Financial markets aren’t the only sector blockchain supporters say the novel technology can disrupt ― they also say the tech can decentralise the infrastructure that supports internet-based services such as mapping, wireless, and computing.

DePIN, or decentralised physical infrastructure networks, is a fledgling crypto sector packed with projects that claim to use blockchain to achieve that and it’s already a $26 billion market, according to CoinGecko.

Franklin Templeton on Wednesday identified two projects ― Hivemapper and Helium ― that are gaining traction.

Even though those two aren’t the biggest DePIN projects by market value, Franklin Templeton noted in its report that both Hivemapper and Helium are showing early signs of creating products that will succeed.

Hivemapper is a $133 million Solana-based crypto mapping project that is similar to Google Maps and that aims to provide fresher real-world mapping data than its centralised counterparts.

The project rewards contributors with its native token HONEY for mapping roads.

Hivemapper has mapped over a fifth of the world’s roads in less than three years, mostly in the US and Europe.

The Franklin Templeton report noted that while the project has “had great success” in gaining contributors, demand for it still lags.

Helium is also a Solana project. It’s valued at $570 million.

DePIN projects tend to be drawn to Solana because of the blockchain’s high speed and low costs.

Wireless service

Helium offers a wireless mobile service and says it has cheaper subscription packages than traditional wireless carriers.

The Franklin Templeton report noted the project has signed up 93,000 subscribers for its unlimited wireless plan.

“Helium has shown early signs of product market fit and potential to disrupt the telecommunications industry,” the report said.

However, the trillion-dollar asset manager noted that the success of these projects is still tied to token incentives and not to the value of their services. That could change with a greater network effect for these projects.

“As these network resources increase, the DePIN projects may become more valuable to potential customers,” the report said.

However, these projects’ tokenized incentives are not without its critics.

Chris Newhouse, DeFi analyst at Cumberland Labs, previously questioned the need for these projects to reward users with their native tokens in the first place, telling DL News that many projects fail to align their economic incentives in a way that requires crypto token rewards.

Osato Avan-Nomayo is our Nigeria-based DeFi correspondent. He covers DeFi and tech. To share tips or information about stories, please contact him at osato@dlnews.com.

A Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Thursday highlighted a question at the heart of US crypto regulation: Does the US derivatives watchdog have enough resources to police cryptocurrencies?

Lawmakers worry that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission “is biting off a hell of a lot more than it can chew” in wanting to regulate crypto markets, Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois said.

Durbin was speaking during the hearing held to consider funding for the CFTC and its sister agency, the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The SEC has by far more resources than the CFTC. It’s a disparity that has rankled past CFTC chairs and that has attained new urgency now that Congress is seriously considering tailored regulations for crypto.

CFTC Chair Rostin Behnam responded to Durbin by saying that his agency was “adequately equipped” to oversee the markets it is mandated to oversee.

“But if we were given authority over crypto markets, I would certainly expect there to be an increase in the budget,” he added.

FIT21 Act

A bill that passed the House of Representatives in May would give the CFTC exactly that authority — though not a bigger budget — if it became law.

The crypto industry has hailed the FIT21 Act as a pathway toward a market structure tailored to cryptocurrency trading.

Per the wishes of many crypto industry players, the bill contemplates anointing the CFTC, rather than the SEC, as the industry’s primary regulator.

That has stoked worries that the CFTC is underfunded.

Different funding models

On Thursday, SEC Chair Gary Gensler asked the Appropriations Committee for $2.6 billion to fund the SEC for the 2025 fiscal year, which begins on Oct. 1.

Behnam askedthe committee for $399 million for fiscal 2025.

The difference in their budgets is partly because the SEC is a larger agency that oversees the public securities markets, which historically dwarfed the futures markets that the CFTC regulates.

However, when the Congress passed post-financial crisis legislation during the Obama years, the CFTC was given a big chunk of the swaps markets to oversee, without increasing its budget accordingly.

Also, the SEC is partly self-funded, as it collects fees from market participants that offset its cost to taxpayers.

CFTC the preferred regulator

Yet, the crypto industry has lobbied for the CFTC to be its primary regulator, believing it to be more lenient.

Behnam, however, rejects the characterisation of his agency as relatively toothless.

He told the committee on Thursday that his agency’s enforcement record demonstrates that it can handle the crypto industry.

“Over the past 10 years, we brought 135 crypto cases, we’ve brought in billions of dollars [in penalties], and we’ve successfully policed a market where we don’t have direct authority and jurisdiction,” Behnam said.

He added that the failure to grant that to the CFTC has resulted in “fraud and rampant abuse in markets, and ultimately public mistrust, lack of confidence and loss of funds.”

Joanna Wright writes about crypto regulation for DL News. Reach out to her at joanna@dlnews.com.

Convicted Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev is fighting to be released from prison as he prepares his appeal.

A court hearing took place on Thursday in the Dutch city of ‘s-Hertogenbosch where Pertsev and his defence argued that his detention should be suspended.

“He needs digital facilities,” Pertev’s lawyer Keith Cheng told DL News.

“If he cannot have basic things like internet connection, access to BlockExplorer, or confer with experts, then he is obstructed by being in detention to prepare for his case.”

Cheng noted that detention overrides Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights describing an individual’s rights to a fair trial.

No decisions were made on Thursday. The panel of three judges is set to decide whether Pertsev should be released in a hearing scheduled for July 11.

But first, Pertsev’s defence will need to present which parts of his case require online access.

Pertsev filed an appeal shortly following his guilty verdict in May. He was found guilty of money laundering and sentenced to 64 months in prison.

“This case is important not just for him but also for the community,” Cheng said on a phone call. “He does not want to disappoint his supporters and developers in a similar situation or those who are in suspense due to his case.”

The court and prosecution would also benefit from Pertsev’s blockchain expertise to help explain complicated technological details, Cheng said.

Flight risk

Cheng also argued that Pertsev doesn’t present a flight risk, as his circumstances haven’t changed since the last time he was released from jail in April 2023.

Tornado Cash’s software was sanctioned by the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control in August 2022. Pertsev was arrested by Dutch authorities days later.

The decentralised protocol provides Ethereum users with anonymity by obfuscating transaction histories.

Pertsev spent eight months in jail before he was released under surveillance ahead of his trial in March. Those months are reduced from his sentence.

When the judges delivered his verdict last month, Pertsev was immediately detained and sent to a prison in the Netherlands.

During his trial, Pertsev and his defence argued that he wasn’t responsible for how third parties abused the open-source protocol that runs on automated smart contracts.

Criminal organisations, including North Korean cybercrime groups, used Tornado Cash to launder $2.2 billion from crypto hacks.

A second Tornado Cash developer, Roman Storm, will stand trial in New York in September.

Inbar Preiss is DL News’ Brussels correspondent. Contact the author at inbar@dlnews.com.

Spot Ethereum exchange-traded funds are likely to launch this summer.

That’s what Securities and Exchange Commission chair Gary Gensler told US senators today during a hearing on the agency’s funding request for 2025.

“Those applicational applications will be approved by the end of the summer,” Gensler said.

The SEC has already greenlit a batch of documents necessary for the launch of Ethereum ETFs, called 19b-4s, but still needs to get a second set of filings, called S-1s, finalised with prospective ETF issuers.

It’s only once both sets of documents are completed that the SEC can officially approve the ETFs — and subsequently launch the products.

“Individual issuers still are working through the registration process,” Gensler said. “That’s working smoothly.”

This is a developing story.

UK fintech powerhouse Revolut says it will move to a splashy new headquarters in London’s Canary Wharf next year as it tops up its talent pool with a whopping 4,000 hires.

The company today confirmed a plan to boost headcount by some 40% in an announcement of the London move. Revolut employs about 10,000 globally and about 1,300 in the UK.

The neobank, valued at $26 billion, serves 40 million customers — 9 million of which are in Britain.

As an early crypto adopter among fintechs, Revolut is seeking to partner with more crypto wallets such as MetaMask, Revolut told DL News last month. It also said it wants 12 new hires for its new crypto business.

“There’s going to be so much work for us from a recruiting perspective,” Sam Wellalage, a crypto recruiter at WorkInCrypto.Global, has told DL News.

London-listed venture capital firm Molten Ventures wrote up the value of its stake in Revolut to £65 million in March, a 20% gain from last year. In April, an investment trust managed by Schroders wrote up the value of its stake in Revolut by 45%.

The new hub

Revolut will move from Westferry Circus to Canary Wharf’s business district, opting for four floors of the YY London building for a 10 year lease.

“As a remote-first business, the company plans to use its new office in a more innovative way, taking advantage of the increased space for product launches, workshops, team building activities, and other events,” it said.

Crypto market movers

Bitcoin gained 3.3% over the past 24 hours to $69,334.

Ethereum increased 2.6% to $3,627.

What we’re reading

Robinhood got far more than crypto investors in its $200m acquisition of Bitstamp — DL News

Best DeFi Exchanges 2024 — Milk Road

The US Lost 14% of Blockchain Developer Share Since 2018: Coinbase — Unchained

MicroStrategy To Purchase More Bitcoin (BTC) With $500M Capital Raise — Milk Road

UwU Lend hacked again for $3.7m amid payback plan for first attack — DL News

UwU Lend users rejoiced on Wednesday after the lending protocol said it was able to fully reimburse victims of its recent $23 million exploit.

But their celebrations were cut short when at 7:46 am London time, the same hacker returned to take another $3.7 million.

🚨SlowMist Security Alert🚨

We have detected that @UwU_Lend has suffered another loss of $3.72M.https://t.co/ttLSq0m18u

As always, stay vigilant! pic.twitter.com/6tz2e5NDwx

— SlowMist (@SlowMist_Team) June 13, 2024

That’s despite UwU Lend offering the hacker a 20% bounty — worth $4 million — to return users’ funds from the first hack.

The second hack comes after UwU Lend said in a June 12 X post that it had identified and fixed the vulnerability in its sUSDe market that the hacker previously exploited.

“All other markets have been re-reviewed by industry professionals and auditors with no issues or concerns found,” the protocol said.

UwU Lend did not return a request for comment.

UwU Lend began repaying users on Wednesday after the $23 million exploit forced it temporarily offline.

As of 5 am on Thursday, the protocol said it had repaid about $9.7 million stolen in the first hack.

“The protocol will repay all bad debt, as quickly as reasonably possible,” UwU Lend said. “We are happy to announce that no user funds have been lost due to this process.”

UwU Lend’s controversial founder Michael Patryn, better known by his pseudonym 0xSifu, had previously offered to drop any charges if the hacker returned 80% of the stolen crypto, worth about $18 million.

Oracle attack

On Monday, a hacker used a $4 billion flash loan to manipulate the price of certain tokens on UwU Lend, which allowed them to drain the protocol.

A flash loan is a type of DeFi transaction where a user borrows funds from a lending protocol and repays them in the same transaction.

While flash loans are often used by market makers to quickly arbitrage price differences in DeFi markets, they also make possible exploits that require large amounts of capital to perform.

Circuit founder Martin Derka — who co-developed a tool to detect flash loan-based exploits while at crypto security firm Quantstamp — said such exploits were notorious in DeFi.

“These kinds of vulnerabilities are usually very difficult to discover during smart contract audits, because they require in-depth knowledge of multiple protocols — those that one is auditing, and those that are being used as oracles,” he told DL News.

“There are also not enough automated tools that are capable of discovering such vulnerabilities.”

Launched in 2022, UwU Lend is a fork of Aave, the largest DeFi lending protocol with $12.4 billion of deposits.

A fork is where a developer team uses the open-source code from an existing DeFi protocol to launch a similar protocol — often on a different blockchain or with minor changes.

But the changes to Aave’s code allowed the hacker to drain UwU Lend. The protocol used easily manipulated oracles — software that provides it with the prices of various tokens.

UwU Lend’s UWU token is down 15% over the past week, and trades at around $2.70.

Aleks Gilbert is a DeFi Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at aleks@dlnews.com.

Terraform Labs, the entity behind the stablecoin TerraUSD, will pay the Securities and Exchange Commission $4.47 billion in penalties to resolve a civil lawsuit, according to a settlement announced Wednesday.

Do Kwon, founder of Terraform Labs and the target of ongoing criminal litigation from the Justice Department, will pay another $204 million to the SEC.

The final judgement is still pending a federal judge’s approval.

This story is breaking and will be updated accordingly.

The crypto industry has never truly experienced a rampant deal-making phase, with larger firms historically preferring to scoop up tokens that are already on the market.

That’s changing, says Dan Tapiero, CEO and chief investment officer of 10T Holdings, a $1.4 billion fund that invests in digital-assets companies.

The industry’s $4.1 billion in deals so far — capped most recently by Robinhood Markets’ $200 million acquisition of Bitstamp — is just the beginning.

“We’ll see a lot more of that, and probably a lot more substantial; $200 million is a very low value,” Tapiero told DL News.

Tapiero said exchanges are the easiest deals for traditional firms.

“The traditional financial exchanges should be purchasing or merging with some of the larger, global exchanges,” he said. “There are at least 10 to 15 exchanges out there that are of decent quality.”

Tapiero said the industry is seeing renewed interest this year — evidenced by Robinhod’s splashy acquisition — thanks to the January approval of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds, which count Wall Street heavyweights BlackRock and Fidelity Investments as issuers.

“That’s really woken people up,” he said. “Up until six months ago, people were thinking this space was just going to disappear, then we had the ETF.”

Indeed, the last six months have already been dotted by smaller acquisitions in the industry.

In February, Tools for Humanity, the firm developing the controversial iris-scanning crypto project Worldcoin, acquired a wallet provider and team of engineers for an undisclosed amount.

In March, Marathon Digital, one of the industry’s largest Bitcoin mining outfits, said it acquired another Bitcoin mine in Texas, adding 200 megawatts in mining power.

“I’ve never been able to buy things at these low levels.”

Dan Tapiero, CEO and CIO of 10T Holdings

Consensys CEO Joe Lubin told DL News in May that his blockchain firm was working on an acquisition in the crypto security sector.

In June, Polygon bought another zero-knowledge technology firm called Toposware.

Tapiero said Consensys — which counts stablecoin issuer Circle and crypto exchange Kraken among its portfolio companies that are eyeing public listings — just closed a new fund and is going to invest now, too.

“I’ve never been able to buy things at these low levels,” he said.

“We’ve never had these kinds of deals, because the playing field was more crowded.”

Crypto’s three-year shakeout

The uptick in deal talk comes at a time when Bitcoin is hitting record highs but traditional investors are still wary of entering the crypto business because of its notorious volatility and sky-high valuations.

The past three years were no exception.

In 2021, Celsius Network hit a valuation of $3 billion and counted Caisse de Depot, Canada’s second-largest pension fund, as an investor. A year later, the crypto lender filed for bankruptcy.

Crypto exchange FTX, which was valued at $32 billion in January 2022, collapsed seven months later with a $8 billion hole in its balance sheet.

In March, FTX’s founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for fraud.

Liam Kelly is a Berlin-based DL News’ correspondent. Contact him at liam@dlnews.com.

Robinhood’s $200 million acquisition of Bitstamp last week won’t only deliver the US online brokerage crypto investors around the world. It also comes with a potential bonus prize — a MiCA licence.

The European Union is in the process of implementing a bloc-wide crypto regulatory regime called the Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation, or MiCA.

While numerous ventures are undertaking the painstaking effort to comply with the landmark law, Robinhood may leapfrogged them all by simply buying a company that is already qualified.

“It must be interesting to any US business to have part of your platform in Europe, just from a diversification of risk perspective,” James Sullivan, Bitstamp’s general counsel said at a Paris event on digital money the company co-organised on Tuesday.

Governance requirements

The deal comes as crypto firms operating in the EU will need to comply with tougher capital and governance requirements from the end of the year.

Once a firm earns its licence from a chosen EU country, it can passport its services across the 27-nation bloc.

“They [Robinhood] are hoping to acquire Bitstamp with a MiCA licence,” Sullivan said.

“That’s our strategy for 2024 and if all goes well, we will be their licenced MiCA entity.”

Indeed, in its deal announcement Robinhood highlighted the value of regulatory approvals.

“Bitstamp holds over 50 active licenses and registrations globally and will bring in customers across the EU, UK, US and Asia to Robinhood,” the brokerage said.

The deal is expected to close in 2025.

The European Union was the first major jurisdiction to pass comprehensive and tailor-made laws for crypto platforms.

“Europe as a market has been leading the charge in actually adopting a regulatory regime, which I think many other regulators are going to follow,” Sullivan said, five days after Robinhood broke the news on the acquisition plans.

Legal battles

The US government, on the other hand, has made little progress in agreeing on how to regulate the new digital asset class. As a result, some of the biggest firms are embroiled in legal battles on whether or not crypto classifies as a security.

Still, crypto has become a hot issue in the runup to the US presidential election in November. Former president Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican Party nominee, promised to prioritise crypto users.

But whether that would lead to changes in regulation is unknown.

“There is a scenario where nothing changes for some time,” Sullivan said.

“The US is obviously a very important market, but Europe is interesting because of it being more set,” Sullivan said, adding that market uncertainty stems from the lack of regulation.

Johann Kerbrat, general manager for Robinhood Crypto, previously told DL News that Robinhood is keen to continue expanding beyond the US, including European and Asian markets.

“The goal is to keep pushing on the international side,” Kerbrat said.

Inbar Preiss is DL News’ Brussels correspondent. Contact the author at inbar@dlnews.com.

Bitcoin jumped after US inflation data signalled that consumer prices are rising more slowly than feared, making investors optimistic about the health of the world’s largest economy.

The core consumer price index fell to 0.2% compared with last month, versus a consensus estimate of 0.3%. Compared with last year, inflation fell to 3.4%. Analysts expected a 3.5% gain.

“This is stellar data, unequivocally confirming that disinflation is still intact,” Caleb Franzen, founder of Cubic Analytics, said in a note.

Bitcoin gained 2.3% in the last hour. Futures tracking the S&P 500 rose, while US government bond yields fell.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will speak later today on his outlook for US monetary policy.

Slower than expected inflation “could see Powell take a more dovish tilt,” Markets.com chief analyst Neil Wilson said before the numbers hit at 8:30 am in Washington today.

“They are seeking to trim some level of restriction from monetary policy, with the eco data pointing towards a slowdown and unemployment rising,” Wilson said. “That tends to suggest a cut in September and one more this year.”

An interest rate cut tends to lift risk-on assets, including stocks and crypto.

Crypto market movers

Bitcoin gained 3.3% over the past 24 hours to $69,334.

Ethereum increased 2.6% to $3,627.

What we’re reading

Cardano’s next upgrade makes it more like a DAO — DL News

Best NFT Tax Loss Harvesting Tools 2024 — Milk Road

How Coinbase Might Bring 1 Billion People Onchain Using Its Smart Wallet — Unchained

Best Ethereum Wallets Of 2024 — Milk Road

Macron’s snap election throws Paris crypto scene into uncertainty — DL News

One Bitcoin will be worth north of $350,000 by the end of the decade. Ether, meanwhile, could be priced at $22,000.

That’s according to Matthew Sigel, head of digital assets research at VanEck, an investment firm with $90 billion in assets under management.

Sigel told DL News that in this scenario, crypto exchange-traded funds could end up vacuuming $500,000 billion in assets within the next five years.

“It doesn’t seem like a stretch,” Sigel said.

Changing political winds

Since only January, the Bitcoin ETFs have accumulated a record $60 billion in assets.

But the funds may just be getting started.

“Bitcoin is likely to exceed $350,000 by 2030″ off the back of changing political winds and increased adoption among young people, Sigel told DL News.

“Election after election, this year has ended with the more pro-crypto candidate winning,” Sigel said, adding that, in the short term, investors will try to front-run a potential second Trump presidency by buying Bitcoin up until November.

Former US president Donald Trump has recently marketed himself as pro-crypto, contrary to President Joe Biden, generally seen as averse to the industry.

$500 billion in assets

To meet Sigel’s $350,000 target, Bitcoin would have to rise roughly 400% from its price today. That means the $60 billion already held in ETFs would swell to $300 billion on value appreciation alone.

That’s without counting new flows, which Sigel estimated would reach $10 billion per year.

As for Ethereum, Sigel predicted the yet-to-be-launched spot ETFs will attract $15 billion in a period of six months, and then about $5 billion a year in fresh flows.

But Sigel estimated that the price of Ether could reach $22,000, which would boost the value of the ETF assets.

All in all, crypto funds could end up with $500 billion worth of assets across all products.

Nvidia stock is all anyone in the market talks about, and that’s not good for crypto.

So says Youwei Yang, vice president of mining at BIT Mining, who told DL News that investors have passed over crypto stocks in favour of a new market narrative.

“Market and hot money is so focused on and obsessed with the AI track,” said Yang, who is also the Bitcoin mining firm’s chief economist.

Nvidia

It’s been hard not to notice Nvidia, which has soared some 154% since the start of the year and has earlier this month leapfrogged Apple’s $3 trillion in market value.

Nvidia is the market leader in creating the powerful computers used to train and operate artificial intelligence, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Meanwhile, mining stocks have struggled. Marathon Digital Holdings, the biggest Bitcoin mining company with a $5.6 billion market capitalisation, has dropped 13% this year.

BIT Mining shares are faring even worse, falling 48%.

That compares with the broader S&P 500 and tech-heavy Nasdaq, which have been riding optimism about Federal Reserve policy to notch new records.

“The stock and particularly tech market now finds and regards every news to be bullish and FOMO” — he said, referring to investor fear of missing out. ”Crypto has lost its charm.”

Lost momentum

The crypto market has lost momentum after a strong start to the year fuelled by the approval and launch of 11 spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds in January.

The snap approval of Ethereum spot ETFs in May temporarily breathed new life into crypto assets. But with the launch of Ethereum ETFs still weeks away, the market has endured a slow selloff.

Until crypto can “break out some convincing narrative or constructive advancement,” Yang said, “crypto will just be trading sideways waiting for major market shocks.”

Tim Craig is a DeFi Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tim@dlnews.com.

Short sellers are targeting Bitcoin miners.

Short interest on the US Bitcoin mining sector reached $3 billion — up 21% in the last 30 days, according to financial data firm S3 Partners.

“The Bitcoin mining stock sector is very crowded on the short side relative to the US market,” Ihor Dusaniwsky, managing director at S3, told DL News.

The popularity of the trade made shorts “very squeezable,” he said, meaning that if short sellers are caught by an upwards move, they may quickly need to buy back their shares, sending prices higher.

But shorts are doing well for now. They’re up about 15% since the start of the year, pocketing about $350 million.

The most profitable shorts: Riot Platforms and Marathon Digital — two of the largest Bitcoin mining companies.

Bearish traders have made returns of 47% and 21%, respectively, off of these stocks.

‘Dysfunctional’

Activist investment firm Kerrisdale Capital released a sceptical report on miner Riot Platforms on June 5, sending the shares lower.

“Bitcoin mining is easily among the worst business models for a public company we have ever encountered,” Kerrisdale wrote.

”Riot’s business model is dysfunctional, characterised by seemingly endless capital spending, lack of operating leverage, unpredictable revenue, poor returns, and negative cash flow.”

Among Kerrisdale’s criticisms: Riot has diluted its shares 18% in the first four months of the year — and increased its shares six-fold since 2020.

This stock issuance has allowed the firm to finance its mining operations without dipping into its Bitcoin holdings, now worth north of $600 million, according to Kerrisdale.

But that has come at the expense of its shareholders, the short sellers said.

Kerrisdale said Riot had also failed to secure a tax abatement from regulators for a crucial facility in Corsicana, Texas — a sign the state, considered a mecca for miners, may be souring on the industry.

Riot’s shares have rebounded since the report, but are down some 35% this year.

“We disagree with the characterisation of the Bitcoin mining industry and of Riot, and the equally unsound conclusions reached in the Kerrisdale Capital report,” Riot told DL News.

“These errors will be demonstrated through the execution of our ambitious 2024 growth plans and resulting financial performance.”

Risky bets

Shorting cryptocurrencies — and stocks in general — is risky.

Whether or not Kerrisdale’s analysis is correct, mining stocks may simply follow Bitcoin if the top cryptocurrency surges to new all-time highs, as they did in 2021 and 2017.

“Interest in fundamental stock pickers has waned,” legendary short-seller Jim Chanos said in November.

Chanos closed his fund amid a bet against Coinbase, which is up 383% in the last 12 months.

MicroStrategy

Kerrisdale has also come out against MicroStrategy, saying in March that shares of the company with the largest Bitcoin holdings on its balance sheet are overvalued.

MicroStategy’s stock has tracked Bitcoin to gain almost 130% this year.

Kerrisdale said it is long Bitcoin — up 54% this year — to hedge its bet against Riot.

Tom Carreras is a markets correspondent for DL News. Got a tip about Bitcoin miners or short-sellers? Reach out at tcarreras@dlnews.com

MetaMask is going all in on the $116 billion market in Ethereum staking.

Consensys, the firm behind the top crypto wallet, announced Wednesday the launch of Pooled Staking, a new offering that will let those with small amounts of Ether pool their tokens and earn staking rewards.

“It’s a simple way to be rewarded for contributing to the security of Ethereum,” Matthieu Saint Olive, a senior product manager at Consensys, told DL News. “This solution will be competitive.”

Previously, only users with 32 Ether could stake through MetaMask.

The Pooled Staking launch puts MetaMask on an equal footing with other staking providers that accept small amounts of Ether for staking.

But it could be an uphill battle for MetaMask to break into this highly-competitive market.

Saint Olive said MetaMask will charge Pooled Staking users 15% of their staking rewards for its service — much higher than leading Ethereum staking provider Lido’s 10%.

The market for Ethereum staking is huge. Almost 33 million Ether tokens worth $116 billion are staked on the blockchain, earning at least 3.1% per year, paid in Ether.

Lido dominates the market, accounting for almost 29% of all Ether staked.

By providing a more accessible option to MetaMask users, Consensys is hoping its Pooled Staking feature can compete against dozens of other options, many of which, like Lido, offer lower fees.

Staking fees

Staking on Ethereum is complex.

It requires in-depth technical knowledge, a stable internet connection, and a minimum of 32 Ether — worth $113,000. Mistakes can cause significant financial losses.

Because of this, many Ethereum users choose to stake through a third party provider.

Staking providers usually take a percentage of rewards — between 10% and 25% — in exchange for helping their users stake.

At the low end, Lido, Binance Staked ETH, and Mantle Staked ETH charge a 10% fee on staking rewards.

Coinbase’s Wrapped Staked ETH sits on the high end, charging 25%.

MetaMask’s 15% Pooled Staking fee, Saint Olive says, falls somewhere in the middle.

“Users care more about the rewards they actually receive, and how secure the solution is, rather than the provider fee itself,” Saint Olive said.

Security and convenience

The new offering may appeal to more casual crypto users because of its convenience.

MetaMask users can start staking their Ether via the wallet’s interface.

However, MetaMask also gives users the option to stake through rival staking providers Lido and Rocket Pool — both of which offer lower staking fees — through the same interface.

As for security, Pooled Staking will use the same staking system used by Consensys Staking, the firm’s enterprise-grade staking product.

Consensys says it has received third-party security certifications for both Consensys Staking and MetaMask.

Consensys Staking has 33,000 Ethereum validators with more than 1 million Ether staked, equivalent to 3.3% of all staked Ether, according to the Pooled Staking announcement.

Even so, it says it has never had one of its validators get slashed.

Slashing is when the Ethereum network takes Ether from validators who don’t publish data when they are supposed to, or don’t publish the correct data.

In November, Bitcoin Suisse, a company that provides staking services for institutional clients, suffered a $200,000 loss after nearly 100 of its validators were slashed for trying to publish incorrect data.

In October, 20 of Lido’s validators were also slashed, costing the protocol $45,000.

Tim Craig is a DeFi Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at tim@dlnews.com.

Crypto advocates cheered a landmark bipartisan bill that sailed through the US House of Representatives last month. Yet they are prepared to fight tooth and nail to ensure it goes no further unless massive changes are made to it.

The bipartisan vote included a substantial number of Democrats, and signalled that Congress, like the crypto industry, was eager to rescue digital assets from their legal limbo, according to industry attorneys who spoke to DL News.

Although the industry wanted to accept a symbolic victory, the bill itself would give unprecedented power to the regulators who have waged legal warfare on crypto, the attorneys said.

Radical revision

As such, some in the industry have said it needs radical revision before it advances any further.

The Senate isn’t expected to vote on the bill this year, but could consider the legislation, or parts of it, in next year’s session.

“What started out as probably a well-intended and somewhat well thought-out attempt has gotten muddied very heavily by a lot of input over time,” Alexander Lindgren, an attorney at LLOY Law LLP, told DL News.

“There are a lot of fundamental problems with the bill,” he said.

A ‘ringing endorsement’

The Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act, known as the FIT21 Act, would end the “food fight for control” of crypto between the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, according to Representative. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina, the bill’s co-sponsor and the Republican chair of the House Financial Services Committee.

FIT21 sets up definitions for crypto assets, and divides responsibility for its regulation between the CFTC and the SEC.

The rules would grant the CFTC, which is considered friendlier to crypto, more jurisdiction over the sector. Definitions determine whether an asset would be subject to SEC or CFTC oversight.

In a statement after the House vote on May 22, Blockchain Association CEO Kristin Smith called the bill’s passage “a watershed moment and badge of congressional validation for the crypto industry in the United States.”

Crypto attorney Orlando Cosme said he was among those privately hoping the bill would pass, despite misgivings.

That’s because of the way it had been framed in the weeks leading to the House vote.

“If you’re pro-crypto, you’re going to vote yes on this bill, and if you’re against crypto, if you want crypto to die … then you should vote against it,” he said, recalling the debate.

“Seeing one-third of House Democrats voting in favour of the bill, I think sent a ringing endorsement by Congress in support of this technology.”

Three major issues

But it has three major issues, he said.

First, it increases the SEC’s power by letting the agency determine whether a particular crypto project is decentralised — power it’s apt to abuse, Cosme said.

Second, it gives the CFTC unprecedented power to regulate spot crypto markets, something the industry could come to regret.

Finally, vague language in the bill could mean that DeFi protocols — which were ostensibly left out of its purview — could mean those protocols will find themselves subject to SEC or CFTC regulation after all.

“This exception for DeFi actually isn’t that robust,” Cosme said.

‘Absolute power’

Under the bill, crypto assets that are sufficiently decentralised would be considered commodities, like gold or wheat.

Assets that don’t pass the decentralisation test would be considered securities, like stocks or bonds, and would be subject to more rigorous SEC oversight.

But the SEC would be the one to make that determination, a problem for an industry that considers SEC Chair Gary Gensler a mortal enemy. Gensler has long said the vast majority of digital assets are securities.

“With this SEC right now, I would bet that the SEC would reject every single request for a decentralisation certification,” Cosme said.

“It gives them absolute power to reject any token from going into CFTC land.”

Even a more crypto-friendly SEC might be hard-pressed to classify tokens as non-security commodities.

“The overwhelming majority of useful tokens in crypto ecosystems right now probably, at least arguably, qualify as one of the nonexempt [security] categories,” Lindgren, of LLOY, said. That includes stablecoins and “anything that can be staked or earn revenue in any way.”

In any case, crypto companies might not like what’s waiting for them in “CFTC land,” Lindgren said.

That’s because the bill gives the CFTC control over spot crypto markets. Digital assets would be the only commodity subject to such scrutiny, according to the attorneys.

The CFTC now actively regulates the markets for derivatives of commodities, such as wheat and oil futures. But it has little oversight of spot commodity markets.

“They have what’s called market manipulation, fraud jurisdiction over spot commodities,” Cosme said, “but that’s only because if you commit fraud or market manipulation on a spot commodity, then you’re going to impact the derivative of it.”

‘It would be a huge barrier to entry for new entrants versus incumbents.’

Alexander Lindgren, LLOY Law LLP

Under the bill, companies like crypto exchange Coinbase would likely have to register with the CFTC, even if they refrain from offering crypto derivatives.

“When you’re registering as an intermediary with the CFTC and with the appropriate self-regulatory organisation, you are undertaking a lot — A LOT — of ongoing compliance, reporting, and cost burden,” Lindgren said.

“It would be a huge barrier to entry for new entrants versus incumbents, because you’re moving more into bank-like compliance territory.”

DeFi caught in the mix

Moreover, the CFTC requires intermediaries in the derivatives markets that it currently regulates. That is a problem for the world of decentralised finance, where applications are designed to eliminate the need for an intermediary and to let users conduct peer-to-peer transactions.

“Any of the transactional activity covered by the law needs to occur on a platform that is centralised, intermediated, regulated, and reporting,” Lindgren said.

“You’re probably just increasing the likelihood and frequency of enforcement actions against DeFi platforms by the CFTC.”

Nevertheless, the bill’s passage is one of several recent events that suggest the US is softening its anti-crypto stance.

In another bipartisan move in May, Congress voted to scrap a policy called SAB 121. Among other things, the end of SAB 121 would have made it easier for big banks such as JPMorgan Chase, BNY Mellon, and State Street to hold crypto on customers’ behalf. President Joe Biden vetoed the bill.

A week later, the SEC shocked ETF watchers when it approved spot Ether exchange-traded funds.

And if crypto advocates squint, there are things in the bill they might like.

For example, it makes it possible to launch new tokens “in a compliant way, which obviously will then provide a little bit more legitimacy,” Cosme said. “Current token launches aren’t illegal per se, they’re just in this legal grey area.”

Lindgren thinks its merits are simpler than that.

“There’s an argument to be made that, ‘Hey, even a deeply flawed bill is better than everyone suing everybody,’ which is where we’re at,” he said.

Aleks Gilbert is a DeFi Correspondent at DL News. Got a tip? Email him at aleks@dlnews.com.

Cardano, Charles Hoskinson’s $15 billion blockchain, is barreling toward a transition to decentralised ownership, similar to the structure of a decentralised autonomous organisation, or DAO, that’s popular among DeFi protocols.

The development of Cardano, which was created in 2017, has been under the sole management of Hoskinson’s blockchain engineering firm, Input Output Global, along with the Cardano Foundation and EMURGO, Cardano’s official commercial arm.

That will change with the scheduled Chang hard fork this month.

Hard forks happen when developers execute major changes to a blockchain’s programming resulting in a new network version that is not backward compatible with the previous network.

Blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum have also completed hard forks in the past that have triggered massive changes to their networks.

Ethereum’s most recent hard fork in 2022 changed the network from a Proof of Work chain with miners to Proof of Stake.

Cardano’s Chang hard fork can happen once 70% of the blockchain’s validators upgrade to the network’s latest node software version.

Instead of centralised entities running Cardano, the blockchain’s governance will be community-driven once the Chang hard fork happens, Hoskinson said on X this week.

With Chang, ADA token holders will have governance rights and be able to vote on changes to Cardano. ADA is Cardano’s native token.

The upgrade will also introduce other DAO-like elements to Cardano such as voting power delegation, budgets for project teams, and a treasury managed by the community.

The Chang hard fork and the resulting pivot to a decentralised governance structure is called the Voltaire era, and is the fifth step in Cardano’s road map. The previous two milestones — Goguen and Basho — introduced smart contract and scalability features to the blockchain.

Despite those new features, Cardano’s DeFi market has struggled to take off and has been overshadowed by Solana and several Ethereum layer 2 networks.

Cardano losing ground to buzzier crypto projects is reflected in its token’s value.

ADA, once the third-largest crypto by market value during the 2021 bull market, has dropped to 11th place, overtaken by popular memecoins Dogecoin and Shiba Inu.

Osato Avan-Nomayo is our Nigeria-based DeFi correspondent. He covers DeFi and tech. To share tips or information about stories, please contact him at osato@dlnews.com.

President Emmanuel Macron of France has long believed in crypto.

During his seven years in power, his government has taken numerous steps to reward founders with all manner of incentives to set up shop in Paris’s burgeoning digital assets hub.

Now, France’s crypto industry may need to fend for itself.

The centre-right premier’s decision to hold a snap parliamentary election on June 30 has left the digital assets industry pondering a sudden shift in policy.

“It is hard to say what’s next, as the other political parties don’t have specific positioning on crypto,” said Daniel Seifert, Coinbase’s vice president and managing director in Europe and the Middle East.

Incoming crypto regulations

The election on June 30 and runoff on July 7 will not end Macron’s five-year term — the presidential contest won’t be held until 2027. But asking voters to elect a new National Assembly could result in a majority led by the right wing National Rally party, and a new prime minister.

This type of hybrid government is not unprecedented in French political history. But whichever party calls the shots domestically come July, it will have to engage with the new European Commission on incoming crypto regulations.

At the top of the list: the Markets in Crypto-Assets law which comes into full force at the end of the year and will lay out the rules of the road for the industry.

As it happens, MiCA’s rules for stablecoins go live on June 30.

‘It created a lot of confidence for foreign actors to choose Paris. This is something that may disappear.’

William O’Rorke, ORWL

“What remains of Macron’s legacy for the crypto industry in France is yet to be seen, but his ambition has always been to make France a major crypto hub,” said Francois Volpoet, a regional managing director at blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis.

Starting in 2017, Macron’s administration threw open the doors for investment in the sector. The government deployed favourable tax breaks for start-ups and incubation opportunities for investors. As a result, Paris’s crypto scene sprang to life.

Paris is home to several crypto unicorns, such as Ledger and Morpho, and sports a diverse web3 culture. The market regulator has registered more than 100 crypto firms.

Europe’s crypto industry gathers regularly in the capital’s most illustrious venues, including the Louvre, the Ritz Paris hotel, and the palatial Palais Brongniart, the city’s old stock exchange.

Bruno Le Maire, the finance minister, and Jean-Noël Barrot, the digitalisation minister, personally welcomed crypto giants such as Circle, Binance, and Crypto.com when they set up shop in Paris.

“All these players had access to the top level of the ministry of economy,” said William O’Rorke, a lawyer with ORWL, a local law firm that represents crypto ventures.

“That’s important because it created a lot of confidence for foreign actors to choose Paris to set up. This is something that may disappear.”

But, O’Rorke doesn’t imagine there will be direct regulatory changes based on the result of the June elections.

Many industry players remain unphased by which party rules.

The European Parliament’s Renew party, which Macron represents, won only 15% of the vote on Sunday. The far-right Identity and Democracy led the polls with more than 31%. In France, this group is represented by the National Rally party.

Slight shift

While the centre largely held in Brussels, the crypto industry is trying to gauge how the results Sunday may affect the industry across the bloc.

“The slight shift to the right may well see a greater focus over the next five years on competitiveness and growth,” said Mark Foster, EU policy lead at the Crypto Council for Innovation.

“This could lead to a more enabling framework for innovation friendly policies.”

The left-wing Green Party took a hit losing 18 seats in the European Parliament.

“The European Parliament might decrease the focus that was around Bitcoin and the energy consumption of proof-of-work mechanisms,” said Tommaso Astazi, head of regulatory affairs at Blockchain for Europe.

The elections also saw the return of some of the lawmakers that helped shape EU crypto policy in the last mandate.

They include German centre-right lawmaker Stefan Berger and Czech lawmaker Ondrej Kovarik, both of whom helped author MiCA.

“We will still have some of our closest members of the European Parliament, the ones that we’ve been working with for the past five years,” Astazi said.

Inbar Preiss is DL News’ Brussels correspondent. Contact the author at inbar@dlnews.com.

Smoke weed in Singapore and you could end up with 10 years in prison. Get caught with over 330 grams of cannabis and your corporal punishment might include a caning.

But launder US$2.2 billion in illicit cryptocurrencies, cash, and other assets such as luxury handbags? Don’t worry, all you may get is 17 months.

That was the sentence the tenth defendant in the city-state’s biggest money laundering case ever received on Monday.

Su Jianfeng pleaded guilty to laundering proceeds from an illegal gambling operation overseas and giving banks forged documents to disguise the origins of funds.

Police seized US$20 million in illicit cryptocurrencies from him and his wife. Su agreed to forfeit about US$132 million of total US$138 million in cash and assets seized.

Among the dozen other charges, he was accused of hiring a personal chef without a valid work pass.

Luxury haul

His arrest on August 15 last year was part of a massive operation involving over 400 police officers in the city.

The initial raids seized cash and assets worth over US$747 million, with prohibition of disposal orders filed against 94 properties and 50 vehicles and more than 35 connected bank accounts frozen.

Police also unearthed a huge haul of luxury items: 250 designer bags and watches, over 120 electronic devices, two gold bars, 270 pieces of jewellery, an enviable wine and liquor collection, and 11 documents with information about virtual assets.

The money’s origins have been traced back to gambling operations in Southeast Asia.

Each of the ten individuals arrested were found holding passports from multiple different countries, including destinations for so-called “golden passports’' like Vanuatu, Turkey, St Kitts and Nevis and Cambodia.

All are originally Chinese citizens from Fujian province in southeast China.

The relatively lenient sentence may raise eyebrows as Singapore seeks to reassure the global financial industry that it is taking a hard line against criminals who deem it a safe haven to park illicit cash.

Many Singaporeans are questioning why the defendants, none of whom hold Singaporean citizenship, will walk away with millions.

Of the ten, only two have forfeited 100% of the seized assets.

Swift prosecution

But the chief prosecutor, Tan Kiat Pheng, seems fine with it. The prosecution initially asked for prison terms of 17 to 18 months.

“The swift prosecution of these 10 cases is a strong message to would-be criminals that Singapore will not tolerate attempts to flout our laws,” Pheng told the media after the hearing.

The director of the police’s Commercial Affairs Department, David Chew added in a statement that the swift and firm law enforcement efforts and the successful prosecutions of these 10 offenders were testament to the state’s commitment to tackling transnational crime and disrupting the activities of organised crime syndicates.

Still, when five of the 10 defendants received similarly short terms in May, Leong Mun Wai, an influential legislator, said money laundering convicts can get 10 year prison terms.

“In my view, the jail terms that the courts have meted out to the five foreigners who have been convicted are not severe enough,” Leong, a Non-Constituency Member of Parliament from Progress Singapore Party, said in a Facebook post on May 10.

Guilty plea

At the time, K Shanmugam, the minister for Home Affairs, defended the court’s decision. “The sentences meted out by the Singapore Courts have been comparable to those in other jurisdictions,” the minister said.

He also pointed to the relatively early plea of guilt and agreement and asset forfeiture as mitigating factors.

Two of those sentenced, Su Wenqiang and Wang Baosen, have already been released and deported to Cambodia.

The others will all be deported and barred from re-entering Singapore after serving their sentences.

Investigations are continuing against 17 other individuals not in Singapore. Those that end up back in China might find themselves facing new rounds of prosecution.

Beijing has taken a hard line on the organised crime groups operating in Southeast Asia. Chinese authorities issued an arrest warrant for Su in 2017.

Callan Quinn is DL News’ Hong Kong-based Asia Correspondent. Get in touch at callan@dlnews.com.

Spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds are vacuuming funds like there’s no tomorrow.

Yet Bitcoin’s price isn’t bulging. For almost a month now, the top cryptocurrency has traded in a tight range between $67,000 and $72,000.

Crypto market maker Wintermute offered an explanation in its latest report. The problem, the firm said, is that hedge funds buying ETF shares may well be selling the asset elsewhere.

$100 billion in assets

Bitcoin ETFs have experienced inflows for 19 days in a row as of yesterday — a new record.

And just last week, Bitcoin investment vehicles amassed almost $2 billion globally, bringing crypto assets under management to the $100 billion mark for the first time since March.

But even then, Bitcoin is still trading at $69,000, the same price as in mid-May.

CME, the largest platform in terms of volume for Bitcoin derivatives, offers a clue as to why: Hedge funds have taken up an unprecedented $7.5 billion in short positions, according to Wintermute.

Not necessarily bearish

It’s not necessarily because they’re bearish Bitcoin.

By combining short positions with a potential Bitcoin ETF exposure, hedge funds can profit from inefficiencies in the crypto market, Wintermute said.

These funds are likely targeting the discrepancies between Bitcoin’s spot price in ETFs and its futures on the CME exchange.

This strategy is deemed to be market neutral, which means the firms aren’t making a directional bet on the price of Bitcoin — they’re simply arbitraging the asset on different venues.

Hedge fund strategies

Hedge fund Millennium Management, which manages some $60 billion, had likely deployed such a strategy along with other peers when it purchased over $2 billion across for Bitcoin ETFs in May.

In other words, these flows are purposefully countered on other venues by the very same institutions that acquired the shares.

“The impact of recent market structure changes is becoming evident, particularly with the muted price action despite significant ETF inflows,” Wintermute said. “Markets remain range-bound.”

Crypto market movers

Bitcoin is down 3.2% in the last 24 hours to about $67,145.

Ethereum is down 3.7% over the same period to $3,537.

What we’re reading

How Robinhood’s $200m Bitstamp deal is a bet against the SEC’s crypto crackdown — DL News

Best Crypto Options Trading Platforms June 2024 — Milk Road

Friend.tech to Migrate From Base to Its Own Blockchain — Unchained

Best DeFi Exchanges 2024 — Milk Road

Top crypto VCs bounced back in 2023 as Multicoin led the way with 180% increase — DL News

Tom Carreras is a markets correspondent at DL News. Got a tip about Bitcoin ETFs? Reach out at tcarreras@dlnews.com

A version of this article appeared in our The Decentralised newsletter on June 11. Sign up here.

GM, Tim here.

Here’s what caught my DeFi-eye recently:

ZKsync’s token goes live next week.

Railgun Project co-founder talks to the feds.

A DL News journalist shares his story about getting hacked.

ZKsync’s token launch

ZKsync’s long-awaited token launch is imminent.

In a Tuesday blog post, ZK Nation released details on how it will allocate 21 billion ZK tokens on June 17.

17.5% of the supply will be distributed through an airdrop, with another 49.5% going to the ZKsync community.

Alex Gluchowski, the co-founder and CEO of Matter Labs, the company behind ZKsync, emphasised the ZK token’s utility in an interview with DL News.

“It’s not a financial thing,” he said. “It’s really a governance token.”

Users who transacted on the ZKsync Lite and ZKsync Era networks will be eligible for the airdrop.

Actions such as holding ZKsync NFTs, ZKsync-native tokens, and using popular Ethereum mainnet DeFi apps will increase the number of tokens users receive.

ZK Nation is a newly-set up organisation for the purpose of governing and growing the ZKsync protocol.

ZK token holders will be able to propose and vote on initiatives that govern ZKsync.

“The community will have the power to use it also as a payment means,” Gluchowski said, adding that ZKsync community members could vote to add further functionality to the token.

Token holders won’t, however, get full control.

Two other factions, called the ZKsync Guardians and the ZKsync Security Council, will also have the power to veto proposals and approve emergency actions.

Railgun Project interview

Railgun Project co-founder Alan Scott sat down with DL News to talk about educating authorities on what Railgun contributors are doing to stop bad actors.

The Railgun Protocol has a feature called Proof of Innocence that lets honest users prove the money they put into the protocol didn’t come from stolen funds or illicit activity.

Currently, Proof of Innocence only flags crypto addresses that the Office of Foreign Assets Control has put on its sanctions list, but Scott said Railgun contributors want to change that.

Contributors are working on a secure way to allow law enforcement and crypto security experts to update the list of bad actors in real time — even if the addresses are not yet on the official OFAC list.

A $45,000 mistake

DL News’ Osato Avan-Nomayo recounts the painful theft of $45,000 after a hacker infected his computer with malware.

Osato told the story of how he promised to help a younger relative download a computer game.

But when the relative grew impatient and tried to do it himself, he downloaded a version of the game embedded with malware.

The malware probably installed a keylogger — a programme that records keystrokes — and exposed his wallet details, which allowed the hacker to syphon out the crypto.

Osato disclosed the hack publicly, not only to warn other potential victims, but also to help highlight the need for better safeguards.

If broad-based crypto adoption is the goal, Osato says, then safely storing digital assets needs to become simpler, especially for those who prefer self-custody.

Data of the week

May was the worst month for crypto hacks since November 2022.

The $305 million hack suffered by Japanese crypto exchange DMM Bitcoin made up the majority of the losses.

This week in DeFi governanceVOTE: Arbitrum DAO votes on ventures initiative pilot phasePROPOSAL: Aave DAO discusses Lido-focused Aave v3 instanceVOTE: Compound to launch USDT market on OptimismPost of the week

A recent interview where Australian rapper Iggy Azalea’s expresses scepticism over where Ethereum gas fees go has spawned a new meme — and Crypto Twitter is putting it to good use.

They're called "decentralized autonomous organizations" but basically the team and the investors decide every vote pic.twitter.com/gis2mLaWoV

— davis 🐺🦊 (@basedkarbon) June 8, 2024

What we’re watching

#CertiKInsight 🚨

We are seeing multiple exploit transactions affecting @UwU_Lend

0x841dDf093f5188989fA1524e7B893de64B421f47 is currently holding ~$19.4m of assets pic.twitter.com/b8KeHdZche

— CertiK Alert (@CertiKAlert) June 10, 2024

DeFi protocol UwU Lend was exploited on Monday for $19.4 million using a flash loan.

Got a tip about DeFi? Reach out at tim@dlnews.com.