Scenius Sync (Issue #99)

CZ Sentenced To 4 Months, Robinhood Gets Wells Notice, Bitcoin Surpasses 1B in Transactions, & EigenLayer Capitulates And Will Airdrop Another 100 $EIGEN

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. Binance founder Changpeng Zhao sentenced to 4 months in prison after plea deal

   • Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who pleaded guilty to money laundering violations in November, was sentenced to four months in prison on Tuesday. U.S. prosecutors had recommended a 36-month sentence for Zhao. The crypto billionaire stepped down as Binance’s CEO as part of his agreement with the Justice Department.

2. SEC Wells Notice to Robinhood Crypto continues trend of probes in digital asset industry

   • The SEC is ratcheting up its purview of the crypto industry after filing a Wells Notice against Robinhood's crypto arm on Monday.  In a Form 8-K filed on Monday, Robinhood Crypto, the crypto unit of the brokerage firm Robinhood Markets, said it had received a Wells Notice from the SEC. The exchange said the SEC staff has decided to recommend an enforcement action against the crypto unit, alleging securities violations, according to the form used to announce major events to shareholders.  Robinhood's Wells Notice is one of a handful filed against crypto entities over the past month. Consensys, the crypto firm behind MetaMask Wallet, and decentralized crypto exchange Uniswap have said they also received Wells Notices from the SEC last month. 

3. Michael Saylor delivers BTC masterclass to Fortune 1000 companies

   • In a Keynote address at MicroStrategy World: Bitcoin for Corporations, MicroStrategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor delivered a masterclass on corporate finance and the power of bitcoin to supercharge corporate balance sheets. Saylor made a point to emphasize Bitcoin as the single solution for capital appreciation in an inflationary environment.

4. SEC delays making a decision on the proposed Invesco Galaxy spot Ethereum ETF

   • The SEC set its next deadline to July 5, 2024 to approve or disapprove of the proposed spot ether ETF.  Optimism for the SEC approving such a product has dwindled over the past few months.

5. Coinbase faces copycat class action suit asserting tokens are securities in echo of pending case

   • A class-action lawsuit against Coinbase was recently filed by a serial crypto litigator on behalf of its customers, alleging the exchange sells unregistered securities and operates as an unlicensed broker/dealer.  The lawsuit, which the company calls “legally baseless,” is similar in language to another class-action suit that was initially dismissed, but recently partially revived under appeal. 

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Innovation & Adoption 💡📈

1. Bitcoin surpasses one billion transactions processed, eight hundred weeks after launch

   • Eight hundred weeks and one day after Bitcoin launched on January 3, 2009, with the minting of its genesis block, the world's most valuable cryptocurrency has surpassed one billion processed transactions. The milestone comes at an especially exciting time for the cryptocurrency, which has seen heightened levels of daily transactions for the past year as novel protocols like Bitcoin Ordinals and Runes attract more and more activity on the world's first blockchain. The launch of spot Bitcoin ETFs also led to bullish sentiment for the token over the past year. 

2. Eigen Foundation to distribute 100 more EIGEN to token holders, following airdrop backlash

   • The Eigen Foundation will airdrop 100 more EIGEN to more than 280,000 wallet holders, shortly after its community took aim at its controversial airdrop. Season 1 claimants will receive at least 110 EIGEN, while Season 2 will get 100 EIGEN or more, the Eigen Foundation said Thursday in a post on X. The developers are distributing more tokens after facing public backlash over the EIGEN airdrop plan, including criticisms of a stipulation that bars claimants from cashing out their allocations for a fixed period of time.

3. Arbitrum surpasses $150 billion in total transaction volume on Uniswap

   • Ethereum Layer 2 protocol Arbitrum surpassed $150 billion in transaction volume on the decentralized exchange Uniswap. Arbitrum is the first Layer 2 to pass the threshold on the DEX, Uniswap Labs wrote in a social media post on Monday. As of early May, Arbitrum's cumulative swap volume hit $150.2 billion.

4. Coinbase integrates Lightning Network for Bitcoin transactions

   • Coinbase has begun supporting the Bitcoin Lightning Network, providing users with a choice between Lightning and the Bitcoin network when transferring Bitcoin. By using the layer-2 Lightning Network, Coinbase customers can transfer Bitcoin more quickly and cheaply than transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain. To use the Lightning Network, the intended recipient sends an invoice consisting of a lengthy string of characters that Coinbase will recognize as the amount of the transfer.

5. Jack Dorsey's Block Adding More Bitcoin to Balance Sheet, Presents Road Map for Others

   • Payments firm Block has begun a dollar cost averaging program to add to its already sizable bitcoin stack. Led by CEO Jack Dorsey, the company in April began using 10% of its monthly bitcoin-related gross profit to buy additional bitcoin, with plans to do this each month for the remainder of 2024. For perspective, Block had $80 million in bitcoin gross profit in the first quarter, according to its earnings results. Were that level of profit to continue through the rest of the year, the company under this program would add another $24 million worth of bitcoin to its balance sheet.