3/20/24: BlackRock Is Evolving šŸ—暟¤”šŸ’°

Top News

  1. BlackRock launches tokenized investment fund with $100M USDC

  2. Solana memecoin ā€œpresalesā€ cross $150M, bad actors called out

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

Specsā€™ Breakdown

1. BlackRock launches tokenized investment fund with $100M USDC

āŒā—Ŗ-ā—Ŗ ā†’ BlackRock just announced a new Institutional Digital Liquidity fund in collaboration with Securitize.

This isnā€™t some pretend blockchain theatre either. BlackRock, the worldā€™s largest asset manager, just put $100M USDC on the Ethereum blockchain. Pretty crazy.

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

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

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

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

2. Solana memecoin ā€œpresalesā€ cross $150M, bad actors called out

āŒā—Ŗ-ā—Ŗ ā†’ The memecoin presale meta continues to rage on with over $150M raised on Solana alone over the last week.

For those who donā€™t know, the ā€œpresalesā€ are an increasingly common and dubious practice where traders blindly send millions to strangersā€™ wallets in hopes of getting in early on the next memecoin.

The problem is, besides these memecoins having absolutely zero value/purpose, there is no guarantee the strangers donā€™t just take the money and run ā€” which many have already done.

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

If youā€™re curious, check out ZachXBTā€™s breakdown to better understand the anatomy of these presale scams.

I love me a good memecoin, but this is getting out of hand and is frankly destroying the Solana ecosystem. Itā€™s so bad that one of Solanaā€™s co-founders tweeted ā€œStop doing this."

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

āŒā—Ŗ-ā—Ŗ ā†’ $USDe is now a top 5 stablecoin with a market cap of $1.17B. While theyā€™re still very far behind Tether ($103.43B) and USDC ($29.64B) they are doing pretty good considering they launched 1 month ago.

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

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

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

For a more detailed breakdown, check out Cygaarā€™s thread!

Everything Else

ā›“ļø Crypto & DeFi

šŸ¦ Wallstreet & VC

  • MicroStrategy holds 1% of BTC supply after recent $600M purchase

  • Record ETF outflows of $326M, Grayscale bleeds the most

  • Grayscale adds ETH staking to its ETH ETF application

  • Immutable, Polygon, and King River raise $100M web3 gaming fund

  • Sygnum tokenizes $50M of Fidelity International Fund

  • Coinbase CEO says they custody ~90% of spot BTC ETF assets

šŸ›ļø Legal & Regulatory

  • Pro-Crypto Republican Bernie Moreno wins Ohio Senate Primary

  • SEC delays decision on Hashdex and Ark Ethereum ETFs

  • Coinbase pushes for SEC to write rules, lobbying groups support

  • Bankrupt Genesis to pay $21M to settle SEC charges

šŸŒŽ Rest of the World

  • Lithuania crypto bank Meld to offer tokenized RWAs to retail investors

  • Netherlands alleges Alexey Pertsev laundered $1.2B via Tornado Cash

šŸ–¼ļø NFTs & Metaverse

  • XCOPY drops open edition mint on Base called MUTATIO

  • Portal staking opens this Thursday, provides access to mints/pre-sales

  • Polygon Labs paid $4M to host Starbuckā€™s failed NFT-loyalty program

  • Rug Radio introduces Content+ rewards platform

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