Did Ledger Violate the Cypherpunk Ethos? 🤨

In today's edition: 📣 New podcast on the Ledger controversy, 🤑 FTX's $240 million clawback, ➡️ Coinbase expands, and more!

May 19, 2023

What’s Poppin’?

by Samyuktha Sriram

The FTX Bankruptcy estate is suing the exchange’s former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and other executives as it seeks to claw back funds from a “wildly inflated” acquisition of Embed.

Ledger addressed a now-deleted controversial tweet that said it has always been possible to facilitate key extraction.

Visa is experimenting with ERC-4337, or Account Abstraction, which offers an alternative solution to dealing with transaction fees.

Coinbase One, the crypto exchange’s zero-fee subscription model, is officially out of beta testing.

New Pod Today!

Ledger, the crypto industry’s leading hardware wallet manufacturer, rolled out a new recovery feature this month that caused an uproar. The recovery service has dangerous implications for crypto self-custody, says Foundation Devices head of content “Seth For Privacy.”

He joins the show to discuss the downsides of closed-source code and the security risks that come with compromising for mainstream adoption.

Daily Bits…✍️✍️✍️

  • 🚫 Despite growing local adoption, Pakistan's Minister of State for Finance and Revenue, Aisha Ghaus Pasha, reiterated a hardline stance, stating cryptocurrencies will "never be legalized" in the country.

  • 📜 U.S. lawmakers at a House Financial Services Committee's digital assets panel hearing highlighted the ongoing partisan divide over the regulatory oversight of stablecoins, despite optimism for legislative compromise.

  • 🚫💳 Worldcoin, cocreated by OpenAI's Sam Altman, is reportedly taking action against a rising black market for illegitimate purchases of its credentials before the token's official launch.

  • 📉 Exchange trading volumes hit a yearly low, potentially due to a reduction in activity from trading firms Jump and Jane Street.

  • 🏦 Custodia Bank is set to launch Bitcoin custody services for its clients, as announced by founder and CEO Caitlin Long at the Bitcoin 2023 conference.

  • 💻 Ripple unveiled a proprietary platform designed to facilitate central banks, governments, and financial institutions in creating their own central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

  • 🗽 After misleading customers about undisclosed fees, New York-based crypto trading platform Coin Cafe was ordered to repay $4.3 million to defrauded investors, the state's Attorney General's office announced.

  • 🔍💰 Swaprum, an Ethereum Layer 2 decentralized exchange, is suspected of an exit scam after around 1,628 ETH ($3 million) disappeared from its liquidity pools, leaving its token holders with nearly valueless assets.

Today in Crypto Adoption...

  • 🌍 Climate finance company Solid World partnered with Polygon to launch the first automated market maker pool for forward carbon credits, marking a step towards the financialization of carbon credits on the blockchain.

The $$$ Corner…

  • 💰 Digital asset financial services firm, HashKey Group, is reportedly aiming to raise between $100-200 million at a valuation of $1 billion, taking advantage of Hong Kong's growing status as a potential cryptocurrency hub.

  • 💸🌍 Block CEO and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey led a $6 million seed funding round for Azteco, a Bitcoin payments firm that offers Bitcoin purchasing via redeemable vouchers.

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📈 Your Market Update 📉

  • BTC is down 2.0%, trading at $26,833

  • ETH is down 1.1%, trading at $1,807

  • BTC dominance: 44.41%

  • Crypto market cap: $1.17 trillion

*All data as of today, 7:10 am ET

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