Yuga Labs reorganization, layoffs

Yuga Labs CEO Greg Solano tweeted a message he previously sent to employees, with the following key points:

Yuga Labs is continuing to change its direction, which will expose the company to restructuring and layoffs.

Small projects were split, and the focus of game development returned to the Otherside metaverse project.

Bored Room Ventures founder Won Kim joins as head of brand partnerships for Yuga Labs.

Yuga Labs' past successful projects were all conceived and launched within three months, but now they have evolved into time-consuming planning. This will be significantly improved.

DTCC: Bitcoin, cryptocurrency ETFs can no longer be used as collateral

The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC)'s DTC Risk unit issued an announcement that it will revise the collateral value of certain securities starting April 30.

Major changes include:

For securities rated B1 to B3, the discount rate as collateral was increased from 50% to 70%.

Bitcoin, cryptocurrency ETFs or other investment vehicles will not be considered collateral (100% discount).

The scope of responsibilities of the US DTCC includes clearing, settlement and custody services, while DTC is mainly focused on custody and is one of the largest securities depositories in the world.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the establishment of an AI Security Council on the 26th, with members including many well-known technology executives.

Department of Homeland Security establishes AI safety committee

According to the announcement, the security committee aims to use AI to protect critical U.S. infrastructure and mitigate potential threats from AI.

The committee will be led by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and includes a number of prominent technology executives:

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai

Amazon Web Services CEO Adam Selipsky

The latest inflation data revealed continued economic pressure ahead of next week's Federal Reserve policy meeting. These data show that despite multiple control measures, the inflation rate is still above the target and consumer spending is strong, adding to the uncertainty of economic policy.

Economic indicators point to continued inflation

According to CNBC, a U.S. Commerce Department index shows inflation remains above the Fed's annual 2% target. Several key points in the data include: large amounts of money flowing through the financial system, giving consumers enduring purchasing power; the fact that consumers are spending more than they earn, a situation that is neither sustainable nor conducive to deflation; furthermore, consumers Savings are being used to finance this consumption, creating a dangerous situation.

The European Commission has launched a formal investigation into social media giant TikTok amid Europe's strict regulatory environment for digital services. The investigation is targeting TikTok Lite and its Tasks and Rewards Program in France and Spain, examining possible violations of the Digital Services Act (DSA).

TikTok financial gamification, EU launches investigation

The European Commission announced on April 22 that it would launch an investigation into TikTok to confirm whether TikTok Lite complies with the strict requirements of the DSA. According to the DSA, platforms like TikTok, which is classified as a very large online platform due to its large user base, must conduct a comprehensive risk assessment and implement measures to mitigate systemic risks before rolling out new features.

The Ministry of the Interior sent a letter to representatives of XREX promoters on March 25, approving the formation of the "Virtual Currency Business Association of the Republic of China" in accordance with the law. On the 26th, the first preparatory meeting was held and 11 preparatory committee members were elected to formally form the association's preparatory meeting.

(Taiwan’s encryption industry milestone, officially approved by the Virtual Currency Business Association)

11 preparatory committee members announced

XREX, a representative of the association’s preparatory group, pointed out that the Virtual Currency Business Association (Preparatory Meeting) held its sponsor and first preparatory meeting on April 26.

During the founders' meeting, 36 founders voted to elect 11 preparatory committee members to formally form the association's preparatory committee.

Metis development has entered the second stage, and the decentralized sequencer (Sequencer) will be able to perform sequencer mining (Sequencer Mining) to obtain METIS tokens as rewards. General users can also participate through the LST protocol, which can be said to be an important step in the development of the Metis network economy.

Background knowledge: Metis decentralized sorter innovation

Metis is a Layer 2 network based on the Optimistic Rollups architecture of the Ethereum ecosystem. Different from existing mainstream Layer 2 competitors, Metis uses the decentralization of the sequencer as a selling point to attract market funds. Therefore, whether it is a virtual machine or a consensus mechanism, it is Modify with this goal in mind.

According to the Shanghai Securities News, "Yao Qian", director of the Science and Technology Supervision Department of the China Securities Regulatory Commission and director of the Information Center, is suspected of serious violations of discipline and law. He is currently undergoing a disciplinary review by the Central Discipline Inspection and Supervision Team and a supervisory investigation by the Shanwei City Supervisory Committee of Guangdong Province.

CoinDesk and The Block have also used this source for reporting, but the details of the accusations against Yao Qian, a former leader of China’s digital renminbi project, are still unclear.

Yao Qian was born in 1970 and was appointed as the first director of the Central Bank’s Digital Currency Research Institute in 2017. He once emphasized that the international monetary system is an excellent application scenario for blockchain.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is strongly urging Americans not to use cryptocurrency transfer services that are not registered as money services businesses (MSBs), according to a Thursday statement. However, the warning is widely believed to be directed at mixing protocols, which have recently come under regulatory scrutiny.

FBI: Avoid using unlicensed crypto transfer services

The FBI warns Americans to avoid using cryptocurrency services provided by companies that are not legally registered as a money services business (MSB) and do not comply with anti-money laundering rules:

The FBI recently conducted enforcement actions against unregistered crypto services and is reminding users of its cryptocurrency transfer services that their funds may be restricted during enforcement periods, especially if their cryptocurrencies are linked to money laundering activities.

After six years of deactivating Bitcoin (BTC) and suspending support for cryptocurrency payments entirely, Stripe has announced that it will resume crypto payments this summer, but initially only with support for Circle’s USDC stablecoin.

Stripe announces support for USDC

Stripe co-founder John Collison announced at the Global Internet Economy Summit on the 25th that it will reintroduce encrypted payments and greatly improve the user experience. Users will be able to use USDC to pay. Stripe initially supports three major public chains:

Ethereum (ETH)

Solana (SUN)

Polygon (MATIC)

John Collison said:

Cryptocurrencies are becoming more and more practical, and as transaction speeds increase and costs decrease, we believe it makes sense to use cryptocurrencies as a method of transaction.

Serotonin CEO Amanda stated on Twitter that in fact, privately, members of the Ethereum community hope that Ethereum will maintain the proof of work mechanism (Proof of Work, PoW), which attracted Vitalik's attention and responded to the objection that "proof of work is more centralized" .

What are the advantages of the PoW mechanism?

Amanda said that in fact, many members of the Ethereum community have privately expressed the hope that Ethereum will stick to PoW instead of transitioning to Proof of Stake (PoS). The main reasons are as follows:

Centralization risk: PoS mechanism verification is more centralized.

Balance of power: It turns out that three groups of stakeholders check and balance each other, while PoS removes miners.

As the payment company Block disclosed a major breakthrough in its mining chips and systems, the company's founder Jack Dorsey even tweeted in the early morning of yesterday (25th), saying that Block is embarking on a new project to provide users with the use of its Square and Cash Merchants served by the App can convert a portion of their daily turnover into Bitcoin services.

(Block completes three-nanometer chip development, Jack Dorsey: will launch a complete Bitcoin mining system)

Square will support daily turnover conversion to Bitcoin

In Jack Dorsey's tweet, a report from Techcrunch was forwarded showing that U.S. merchants using Square and Cash App financial services can now convert part of their daily sales into Bitcoin and hold it.

Regan Bozman, co-founder of crypto venture capital Lattice, made an interesting conclusion regarding the token issuance phenomenon this year: the prices of recently issued tokens will inevitably fall. Because of excessive valuations and the prevalence of airdrops, there will be no buyers to maintain the token price, and the price will continue to fall in the long term.

This article is compiled and compiled by Lianxin. If you have any questions, please refer to the original text.

(This article is not investment advice)

Background knowledge: Token market value

Before starting to talk about token economics, first make sure that you have knowledge of two proper nouns for evaluating the market value of tokens:

The UK proposed an amended version of the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill in early March, one of which would allow authorities to confiscate, freeze, or even destroy crypto assets related to illegal criminal activities without prior arrest and conviction. , has now officially come into effect.

(The United Kingdom strengthens encryption supervision: law enforcement agencies can freeze or destroy illegal encryption assets without the need for conviction)

Seize and destroy crypto assets in advance

According to CoinDesk, under the new law, British police will be able to seize cryptocurrency assets before arresting criminals in the future. The British Attorney General said:

The Forbes research team released a list of cryptocurrency zombies, including many familiar names, such as XRP, ADA, LTC, ALGO, XTZ, etc. Crypto analyst Ignas also excerpted and shared some thoughts.

Forbes research published a list of 20 crypto billion-dollar zombies.

These are L1s with high valuation but "are unproven and have little utility other than for speculative crypto trading."

Notable mentions: $STX, $ICP, $FTM, $ADA , $EOS… pic.twitter.com/XDKOkrshfc

— Ignatius | DeFi Research (@DefiIgnas) April 25, 2024

a16z From a legal perspective, how should the integration project team issue tokens to minimize the risk of being sanctioned by U.S. law, from token sales, when to circulate in the United States, token lock-up period, to precautions for team speeches, Give clear guidance.

How to issue tokens to reduce legal risks?

How to launch a token is one of the most common questions among project founders. But in fact, there are many details that need to be paid attention to when launching a token. This article sorts out five major principles that need to be paid attention to from the perspective of U.S. law? They are:

Do not sell tokens publicly in the United States for fundraising purposes

The investigation into the virtual currency fraud case involving the founder and former CEO of Ace Exchange was officially concluded on the 26th.

Trump case indicted 32 people and required punishment for 20 years

According to a press release from the Taipei District Prosecutor’s Office, prosecutors launched a total of three waves of large-scale searches and found out that the entire case was committed by Lin Genghong, a habitual money-grabbing fraud criminal. He first found Pan Yi-chang, the founder of ACE, and then teamed up with lawyer Wang Chenhuan to commit fraud and money laundering, and obtained more than NT$2.2 billion.

In addition, the scale of assisting the fraud group in laundering more than NT$2 billion. After investigation, the Taipei District Prosecutor's Office indicted 32 suspects in the case on the 26th, and sought heavy sentences of 20 years for core members Pan Yi-chang, Lin Genghong, Chen Jinyang, Lin Ruoqiao and others.

According to statistics from Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas, BlackRock’s Bitcoin spot ETF IBIT experienced no inflows yesterday, so its record of daily continuous inflows has ended at 71 days. Grayscale’s GBTC is still setting new records. It has experienced net outflows for 72 consecutive days, and no one can match it.

ITS OVER: $IBIT took $0 yesterday and as such it's daily inflow streak has ended at 71 days, shy of all time record but one for the ages and utterly smashing the record for a new launch. For context, $GLD had awesome launch and its 'out of the gate' inflow streak was 3 days. https://t.co/ZwZSKmnqD5

Ethereum infrastructure developer Consensys decided to take the initiative to sue the SEC after receiving the SEC's Wells Notice. The indictment also found that the SEC has been investigating Consensys' product MetaMask for many years.

SEC targets ETH, MetaMask

ConsenSys received the SEC’s Wells Notice on April 10. According to the indictment on April 25, ConsenSys mainly has the following claims:

Hopefully a federal court declares ETH is not a security.

MetaMask’s staking service does not violate securities laws.

MetaMask is not a trading broker under federal law.

The indictment emphasizes that if the SEC is allowed to illegally control ETH, it will have catastrophic consequences for the Ethereum network and ConsenSys.

The first on-chain fund in the United States, Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund FOBXX, has enabled on-chain P2P transactions. With the addition of BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL), the market value of the tokenized U.S. bond market continues to break new highs. Currently, to $1.18 billion.

Franklin is also a Bitcoin spot issuer

Franklin Templeton Fund Group (Franklin Templeton) is a California-based asset manager that provides services in 155 countries around the world and had approximately $1.6 trillion in assets under management as of March 31, 2024.