🗓💊 Is Binance.US an Unregistered Security Exchange?
Why is Apple C*ckBlocking Uniswap? & ConsenSys Enters zkEVM Battle Royale Race
Theo Delarosa
March 06, 2023
Daily Bullets - Monday, March 6th
Today’s newsletter is 1481 words, a cool 5-1/2 minute read.
The crypto market is struggling - After spending last week crabbing sideways in very tight ranges, Bitcoin and ETH fell on Friday to new lows of $22k and $1500 respectively.
We’ve got developing crypto banking FUD around Silvergate, more uncertainty surrounding which exchanges and crypto entities are safe from the SEC and ICYMI, the Ethereum Shanghai upgrade has been pushed back to mid April.
Do you expect the ETH Shanghai upgrade to result in a dump or pump? |
Today we’re looking at:
- 🏦🚫 Is Binance.US an Unregistered Security Exchange?
- 🍎🛡 Why is Apple C*ckBlocking Uniswap?
- ⚔️🤺 ConsenSys Enters zkEVM Battle Royale Race
- ✅ Daily Bullets
- 📊 Market Dashboard
- 📚 Research/Reads
- 📝 Good Tweets
🏦🚫 Is Binance US an Unregistered Security Exchange?
Quick Take: At this rate, will any crypto entities in the U.S. be safe to use? A senior trial attorney at the SEC, William Uptergrove, said that both Binance.US and Voyager Digital come under securities regulations during Voyager's bankruptcy proceedings.
Key Details:
- SEC staff believes Binance.US is running an unregistered securities exchange in the U.S.
- Also claimed that the sale of VGX tokens by Voyager Digital violated federal securities laws
- Binance.US faces an SEC investigation, and the SEC objected to its attempt to purchase the assets of Voyager Digital as early as January
- The SEC has not made any determination on these issues, and the staff beliefs do not represent the SEC's position
Significance: SEC Chair Gary Gensler has previously stated that most crypto trading platforms should be registered as national securities exchanges and the SEC has been ramping up its crypto enforcement activity.
For US users, we’ve seen the collapse of FTX.US and now many of the remaining major available exchanges such as Coinbase, Kraken, Gemini, Robinhood and Binance.US are coming under fire.
It’s getting harder and harder to find an exchange you have trust in. Will this result in an exodus to DEXs or will it only be a matter of time before they’re in the crosshairs of regulators too?
🍎🛡 Why is Apple C*ckBlocking Uniswap?
Quick Take: Uniswap Labs, the company behind the top DEX on Ethereum, plans to launch a mobile crypto wallet app for iPhone users - however, Apple has been c*ckblocking them for yet unknown reasons.
1/ Introducing the Uniswap mobile wallet 🦄✨
A completely self-custodial, open-sourced mobile app from the most trusted name in DeFi.
Now available as a limited early release - through Apple TestFlight.
— Uniswap Labs 🦄 (@Uniswap)
Mar 3, 2023
Key Details:
- Planned app is primarily a self-custodial crypto wallet and will also offer the ability to trade tokens directly with Uniswap
- The app plans to have a swap feature that routes trades through Uniswap's DEX, which may not meet Apple's "approved exchange" criteria
- Plans to release app to 10,000 users via the TestFlight beta platform while waiting for Apple's approval
- Adds to Apple's reputation as a strict gatekeeper in regulating the crypto industry's access to iOS
Significance: Apple, as one of largest phone companies and app stores in the world, carries a lot of weight and has been giving different answers to different crypto companies on what is and isn't allowed, and it's unclear what rules must be followed.
They have historically made it difficult for crypto companies who try to encroach on their ability to make a profit through their app store model.
So we want to pay attention to all moves made by the tech giant towards crypto companies to guage what will come next. For now, Apple is in their c*ockblock phase.
⚔️🤺 ConsenSys Enters zkEVM Battle Royale Race
Quick Take: Zero-knowledge Layer 2 solutions currently lack Ethereum compatibility, making zkEVM technology a competitive landscape.
We’ve seen Polygon, Starknet, zkSync, Scroll and ConsenSys fiercely competing over the past year to develop a functioning ZK-based Layer 2 and be the first to market.
Key Details:
- ConsenSys will begin public testnet of their zkEVM rollup network on March 28
- The private beta phase was successful, processing over 490,000 transactions from various dApps
- Comes with built-in integrations with popular tools such as Infura, Truffle, and MetaMask wallet
- ConsenSys has not set a date for when their zkEVM will move out of testnet phase, but they aim to do so by the end of 2023
Significance: ZK technology uses cryptography to speed up transactions and reduce gas fees on blockchains, and is considered one of the hottest trends of the year.
As far as the race goes, hotshot Polygon is launching their zkEVM on mainnet beta on Mar. 27.
✅ Daily Bullets
🔥 Highlights
- SEC believe Binance.US is operating an unregistered securities exchange
- Singapore Police commenced an investigation into Do Kwon's Terraform Labs
- New Uniswap wallet not available in Apple's App Store
- Base integrates Chainlink for off-chain price feeds
- ConsenSys opening its EVM-equivalent zkEVM rollup to public testnet on March 28th
- Silvergate short seller predicts bank's demise within a week
- Binance once sought to hire Gary Gensler as an adviser
- Kraken plans to launch its own bank despite a challenging regulatory environment
- Tether denies WSJ allegations of falsified bank documents
- Binance partners with law enforcement agencies to launch joint anti-scam campaign
📰 Crypto News
- Silvergate Bank to release nearly $9.9M to BlockFi
- Silvergate suspends Silvergate Exchange Network as company reels from crises
- Binance recommends P2P as Ukraine suspends hryvnia use on crypto exchanges
- Babel Finance plans to introduce a decentralized stablecoin to repay the firm’s creditors
- Warner Bros backs Ethereum ecosystem as it migrates Blocklete Golf to ImmutableX
- Snoop Dogg revealed as one of the co-founders of Web3-powered live streaming app “Shiller"
- Gitcoin co-founder unveils ReFi incubator Supermodular
- EOS EVM mainnet is slated for an Apr. 14 release
- Multicoin Capital's hedge fund lost 91.4% last year
- Decentraland Metaverse Fashion Week ft. Dolce & Gabbana, Tommy Hilfiger, COACH, Adidas
- Bybit halts deposits via USD bank transfer, citing partner 'service outages'
- U.S. Lawmakers reintroduce bill to force crypto miners to disclose emissions
- EU keeps focus on NFTs in latest anti-money laundering bill draft
- Coinbase purchases One River Digital in move into asset management business
- India explores offline functionality of CBDCs — RBI executive director
💲Coin/Project Updates
- PancakeSwap V3 upgrade set to go live on BNB Chain in first week of April
- v0 of privacypools.com is live on Optimism - sequel to Tornado.Cash
- DeFi lending platform Iron Bank urged Alpha Homora to take ownership of its bad debt
- Dan Harmon's still-unreleased NFT TV show 'Krapopolis' gets third season
- Binance Futures will launch USDⓈ-M PERP perpetual contract
- Binance Futures will launch USDⓈ-M TRU perpetual contract
- OKXNFT marketplace launched Bitcoin Punks Ordinal NFT collection
- Rollkit - The first research integration of Bitcoin as a data availability layer for sovereign rollups
- Duality launches Multiplicity - modified Tendermint consensus enabling on-chain MEV capture
- Pendle introduces cross-chain veTokenomics
- Calimero launches private sharding on Near
- Japanese gaming giant, GREE, chose Avalanche to build on for their big push into Web3
- More than 100,000 received an airdrop of 34% of the total supply of ZigZag tokens
- Manta Network wins Polkadot parachain auction #39
- Magna, a token distribution infrastructure platform, is releasing an open-sourced airdrop tool
- DeepBook to serve as a foundational liquidity layer on Sui
- Wemade's new collateral-backed DeFi service
- Introducing LongSwap - TWAMM = Time Weighted Average Market Maker
- Solend V2 litepaper
- HALO airdrop - tokens released linearly
- Waitlist open for Web3Inbox: the messaging app for Web3
📊 Market Dashboard
Do You Like This New Style of Graphic? |
Chart of the Day - Daily Active Users
- Some interesting observations regarding daily active users. Arbitrum, which has been gaining attention as one of the most likely successful L2s in the race, currently falls behind Litecoin when it comes to DAU. 84.51k vs 202.03k\
- Why are that many people using Litecoin in 2023?
📚 Research/Reads
- Ordinals could reach a $5B market cap by 2025 | Bitcoin Inscriptions & Ordinals - source
- Create an optimal and attractive exchange that shares the Real Yield from several sources | How to gamify an exchange? - source
- WuBlockchain | The Death Spiral and Way out of Silvergate Bank - source
- Aims to reassure dapps, DAs, sidechains, bridges and chains alike | Summary of EigenLayer’s Whitepaper - source
- An order-of-magnitude improvement wrt the usability of Ethereum | All about ERC-4337 - source
- To create the decentralized web stack we need to scale without sacrificing security or decentralization | Karl Floersch's technical deep-dive on Superchain - source
- Demystifying SNARK Jargon | zk-SNARK Concepts Explained Like You’re 15 - source
- Stride, Lido, pStake and Quicksilver | Overview and Comparison of Cosmos Liquid Staking - source
- Route 2 FI | How to survive in crypto long-term (without getting lucky) - source
- Curve Wars intro | Introduction to the Principles and Architecture of Curve Stablecoin - source
📝 Good Tweets
Arkham Intelligence on last week’s controversial GETH Layer Zero marketplace
Layer Zero made headlines last week with the release of a testnet bridge, allowing users to trade GETH for real Ether.
Not everyone was happy with this, however - and some interesting power-struggles have played out in the GETH pool.
Let's dive into some of the data on-chain.
— Arkham (@ArkhamIntel)
Mar 3, 2023
Crypto Nova on how to tell which presales will be successful on launch
1) Did you know there's a method to see which presales will be successful on launch in 2 steps?
It's 90% accurate and I've printed thousands of dollars with this.
Here's the blueprint 🧵 👇
— Crypto Nova (@CryptoGirlNova)
Mar 5, 2023
Salazar.eth on whether 17M ETH will be unstaked during Shanghai
The media and fudders tell you that 17 million ETH ($28 billion) will be unstaked during Shanghai
But they won’t tell you this 👇🏻
Here is the truth backed by data
A 🧵
— 🐍Salazar.eth 🦇🔊 (@0xSalazar)
Mar 6, 2023
What category do you fall into? |