TLDR Crypto 2024-05-09

Former crypto exchange FTX has proposed a plan to see 98% of creditors receive 118% of their claims. Other non-governmental creditors would get 100% of claims plus up to 9% interest if the bankruptcy court approves the plan. The money was accrued by selling various FTX assets, like its stake in AI company Anthropic. FTX's lack of BTC and ETH holdings at the time of bankruptcy prevented it from seeing asset appreciation due to recently rising prices.

President Joe Biden's Executive Office announced that Biden would veto the proposed H.J. Res. 109, allowing highly regulated financial firms to be cryptocurrency custodians. The office claims the resolution would disrupt the SEC and overturn a previous SEC bulletin. The legislation passed in the House of Representatives.

VanEck has launched an index of popular meme coins like DOGE and SHIB. Its strategy caps individual coins at a 30% weighting and adjusts monthly. VanEck warns investors how memecoins are volatile and driven by social media influence.

Mastercard is partnering with major U.S. banking institutions like Citigroup, Visa, and JPMorgan to test a tokenized settlement system on a shared ledger platform, aiming to streamline multi-asset class settlements. This Regulated Settlement Network (RSN) trial integrates different asset types like treasuries and commercial bank money into a unified system, potentially improving settlement efficiency and lowering risks associated with traditional finance systems.

This post breaks down how EIP-7702, recently proposed by Vitalik Buterin, incorporates EIP-3074, 4337, and 5003 to improve Ethereum's account abstraction while enhancing security and user experience. EIP-7702 introduces a migration mechanism for EOAs to leverage smart contract features, enabling users to interact with Ethereum in a more streamlined fashion.

This article shares five perspectives on stablecoins and what a post-stablecoin world looks like. It focuses on thoughts that shift from “should stablecoins exist” to “assuming stablecoins, then what” and explores a wide spectrum of views from academics to policymakers.

In its 13F filing, Susquehanna revealed it purchased $1.3 billion of Bitcoin ETFs. The purchase was spread across various ETFS, with Grayscale's GBTC accounting for over $1 billion. This is the largest recorded holding of the ETF to date. Hightower, a $130B asset manager, recently bought $68 million in Bitcoin ETFs.

Options and forward contracts for blobspace allow L2s to hedge against future congestion or mainnet demand effectively. A ~1-month forward strip is a sufficient timeframe for hedging while consolidating liquidity across speculators. Since the blob gas fee is prone to manipulation, the supply of contracts must be limited. Sellers exposed to asymmetric risk must be protected somehow, possibly through an insurance fund.

Pantera Capital is launching a new $1 billion venture fund, Pantera Fund V, to invest across the spectrum of venture equity, early-stage tokens, treasury tokens, and liquid tokens.

Human rights activists are using Bitcoin to maintain financial independence despite authoritarian regimes trying to weaponize traditional finance systems to strip them of their assets.

An Argentinian state-owned energy firm, YPF Luz, is working with Genesis Digital Assets to launch a Bitcoin mining operation powered by stranded gas from oil fields.

This thread briefly touts the benefits of using the Cosmos chain due to the IBC bridge's cheap, fast settlement and bigger Dapps like DyDx leveraging Cosmos' app chain capabilities