Venezuela’s state-run oil company started experimenting with Tether in 2023. Source
Venezuela Looks to Tether to Bypass Sanctions: Reuters
Category: ICO
Stacks Begins 2-Step Rollout of Major ‘Nakamoto’ Overhaul
Called Nakamoto, honoring Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, the upgrade will decouple the Stacks block production schedule from Bitcoin’s. Although the layer-2 network has a higher transaction throughput than Bitcoin (which processes about 7 transactions per second), as initially designed, Stacks produced blocks at the same rate as Bitcoin, leading to congestion issues, network creator Muneeb Ali told CoinDesk. Source
Two SEC Lawyers Resign Following Debt Box Sanctions Fiasco: Bloomberg
Michael Welsh, a former lead attorney on the Debt Box case, and Joseph Watkins, an investigative attorney whose declaration served as the foundation for the SEC’s case against Debt Box, were reportedly forced to step down or else be terminated, according to the report, which cited people familiar with the situation. Source
Sam Bankman-Fried Agrees to Help FTX Investors Go After Celeb Promoters
Several of the smaller celebrity promoters – including finance Youtubers Andrei Jikh, Graham Stephan, Jaspreet Singh, Tom Nash, Brian Jung and Jeremy Lefebvre – have also settled, contributing to a common fund of $1.4 million to fund the lawsuit, according to court documents. Source
NYSE Asks Market Participants About 24/7 Trading for Stocks
NYSE, whose roots stretch back to the 18th century, famously signals the start and end of daily trading with bell-ringing ceremonies in the morning and afternoon – though, because of electronic trading, buying and selling has for decades actually taken place before the first bell at 9:30 a.m. and after the second one at 4 p.m. New York time. Source
Shiba Inu (SHIB) Fetches $12M Investment in a Token Sale to Build Privacy-Focused Blockchain
The list of investors participating in the round are Comma 3 Ventures, Big Brain Holdings, Cypher Capital, Shima Capital, Hercules Ventures, Animoca Brands, Morningstar Ventures, Woodstock Fund, DWF Ventures, Polygon Ventures, Stake Capital, Illuminati Digital Capital, Primal Capital, Mechanism Capital and Spirit Dao, who all purchased the new network’s upcoming utility and governance token TREAT. Source
Polymarket Odds Say Columbia University President Minouche Shafik Will Keep Job
Right now, “yes” shares for the crypto-based betting platform’s “Minouche Shafik out as Columbia President in April?” contract are trading at 7 cents, signaling a 7% chance of her ouster in that timeframe. Each contract pays out $1 if the prediction turns out to be true, and zero if it’s false. Source
ZKasino Users Plead for Refunds as $33M of Bridged Ether Sent to Lido
In the lead-up to going live, ZKasino opened up a token bridge that allowed investors to deposit ether (ETH) to earn ZKAS, the platform’s native token. Originally, the website said that bridged ether would be “returned” once the bridging period was over, that wording has since been removed. Source
Celo Chooses Optimism, Concluding Bake-Off Among Layer 2s
“It’s super cool to actually see them [Celo] be keen on OP Stack, do deep due diligence and look at all these chains,” said Ryan Wyatt, chief growth officer at the Optimism Foundation, in an interview with CoinDesk. “I mean, there’s a lot of opportunities around this build-a-blockchain out of the box. So I love that they did it and then ultimately concluded that we’re going with OP Stack.” Source
Bitcoin (BTC) Layer 2s Have Their Moment
Tokens associated with Bitcoin layer 2 solutions have outperformed bitcoin (BTC) since the Bitcoin blockchain’s highly-anticipated mining reward halving took effect early Saturday. STX, the native token of leading Bitcoin layer 2 network Stacks, has risen nearly 20% to $2.87 since quadrennial halving reduced the per block coin emission to 3.125 BTC from 6.25 BTC, according to data source CoinGecko. Bitcoin, meanwhile, has gained just over 4.7% to $66,300. STX is one of the best-performing top 25 cryptocurrencies of the past 24 hours, per Velo Data. Other layer 2 coins,…