The SEC has considered Ethereum a security for a year now!

🚨 Recent court documents reveal that the SEC, led by Chairman Gary Gensler, has considered Ethereum to be an unregistered security since at least last year.

⚡️This insight emerged from an unredacted lawsuit filed by Consensys against the SEC, which is now challenging the agency's attempt to classify Ethereum under federal securities law.

👀 In March 2023, the SEC's Enforcement Division began a formal investigation into Ethereum's status, leading to subpoenas for entities involved with Ethereum transactions.

➡️ This move marks a potential shift from previous SEC stances, contradicting a 2018 assertion that Ethereum was not a security.

👆 Stay tuned as this legal battle could significantly impact the cryptocurrency industry and Ethereum's regulatory status.

USDC has surpassed USDT in monthly transactions

👀 The stablecoin USDC has overtaken the segment leader — USDT from Tether — in terms of monthly transactions, Visa analysts have noted.

📝 According to their data, in April 2024, there were 166.6 million transactions in USDC versus 163.6 million in USDT. The stablecoin from the Centre consortium first pulled ahead in December 2023, with 145 million monthly transactions compared to 127 million for its competitor.

👆 However, USDT is still the largest stablecoin with a market capitalization of $110.3 billion. USDC's market cap is $33.4 billion.

✔️ In terms of total number of users, USDC is also significantly behind USDT. In April, the former was used by 9.57 million unique addresses, while the latter had more than 34.2 million.

The first Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs have officially launched in Hong Kong

According to data from the 🇭🇰 Hong Kong Stock Exchange, six new Hong Kong exchange-traded funds trading in Bitcoin and Ethereum recorded 💰 a trading volume of about 49.4 million Hong Kong dollars ($6.3 million) during the morning session of their first trading day on Tuesday.

👀 Trading will continue today, but so far, the figures are not particularly impressive, considering that when 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs were launched in the 🇺🇸 U.S. in January, their volume on the first day reached approximately $4.6 billion.

💲The price of Bitcoin reacted with a slight increase to $64,500 at the start of trading in Hong Kong, but currently, $BTC is trading again in the $63,000 range.

Lido Finance Reaches 1 Million Validators

👏 Lido Finance has achieved a milestone of one million validators, making it Ethereum's top decentralized finance (DeFi) platform.

💲 Lido Finance represents 28.5% of all staked Ether, in contrast to Coinbase Exchange's 13.6%, based on data from Dune. Currently, more than 27% of the entire Ether supply is staked.

🔒The total value locked (TVL) in DeFi protocols has risen sharply, from $36 billion in the last quarter of 2023 to a high of $97 billion in the first quarter of 2024. As per DefiLlama, the total DeFi TVL now stands at $92.32 billion.

Is Bitcoin set for a sharp rise at the start of summer?

$BTC will close April with a red 🕯candle, following 7 months of growth. Not too exciting, is it? However, crypto analyst TechDev has a somewhat different opinion in his post on X.

📊 Analyzing the two-month growth chart for Bitcoin, he found a possibility that the next candle could be similar to the one we saw in November 2020. It might potentially drive Bitcoin's price up 🚀 to $100,000. Do we believe it?

Coal company mined 425 BTC using its own surplus energy

🇺🇸 American public energy company Alliance Resource, which engages in coal mining, disclosed in its financial reports that it has 425 BTC on its balance sheet.

The company does not purchase the leading cryptocurrency but instead 🔨 mines it using its own equipment and excess energy generated. The coal giant, with a market capitalization of $2.8 billion, began mining in 2020 as a pilot project.

🗒 At the end of the first quarter, the company valued the cryptocurrency on its balance sheet at $30 million. After accounting for net property costs, this valuation increased by $7.3 million.

Coinbase Integrates Lightning Network!

Coinbase has begun supporting the ⚡️ Lightning Network. For this integration, the exchange partnered with Lightspark.

📩 Transfers via Lightning will incur a fee of 0.1%. Initially, there will also be a withdrawal limit of $2000 in BTC.

🤷 Binance founder Changpeng Zhao has been sentenced to 4 months in prison for violating anti-money laundering laws, although prosecutors sought three years. 👀 Did his sincere repentance help?

Amid this news, the price of Bitcoin ⬇️dropped to $59,000, although many had expected it to fall to $56,000. Is more to come? 🤔

🙀 Roger Ver arrested for tax evasion

❗️Roger Ver, also known as "Bitcoin Jesus" and founder of Bitcoin.com, was 👮‍♀️arrested in Spain on U.S. charges of tax evasion, with plans for extradition to face additional charges of mail fraud and filing false tax returns.

😡 Authorities claim Ver hid his cryptocurrency assets from the U.S. IRS, leading to $48 million in damages. He reportedly controlled around 70,000 BTC through two companies, which he sold for about $240 million, misleading his accountant and the IRS in the process.

Ver used legal services to file tax returns that significantly undervalued his companies. Although he renounced his 🇺🇸 U.S. citizenship in 2014 and moved to Saint Kitts and Nevis, the Justice Department asserts he was still required to pay U.S. taxes on specific incomes from U.S.-based corporations MemoryDealers and Agilestar. 🤔

Bitcoin risks collapsing to $50,000 - Standard Chartered

🙀 A breakthrough in the Bitcoin price below the $60,000 mark has again opened the way to the $50,000-52,000 range. This was warned by Standard Chartered.

ℹ️ They cited a combination of cryptocurrency-specific and broader macroeconomic factors as the "new woes" factor.

✔️ By the former, the bank means a five-day outflow from U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs and a weak response to the launch of their counterparts in Hong Kong.

🤔 After the decline in the digital gold quotes below $58,000, there was a risk of liquidations as more than half of the spot ETF positions are "underwater", so the risk of liquidation of some of them should also be taken into account, experts note.

👀 Regarding macroeconomics, experts mentioned the deterioration of liquidity indicators since mid-April, noting their impact on the cryptocurrency market.

Tether's Net Profit Hits Record $4.5 Billion in Q1

💰 Tether, the company behind the USDT stablecoin, reported a record-breaking net profit of $4.52 billion from January to March.

💲The company generated roughly $1 billion in operating profit, largely from interest earned on 🇺🇸 U.S. Treasury obligations, according to the financial report.

💵 Investments in these treasury instruments surpassed $74.2 billion, with the total assets, including cash and other equivalents like those held through repurchase agreements, reaching $92.7 billion.

⬆️ Tether’s equity rose to $11.37 billion, and its excess reserves increased by $1 billion to $6.26 billion.

👀 The issuance of USDT surged by $12.5 billion in the first quarter, bringing the total to $110.3 billion. The audit firm BDO verified that 90% of the tokens are backed by cash or cash equivalents.

Pike Finance suffered nearly $2 million in losses due to two attacks

On April 30, assailants attacked the DeFi protocol ⛰Pike Finance, extracting 99,970 ARB, 64,126 OP, and 479 ETH, amounting to roughly $1.68 million.

🤷 Just a few days prior to this, on April 26, another breach occurred when hackers exploited a different vulnerability to steal about $300,000 in USDC.

🙀Pike developers revealed that the thefts were enabled by a flaw in the initializing smart contract, allowing the thieves to circumvent the external security system without needing administrator`s access, which led to the fund withdrawals.

✔️In response, the protocol team is offering a 20% reward of the recovered assets or for information leading to the identification of the culprits.

Bitcoin remain sideway as Federal Reserve maintains current interest rate

📉 Federal Reserve left interest rate unchanged, maintaining the highest level in over 23 years.

🪑Fed Chair Jerome Powell remains cautious, indicating no imminent rate hikes and suggesting that rate cuts are unlikely until there's greater confidence in achieving a sustainable 2% inflation target.

👀 This decision continues to impact the crypto market, with Bitcoin and Ethereum trading sideways.

Changpeng Zhao is in prison, Roger Ver is arrested. 👀 Should Jack Dorsey get ready?

🇺🇸 U.S. federal prosecutors are examining the financial transactions of Jack Dorsey’s companies—alleging that Square processed thousands of transactions involving sanctioned countries and conducted several crypto transactions for 💣 terrorist groups.

✔️ Previously, U.S. authorities sentenced the founder of Binance to 4 months in prison, and also charged Roger Ver with fraud and tax evasion.

MicroStrategy has announced a Bitcoin-based identity verification protocol

🔬MicroStrategy has unveiled the 🍊 Orange Decentralized Identity, a new protocol for identity verification built on Bitcoin.

⌨️ This system utilizes unspent transaction outputs (UTXO) on the Bitcoin blockchain to store user information.

🪪 It allows for the creation and updating of documents with only minor restrictions on size and content, by leveraging SegWit technology.

📉 DeFi's TVL dipped by $10 billion in April, a 7% fall, closing at $138.6 billion.

👆Despite the drop, Base and Bitcoin saw gains, each surpassing $1 billion in TVL.

🙀 Avalanche and Solana experienced the sharpest declines among top blockchains. Ethereum continues to lead with 69% of the total DeFi TVL.

💪 Bitcoin's growth, nearly 39%, was driven by new L2 infrastructure and industry hype, pointing to its expanding functionalities in DeFi.

Daily outflow from spot Bitcoin ETFs reached a record $526 million

🗒 On May 1st, the outflow from spot Bitcoin ETFs hit a 🏔 peak since the approval of the products—$563.8 million. BlackRock's IBIT recorded a negative trend for the first time—minus $36.93 million.

👀 From Fidelity's FBTC, clients withdrew $191.1 million—more than from Grayscale's GBTC ($167.3 million).

🙀 In ARKB from Ark Invest, the outflow amounted to $98.1 million—the third largest in history.

🤔 The total inflow into these products since their registration has decreased to $11.2 billion. By the end of April, this figure had dropped by $343.5 million.

Looks like institutions are quite disappointed in Bitcoin 😁

🔔 New Bill on Crypto Staking Taxation in the US!

🇺🇸 US Congressmen Wiley Nickel and Drew Ferguson have introduced the "Tax Clarity for Digital Assets Act." This legislation aims to amend the current IRS guidelines by taxing cryptocurrency staking rewards only at the time of their sale, rather than when earned.

👀This change is intended to prevent the double taxation that can occur under the current system, where staking rewards are calculated as part of taxable income even if not sold.

🤔 The bill responds to IRS amendments from August 2023, which required staking rewards in Proof-of-Stake networks to be included in taxable income calculations.

🚖 New proposal ensures that taxes are only levied upon the actual realization of the income, simplifying the process for investors and aligning with the fair market value declarations.

AI has learned to detect money laundering through bitcoin

🙀 Elliptic company has developed an artificial intelligence-based system capable of efficiently detecting 🧺 money laundering through bitcoin transactions.

📉 The team used a dataset of nearly 200 million transactions on which the model was trained to identify not just individual illegal operations, but entire "subgraphs".

⌨️ System testing on an unnamed cryptocurrency exchange showed high accuracy: out of 52 suspicious transaction chains, 14 were confirmed as related to money laundering. 🧐 On average, only one in 10,000 accounts is marked as such, indicating the model's effectiveness.

🤯 Using external data, the system can detect money laundering schemes that are inaccessible to traditional analysis methods.

The model enabled the identification of a number of previously unknown wallets used by entities associated with Ponzi schemes, darknet markets, and other illegal activities.

📉 BTC Dips But Altcoins Show Resilience! 🚀

🤷 Amid recent setbacks including CZ's arrest and a failed BTC-ETF launch in Hong Kong, Bitcoin has fallen to $56,000, sparking market-wide panic. 👆However, unlike usual trends where Bitcoin's dominance rises in such times, altcoins are showing unexpected strength!

📉Despite the drop, altcoins remain stable, holding above their recent lows while Bitcoin remains sideways. 💡This indicates a possible shift in investor focus from Bitcoin to altcoins and Ethereum, suggesting a strategic rebalancing by 🐳 whales. Maybe they accumulating alts at lower prices? 🤔

🙀 Fear is setting in!

The Fear and Greed Index has dropped to 43, indicating fear. While it's mild, it's definitely present. 👀 This suggests it might be a good time to start building your positions gradually, or at the very least, start monitoring tokens if you haven't already. 🧐