Financial Institutions and Crypto Brokers

Members of the dYdX decentralized finance platform community have approved plans to establish a foundation in the Cayman Islands to support the protocol’s operation and governance, providing legal benefits to users. This step could protect dYdX users from legal threats as US securities regulators show signs of tightening regulations on DeFi protocols.

Deribit FZE, the Dubai-based arm of the world’s leading crypto derivatives options platform, announced that it has obtained conditional approval from the Dubai Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP), which covers both spot and derivative trading. However, some regulatory conditions still need to be met for full operation. The company plans to relocate its global headquarters to Dubai.

Stablecoins

Nick Van Eck, the son of Jan Van Eck, CEO of VanEck investment firm, is the co-founder of Agora stablecoin issuer, which received $12 million in financing led by Dragonfly Ventures. Investors include General Catalyst and Robot Ventures. The company’s token will be pegged to the USD and backed by cash and short-term US Treasury bonds. VanEck Asset Management will manage the reserves.

Ripple announced plans to launch a USD-pegged stablecoin, initially available on the XRP Ledger and the Ethereum blockchain. With their new product, they aim to provide more options for institutional investors. The stablecoin will be backed by USD bank deposits and short-term US Treasury bonds.

PayPal introduced a new service allowing US customers to send international transfers using the company’s PYUSD stablecoin starting Thursday. Through its international payment service, Xoom, US customers can convert PYUSD to dollars and send money to nearly 160 countries without transaction fees.

Sony Bank, the banking arm of Japanese gaming and entertainment conglomerate Sony, announced the issuance of its own stablecoin on the Polygon network. The token, based on a proof-of-concept mechanism, will be pegged to fiat currency, primarily targeting adoption in the gaming sector.

Project Investments

The Chinese government has launched a new large-scale blockchain project aimed at creating a significant blockchain-based platform to support cross-border collaboration in economic, trade, and cultural fields. The public blockchain infrastructure will be led by the Conflux Network, with the participation of numerous research institutes and universities.

Notable venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz announced plans to invest $30 million in various startups over the next 45 days through the a16z Speedrun program. Games Fund One focuses mainly on investments in gaming-related technologies, including artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented reality, and other technologies, but has now decided to finance web3 startups as well.

The web3 venture capital firm Paradigm plans to create a new crypto fund. They are currently in negotiations with investors to raise approximately $750 million for the fund.

Galaxy Digital Holdings is establishing a $100 million fund for early-stage crypto startups. The Galaxy Ventures Fund will primarily support financial applications, software infrastructure, and protocol development, with plans to fund up to 30 ventures over three years.

Blockchain Developments, Partnerships, Web3, and DeFi

The modular blockchain project Celestia introduced its new product, Blobstream, which is a data availability solution for the Arbitrum ecosystem. Blobstream allows developers to create customizable Orbit chains for data availability using Celestia. These chains can be layer 2 networks directly connected to Ethereum or layer 3 chains built on top of Arbitrum One, its layer 2 solution.

Core Chain, a Bitcoin-based, EVM-compatible blockchain, announced a partnership with ZAN, a brand under Alipay, the Chinese payment giant. Under the collaboration, ZAN will operate as a validator in the network, crucial for Core to leverage ZAN’s technological expertise to enhance scalability and reaffirm its commitment to decentralization.

Bhutan’s investment arm, Druk Holding & Investments, partnered with crypto mining company Bitdeer Technologies Group to triple Bhutan’s mining capacity using state-of-the-art technology. The proposed developments aim to double the mining capacity by 500 megawatts in the first half of 2025, reaching a total capacity of 600 megawatts in the future.

Ethena Labs, known for its synthetic dollar, announced it has supplemented the USD backing with Bitcoin. This innovation allows for more than 2.5 times scaling of the dollar-pegged token and makes its products safer for traders. Ethena added that Bitcoin offers better liquidity and a delta hedge profile compared to liquid staking tokens, providing more stable backing for the USD.

Legal Proceedings

Genesis, the bankrupt crypto lender, completed the sale of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) shares on April 2 and used the proceeds to purchase 32,041 bitcoins. The value of bitcoins is currently around $2.2 billion, and they are likely to be distributed among Gemini Earn lenders.

After two weeks of civil proceedings, the co-founder of Terraform Labs, Do Kwon, was found guilty of fraud by a jury. The US Securities and Exchange Commission filed a lawsuit against Terraform Labs and Kwon in February 2023 regarding the Terra USD algorithmic stablecoin, which collapsed dramatically a year earlier. According to the allegations, both the Singapore-based company and its co-founder, Do Hyeong Kwon, misled investors, raising billions from investors by offering and selling interconnected bundles of crypto securities, often in unregistered transactions.