ICO Archives

Zircuit Launches ‘Build to Earn’ Program With Rewards for Devs

March 27, 2024

March 28: Zircuit, a fully EVM-compatible ZK rollup with parallelized circuits and AI-enabled security, launched its Build to Earn program on Wednesday to incentivize builders, founders and community members who contribute to the Zircuit ecosystem. Backed by Pantera Capital, Dragonfly Capital, and Maelstrom, Zircuit currently has over $700 million staked. According to the team: “Developers and ecosystem contributors who participate in the program stand to receive rewards for approved contributions.” Source

U.S., U.K. Issue Joint Sanctions of ‘Hamas-Aligned’ Gaza Now

March 27, 2024

Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic found that the online organization raised a mere $21,000 in crypto for Hamas since the October 7th attacks. Source

DeFi Protocol Ethena (USDE) Plans to Airdrop Governance Token Next on April 2

March 27, 2024

Ethena’s USDe token, often referred to as “synthetic dollar,” offers steady yields to investors by using ether (ETH) liquid staking tokens such as Lido’s stETH as backing assets, pairing them with an equal value of short ETH perpetual futures position on derivatives exchanges to keep a “rough target” of $1 price. This is also known as a “cash and carry” trade, which harvests derivatives funding rates for a yield. Source

BlackRock’s BUIDL Fund Quickly Rakes in $245M, Right Behind Franklin Templeton’s FOBXX

March 27, 2024

BlackRock’s BUIDL token on the Ethereum blockchain, created with asset tokenization platform Securitize, represents investment in a fund that holds U.S. Treasury bills and repo agreements. Its price is pegged to $1, and holders receive a yield from the underlying assets paid in the token. The offering is targeted to large institutional investors. Source

BlackRock (BLK) CEO Larry Fink Says an Ether ETF Is Possible Even if SEC Deems ETH a Security

March 27, 2024

Eight potential issuers, including BlackRock, have submitted filings with the SEC to bring a spot ether exchange-traded fund (ETF) to the market. The final decision by the regulator is due in May, with industry experts predicting that applications won’t get approved, regardless of what the SEC finds the nature of ether to be. Source

Meme Coins (and Pepe’s Best Friend) Swarm Coinbase Layer 2 Chain

March 27, 2024

It’s not something we have historically written a lot about – bridging yields. But a new report from the crypto investment firm Exponentia.fi included a chart on these yields, and it caught our eye because they’ve been rising fast recently, pushing above 15%. Co-founder Mehdi Lebbar attributes the rising yields to higher demand from users, in part a reflection of the trend toward greater interoperability between blockchains, along with the proliferation of layer-2 and layer-3 networks. “As the DeFi ecosystem extends across networks, third-party bridging protocols like Across and Synapse…

Crypto Stocks Like MicroStrategy (MSTR), Coinbase (COIN) Could Shoot Up if Short Sellers Exit

March 27, 2024

“These crypto related stocks are extremely crowded and very squeezable relative to the U.S. market, with an average Crowded score of 57.34 versus the street average of 32.41 and an average Squeeze score of 78.69 versus the street average of 34.41,” the report said, adding that “MSTR, COIN and CLSK are the most squeezable names in the sector.” Source

Dutch Prosecutors Seek 64-Month Jail Sentence for Tornado Cash Dev Alexey Pertsev

March 27, 2024

Pertsev has been accused of laundering $1.2 billion worth of crypto through the anonymizing tool Tornado Cash, the Dutch prosecutors detailed in an indictment that was shared ahead of the trial. The indictment said that between July 9, 2019 and Aug. 10, 2022 Pertsev made “a habit of committing money laundering.” Source

RWA Platform Ondo Finance Will Use BlackRock’s Ethereum-Based BUIDL Fund to Back Its T-Bill Token OUSG

March 27, 2024

Ondo’s action marks the first example of a crypto protocol leveraging asset management giant BlackRock’s tokenized fund offering, which debuted last week. The fund, represented by the Ethereum-based BUIDL token backed by U.S. Treasury bills and repo agreements, is targeted for white-listed, institutional clients and requires at least $5 million minimum allocation. While the strict requirements prohibits smaller investors to invest in BlackRock’s BUIDL, it allows other platforms such as Ondo to leverage the fund for its own retail-facing offerings. Source

The Munchables Hack Is Way Worse Than It Seems

March 27, 2024

After an hour of negotiations led by Munchables, along with independent blockchain investigator ZachXBT and security firm PeckShield, Werewolves0943 was convinced to return all the funds. “The Munchables developer has shared all private keys involved to assist in recovering the user funds. Specifically, the key which holds $62,535,441.24 USD, the key which holds 73 WETH, and the owner key which contains the rest of the funds,” the Munchables’ team posted at 4:40 a.m. UTC. Source