HashKey Group

Hong Kong-based financial service provider dealing with digital assets, HashKey Group, announced the launch of a new global crypto brokerage platform under the name HashKey Global. As part of the company’s international expansion, it obtained licenses in Bermuda, in addition to existing licenses in Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. The new brokerage currently offers trading with 21 crypto assets for eligible retail users.

Moreover, at the 2024 Hong Kong Web3 Festival, they announced the launch of a new Ethereum layer-2 network in the near future. HashKey Chain is a network employing zero knowledge-proof technology and is created to expand HashKey’s web3 ecosystem by offering users low-cost, efficient, and developer-friendly on-chain services. The network will include the platform’s native token, HSK.

The TON Foundation, behind the Open Network blockchain, partnered with HashKey Group to increase fiat on-and-off ramp access for Telegram wallet users. Within the partnership, support for early-stage projects within the TON ecosystem may also be considered.

Financial Institutions and Crypto Brokers

Chinese asset managers, Harvest Fund and Southern Fund, show strong interest in spot bitcoin ETFs. These companies, each managing assets of over $200 billion, currently cannot offer ETFs due to strict regulations on crypto trading and mining in mainland China, but their Hong Kong subsidiaries have applied for regulatory approval.

Kraken crypto broker announced it will delist Monero for its Irish and Belgian customers. According to the disclosure, from May 10, all XMR trading and deposits will cease for them, and by June 10, they must withdraw XMR from the platform. Any remaining XMR balance will be automatically converted to Bitcoin.

Stablecoin issuer Circle announced it has introduced smart contract support for investors of the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL), providing an off-ramp for BUIDL owners to transfer their shares into USDC. The relationship between the two companies began in 2022 when BlackRock invested in Circle’s $400 million financing round, and they also manage a portion of USDC reserves.

Project Investments

The Berachain, a layer 1 blockchain based on proof-of-liquidity consensus, has concluded a $100 million Series B funding round. The round was jointly led by Framework Ventures and Brevan Howard Digital Abu Dhabi, with partners including Polychain Capital, Hack VC, Samsung Next, Laser Digital from the Nomura Group, Hashkey Capital, Nomad Capital, and others. The company plans to use the funds to strengthen its expansion in Hong Kong, Singapore, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa.

Blockchain Developments, Partnerships, Web3, and DeFi

The decentralized financial platform 1inch Network announced plans, in collaboration with MasterCard and Baanx, to introduce a new debit card with bridging functionality from cryptocurrencies to fiat currency. The 1inch Card will feature all banking card functions and utilize Mastercard’s leading technology and standards to bridge the gap between the web2 and web3 worlds.

The restaking protocol EigenLayer and its data accessibility layer EigenDA have gone live on the Ethereum mainnet today. The platform allows restakers to delegate their entire stake to their preferred operator and enables operators to decide whether to run an actively validated service (AVS) on the EigenLayer. Shortly after the EigenLayer Ethereum mainnet launch, several major companies joined as operators. In addition to big names like Coinbase and Google Cloud, other companies such as Deutsche Telekom MMS, P2P, Nethermind, Figment, Swell, and Kiln have also become EigenLayer operators. The protocol currently has locked-in value exceeding $15 billion according to The Block’s data collection table.

The team behind the layer 1 blockchain Nomic has entered into a partnership agreement with the Babylon bitcoin staking protocol to jointly launch a bitcoin liquid staking token (LST) called stBTC. Babylon also helps maintain Nomic’s security through BTC and NOM staking, known as dual staking. Individuals can stake BTC through Babylon, receiving NOM tokens and nBTC rewards, which they can redeem for BTC.

Hong Kong-based First Digital Trust, issuer of the FDUSD stablecoin, announced that FDUSD is now available natively on the Sui blockchain. Vincent Chok, CEO of First Digital Trust, emphasizes the importance of this expansion, citing that it could promote FDUSD adoption among users of decentralized finance.

A web3 authentication platform, Galxe, announced the launch of its “Identity Protocol” mainnet, aiming to provide users with autonomy over their digital identity and private data using zero-knowledge proof technology.

The Chainlink Foundation, providing decentralized data oracle infrastructure, and developer Chainlink Labs jointly released the “Transporter” application, which provides a user-friendly interface on the CCIP for managing and tracking cross-chain transactions. Additionally, the project’s new token transfer mechanism allows for transfers between native ETH chains via WETH token pools. Initially, Transporter supports token transfers across multiple blockchain networks, including Arbitrum, Avalanche, Base, BNB Chain, Ethereum, Optimism, and Polygon networks.

The team behind the layer 1 blockchain VeChain announced a partnership with the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) team to tokenize the gloves worn by UFC fighters, making them traceable on the VeChainThor network. The gloves will contain NFC chips that record combat data and authenticate the gloves’ origin through the network. Fighters will start wearing the gloves at UFC 300 on April 13.

Regulatory Proceedings

The STFIL protocol, the second-largest DeFi protocol on Filecoin, announced in a post that the Chinese police are investigating the main technical team of STFIL. In addition, in recent days, abnormal, unplanned updates have occurred on the protocol, and FIL tokens on STFIL have also been transferred to unknown addresses. This is not the first police case for Filecoin, as last year, four executives of a Filecoin mining company were charged with criminal offenses, including organizing a pyramid scheme worth over 600 million yuan.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has sent an official notification, a Wells Notice, to Uniswap Labs, the organization developing the Uniswap decentralized financial (DeFi) protocol. The document informs them of the intention to bring charges against them, likely related to trading unregistered securities and failure to register as a broker. This move comes amid broader regulatory tightening against DeFi.