Scenius Sync (Issue #44)

Shanghai Ushers In a New Era of Ethereum, Uniswap Wallet App Goes Live, & FTX To Consider a Restart

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Welcome to The Scenius Sync.

Our mission with this concise publication is twofold:

1. Share the essential stories driving the crypto industry and markets.

2. Highlight innovative applications and mainstream adoption of crypto and blockchain technology.

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Essential News 🗞

1. Ethereum’s Shanghai Upgrade Is Complete, Starting New Era of Staking Withdrawals

   • Ethereum devs have implemented the Shanghai upgrade that now enables users and validators to withdraw their staked ETH on the network. The much anticipated hard fork – essentially upgrading the blockchain by splitting off a new one – has been characterized by members of the Ethereum community as a historic milestone, completing its multi-year transition to a full proof-of-stake network.

   • Nansen launched a public dashboard tracking the status of ETH withdrawals.

2. New Stablecoin Bill Draft Introduced in US House of Representatives

   • The US House of Representatives has released a new draft bill proposing a comprehensive regulatory framework for stablecoins. Some highlights of what the bill would do if it becomes law: (a) Put the Federal Reserve in charge of nonbank stablecoins, which means banks and credit unions would look to their respective financial regulators, (b) A (temporary) ban on new stablecoins without fiat backing, and (c) Direct the Fed to study a digital dollar.

3. FTX Has Recovered $7.3B in Assets, Will Consider Rebooting Exchange

   • Bankrupt crypto exchange FTX has recovered over $7.3 billion in cash and liquid crypto assets, an increase of more than $800 million since January, the company's attorney said on Wednesday at a U.S. bankruptcy court hearing . The lead attorney for FTX also told the court that re-starting the exchange was one of many potential options being considered for the future of the company. A related option was to let FTX's creditors convert a portion of their holdings to a stake in a reopened exchange. FTX's FTT token more than doubled in price following the news.

4. SEC Sues yet Another Crypto Company — This Time it’s Bittrex — in Latest Challenge for Industry

   • The SEC filed a lawsuit against crypto exchange Bittrex and one of its co-founders alleging it was operating as an "unregistered national securities exchange, broker, and clearing agency." The move against Bittrex is the latest in a string of regulatory actions taken by U.S. agencies policing the crypto space. Binance, Paxos and Kraken are among the crypto companies that have been charged in recent weeks by U.S. regulators.  

   • Noteworthy as part of the lawsuit is that the SEC labels Algorand and Five Other Tokens as Securities. In addition to Alogrand, the largest by market cap, are OMG Network (OMG), Dash (DASH), Monolith (TKN), Naga (NGC), and Real Estate Protocol (IHT). Once again, the SEC is making claims without actually suing the tokens themselves as none of the six tokens’ issuers are named as defendants in the Bittrex lawsuit, and no separate charges have been announced.

5. Peter Thiel's Founders Fund Taps Former Pantera Exec Joey Krug as Partner

   • Krug was previously co-chief investment officer at crypto firm Pantera, which he first joined in 2017. “I’ll be focused on defining the next decade of Founders Fund’s crypto strategy while looking for the next wave of generational crypto startups and founders to back,” he wrote on Twitter. 

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Innovation & Adoption 💡📈

1. Uniswap Wallet Goes Live on iOS After Apple App Store Challenges

   • Uniswap Labs, the crypto firm behind the decentralized exchange juggernaut Uniswap, has secured a spot in Apple’s App Store for their Wallet app and gone live with the Uniswap Wallet iOS app for users in the U.S. and other select countries.

   • This is a pretty big deal, so here’s a link to the twitter announcement and some more coverage here.

2. Twitter Partners With eToro To Offer Stock, Crypto Trading

   • Twitter has announced a partnership with crypto exchange eToro to let its users trade stocks, cryptocurrencies and other assets on the social network’s platform. The deal comes hard on the heels of Twitter CEO Elon Musk merging Twitter into a shell company named X Corp., which he says he would like to turn into an “everything app.”

3. Venture Capital Firm Andreessen Horowitz ("a16z") Released Their 2023 State of Crypto Report

   • In the report’s own words: “Our 2023 report aims to address the imbalance between the noise of fleeting price movements – and the data that tracks the signals that matter, including the durable progress of web3 technology. Overall, the report reflects a healthier industry than market prices may indicate, and a steady cycle of development, product launches, and ongoing innovation.”

   • They also unveiled their new State of Crypto Index, an interactive tool to track the health of the crypto industry from a technological, rather than financial, perspective by tracking 14 industry metrics that offer a health snapshot of the industry.

4. Solana Saga, an Android Phone With a Crypto Twist

   • The Solana Saga is designed to integrate the Web3 experience onto your mobile phone seamlessly. Users will have the ability to self-custody private keys straight from their own mobile device and have native access to decentralized applications via the Solana DApp store. The phone will officially go on sale on May 8th and cost $1,000

5. London Stock Exchange Unit to Clear Bitcoin Derivatives

   • London Stock Exchange Group took a step into crypto as its French clearinghouse unit signed a deal with an institutional-focused trading venue to offer trading in bitcoin derivatives.  LSE's LCH division plans to begin clearing bitcoin index futures and options for GFO-X, a UK-based startup founded in 2020, according to a statement. The new venture will be known as LCH DigitalAssetClear.

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