 

Having studied creative writing, Aronow was inspired by short story writers, which filtered through to the lore of BAYC, Bored Ape Kennel Club, Mutant Ape Yacht Club and Otherdeeds for Otherside. 

I love creative process stuff; it was really interesting to me. I like talking to other creatives, writers and artists about their process. Thats the shit that Im really into, Aronow says, singling out George Saunders as probably the greatest living short story writer and a source of personal inspiration.

George had written this essay about a Donald Barthelme story called The School, and his essay was called The Perfect Gerbil. It blew my mind when I read it over a decade ago because it explained how narrative works in a way that I couldnt quite digest yet from Aristotles poetics or the like. My stupid brain finally understood it when he explained it as a Hot Wheels track. 

George basically said it had these little gas stations that sped up the car around the track, and it was your goal as a writer to place these Hot Wheels tracks at just the right moments to get the reader through the story. For example, lets use a novel; you could have the greatest moment ever on page 276, but if your reader stops reading at 275, what was the point of it, right? Thats what matters, and timing was everything. 

MAYC #7069 Bored Ape Kennel Club #8908 BAYC Digital Hoodie

Aronow believes that narrative drives community, and apart from Bitcoin and Ethereum, most crypto kind of exists because of X and Twitter. I know thats going to be a very unpopular thing to say, but they have a very codependent relationship. 

What works on social media is narrative. When people talk about community being the most important thing, I think thats a bit of a meme. Im not saying that community is not important. Community is extraordinarily important, but what comes before community? Community follows narrative. Narrative comes first. Its almost like one begets the other. If you have a strong narrative about something, community will form around it. 

Bored Apes controversy and its toll on his health

They often say fame comes at a heavy cost, and for Aronow, the cost has been higher than most, revealing his nervous system feels shot to bits dealing with the autoimmune disease and heart failure while battling internet trolls amid the infamous Buzzfeed doxing.

When Aronow was diagnosed with heart failure, he posted Setting the Record Straight on Substack to address the bizarre Nazi conspiracy smear campaign that shook him and his co-founders. 

I started to get sick, and I hid it for a while. I just really started to burn out. All the trolls and all the nastiness. The doxing, and the way all that shit went down; it was brutal, and there was so much happening on that front behind the scenes, Aronow says. 

So many people are not aware. Two trolls, which I wont name just because they would love it if I did, really tried to make our lives a personal living hell in the most egregious of ways. Therell probably be multiple documentaries coming out in the future about just how nasty those guys were. 

By the time I was diagnosed with heart failure when I was told I had a 50% chance of dying within five years, I just closed my fucking laptop.

I fulfilled every promise that Ive ever made I just deserve my own peace now. I worked nonstop up until that point, and I mean, nonstop. I didnt take a day off, neither did Greg by the way. Greg took six hours off during that second year to get married. Im not fucking kidding.

Forever the optimist, Aronow shares that a recent treatment has had a positive effect on countering his heart failure condition.

I did an experimental stem cell thing for my heart, which did really help it. It slowed the progression of the disease pretty dramatically, but it made it so that the medications that allowed me to create Yuga in the first place for my colitis stopped working entirely. 

Im now back to this place where I was. Im back to dealing with the disease that I was sick with for 10 years on top of now having heart failure, which, again, has been fairly stable. But as a result of the stem cells, now Im struggling in this way, which is pretty difficult.

Its hard to appreciate everything we were able to build and everything it did for the ecosystem all the new people it brought in when your nervous system is so thrashed. I still, to this day, feel thrashed from it all. 

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Not one to wallow in his own adversity, Aronow, whos ridden the rollercoaster of a lifetime with his treasured Bored Ape Yacht Club, remains optimistic that the collection will see its time in the sun again. 

I think Apes will always have some kind of cultural relevance due to the splash that they made in its first year. I think those moments are going to come back again and again and again. Its going to follow the same attention economy that all of crypto has, says Aronow.

I think one of the reasons for that is that we have an extraordinary BAYC team being headed up by Jeff Nicholas, Figgie and Greg now. Theres going to be just a ton of extraordinary moments out in the next year, and I think a lot of them can bring a lot of attention back to the space as a whole, but in particular, Bored Apes. I think Bored Apes are going to be around pretty much forever.

Aronow also has his sights set on returning to the space once his health improves. 

Eventually, I will get better. I feel that in my heart, that even if I cant fully correct the colitis or the heart failure, that I will get back to a place where Im building, and I think itll probably be what everyone is expecting on some level. Ill probably create some kind of corner for myself. Ive tentatively wanted to call it the basement, and its like my little corner where I get to do whatever the fuck I want and everyone leaves me alone. 

I want to capture the meta-narratives; I want to capture that stuff that only a really small, nimble and extraordinarily degenerate team can accomplish. Thats because thats the kind of shit that gets me going; thats the kind of shit that I get out of bed, and Im like, Yeah, lets fucking do it. 

BAYC co-founder Greg Solanos aka Garga PFP BAYC co-founder Kerem Atalays aka EmperorTomatoKetchup PFP BAYC co-found Zeshan Alis aka Sass PFP Rapid fire Q&A with Gordon Goner

Favorite NFT in your wallet? 

Bored Ape number one. I know its a boring answer, but its that one, absolutely.

Favorite 1-of-1 art piece? 

I havent collected a lot of 1-of-1s. I absolutely will over the next year, and I have a few in mind that Im just waiting for the right price moment or negotiation to come through.

Who are your top 3 favorite follows on Twitter for NFTs?

1. NFT Nick I love Nick. I would put him in my top three.

2. CL207 Someone whos not as involved in the NFT space who doesnt know who I am and probably doesnt give a shit about me one way or the other. But I have always secretly loved him as a guy. Probably been my all-time favorite Crypto Twitter personality.

3. Lior I have a lot of respect for him, not just as a founder, but also as a community member, and I like his thoughts on things. Hes such a fucking incredible guy.

Advice on how to survive NFTs and crypto in the long run?

I think its important to not follow every meta-narrative, right? I think its important to think long-term. To have the discernment on what metas to follow and what not to follow, and that only comes unfortunately from just being around long enough. You have to get burned enough times.

The other thing I will say is that pride comes before the fall in crypto. Dont let hubris get the best of you because crypto has a way of humbling you every fucking time. 

I cant think of a single person. I honestly cant think of a single person since 2017 who has not burned themselves from not showing humility and or letting greed take over.

Would you do anything different in the last three years of this wild ride? 

Id do a million things differently, but I wouldnt even know where to begin. Its not like Im filled with regret or anything, but there are a tremendous amount of moments that I would redo if I could almost on a day-to-day level, but I really did the best I could. 

Im not just thinking about myself but thinking from the perspective of the holders. That became harder as I became sicker and had to sort of step away from the company and entrust others along the way, but everyone weve entrusted has only gotten better and better. 

I feel good about where were heading now. I feel so filled with optimism and hope for the entire NFT ecosystem. Im feeling pretty fucking great about where everything is heading. 

On a personal level, all of this was the first time for us. You learn through doing. 

What message do you want to get out to the Bored Ape community? 

Apes together strong I love you.

Wylie Aronow, straight after this interview. Subscribe The most engaging reads in blockchain. Delivered once a week.

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An "epic sat" — an exceptionally rare satoshi that was mined from the fourth Bitcoin halving block — has sold for 33.3 Bitcoin (BTC), worth about $2.13 million.

The sale of the satoshi — the smallest unit of Bitcoin — took place on cryptocurrency exchange CoinEx Global on April 25 — roughly five days after one of its partners, Bitcoin mining pool viaBTC, mined it in block 840,000 on April 20.

The auction, which commenced on April 22, saw 34 bids before an unidentified bidder won ownership rights to the epic sat — with “sat number 1,968,750,000,000,000.”

The next closest competitor bidded 20 Bitcoin for the rare sat.

“The auction has concluded successfully, with the FIRST & ONLY epic sat selling for 33.3 $BTC (≈$2,134,000),” CoinEx posted to X on April 25.”

“This auction isn't just a bidding event; it marked the community recognition, media attention, & widespread embrace of #Bitcoin.”

Auction of the epic sat mined in the fourth Bitcoin halving block on April 20. Source: CoinEX

An epic sat refers to the first satoshi mined in the first new Bitcoin halving block. Given there’s been four halvings, only four of these rare sats exist.

These sats are allocated a unique sequence number under the Ordinals number system, which is based on mining timestamps.

Source: Ord.io

As there are one hundred million sats in a Bitcoin, an ordinary satoshi is currently priced at $0.00065.

But certain sats have a special meaning within the Bitcoin ecosystem, CoinEx explained.

"Given that satoshis are assigned unique identifiers, they inherently possess higher collectible value. As periodic events occur within the Bitcoin network, some more frequently than others, scarcity is naturally promoted.”

Related: El Salvador’s Bitcoin wallet gets sats, cats and a cypherpunk manifesto

ViaBTC mined the fourth halving block, block 840,000, at 12:09 am UTC on April 20.

It received the new block subsidy of 3.125 Bitcoin, in addition to an eye-popping 37.6 Bitcoin in reward fees, worth $2.4 million at the time.

The next Bitcoin halving event is expected to occur sometime in 2028 at block 1,050,000, which will see mining rewards halved to 1.5625 Bitcoin.

Big Questions: How can Bitcoin payments stage a comeback?

Caroline Crenshaw, one of five commissioners of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), could be leaving the financial regulator after roughly four years.

As of April 25, President Joe Biden’s administration will have 41 days to decide whether to nominate someone to replace Crenshaw before her term ends on June 5. The commissioner was nominated by former President Donald Trump in 2020 to fill a seat left vacant by former SEC commissioner Rob Jackson but may continue to serve until the end of 2025 if no replacement is found.

During her time at the SEC, Crenshaw, a Democrat, was one of the seemingly anti-crypto voices. In January, she voted against approval of listing and trading for spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds, claiming the underlying markets were “marred by fraud and manipulation.”

“[I]t is well-documented that many criminals use bitcoin to evade U.S. financial sanctions,” said Crenshaw in January. “Many ransomware attacks demand payment in bitcoin, and analysis shows that these payments may end up funding our geopolitical rivals or adversaries.”

Caroline Crenshaw. Source: SEC

Crenshaw, Chair Gary Gensler, and Commissioner Jaime Lizárraga supported efforts to redefine the term “dealer” under SEC rules. Many in the crypto space criticized the change as a threat to the industry, with the Blockchain Association filing a lawsuit against the SEC with the Crypto Freedom Alliance of Texas.

Gensler, often the commission’s public face, has taken the brunt of ire from many crypto users over leading the commission through a “regulation by enforcement” approach to companies. Many on social media believed the SEC chair was resigning after an ambiguous X post in April, but his term does not end until 2026.

Related: Consensys files lawsuit against SEC and commissioners over Ether regulation

The White House has sometimes put forward names for financial regulators reaching the end of the terms only days after they have officially ended. For example, in June 2023, President Biden nominated Commissioner Mark Uyeda to serve at the SEC for five years. He was sworn into office in December 2023, roughly six months after his initial term ended.

No pick for Crenshaw’s replacement or her nomination appeared on the White House website at the time of publication. Any nominations would first go to the Senate for approval.

President Biden would have the choice to nominate either a Republican or Democrat to fill Crenshaw’s seat based on SEC rules. It’s unclear what impact her potential departure could have on the regulation and enforcement of crypto. The commission has several ongoing lawsuits against crypto firms, including Coinbase, Binance and Ripple.

Magazine: Crypto regulation: Does SEC Chair Gary Gensler have the final say?

Nearly every corner of the crypto market has corrected at some point in April, but, memecoins in the Solana ecosystem seem to be charting a different path. 

According to CoinGecko data, the total market capitalization of memecoins on Solana has significantly risen in the last 24 hours, climbing 4.2% to $8.261 billion.

Bonk (BONK) gained the most, rising 15.2% over the last 24 hours and 8.7% in the last hour. Popcat (POPCAT) followd with double-digit gains of 10.7% over the last 24 hours and 214% over the last seven days.

Top-cap memecoins in the Solana ecosystem. Source: CoinGecko

The leading Solana-based meme token by market value — Dogwifhat (WIF) — saw a 1.4% price ascent on the day and a 5% increase in an hour, bringing its market cap to $3.185 billion. Notably, WIF still accounts for nearly half of Solana's total memecoin market share.

Many crypto analysts believe that it’s common for memecoins to pump on launch and plummet sharply when the price of BTC crashes.

Mert Mumtaz, the co-founder and CEO of Helius Labs pointed out the importance of memecoins for the industry and the networks hosting them, saying memecoins are good for “getting crypto into the hands of more people” and for stress testing the network.

Mumtaz added,

“Memecoins have improved Solana 10x long-term, just as NFTs had done in 2021.”

According to a recent report by CoinGecko, the memecoin sector has emerged as the most profitable narrative year-to-date..

The bullishness displayed by Solana memecoins reflects a broader trend of capital moving back into the riskier assets as the market readies for a sustained recovery after the April 20 Bitcoin halving event.

Solana network activity spikes

The rally in Solana memecoins amid a pullback in the broader market is evidence of the increased relevance of Solana as a layer 1 ecosystem. This means investors’ sentiment toward the blockchain is not speculative. Instead, it is rooted in genuine user engagement and high development activity.

Its potential has been reinforced by high transaction volumes and growth in DeFi applications (DApps).

Related: Why is Solana (SOL) price down today?

Data from DefiLlama reveals that volume on Solana climbed to $1.5 billion on April 25, up from $840 million on April 7. The blockchain’s all-time high volume is $3.8 billion — a figure set on March 15.

Transaction volume on Solana. Source: DefiLlama

Looking at other metrics, data from The Block shows that the number of active addresses on the Solana network continues to rise. According to the chart below, more than 842,000 active addresses were clocked yesterday—higher figures than those recorded in 2022 and 2023.

Number of daily active addresses on Solana. Source: The Block Solana price in slight retracement

Compared to memecoin gains, the price of Solana (SOL) has experienced a pullback after its rally that began on April 17.

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and Tradingview shows that SOL’s price decreased by 1.15% in the past 24 hours to $147.

SOL/USD daily chart. Source: TradingView

Trading volume across all major centralized cryptocurrency exchanges has dropped by 56% from a six-week high of $8.9 billion on April 13 to $3.9 billion, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

Payment service Stripe is bringing back crypto in the form of stablecoin payments, co-founder and president John Collison has announced. The new service will be available this summer, he said.

“Crypto is finally making sense as a means of exchange,” Collison told the audience at the company’s developers conference in San Francisco on April 25. Since Stripe discontinued its Bitcoin (BTC) payment option in 2018, transaction times have increased, fees have decreased and stablecoins are performing stably.

Source: John Collison

“If we’re in a crypto winter post 2021, nobody told the stablecoins,” Collison said, referring to a chart of stablecoin value transferred. Therefore:

“We’re bringing back crypto as a way to accept payments, but this time with a much better experience with stablecoins.”

Collison proved his point by carrying out a transaction on stage. Stripe will offer payment services using USD Coin (USDC) on the Solana, Ethereum and Polygon blockchains.

Besides the stability Collison has found in USDC, its dollar peg makes it a store of value. “You don’t see it in the U.S. You have a very good currency,” said Collison, before displaying a chart of stablecoin use versus the volume of Turkish lira traded across crypto exchanges.

Stripe president John Collison speaking in San Francisco on April 25. Source: YouTube

Stripe was the first major payment provider to adopt Bitcoin in 2014. “At the time, Bitcoin was a pretty terrible payment method,” Collison said, explaining its discontinuation four years later.

Stripe did not entirely turn its back on crypto, however. It was one of the participants in Facebook’s ill-fated Libra project, before backing out under pressure from United States politicians. It began rebuilding its crypto engineering team in 2021.

Related: 7 payment gateways for fast online transactions

Stripe is the payment processor for payouts on X. In 2022, Stripe and X (then Twitter) introduced a program to allow creators on the social platform to receive payment in USDC on Polygon. After that, it created fiat-to-crypto on-ramps via application programming interfaces (APIs) in conjunction with cryptocurrency exchanges.

It began hosting a fiat-to-crypto on-ramp for U.S. customers, taking on conversion and compliance obligations such as Know Your Customer and fraud prevention. It was following the examples of Venmo and Robinhood with this move.

Magazine: Big Questions: How can Bitcoin payments stage a comeback?

While Dogecoin (DOGE) price fell during the past month, historical data indicates that it could start its rally to new all-time highs around seven months after the Bitcoin halving. 

Dogecoin price rally in November?

Dogecoin price is down nearly 8% on the daily chart and over 18% over the past month, but remains in line with the previous cycle’s price action, suggesting that it could be on track toward new all-time highs.

During the previous crypto bull market, Dogecoin started rallying in May 2020, or seven months after the 2020 Bitcoin halving, according to TradingView.

DOGE/USDT. 1-month chart. Source: TradingView

Dogecoin price rose to its all-time high of $0.73 on May 8, 2021, a year after the 2020 Bitcoin (BTC) halving. Dogecoin is currently 73% down from its previous all-time high.

If this pattern were to repeat, Dogecoin price would reach a new all-time high in April 2025. However, technical analysis is difficult to apply to memecoins as their value is speculative. 

Memecoins are a “manic market” purely driven by greed, with little understanding of the high risks, according to Robby Greenfield, founder of Umoja Labs.

However, Greenfield expects some memecoins to maintain a high valuation. He told Cointelegraph:

“Some of these tokens, like DOGE and PEPE will continue to legitimize as exchanges like Coinbase introduce memecoin futures markets. Given the large, cult-like communities behind these assets, it’s likely that they will remain as higher-cap cryptos than even most legitimate project-backed tokens."

Related: Bitcoin outperforms Tesla stock for the first time since 2019

Memecoins offer fairer market access?

Numerous cryptocurrencies have launched with a high fully diluted valuation (FDV) and significant venture capitalist (VC) allocation during 2024, prompting some analysts to argue that "money-hungry VCs" are bad for cryptocurrencies long term.

Thus, retail investors could be seeing memecoins with no VC allocations as the fairest market opportunity, according to Gianluca Sacco, chief operating officer at VALR. He told Cointelegraph:

“These tokens are being seen as the fairest opportunity to participate in the crypto market right now, while the communities around them are just a lot of fun to be involved in… Many feel burnt by high FDV, low issuance tokens that have historically been offered by token projects at deep discounts to insiders and VCs at the expense of retail users.”

Other memecoins like Pepe (PEPE), Shiba Inu (SHIB), Dogwifhat (WIF), and Floki (FLOKI) saw double-digit gains during the past week, according to TradingView.

Pepe, Shib, Wif, Floki, 7-day chart. Source: TradingView

Yet, this only suggests a temporary surge of interest in some memecoins, not the resurgence of a memecoin "altseason," according to Diane Dai, the CMO of Dodo. Dai told Cointelegraph:

“Despite the double-digit price increases, trading volume remains low, indicating insufficient market liquidity. The significant price fluctuations of memecoins are not enough to prove an influx of investors into the memecoin market after the halving event.”

The daily trading volume of memecoins fell over 17% in the past 24 hours to $6.58 billion. The market capitalization of memecoins was down 5.8% to $52.8 billion, according to CoinMarketCap data.

Top memecoins by market cap. Source: CoinMarketCap

Related: Bitcoin price breaks above $66K — Has BTC flipped bullish again?

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

Jack Dorsey’s fintech firm, Block, recently announced that it was integrating a new feature for Square merchants that would allow them to allocate a portion of their daily sales to bitcoin, with on-demand payouts via CashApp. 

Qualified merchants in the U.S. can currently allocate between one and ten percent of their daily sales to bitcoin. According to a TechCrunch article, the fiat funds are collected until the end of the day, at which point they’re converted to bitcoin and deposited into the user’s CashApp account. Merchants will be required to pay a one percent fee on each conversion.

Per a statement, Square says this move will empower small businesses and individual proprietors to participate in the global financial economy:

“Block believes that bitcoin is an instrument of economic empowerment and provides a way for people around the world, including business owners, to participate in a global monetary system. According to direct feedback from Square sellers, many are interested in bitcoin and believe it presents a wide range of use cases, such as long-term savings and diversifying their businesses’ holdings.”

The integration was announced just a day after Block signaled its intent to build a full-scale Bitcoin mining solution.

As Cointelegraph recently reported, Block is diving into the mining scene headfirst after having recently completed the development of a proprietary three-nanometer chip for the purpose of mining Bitcoin. By way of unveiling the news, Dorsey posted “we’re building a mining rig” on the X social media platform.

Block’s sudden drive into the Bitcoin ecosystem is likely related to its exceptional BTC profits from the fourth quarter of 2023. CashApp alone generated $66 million in Bitcoin gross profits, up 90% over 2022.

The expansion into Bitcoin services also follows Dorsey’s commitment for Cash App “to become one of the top providers of banking services to households in the United States which earn up to $150,000 per year.”

Related: Boomers to pour $300B into crypto markets — Morgan Creek Capital

The demand for leveraged buyers using Bitcoin (BTC) perpetual futures has dropped to its lowest levels in over six months, a trend some analysts consider extremely bullish. However, the BTC futures funding rate, which measures the demand between longs (buyers) and shorts (sellers), is greatly influenced by past performance, as historical data indicates.

Let’s dig in to whether or not Bitcoin’s flat funding rate is a sign of a buying opportunity.

The Bitcoin funding rate is often a backward-looking metric

Bitcoin’s funding rate fee is implemented by exchanges to manage the use of leverage since every trade involving perpetual contracts requires a buyer and a seller of equal size. When buyers are more aggressive, the funding rate becomes positive, indicating that they are paying for the use of leverage. Essentially, one side compensates the other, ensuring the exchange does not hold exposure risk.

Source: Inmortal

Inmortal's post on the X social network attempts to link periods of negative funding rates with preceding bull markets. While there's no issue with conducting backtests and employing historical data, these periods ranged from a few days to over two months. Moreover, external factors may have influenced the price increases and subsequent reversals in the funding rate.

For instance, the intervention of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) on March 23, which was holding $3.3 billion in USD Coin (USDC) reserves, adversely affected Bitcoin's funding rate. However, once U.S. authorities announced measures to protect investors' deposits, Bitcoin's price regained the $24,000 support level, and the funding rate turned positive. Therefore, relying solely on a single metric to establish cause and effect is not very effective.

Similarly, the funding rate increase in October 2023 occurred alongside a significant event for Grayscale Investments, which won approval to launch a spot Bitcoin ETF despite opposition from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). On October 23, federal Judge Neomi Rao criticized the SEC’s decision as “arbitrary and capricious,” noting the regulator's failure to justify how Bitcoin was different from similar financial products.

Bitcoin’s performance relative to gold’s helped to instill bearishness

Regardless of the outlook for Bitcoin's price in 2024, it's clear that BTC has struggled to maintain bullish momentum since April 12. Some analysts suggest that the brief surge above $72,000 on April 8 signaled a double-top formation, indicating a bearish trend. The subsequent drop below $60,000 on April 17, coinciding with escalating conflicts in the Middle East and a surge in gold prices to record highs, has bolstered the confidence of bearish traders.

The diminished inflows into spot Bitcoin ETFs have also dampened the enthusiasm for leveraged BTC long positions. Given that institutional investors were a major driver of Bitcoin's rally in March, it's logical to anticipate a decrease in demand for leveraged longs as market conditions shift. Consequently, the BTC funding rate is more a reflection of recent price movements rather than a predictor.

Related: SEC reviews new rules for Bitcoin options trading

To determine whether the reduced interest in leveraged long positions reflects broader market sentiment, it is useful to analyze the demand for stablecoins in China. Typically, excessive retail demand for cryptocurrencies leads the stablecoin to trade at a premium of 1.5% or higher compared to the official U.S. dollar rate, whereas bear markets result in a discount.

USC Coin (USDC) peer-to-peer trades vs. USD/CNY. Source: OKX

The USDC premium in China has maintained levels just above the 1.5% neutral threshold, subtly challenging the data from BTC futures funding rates. From one perspective, bulls can take comfort in knowing that the decline to a $59,700 low on April 17 did not push Asian investors into a state of panic. This observation supports the idea that the BTC funding rate might eventually rise as trader confidence returns, rather than the reverse.

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

Morgan Creek Capital’s CEO Mark Yusko anticipates massive inflows into the crypto market as baby boomers’ wealth, estimated at trillions, seeks entry into digital assets.

During an interview with “The Wolf Of All Streets” podcast, Yusko discussed how the introduction of Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and increased interest from registered investment advisers have led to a significant shift in demand. Its full impact, however, is yet to be realized. According to Yusko:

“There’s going to be $300 billion, I believe. That’s 1% of the $30 trillion that comes into this space [within 12 months]. That’s actually more money than has ever [been] converted to Bitcoin in 15 years. That’s a pretty amazing thing.”

Yusko predicts capital flows are likely to come from baby boomers — those born between 1946 and 1964 — through retirement accounts managed by advisers. According to the Investment Adviser Association, U.S. financial advisers managed $114.1 trillion in assets in 2022.

“We’re a couple of months [...] about three months into the ETFs, and we’ve gotten about 10% of what I believe is coming into this space from registered investment advisers that control all the boomers’ cash,” Yusko stated, adding that the influx could potentially push the crypto market’s capitalization to $6 trillion.

“I’ve been saying that this is going to be the best Thanksgiving ever, right? No more ‘you’re not welcome because you’re a crypto person in the family,’“ the executive commented over the expected increase in Americans’ social acceptance of cryptocurrencies.

Source: The Wolf Of All Streets

Spot Bitcoin ETFs were approved by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in January, ten years after the Winklevoss twins’ first application. Wall Street giants BlackRock, Fidelity, and VanEck, among others, led the first batch of approvals. According to data from BitMEX Research, Bitcoin ETFs were worth a combined over $53 billion as of April 24.

Magazine: The real risks to Ethena’s stablecoin model (are not the ones you think)

Blockaid’s Web3 security platform has caused at least one crypto drainer to shut down in frustration, according to an April 25 X post by the service provider. Blockaid also defended itself against claims that it has too many “false positives,” stating that a service with zero false positives will always allow some malicious apps to drain users' funds.

Blockaid is a developer of security software that attempts to recognize malicious smart contracts on Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) networks, including Ethereum, BNB Chain, Polygon, Arbitrum, and others. It is integrated into multiple wallets and apps, including MetaMask, Coinbase wallet, Open Sea, Zerion, and others. When users attempt to transact with a contract that Blockaid identifies as malicious, these wallets and apps warn users that their funds may be drained if they interact with it.

Blockaid posted an image showing a purported announcement from a crypto drainer service that had been used in the past to steal crypto. The announcement claimed that “[W]e have shut down because of Blockaid and the low hit-success rate.” The crypto drainer team suggested that thieves should stop using networks that are popular with Blockaid users, as they're just not profitable anymore. “I suggest draining on the Bitcoin network or maybe using a SOL drainer with the blowfish bypass,” the drainer team stated. Blockaid’s software is currently not compatible with the Solana and Bitcoin networks.

Crypto drainer reportedly quits because of Blockaid. Source: Blockaid.

This post was part of a larger thread related to “false positives,” or cases where a security service accidentally flags legitimate apps as malicious. In the thread, Blockaid acknowledged that it sometimes mistakenly flags legitimate apps. However, it claimed that this only happens in 0.0002% of attempted transactions. The team argued that achieving a false positive rate of zero is not a worthy goal, as this can only be achieved by allowing some malicious apps to bypass filters and drain users of funds. It stated:

“The statistical nature of these systems means that we have to work towards striking a balance: having zero false positives inevitably means that malicious transactions will get through the defenses, resulting in easy to develop bypasses, and ultimately not disrupting the drainer economy.”

Even so, Blockaid said it wants to further reduce false positives. Blockaid announced that it is opening a new web portal that will allow users and developers to report these mistakes, which it hopes “will allow for finding and fixing false positives as fast as possible.”

Web3 users lost more than $300 million to crypto drainers in 2023, according to a report from Web3 security platform Scam Sniffer. In October, Blockaid announced that its service had been integrated into Web3 wallet MetaMask, which has more than 30 million users. On March 13, Coinbase wallet also announced that it had quietly integrated the service into its wallet five months earlier.

Software development company Consensys filed a lawsuit against the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and its five commissioners over claims they plan “to regulate ETH as a security.”

In an April 25 filing in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Consensys alleged the SEC had orchestrated a campaign “to seize control over the future of cryptocurrency” with enforcement actions aimed at regulating Ether (ETH) as a security. The company cited the SEC’s record — also referring to Chair Gary Gensler’s statements — of declaring ETH was not a security as early as 2018, warning of the potential ramifications of the commission changing its position after firms had built businesses based on regulatory precedent.

“The SEC’s unlawful seizure of authority over ETH would spell disaster for the Ethereum network, and for Consensys,” said the filing. “Every holder of ETH, including Consensys, would fear violating the securities laws if he or she were to transfer ETH on the network. And the ability of anyone new to acquire ETH to use Ethereum’s repository of decentralized applications and services would be extinguished. This would bring use of the Ethereum blockchain in the United States to a halt, crippling one of the internet’s greatest innovations.”

This is a developing story, and further information will be added as it becomes available.

Bitcoin (BTC) price has surged throughout 2024, fueled by the launch of several spot BTC ETFs and the asset’s fundamental role as a store of value. 

The interest in BTC is expected to persist, particularly as the United States government's continued high spending and interest rate policy discussions prevail, suggests Grayscale's research director Zach Pandl.

“We expect persistent inflation and unsustainable budget deficits to contribute to continued demand for a store of value assets, like Bitcoin,” Pandl told Cointelegraph.

Predicting the future value of Bitcoin remains challenging due to the multiple underlying variables in play, yet Jupiter Zheng, a partner at HashKey Capital’s liquid fund, sees significant potential for growth, suggesting that Bitcoin could possibly hit $200,000 by the end of the year.

"Low prediction will be $100,000, medium one is $140,000, and high prediction is $200,000, by the end of 2024," Zheng explained in an interview with Cointelegraph.

The positive impact of ETFs on the cryptocurrency market has made crypto investments more accessible and appealing to a broader audience. Over the long term, Bitcoin’s price behavior will start to mirror that of traditional assets such as equity and gold. This could potentially lead to more stable growth and integration into mainstream investment portfolios, he added.

The bullish case for BTC

Tim Draper, renowned venture capitalist, predicts BTC will triple in value in 2024 due to the inflows into ETFs and the impact of the Bitcoin halving.

Draper expressed optimism about Bitcoin's trajectory, reflecting on his earlier predictions and suggesting a possible rise to $250,000 by year's end, given the positive signs he observes in the market, in an interview with Cointelegraph at Paris Blockchain Week.

The introduction of spot Bitcoin ETFs in the United States has significantly revived interest and capital investment in Bitcoin. The investment products have opened up a new avenue for Bitcoin-curious investors who might be daunted by the prospect of holding BTC in self-custody and serve as a hedge against devaluing fiat currencies, Draper added.

Even in the worst-case scenario, it’s not too late to buy Bitcoin

While historical halving events offer some insight, the current situation presents a novel scenario with ETFs introducing more volatility to crypto prices due to fluctuating demand.

Bitcoin’s recent volatility suggests that the market is adjusting to new supply and demand dynamics, particularly with the global introduction of spot ETFs that could significantly increase Bitcoin's demand in the upcoming months, potentially driving up its price.

On the flip side, these investments could cost more volatility, as investors can move in and out of funds easier than they would be able to with self-custody.

Zheng said,

“Our current model price is $90,000. A more bullish scenario is $125,000, and a bearish one is $50,000.”

“The key factors are the BTC spot ETF net inflows (as a measure of TradFi adoption process), the Fed interest cut late this year, the 2024 BTC halving (creating more imbalance of demand and supply),” he added.

While predicting the precise value of BTC by the end of 2024 is difficult, there is consensus among experts that its price is likely to see an upward trajectory throughout the year. These predictions are based on the expectation of high inflows in the Bitcoin ETFs, the asset quality as a store of value, and the current macroeconomic conditions.

Magazine: 5 dangers to beware when apeing into Solana memecoins

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

Visa has premiered an Online Analytics Dashboard for stablecoins. The website seeks to cut through the “noise” to provide easily accessible and digestible data on four stablecoins across nine blockchains.

In a blog post introducing the new service, Visa head of crypto Cuy Sheffield stated that stablecoin data, despite being publicly available in real time, requires interpretation before they can be compared to activity on traditional financial networks.

Source: Cuy Sheffield

The noise in stablecoin data is the result of their varying use cases. Smart contracts, or “bot programs,” are used for arbitrage, liquidity provision, market making and other functions in decentralized finance (DeFi) that are not comparable to “settlement in the traditional sense.” Visa applies filters out bot activity:

“When we apply a simple heuristic that removes inorganic data, we see that transfer volume for the last 30 days can be adjusted from $2.65T to $265B.”

Furthermore, stablecoin accounting is represented differently from traditional transactions. Sheffield noted in an X post:

“If a consumer converts $100 of USDC to PYUSD on Uniswap, this is counted as $200 of total stablecoin volume ($100 of USDC from the consumer's wallet to the Uniswap contract, and $100 of PYUSD from the contract to the consumers wallet).”

In the Visa analytics, that transaction would be considered $100 in volume. The website provides data on USD Coin (USDC), Tether (USDT), PayPal USD (PYUSD) and Pax Dollar (USDP) supply, transactions and users using charts and graphs. Off-chain transactions with stablecoins are not captured in the data.

Stablecoin transaction volumes, with and without heuristic adjustment. Source: Visa Onchain Analytics Dashboard

Visa is engaged with crypto and blockchain technology on several fronts. It announced a project to “drive mainstream adoption of public blockchain networks and stablecoin payments” in 2023 and it already supports USDC. It has also partnered with MetaMask to allow crypto withdrawals on its debit cards.

Related: Bitcoin to surge to $80K as stablecoins overtake Visa in 2024 — Bitwise

Visa participated with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and two banks on a project using central bank digital currency and tokenized deposits in 2023. This year, it was one of 11 financial institutions that experimented with use cases of the U.K. Regulated Liability Network.

Magazine: The real risks to Ethena’s stablecoin model (are not the ones you think)

Meta recently announced that it would “open” the operating system that powers its Quest line of mixed-reality devices for third-party hardware and software development. 

The change comes with a new name, “Meta Horizon OS,” and a rebranding of the Quest Store to the “Meta Horizon Store.” It also brings a trio of high-profile partners in Asus, Lenovo, and Microsoft’s Xbox brand.

According to a blog post from Meta, each of the partners will work with Meta to develop their own mixed/virtual reality devices.

Asus’s Republic of Gamers is working on a “performance gaming headset,” though details are currently scarce on exactly what that means. It’s possible that this indicates it’ll be geared towards high-fidelity visuals and audio with a focus on multiplayer connectivity.

Lenovo is also slated to build its own Meta Horizon OS devices. The Chinese tech giant previously worked with Meta to develop the company’s Oculus Rift S headsets before Facebook became Meta and the Oculus vertical was rebranded to Quest.

Microsoft’s Xbox brand is also working with Meta to develop a limited-edition Xbox-themed Meta Quest headset. There’s no indication that Xbox is getting its own VR devices to compete with PlayStation VR. Per the blog post this’ll be a continuation of the two companies’ previous Quest headset partnership which saw users able to play Xbox games on a flat, 2D screen set inside of a virtual reality environment.

Also announced, Meta will be launching an “App Lab” to publish titles from smaller developers. Based on the verbiage in the blog post this’ll be somewhat akin to the “arcade” or independent developer offerings in many gaming storefronts featuring lower-priced and lesser-known titles:

“We’re beginning the process of removing the barriers between the Meta Horizon Store and App Lab, which lets any developer who meets basic technical and content requirements release software on the platform. App Lab titles will soon be featured in a dedicated section of the store on all our devices, making them easy for larger audiences to discover.”

Related: Meta drops 15% on weak outlook and high AI and metaverse spending

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has launched another round of consultations on a proposed rule change for trading options on Bitcoin exchange-traded products (ETPs).

According to an April 24 filing, the securities regulator wants to better understand how listing Bitcoin (BTC) options could affect the overall market, especially during times of stress. Part of the review will assess whether the exchanges’ current surveillance and enforcement mechanisms are adequate to handle the unique aspects of Bitcoin options.

Initial comments must be submitted within 21 days after the document is officially registered, which would make the final deadline May 15, 2024. Likewise, rebuttal comments may be submitted up to May 29, 2024.

SEC requests public feedback on Bitcoin options trading. Source: SEC

Bitcoin options are financial instruments that give the buyer the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell Bitcoin at a specified price by a certain date. Options are typically used by traders familiar with option pricing and market movements. Similar to other investments, options trading carries risks that may not be suitable for all investors.

The Commission previously sought comments on the rule change and included the feedback received in its filing. Most of the comments highlighted how options on Bitcoin ETPs would increase liquidity and improve market efficiency:

“In addition, the commenter stated that approving the listing and trading of options on spot Bitcoin ETPs “would further bring Bitcoin into the regulatory perimeter by allowing additional regulated market participants such as CFTC-regulated designated contract merchants and SEC-regulated broker-dealers to trade the products.” “

Several financial firms, including Nasdaq and Cboe, have submitted proposals to the SEC seeking permission to trade Bitcoin options. Nasdaq’s application seeks to list and trade options on BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust, while Cboe intends to offer options trading on various ETPs that hold Bitcoin.

Additionally, asset managers like Bitwise and Grayscale are also seeking regulatory approval to list options on their Bitcoin ETFs through New York Stock Exchange applications.

Magazine: 1 in 6 new Base meme coins are scams, 91% have vulnerabilities

Representative Maxine Waters, ranking member of the United States House Financial Services Committee, has suggested that lawmakers are making progress on passing stablecoin legislation.

In an April 24 interview with Bloomberg, Representative Waters said she had been working “very well together” with committee chair Patrick McHenry in legislation on stablecoins and clawbacks for banks and talking to lawmakers in the U.S. Senate. According to the ranking members, only a “few more tweaks” were necessary for the stablecoin bill to move forward in the House.

“It’s been very complicated,” said Representative Waters. “We have so many entities that are involved [...] everybody has had something to say. We’ve had to recognize all of those concerns. In doing that, in the final analysis, it’s about making sure that investors and that the people are protected and that we don’t have a stablecoin bill where [...] companies don’t have the assets that they say that they have.”

She added:

“We’re talking with the Senate side. We’ve met with Schumer. Talked with Sherrod Brown. We’re on our way to getting a stablecoin bill in the short run.”

Senator Brown, who chairs the Senate Banking Committee, reportedly said in April he was open to passing stablecoin legislation, provided his concerns were addressed. Lawmakers in the House and Senate have proposed different legislative paths to regulate stablecoins, but any bill would need to pass through both chambers before being signed into law.

Related: Crypto advocacy group claims stablecoin bill would ‘violate free speech rights’

Representative Waters suggested in February that lawmakers were “very close” to a deal on stablecoins. On April 17, Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Cynthia Lummis introduced a payment stablecoin bill they had been teasing for months. It’s unclear how the bill could divide support in the Senate from the efforts Representative Waters described.

In July 2023, lawmakers in the House Financial Services Committee passed the Clarity for Payment Stablecoins Act, setting the stage for a full floor vote. The legislation has not moved forward since then.

Magazine: Unstablecoins: Depegging, bank runs and other risks loom

The crypto arm of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z crypto) is warning startup co-founders to stay out of the United States market when conducting token sales. 

“Public sales of equity and tokens outside the U.S. and private sales of equity and tokens can all be done in a compliant manner without being subject to the registration requirements of securities laws,” wrote Miles Jenning, a16z crypto’s general counsel and head of decentralization. “Public sales in the U.S. are an own-goal, avoid at all costs.”

Jennings explained that initial coin offerings (ICOs) often met all conditions of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ’s Howey test for determining whether a financial asset should be classified as a security. The Howey test is defined as “a contract, scheme or transaction in which there is an investment of money in a common enterprise with a reasonable expectation of profits based on the managerial or entrepreneurial efforts of others.”

"Nowhere is the application of the Howey test easier than with respect to primary transactions (i.e., token sales to investors by token issuers)," wrote Jennings. “In many ICOs, token issuers made clear representations and promises to investors that they were going to fund their operations with the proceeds from the token sale and deliver a future return to investors." He further warned: 

"Those cases were securities transactions regardless of whether the instruments being sold were digital assets or shares of stock. Case closed."

If the asset is deemed to be a security, issuers face lengthy paths, disclosures, and financial requirements for registration. Strict penalties are often imposed for non-compliance. 

In a landmark case last July, United States District Court Judge Analisa Torres ruled that fintech firm Ripple’s sale of the XRP token on secondary markets, or digital exchanges, within the U.S. did not constitute security offerings. However, Torres also ruled that the firm’s sale of XRP to U.S. institutional investors met the Howey test’s securities classification. Ripple is currently contesting a $2 billion fine imposed by the SEC. As a result of recent step-ups in enforcement, some crypto firms have opted to avoid the U.S. market entirely.

Related: SEC pushes decision on Franklin Templeton spot Ether ETF