Andre Cronje’s Flying Tulip Raises $200 Million — With a Twist

Hi! In today’s edition:

•  🚀 Andre Cronje’s back with Flying Tulip and $200M

• 💥 Bitcoin rallies, crushing shorts

• 🏛️ Binance unveils “Crypto-as-a-Service” for institutions

• 🪙 Polkadot may get a DOT-collateralized stablecoin

• 🕵️ ZeroStack’s $401M raise looks like a grift

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Andre Cronje’s New Crypto Project Raises $200 Million at $1 Billion Valuation 

Andre Cronje's new crypto project, Flying Tulip, has raised $200 million in a private seed round financing with a $1 billion fully diluted token valuation.

The financing was conducted as a Simple Agreement for Future Tokens (SAFT) and closed within a month, involving major crypto investors but without a single lead investor.

Flying Tulip also plans to raise up to $800 million more through a public sale of its native FT tokens at the same $1 billion valuation. This sale will be directly on-chain across multiple blockchain networks, but from the project's own platform.

A distinctive feature of this fundraising is the "on-chain redemption right," which allows investors to burn FT tokens at any time in exchange for redeeming up to their original principal in the asset contributed.

Redemptions will be programmatically settled from a segregated on-chain redemption reserve seeded from capital raised. It's a mechanism designed to provide downside protection, while preserving upside potential.

Another major differentiator is that the team itself has no initial token allocations; their compensation will be linked to token buybacks funded by free protocol revenue.

“This is the kind of experiment crypto desperately needs: a fundraise structure that forces teams to deliver, aligns incentives, and gives investors real protection,” said Dan Elitzer, founder of Nascent, one of the firms that participated in Flying Tulip’s private round.

However, many in the crypto community are skeptical of the new project from Cronje, who is a somewhat controversial figure within the industry. He is known for "testing in production," which means releasing unaudited code directly live, leading to losses for users when bugs appeared in projects like Yearn Finance and Eminence. 

$176 Million Shorts Liquidated as Bitcoin Surges Past $114,000

Bitcoin rallied to an intraday high of $114,836 on Monday, changing course after weaker price action over the weekend.

Other major crypto assets followed bitcoin’s trend reversal, leading to $176 million worth of short positions liquidated over 24 hours, as per data from CoinGlass.

“After a tiny Bitcoin bump over the last few days, retail traders have opened massive leveraged longs expecting a breakout, despite prices trending downward for the past couple of months,” noted SwanDesk CEO Jacob King.

“$800 million worth of longs will be liquidated if BTC falls to $110k. That grows quickly as prices drop: around $2 billion at $105k, $4 billion at $100k, and $7–8 billion if we hit $95k.”

Meanwhile, onchain analytics firm Glassnode noted heightened spot activity, but said derivatives positioning and weaker on-chain fundamentals pointed to a consolidating market structure. 

“Unless new demand materializes, external catalysts may be required to shift the balance and drive the next decisive move,” said Glassnode. 

Binance Launches White Label Crypto Services for Institutions 

Binance has announced a white-label crypto service for traditional finance (TradFi) institutions, offering infrastructure to banks, brokerages, and exchanges seeking to add crypto capabilities for their clients without building in-house technology.

Binance’s offering, branded “Crypto-as-a-Service” (CaaS), allows licensed financial institutions to utilize Binance’s spot and futures markets, liquidity pools, custody solutions, and compliance tools.

The CaaS system includes features such as internalized trading, management dashboards for oversight, and customizable compliance and client management tools.

Binance’s move follows a similar one from Coinbase earlier this year, which allows TradFi players to leverage the firms’ crypto infrastructure while keeping their own front-end experience.

Last quarter, Coinbase made $61 million in institutional transaction revenue from the $194 billion in institutional spot trading volume. 

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Acala Proposes DOT-Backed Algorithmic Stablecoin for Polkadot

The Polkadot community is considering the launch of a native DOT-backed algorithmic stablecoin called pUSD, with the aim of reducing reliance on external stablecoins like USDT and USDC.

The proposal, put forward by Acala CTO Bryan Chen, envisions pUSD as an overcollateralized debt token exclusively backed by DOT tokens that would operate on Acala’s decentralized Honzon protocol.

pUSD would be managed entirely by smart contracts, tracking a fiat currency peg using economic incentives and automated on-chain logic. The design aims to avoid the risks of mixed collateral models and centralized control.

Early voting on the proposal has shown over 75% support, with more than 1.1 million DOT, valued at about $4.3 million, already committed. However, some members of the community raised concerns around Acala leading the charge.

“Acala’s stablecoin (aUSD) launch was a complete disaster and it really killed my trust in the team. I don’t see myself supporting their project anymore,” said one user.

Acala's aUSD stablecoin experienced a major depeg event due to a technical exploit in 2022 — a bug in the iBTC/aUSD liquidity pool allowed hackers to mint over 1.2 billion aUSD tokens without the necessary collateral.

This DAT Claims It Raised $401 Million. But the Fresh Capital Is Only $13.7 Million

By Steven Ehrlich

On Sept. 19, Flora Growth Corp. (NASDAQ: FLGC) announced a $401 million raise to launch the first digital asset treasury company focused on 0G, the native token of the AI-focused Zero Gravity blockchain, and rename itself as ZeroStack.

In an investor presentation obtained by Unchained, the company pitched itself as the “MSTR for the AI era.”

But there is just one problem. It appears that the company only brought in 3% of that money from new investors.

So where did the rest of the so-called $401 million come from—and why are experts calling this the ultimate grift?

• 🤝 CFTC Acting Chair Caroline Pham declared that long-standing tensions with the SEC over crypto oversight are over, as both agencies pledged to coordinate regulation instead of competing for control.

• 🕵️‍♂️ A trove of leaked documents linked an $8 billion crypto operation involving fugitive oligarch Ilan Shor to Russian sanctions evasion and alleged efforts to manipulate Moldovan elections through apps, bots, and ruble-based stablecoins.

• 🚨 The SEC froze trading of QMMM Holdings after its stock skyrocketed over 2,000% in one month following a crypto-buying announcement, citing possible manipulation via social media hype.

• 🌊 Keel, a new protocol on Solana tied to the Sky ecosystem, launched with a plan to deploy up to $2.5 billion into DeFi and real-world asset strategies, aiming to inject large-scale liquidity into the blockchain’s financial apps.

• 🌐 Visa began testing stablecoins for business payments across borders, letting firms use USDC and EURC to pre-fund transfers via Visa Direct in a bid to speed up settlements and lower costs.

• 💱 Deutsche Börse teamed up with Circle to integrate euro- and dollar-backed stablecoins into its trading, settlement and custody platforms under new EU crypto rules, marking the first tie-up between a major European exchange and a global stablecoin issuer.

• 🔗 Chainlink and UBS ran a pilot that let banks use the Swift messaging system to subscribe to and redeem tokenized investment funds, a move aimed at bringing blockchain infrastructure to the $100 trillion fund industry without replacing existing tools.

• 🪙 Societe Generale’s crypto arm SG-FORGE deployed its euro and dollar stablecoins on Ethereum-based DeFi platforms Morpho and Uniswap, enabling clients to borrow, lend and trade them around the clock using crypto and tokenized fund collateral.

1. Forbes: The Race To Rewire Wall Street: Is Ethereum The Safest Bet?

2. Blockchain Association on the joint roundtable held by the SEC and the CFTC