| SEC chair says PoS tokens are securities; Circle largely clears backlog of minting and redemption requests (March 15)

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headlines

US SEC Chairman: Proof-of-Stake tokens are securities and need to be registered under US law
Gensler said the returns that token holders receive from staking indicate that the tokens are securities and need to be registered under U.S. law. Gensler made the remarks when asked to react to a statement by Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chairman Rostin Behnam last week. Rostin Behnam said at the time that Ethereum is a commodity.

Industry news

Industry news

Alameda Research Transfers and Loans Up to $3.2 Billion to FTX Executives
Odaily News FTX and its affiliated debtors submitted financial statements to the bankruptcy court, which showed that Alameda Research transferred and loaned up to US$3.2 billion to FTX founders and executives, including Sam Bankman-Fried (approximately US$2.2 billion), Nishad Singh ( approximately $587 million), Gary Wang (approximately $246 million), Ryan Salame (approximately $87 million), John Samuel Trabucco (approximately $25 million), Caroline Ellison (approximately $6 million).
These amounts do not include over $240 million for the purchase of luxury homes in the Bahamas, political and charitable contributions made directly by FTX debtors, and asset transfers to non-debtor subsidiaries in the Bahamas and other jurisdictions.

While some of the properties purchased with these transferred assets are already under the control of FTX debtors or government authorities working with them, it is currently impossible to predict the amount and timing of eventual currency recovery. FTX debtors are investigating the reasons for the transfers against the recipients of these transfers and their subsequent transferees. (PR Newswire)

U.S. House of Representatives Asks FDIC About Crypto Firms' Banking Services

Odaily News U.S. Representative Emmer said that he sent inquiries to the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) regarding the banking services of cryptocurrency companies. (Golden Ten)

MakerDAO: The large inflow of USDC previously affected the price of DAI, which will limit exposure to centralized stablecoins in the future
Odaily News MakerDAO released a summary of the recent DAI price fluctuations:
1. On March 10, regulators took over Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) due to a liquidity crisis.
2. The emergency vote proposed by Risk Core on March 11th and implemented on Monday, March 13th deployed a set of parameters to limit Maker's exposure to USDC and encourage diversification of PSM stablecoin assets.

3. MakerDAO Core is considering several proposals to limit MakerDAO's exposure to centralized stablecoins.

UK Adds Crypto Declarations to Tax Returns, Estimated to Raise £10M a Year for Treasury
British taxpayers will have to declare crypto assets separately on their tax returns, a move expected to raise an extra £10 million ($12 million) a year for the public coffers. Finance Minister Jeremy Hunt announced the move in his annual budget on Wednesday.

“The government is making changes to the self-assessment tax return to require a separate determination of the amount of crypto assets,” which will be introduced for the first time in the tax year ending April 2025, the U.K. Treasury said in a document published on Wednesday. The government also said it would work to "maximize" the potential of the Metaverse, while managing downside risks to privacy, security and compromise. (CoinDesk)

Relevant agencies in Germany and the United States shut down the ChipMixer server and confiscated 1,909 BTC and 7 TB of data

Odaily News According to the European Union Law Enforcement Cooperation Agency (Europol), relevant agencies in Germany and the United States have confiscated 44 million euros in funds from cryptocurrency mixer ChipMixer. Authorities shut down the platform's infrastructure and seized four servers, 7 terabytes of data and 1,909.4 bitcoin (BTC) ($47.7 million), Europol said Wednesday. It is reported that the reason for this investigation is that ChipMixer allows its customers to hide the traces of criminal activities, such as ransomware attacks and payment fraud, as well as some more serious criminal activities. (Coindesk)

Fed interest rate swap pricing points to 100 bps of rate cuts by December

Odaily news According to the Fed interest rate swap pricing, the Fed will cut interest rates by 100 basis points before December. (Golden Ten)

U.S. officials want to remove immunity clause protecting executives from proposed sale of Voyager assets
Circle: Cleared essentially all backlog of USDC minting and redemption requests

Project News

Circle: Cleared essentially all backlog of USDC minting and redemption requests

Odaily News Circle said in a blog post: "As of the close of banking business in the United States on March 15, we have basically cleared all backlogs of USDC minting and redemption requests. Since Monday morning, Circle has redeemed $3.8 billion USDC, and issued $800 million in USDC. Circle has been working tirelessly with other banking partners to relaunch services, especially payments and USDC redemption services. On Tuesday, March 14th, we announced a new transaction bank partner U.S. domestic money transfers enabled. We expect to restore more functionality tomorrow. We will continue to work hard to add more transaction banking partners."
BAYC: "Summoning" has officially started

BAYC: "Summoning" has officially started

Odaily News "Boring Ape" BAYC announced on the official Twitter that "Summoning" has officially opened and is open to all eligible Sewer Pass holders.
Odaily News According to official news, Formfunction, the Solana ecological NFT market, announced that it will be closed on March 29, and users still have full ownership of NFT.

Solana Ecological NFT Market Formfunction will be closed on March 29

Odaily News According to official news, Formfunction, the Solana ecological NFT market, announced that it will be closed on March 29, and users still have full ownership of NFT.
Formfunction stated: "After much discussion and careful consideration, we have come to the conclusion that Formfunction cannot continue to operate. We will continue to maintain Formfunction until March 29th. After this time, users will no longer be able to access our website."

Formfunction stated: "After much discussion and careful consideration, we have come to the conclusion that Formfunction cannot continue to operate. We will continue to maintain Formfunction until March 29th. After this time, users will no longer be able to access our website."

Euler Foundation Offers $1M Reward for Leads to Hacks and Stolen Funds
Odaily News Lending agreement Euler Finance said on Twitter that the Euler Foundation offered a reward of $1 million to collect information that would help arrest hackers and return stolen funds.
As of last Friday, all critical issues identified in the audit had been fixed. The updated contract has been deployed to the Ethereum Zhejiang testnet for testing.

Uniswap announced that it has listed BNB Chain

Odaily News Uniswap announced that it has listed BNB Chain. Like Polygon and Arbitrum, BNB Chain generally offers faster and cheaper transactions than the Ethereum mainnet, making Uniswap more accessible to a wider audience, Uniswap said.

TrueUSD Stablecoin Issuer Archblock Moves $1 Billion in Reserves to Bahamas

Odaily News TrueUSD stablecoin issuer Archblock has transferred $1 billion in reserves backing the token to a bank in the Bahamas. Archblock, which oversees approximately $2 billion in reserves backing its TrueUSD stablecoin, currently holds more than $1.4 billion in Nassau Capital Union Bank, according to real-time certification released Wednesday by an independent accounting firm. That was up from $438 million on March 10. (Bloomberg)

Lido V2 is expected to launch on the Ethereum mainnet in mid-May and open stETH withdrawals

Odaily News Lido tweeted that Lido V2 will be launched on the Goerli test network next week. After about 4 weeks of testing, the Ethereum mainnet is expected to be launched in mid-May. Withdrawals of stETH will not start on mainnet until all audits on the chaincode are complete (expected end of April), which is currently expected to start around mid-May.
Previously, the Lido community passed the V2 upgrade proposal with 100% support. According to the Lido team, the V2 smart contract underwent a total of 7 audits at a cost of $1.2 million. 2 of them have been completed and 5 are in progress.
As of last Friday, all critical issues identified in the audit had been fixed. The updated contract has been deployed to the Ethereum Zhejiang testnet for testing.

Interest-free DeFi lending agreement Sturdy Finance opens STRDY token airdrop application

Interest-free DeFi lending agreement Sturdy Finance opens STRDY token airdrop application

secondary title

Investment and Financing

Investment and Financing

Ark Invest Raises Over $16M for a New Crypto Fund
There are two versions of the fund, the US and the Cayman Islands. The US fund (ARK Crypto Revolutions US Fund LLC) raised US$7,281,630 from 9 investors, while the Cayman Islands fund (ARK Crypto Revolutions Cayman Fund LLC ) raised $8,993,330 from an investor. Both funds were opened for investment on March 1. They have no clear fundraising goals and are private funds that are only open to a small number of investors. (CoinDesk)

Stripe completes US$6.5 billion in Series I financing at a valuation of US$50 billion, with participation from a16z, Goldman Sachs, and Temasek

According to official news from Odaily, the payment giant Stripe announced the completion of a US$6.5 billion I round of financing at a valuation of US$50 billion. a16z, Baillie Gifford, Founders Fund, General Catalyst, MSD Partners, Thrive Capital, GIC, Goldman Sachs, Temasek, etc. Goldman Sachs acted as the exclusive placement agent for the transaction and JPMorgan Chase served as financial advisor. The financing is valued at about 47% below its 2021 high of $95 billion.

NFT social platform Metalink completes $6 million in seed round financing, with participation from Arrington Capital and others

Odaily news NFT portfolio management and social platform Metalink completed $6 million in seed round financing, Guy Oseary, Gary Vaynerchuk, MoonPay CEO Ivan Soto-Wright, The Sandbox founder Sebastien Borget, former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan, DJ Justin Blau, Social Capital, Arrington Capital, Sound Ventures, Gemini Frontier Fund, Dapper Labs' VC arm BallerVC and Genies' Human Ventures also participated.

Staging Labs Completes $1.1 Million Pre-Seed Funding, NGC Ventures and Others Participate

Odaily News Staging Labs, a provider of encrypted transaction security solutions, announced the completion of a $1.1 million Pre seed round of financing, The General Partnership, Flourish Ventures, NGC Ventures, AlphaGrep, Gangels, Kleiner Perkins, Greylock, and Consensys, Coinbase, Anchorage Digital, Chainalysis, Quicknode, Merkle Science, etc. participated in the investment. The company hopes to establish the same supervision and system protection in the traditional financial field in the encrypted world to resist fraud and fraud. (TechCrunch)

Stablecoin issuer CNHC Group completes US$10 million A+ round of financing, led by KuCoin Ventures

Stablecoin issuer CNHC Group completes US$10 million A+ round of financing, led by KuCoin Ventures