Scenius Sync (Issue #86)

Celsius Emerges From Chapter 11 And Starts 3B+ Distributions, Pro-Bitcoin President Bukele To Win Reelection in El Salvador, GoDaddy and ENS Partner, & EigenLayer Lifts Staking Cap and TVL Soars

Scenius: The intelligence and the intuition of a whole cultural scene. The communal form of the concept of genius.

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. Celsius Emerges from Chapter 11 and Commences Distributions of Over $3 Billion of Cryptocurrency to Creditors

   • On January 31st Celsius announced hat it has successfully emerged from bankruptcy by completing the transactions under its confirmed plan of reorganization. The Plan was overwhelmingly approved by approximately 98% of the Company’s account holders and confirmed by the Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York on November 9, 2023. The Plan includes the distribution of over $3 billion of cryptocurrency and fiat to Celsius’ creditors, and the creation of a new Bitcoin mining company—Ionic Digital, Inc.—which will be owned by Celsius’ creditors and will have its mining operations managed by Hut 8 Corp.

2. El Salvador: Initial polls show Nayib Bukele to win reelection

   • The pro-Bitcoin Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele is widely expected to win a second term in office, with early voting data indicating his party will win 87% of the votes — though the final results are yet to be released.

3. FTX seeks permission to speedily sell 8% stake in Anthropic

   • Bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX is preparing to sell its most significant remaining illiquid asset: the 8% stake the company holds in valuable AI startup Anthropic, which received a $500 million investment from FTX's former CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, in October 2021. Anthropic's latest reported valuation was as high as $18 billion in December 2023, which would give FTX's stake a value of around $1.4 billion. The value of the Anthropic shares has proved to be a considerable hope for victims of the FTX collapse, and FTX does in fact anticipate that the company has enough funds to pay all customer and creditor claims in full. 

4. Steve Christie returns to Binance as Deputy Chief Compliance Officer

   • Crypto exchange Binance has hired its former Senior Vice President of Compliance Steve Christie as the firm's Deputy Chief Compliance Officer. 

     Christie will help bolster the crypto exchange's global compliance program and work with regulators, industry leaders and others to keep Binance aligned with regulatory practices. 

5. Crypto exchange Gemini says bankrupt Genesis moves to authorize sale of trust assets

   • Cryptocurrency exchange Gemini Trust Co said on Saturday that crypto lender Genesis has filed a motion in U.S. Bankruptcy Court authorizing a sale of trust assets and seeking authorization to monetize its interests in two Grayscale Ethereum trusts.

   • In related news, Bankrupt Crypto Lender Genesis Settles SEC’s Earn Lawsuit

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Innovation & Adoption 💡📈

1. GoDaddy to charge $0 for ENS .eth name pairing

   • A partnership between Ethereum Name Service (ENS) and domain registrar GoDaddy will allow the Web3 community to link their .eth names (domains) to traditional Web2 domains at no extra cost.

2. EigenLayer Lifts Staking Cap, TVL Soars Past $3B

   • Liquid restaking protocol EigenLayer has temporarily removed its 200,000 ether per-protocol staking cap, spurring a $750 million rise in total value locked (TVL) in a matter of hours. Data from DefiLlama shows that inflows of over 1 million ETH flooded EigenLayer within two hours after the restaking protocol lifted its cap on deposits, leading to a cumulative TVL of more than $3 billion. EigenLayer placed its official TVL at $3.2 billion at press time, representing a $1 billion increase over the tally from a day before.

3. Apple's 'Vision Pro' Set to Get First Crypto-Focused Metaverse App From Victoria VR

   • The crypto-meets-virtual reality (VR) developer Victoria VR says it's working to release the first metaverse app from a blockchain-related company on the Apple headset "Vision Pro." The project's metaverse consists of "ultra-realistic graphics and immersive gameplay," which will be able to supplement Vision Pro's technologies, the company said in a statement on Friday.

4. Daily active users on Farcaster surge to all-time high, driven by Frames launch

   • Daily active users on the Ethereum Layer 2 Optimism-based decentralized social protocol Farcaster have surged nearly tenfold to record highs since the launch of embedded mini-apps called Frames. Daily unique casters — users who post content on Farcaster-based social apps like Warpcast — jumped from around 2,400 on January 25, the day before Frames launched, to 19,100 on Saturday, according to The Block’s data dashboard. Daily unique reactors, or those who engage with content, went from roughly 2,700 to 25,000 over the same period.

5. Epic Games is listing Call of Duty-style crypto video game 'Shrapnel'

   • “Shrapnel” joins other high-profile early releases of blockchain games on the Epic Games Store including “Illuvium” and “Star Atlas.” Neon Machine, the game studio behind the project, aspires to empower gamers to customize “every aspect of the game, from its characters and weapons to in-game maps.”