This airdrop has “backlash” written all over it

Hi! In today’s edition:

• 🪂 Zora confirms airdrop

• 🕳️ 27% of Lazarus ETH gone

• 🔥 Mantra CEO starts $82M burn

• 🧑‍⚖️ Paul Atkins takes helm at SEC

• 🗳️ Who gave to Trump 

The Financial Freedom Report explores the role currency and banking play in the civil liberties and human rights struggles of those living under authoritarian regimes and how Bitcoin is used to push back.

Coinbase-Backed Zora Confirms April Token Airdrop 

Decentralized social and minting protocol Zora on Monday announced the launch of its native token, ZORA, with an airdrop scheduled for April 23. 

The airdrop will be retroactive, rewarding users who have actively engaged with Zora, as determined by two snapshot periods — Jan. 1, 2020, to March 3, 2025, and March 3, 2025, to April 20, 2025. 

Zora said last month that it planned to allocate 10% of ZORA’s 10 billion total token supply in the airdrop. Meanwhile, 18.9% of ZORA has been earmarked for the Zora team, and more than 26% for strategic advisors and development supporters.

Notably, the Zora’s tokenomics document states that the ZORA token would be launched “for fun only” and would not entitle its holders to governance rights. 

“Why does the token need to exist at all if it serves absolutely zero purpose?” blockchain sleuth ZachXBT asked on X. “This type of vapor for a project that raised $60M+ in total at a $600M valuation is just embarrassing for the space.”

Zora raised that sum from investors such as Paradigm and Coinbase Ventures.

Last week, Coinbase’s layer 2, Base, dealt with community backlash after inadvertently triggering a trading frenzy when Zora auto-tokenized one of the layer 2’s tweets. (The head of Base, Jesse Pollak, responded to that backlash on Unchained last week).

Huge Chunk of Lazarus Hack Funds Have ‘Gone Dark,’ Says Bybit CEO

Bybit CEO Ben Zhou confirmed in an X post on Monday that around 27.6% of the $1.4 billion of ethereum stolen by North Korea’s Lazarus Group in its huge hack of the exchange in February had “gone dark,” meaning that the funds are no longer traceable due to being laundered through privacy mixers and other obfuscation tools. 

Zhou said 68.57% of the funds remained traceable using blockchain forensics, but that only 3.84% had been successfully frozen.

“Recently, we have observed that the mixer mainly used by the [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] is Wasabi,” Zhou said.

“After a certain amount of BTC was washed through Wasabi, a small portion of it entered CryptoMixer, Tornado Cash, and Railgun,” he explained.

Mantra Founder Starts Burning $82M of OM Tokens

John Mullin, the founder and CEO of real-world asset tokenization and trading platform MANTRA, has begun the process of burning 150 million OM tokens valued at $82 million.

“This is a first step in rebuilding trust with the community, but far from the last,” Mullin said on X. 

Mullin had vowed to burn his share of team tokens after OM’s value plummeted by more than 90% in around an hour on April 13, shaking community confidence in the protocol.

Mullin is unstaking his entire allocation of OM and sending them to a burn address. The initial burn will reduce the supply of OM to 1.67 billion and shrink the number of staked tokens by more than 26%, from 571.8 million OM to 421.8 million.

Paul Atkins Sworn in as SEC Chair

Paul Atkins was officially sworn in as the 34th chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday following his confirmation by the U.S. Senate two weeks earlier.

Atkins, known for his pro-business stance and previous SEC service from 2002 to 2008, is widely expected to lead a more crypto-friendly SEC than his predecessor, Gary Gensler.

Atkins has been a vocal advocate of clearer and more coordinated rules for the crypto industry, and has taken an overall deregulatory stance embodied in his consistent opposition to investor protections and reforms in measures such as the Dodd-Frank Act, introduced following the global financial crisis of 2008.

His confirmation process was reportedly delayed due to financial disclosures, which included between $1 million and $6 million in personal crypto holdings such as investments in Anchorage Digital and Securitize — firms involved in crypto custody and blockchain tokenization.

Under its acting chair, Mark Uyeda, the SEC set up a Crypto Task Force in January to improve relations with the industry and reassess enforcement priorities.

Solana, Yuga Labs, and Uniswap’s Hayden Adams Gave to Trump’s Inauguration

A disclosure form filed Sunday with the U.S. Federal Election Commission revealed a new slate of crypto donors to President Donald Trump’s inaugural committee. 

Among the previously unreported names were Solana Labs, the development team behind the eponymous $67 billion blockchain, Ethereum development studio Consensys, and Uniswap founder Hayden Adams.

Their donations, alongside previously reported handouts by prominent crypto firms such as Coinbase, Ripple Labs, and venture capital giant Paradigm, contributed to a record-breaking $239 million haul for the Trump administration.

So, how much did they give, and what did they get in return?

• 🏛️ Circle and BitGo plan to apply for U.S. banking charters, with Coinbase and Paxos possibly following, as Congress advances legislation that could mandate licenses for all stablecoin issuers.

• 🌍 Circle is set to unveil a new global payments and remittance network from its New York City headquarters, targeting banks and fintechs as it seeks to expand USDC’s role in cross-border transfers and challenge legacy players such as Visa and Mastercard.

• 🏦 Institutional BTC holdings have crossed a symbolic threshold, as BlackRock and Strategy now collectively control more BTC — 1.11 million — than Satoshi Nakamoto’s estimated 1.1 million stash.

• 📦 Strategy bought 6,556 BTC for $555 million last week, nearly doubling its previous haul, and now holds more than 538,000 BTC worth $47 billion, outpacing all public firms except BlackRock’s iShares ETF.

• 📈 Unichain’s total value locked surged 2,569% to $318 million after it launched a $21 million liquidity incentives program via Uniswap DAO, vaulting it into the top five layer 2 chains by value locked.

• 🕒 KuCoin’s proposed U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission settlement faces delays amid a regulatory shift deprioritizing enforcement action against crypto firms, leaving the case in limbo due to the agency’s current lack of majority leadership.

• 🔐 Indian crypto exchange WazirX is set for a May 13 court ruling on its $234 million restructuring plan, which includes payouts to creditors and a decentralized exchange launch, after securing more than 93% of creditors’ approval.

• 💱 Spot trading on crypto exchanges has plunged to a six-month low, with futures markets now accounting for more than 80% of BTC and ETH trading as investors’ focus shifts toward leveraged positions.

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