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- 3/20/24: BlackRock Is Evolving šæš¤”š°
3/20/24: BlackRock Is Evolving šæš¤”š°
Top News
BlackRock launches tokenized investment fund with $100M USDC
Solana memecoin āpresalesā cross $150M, bad actors called out
Ethena Labs $USDe is now a top 5 stablecoin, $1.17B market cap

Specsā Breakdown
1. BlackRock launches tokenized investment fund with $100M USDC
āāŖ-āŖ ā BlackRock just announced a new Institutional Digital Liquidity fund in collaboration with Securitize.
This isnāt some pretend blockchain theatre either. BlackRock, the worldās largest asset manager, just put $100M USDC on the Ethereum blockchain. Pretty crazy.
This is Larry Fink putting his money where his mouth is with regard to his newfound belief that the future of finance is the tokenization of financial assets (stocks, bonds, etc).
Seeing one of the worldās most influential financial leaders/players adopt crypto so directly and with such conviction is more than promising.
This move is also a testament that Larry will do whatever it takes to get the Ethereum ETFs approved.
Also, note that they launched on Ethereum, not Solana.
2. Solana memecoin āpresalesā cross $150M, bad actors called out
āāŖ-āŖ ā The memecoin presale meta continues to rage on with over $150M raised on Solana alone over the last week.
For those who donāt know, the āpresalesā are an increasingly common and dubious practice where traders blindly send millions to strangersā wallets in hopes of getting in early on the next memecoin.
The problem is, besides these memecoins having absolutely zero value/purpose, there is no guarantee the strangers donāt just take the money and run ā which many have already done.
For example: Yesterday 0xNibba stole 6 figures with a presale and then rebooted his Twitter account as @richmoneysol to attempt another presale scam.
If youāre curious, check out ZachXBTās breakdown to better understand the anatomy of these presale scams.
I love me a good memecoin, but this is getting out of hand and is frankly destroying the Solana ecosystem. Itās so bad that one of Solanaās co-founders tweeted āStop doing this."
3. Ethena Labs $USDe is now a top 5 stablecoin, $1.17B market cap
āāŖ-āŖ ā $USDe is now a top 5 stablecoin with a market cap of $1.17B. While theyāre still very far behind Tether ($103.43B) and USDC ($29.64B) they are doing pretty good considering they launched 1 month ago.
The platform currently offers yields up to 60.9% with 66.21k users thanks to their unique pegging mechanism.
Instead of keeping dollars in the bank on a 1:1 basis (like Circleās $USDC), they use a combination of Ethereum collateral and perpetual contracts to create a delta-neutral position against Ethereumās price.
This means that the value of the synthetic position stays the same regardless of ETHās price. The long ETH deposits are offset against short ETH perpetuals.
For a more detailed breakdown, check out Cygaarās thread!

Everything Else
āļø Crypto & DeFi
Starknetās 2024 roadmap includes parallel transactions
3AC co-founder Kyle Davis wonāt apologize for 3AC going bankrupt
OP Mainnet tests āfault proofsā to strengthen network security
LQWD partners with Amboss as key lightning network liquidity provider
Soroban smart contract network finally arrives on Stellar network
Human Rights Foundation grants $500k to 14 Bitcoin projects
Solana co-founder warns against presales in tweet
š¦ Wallstreet & VC
MicroStrategy holds 1% of BTC supply after recent $600M purchase
Record ETF outflows of $326M, Grayscale bleeds the most
Grayscale adds ETH staking to its ETH ETF application
Immutable, Polygon, and King River raise $100M web3 gaming fund
Sygnum tokenizes $50M of Fidelity International Fund
Coinbase CEO says they custody ~90% of spot BTC ETF assets
šļø Legal & Regulatory
Pro-Crypto Republican Bernie Moreno wins Ohio Senate Primary
SEC delays decision on Hashdex and Ark Ethereum ETFs
Coinbase pushes for SEC to write rules, lobbying groups support
Bankrupt Genesis to pay $21M to settle SEC charges
š Rest of the World
Lithuania crypto bank Meld to offer tokenized RWAs to retail investors
Netherlands alleges Alexey Pertsev laundered $1.2B via Tornado Cash
š¼ļø NFTs & Metaverse
XCOPY drops open edition mint on Base called MUTATIO
Portal staking opens this Thursday, provides access to mints/pre-sales
Polygon Labs paid $4M to host Starbuckās failed NFT-loyalty program
Rug Radio introduces Content+ rewards platform

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