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⌐◪-◪ → Yuga Labs just let go of an undisclosed number of employees in a recent restructuring after the CEO said Yuga “lost its way”.

The CEO’s post emphasizes that their goal is to reduce spend/overhead, increase agility, and get back to the company’s “creative-first spirit”.

While this specific announcement + round of layoffs is new, a restructuring of sorts has been underway for a while now:

• 2/16: Yuga acquires PROOF, including Moonbirds, Mythics, Oddities, and Grails

• 2/21: Yuga co-founder Greg Solano (Garga.ETH) stepped back in as CEO, ousting Daniel Alegre

• 4/17: Yuga sells off HV-MTL and Legends of the Mara IP to Faraway Games

Yuga is clearly in a tough spot, and while massive layoffs are never fun, it’s probably the right decision here.

The real question is — can they recover?

Most of crypto Twitter took the news positively, buying into the narrative of “focus, agility, creative roots”, but not everybody is optimistic.

The notorious @beaniemaxi says, “it’s near impossible it is to turn around a company that the founder and CEO has admitted has hit rock bottom”

Only time will tell. For now, it’s time to sit back and let Garga cook.

⌐◪-◪ → Bitcoin hash price, the cost of a unit of hashing power, fell to an all-time low of less than $50 per PH/s per day.

This follows a brief surge in revenue for miners post-halving thanks to the Runes frenzy and tx fee windfall, which has now subsided.

The hash price is now below the total hash cost for most major public miners, i.e. miners are going underwater.

If this persists, miners will have to dump Bitcoin reserves to subsidize operations — which means we could see a pull-back before new all-time highs.

Something tells me we’re about to see serious consolation in the Bitcoin mining space as the weaker miners die out. I wonder if any nation-states are agile enough to take advantage of this opportunity to secure mining power for national security.

⌐◪-◪ → Australia’s largest stock exchange, ASX, is expected to list its first batch of Bitcoin ETFs by the end of 2024.

Issuers include VanEck, BetaShares, and DigitalX, who have already filed applications earlier this year.

Note: Bitcoin ETFs aren’t new to Australians, they’ve been trading spot BTC ETFs since 2022 on CBOE Australia.

That said, ASX is still a big deal as it manages about 80% of the local trades with a market cap of $2.7T, roughly 10.6% of the NYSE’s $25.56T market cap.

Meanwhile, the 11 spot BTC ETFs in the US have amassed an incredible $53.16B in total AUM in ~100 days, and Hong Kong’s BTC ETFs are set to start trading tomorrow (April 30th).

While everybody should self-custody their crypto, having easy access via traditional brokerage accounts is a positive. It unlocks new pools of capital, legitimizes the asset class, and is a friendly introduction to crypto for regular investors.

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