Today's news tips:
1. US SEC Commissioner: State-chartered trust companies should be considered as qualified crypto custodians
2. Circle executives deny seeking a U.S. banking license
3. Binance announces listing and delisting standards
4. Trump Meme Coin team refutes rumor of "$300,000 dinner participation threshold"
5. BITWISE NEAR ETF is registered in Delaware
6. BlackRock has purchased $1.2 billion worth of Bitcoin this week and currently holds 2.77% of the total BTC supply
7. Decentralized AI startup Nous Research completes $50 million Series A financing, led by Paradigm
8. Binance Alpha adds OKZOO (AIOT)
Regulatory/Macro
Nasdaq tells SEC: Accurate cryptocurrency labeling will be key to future regulation
Nasdaq sent a letter to the US SEC Crypto Working Group, suggesting that regulators carefully classify digital assets and clarify the regulatory "referees". The document was signed by John Zecca, director of regulatory affairs, and proposed four categories: first, financial securities tokens (such as tokens linked to stocks, bonds, and ETFs, which should be treated the same as underlying assets), which are regulated by the SEC; second, digital asset investment contracts (tokenized contracts that meet the revised Howey test), which are subject to securities rules; third, digital asset commodities (which meet the US commodity definition) are under the jurisdiction of the CFTC; fourth, other digital assets (not included in the first three categories, and are not subject to securities or commodity rules). The SEC and the CFTC will work together to clarify the regulatory boundaries, and the new cryptocurrency law may become a guiding basis. Nasdaq also suggested the establishment of cross-trading qualifications for multi-type asset processing platforms, and emphasized its credibility in the field of digital assets, calling for companies that fully handle investor activities to strengthen security constraints and align with industry practices.
On his fourth day in office, U.S. SEC Chairman Paul Atkins said that digital assets are expected to bring "huge benefits" and said he plans to work with lawmakers to establish a regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies. Paul Atkins said: "I look forward to engaging with market participants and working with colleagues in President Trump's administration and Congress to establish a reasonable and applicable framework for crypto assets." Digital assets are expected to bring "huge benefits", including reducing risks and cutting costs.
DOGE Mining Company Z Squared to Go Public Through Merger with Coeptis
Z Squared, a company focused on DOGE mining, will go public through a merger with biopharmaceutical company Coeptis (COEP). The transaction is expected to be completed in the third quarter of this year, when 9,000 DOGE mining machines will be put into operation. The merger will allow the new company to continue to operate the mining business of Dogecoin (DOGE), while Coeptis' pharmaceutical business will be spun off and operated independently. After the merger, the company will become one of the largest listed companies, mainly focusing on the mining of Dogecoin and other cryptocurrencies such as Litecoin (LTC).
According to Jinshi, US President Trump said he was unlikely to approve another 90-day tariff suspension. Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he hopes to reach trade agreements with a number of countries. We will be reasonable.
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Commissioner Mark T. Uyeda said at a crypto asset custody roundtable that federal regulators currently allow national banks to custody crypto assets as trustees. Given the historical practice of allowing state-chartered banks to compete with federally chartered banks, he suggested that the SEC should consider listing state-chartered trust companies as qualified crypto custodians.
The Commission could also consider taking further steps to enhance competition by amending or terminating the Commission’s “special purpose broker-dealer” regime, providing interim guidance explaining how firms that custody non-security crypto assets, crypto asset securities, and traditional securities may comply with the capital and customer protection rules, and ultimately codifying such guidance in amendments to those rules.
Viewpoint
Michael Saylor: BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF will become the world's largest ETF within a decade
In the past five trading days, the net inflow of funds into the US spot Bitcoin ETF reached about $2.8 billion, pushing the price of Bitcoin from about $85,000 to $94,000. Among them, the iShares Bitcoin Trust Fund (IBIT) under BlackRock alone contributed $1.3 billion in inflows. Michael Saylor, chairman of Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), said at the Investor Day event: "In ten years, IBIT will become the world's largest ETF."
It should be noted that IBIT’s current market value is $54 billion, and its daily trading volume exceeded $1.5 billion on Thursday. In comparison, the world’s largest ETF, Vanguard S&P 500 Index ETF (VOO), has a market value of $593.5 billion, more than ten times that of IBIT. Bloomberg’s senior ETF analyst pointed out: “In theory, this is possible, especially when IBIT’s capital inflows exceed VOO. But it needs to attract more than $1 billion in funds every day - more likely to reach a scale of $3 billion to $4 billion per day to catch up. In short, the achievement of this goal depends on multiple extreme conditions, but it is not impossible.”
According to Cailian Press, the Federal Reserve released its semi-annual Financial Stability Report, which showed that rising global trade risks, overall policy uncertainty and the sustainability of U.S. debt topped the list of potential risks to the U.S. financial system. This is the first time the Federal Reserve has conducted a semi-annual survey on financial risks since Trump returned to the White House. 73% of respondents said that global trade risks were their biggest concern, more than double the proportion reported in November. Half of the respondents believed that overall policy uncertainty was the most worrying issue, an increase from the same period last year. The survey also found that issues related to recent market turmoil have received more attention, with 27% of respondents worried about the functioning of the U.S. Treasury market, up from 17% last fall. Foreign withdrawals from U.S. assets and the value of the dollar have also risen on the list of concerns.
U.S. Senator: Trump hosting dinner for TRUMP holders could constitute grounds for impeachment
In response to Trump's dinner for TRUMP holders, U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff believes that lawmakers should impeach Trump. He emphasized that "when the sitting president of the United States sells access rights and the money is actually paid directly to him, there is no doubt that this has risen to the level of impeachment."
Project News
Binance Alpha adds OKZOO (AIOT)
According to the official page, Binance Alpha has added OKZOO (AIOT).
Ethereum developers consider quadrupling L1’s gas limit as key feature of Fusaka hard fork
Ethereum core developers are considering quadrupling the Gas limit of Layer 1 as a key feature of Fusaka, the next hard fork after Pectra. On April 23, developer Sophia Gold proposed EIP 9678, proposing to increase the Gas limit to 150 million when Fusaka hard forks. On April 24, core developer Tim Beiko said in the meeting summary that the ACDE meeting had discussed raising the Gas limit as a "key feature" of Fusaka. Developers have drafted an EIP and plan to merge it early next week and formally propose it at the next ACDE meeting. As work progresses, changes may be needed within the protocol to support a higher Gas limit, and even if the hard fork range is set, more EIPs will need to be added for Fusaka. Pectra plans to launch its mainnet in May, and Fusaka may be launched at the end of 2025.
Developers said that increasing the Gas limit is intended to expand Layer 1 execution capabilities, and no new features are required, but it requires guidance from execution layer developers to test and fix client vulnerabilities, so it is reasonable to include it in the hard fork EIP. On February 4, validators supported raising the network's Gas limit, increasing the maximum amount of Gas used for transactions in a single Ethereum block. Ycharts data shows that the current value is slightly less than 36 million.
Semler Scientific announces $10 million to increase holdings of 111 BTC
According to official news, Semler Scientific, a US-listed medical technology company, announced that it would spend $10 million to increase its holdings of 111 BTC.
According to the official announcement, Binance Futures will adjust the funding rate settlement frequency of U-margined perpetual contracts from 16:00 (ET) on May 2, 2025. If the settlement of the U-margined perpetual contract in the previous funding cycle reaches the upper/lower limit of the funding rate, Binance Futures will adjust the settlement frequency from every eight hours or every four hours to every hour.
The payment time for funding fee settlement every eight hours is: 08:00 (GMT+8), 16:00 (GMT+8) and 00:00 (GMT+8) the next morning. The payment time for funding fee settlement every four hours is: 04:00 (GMT+8), 08:00 (GMT+8), 12:00 (GMT+8), 16:00 (GMT+8), 20:00 (GMT+8) and 00:00 (GMT+8) the next morning.
Circle executive denies seeking U.S. banking license
Dante Disparte, chief strategy officer of stablecoin issuer Circle, posted on social platform X, denying rumors that the company is applying for a U.S. federal banking license. Disparte made it clear that Circle currently has no plans to obtain a federal banking license or acquire an insured depository institution, and will choose to apply for non-bank financial institution licenses such as federal or state trust licenses in the future in accordance with U.S. payment stablecoin regulatory requirements. This statement clarifies recent media reports that "Circle and BitGo and other crypto companies are considering applying for banking licenses." Disparte also called on the legislature to clarify the regulatory framework for stablecoins as soon as possible.
Sign: The snapshot of the on-chain asset collection has been completed
According to official news, the token distribution chain infrastructure Sign said that the snapshot work of the on-chain asset collection has been successfully completed. The following two related projects completed the snapshot record at a specific block height:
- SignPass (contract address: 0xd6Ab2de4B7e207f0e393c067cDE7cC03Bc770aab);
- Seeing Signs (contract address: 0xbc37ee54f066e79c23389c55925f877f79f3cb84).
Trump Meme Coin Team Refutes Rumors of $300,000 Dinner Entry Threshold
The Meme Coin team of US President Donald Trump has denied rumors circulating on social media that official TRUMP token holders will need at least $300,000 to attend the upcoming dinner with Trump. The rumor stems from community members citing information from the Solana blockchain explorer showing the holders of the token contract address. As of the time of writing, the explorer shows that the 220th holder holds 33,114 TRUMP tokens, worth more than $400,000. However, the Meme Coin team said that the explorer does not reflect their standards. "People mistakenly use the 220th holder data on the blockchain explorer as the qualification line, which is inaccurate because the data includes locked tokens, exchange positions, market maker positions, and user positions that did not participate in the event. The actual participation qualification should be based on the official leaderboard." According to the Meme Coin official website, the team will select the winners based on "time-weighted holdings", which takes into account the number of tokens held and the length of time they are held.
In addition, Trump's Meme Coin team clarified that the rumor that it is "unlocking a large number of tokens" for this competition is also untrue. It also stated that the user "Sun" currently ranks first with 1,176,803 TRUMP (worth about $14 million), while the user "HAR" ranked 220th only holds 35.3 TRUMP (worth about $420).
BITWISE NEAR ETF is registered in Delaware
According to market news, BITWISE NEAR ETF is registered in Delaware.
Alpaca: After receiving community feedback, it has decided not to issue additional tokens
Alpaca Finance officially stated that although its market makers had requested to withdraw more ALPACA from the fund reserves to cope with today's high trading volume, after receiving feedback from the community, it has decided not to mint these tokens.
According to the monitoring of on-chain analyst Yu Jin, after TRUMP announced the Trump dinner plan the day before yesterday, many whales withdrew TRUMP from CEX to the address to register and win the dinner spot. Currently, the address with the largest number of TRUMP in the registration (registered as "MeCo") has withdrawn 1.195 million TRUMP (US$15.76 million) from Binance after the dinner plan was announced, with an average price of US$12.5. The second registered name is "Sun", and the address is the cold wallet of HTX Exchange, holding 1.177 million TRUMP (US$15.52 million).
It is reported that the address registered with the name "MeCo" belongs to the encryption project MemeCore.
Gitcoin shuts down Grants Lab, its software development arm, due to lack of sustainable profit model
Kevin Owocki, co-founder of Gitcoin, posted on the X platform that Gitcoin will close its main software development department, Grants Lab, and lay off some team members. Behind this decision is the change in the ecological environment: the way of funding public products is evolving, the L2 ecosystem is gradually maturing, the collaboration mechanism is constantly innovating, and new competitors are constantly emerging. At the same time, key members of Grants Lab have left one after another, and the team lacks a clear and sustainable profit model in its current form, causing its financial expenditure to exceed its affordable range. Therefore, Grants Lab will no longer apply for the budget for the second half of 2025, and the remaining funds will be used to pay severance pay to affected employees. Gitcoin said that they will do their best to support the transition of departing employees in a respectful and caring manner.
Coinbase International will launch ZORA perpetual contract trading
Coinbase International Station announced on the X platform that Coinbase International Station and Coinbase Advanced will add support for ZORA perpetual contracts. The ZORA-PERP market is expected to open at or after 17:30 Beijing time on May 1.
ZKsync released a security incident investigation report involving $5 million in ZK tokens. On April 13, the attacker used the stolen administrator key to mint 11.18 million unclaimed ZK tokens from three airdrop distribution contracts, and exchanged about 6.71 million of them for 1,116 ETH in the following two days. The development team Matter Labs immediately froze the relevant accounts after discovering the anomaly on April 15. After the ZKsync Security Committee issued a 72-hour "safe harbor" ultimatum, the attacker returned 90% of the funds on April 23 and received a 10% bounty. The remaining funds are currently in the custody of the Security Committee, and the subsequent disposal will be decided by community governance. After investigation, the incident was caused by the airdrop contract adopting an unsafe 1/1 multi-signature management model and retaining the token minting function that should have been removed.
ZKsync said that the incident only affected three specific airdrop distribution contracts, and the main network protocol and governance system were not damaged. To prevent similar incidents, the project will implement improvement measures such as regular rotation of multi-signatures and upgrading of monitoring systems. The recovered ETH will be gradually exchanged for ZK tokens, and the final return plan must be voted on by the token parliament. The investigation showed that the key may have been leaked from the account of a former employee, and no evidence of malicious intent was found.
Jeff Weinstein, product director of US payment giant Stripe, posted on the X platform that Stripe is building its first financial product centered on stablecoins, which is ready for testing.
Earlier in February, Stripe completed the $1.1 billion acquisition of Bridge and prepared to vigorously promote stablecoins .
Binance announces listing and delisting standards
According to the official announcement, Binance detailed its listing and delisting standards, including the listing requirements for products such as Binance Alpha, Binance Futures and Binance Spot, as well as the conditions that the project team must meet. Binance also emphasized the continuous monitoring of market performance, team background, compliance and product security, and projects that do not meet the standards may be delisted.
TON will officially stop using Toncoin Bridge on May 10
According to the official announcement, TON will officially stop using Toncoin Bridge on May 10. At that time, users will no longer be able to transfer Toncoin from TON to Ethereum or BNB Smart Chain through the bridge, but the previous cross-chain assets can still be collected. At present, the bridge function between Toncoin and TON will be temporarily retained, and the termination time will be announced separately.
The world's first XRP spot ETF is listed on the Brazilian exchange
The world's first spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) linked to XRP was issued by Hashdex and managed by Genial Investimentos. It began trading on the Brazilian Stock Exchange B3 on April 25. The ETF code is XRPH11 and tracks the Nasdaq XRP Reference Price Index. According to Hashdex, the ETF will allocate at least 95% of its net assets to XRP.
Important data
According to Arkham monitoring, BlackRock is increasing its holdings and currently holds 2.77% of the total supply of Bitcoin. This week they purchased $1.2 billion worth of Bitcoin.
BlackRock BUIDL fund size reaches $2.5 billion, 80% of which is concentrated in 4 addresses
BlackRock's on-chain tokenized fund BUIDL has an asset management scale of US$2.5 billion, of which about 80% of the funds are concentrated in four wallet addresses. On-chain data shows that the addresses related to the stablecoin protocol Ethena hold US$1.3 billion, Spark Protocol holds US$500 million, and another major holder is the Crypto Relief Fund founded by Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, which holds about US$140 million.
Michael Sonnenshein, COO of Securitize, pointed out that BUIDL's high concentration stems from its institutional product positioning, with a minimum investment threshold of $5 million, and no intention to pursue "investment democratization". He emphasized that on-chain tokenization is still in its early stages and "is only the second half of the first game". Currently, Securitize is working with traditional private equity giants such as Apollo and KKR to launch on-chain funds, but the minimum investment amount for such products is still $20,000 to $50,000, and is only for high-net-worth investors.
According to on-chain analyst @ai_9684xtpa, @MemeCore_ORG, the third institution on the TRUMP dinner list, withdrew 270,000 TRUMP from Binance again 2 hours ago, worth about 3.47 million US dollars; since yesterday, it has withdrawn a total of 925,000 tokens, with a total value of 11.4 million US dollars, an average price of 12.32 US dollars, and a floating profit of 899,000 US dollars.
Bitcoin recorded its biggest weekly gain since the US election, outperforming US stocks
According to Jinshi, Bitcoin has led the rebound in risk assets and is expected to record the largest single-week gain since Trump won the US presidential election. As investors digest the impact of Trump's trade war, the Nasdaq 100 index, which is dominated by technology stocks, has risen by about 5%, but Bitcoin has risen by about 12% since last week, breaking through $95,000 for the first time since early March. "Amid the constant shocks, the implied correlation within cryptocurrencies remains high," said Jack Ostrovskys, a trader at cryptocurrency market making company Wintermute. "So, despite the improvement in the overall market, it is clear that macro and geopolitical forces remain the main drivers of capital flows."
According to the monitoring of on-chain analyst Ember, the whale who made a profit of $732,000 in just half an hour through the news of Trump's dinner plan repurchased TRUMP 7 hours ago: using 5.732 million USDC to buy 427,000 TRUMP at a price of $13.4. Among the 5.732 million USDC, 5 million was the principal he withdrew from Binance, and 732,000 was the profit on TRUMP the day before yesterday.
1inch team investment fund sold 70.76 WBTC again about 30 minutes ago
According to on-chain analyst Yu Jin’s monitoring, the 1inch team investment fund sold 70.76 WBTC for 6.676 million USDC 30 minutes ago, with a selling price of $94,346. The 1inch team investment fund spent $44.22 million to purchase WBTC, ETH and 1INCH between February 2 and March 10:
- 28.85 million USD was used to purchase 11,198 ETH at an average price of 2,577 USD;
- $14.21 million was used to purchase 160.8 WBTC at an average price of $88,395;
- 4.7 million 1INCH were purchased for $1.15 million, with an average price of $0.245.
Financing
Decentralized AI startup Nous Research completes $50 million Series A financing, led by Paradigm
According to Fortune magazine, decentralized AI startup Nous Research has completed a $50 million Series A financing round led by Paradigm (the financing was almost entirely provided by Paradigm). This round of financing values Nous's token at $1 billion. The funds raised will be mainly used to increase computing power reserves and expand the research team. Previously, the company had raised approximately $20 million in seed round financing, with investors including Distributed Global, North Island Ventures, Delphi Digital and other institutions. It is worth noting that this is Paradigm's largest investment in the AI field since the FTX crash in 2022, marking that crypto capital is accelerating its layout in the cross-cutting field of cutting-edge technology.
Nous was founded in 2022 by a group of AI researchers, focusing on developing open source large language models. Its innovation lies in using the Solana blockchain to coordinate global distributed computing resources and encourage users to contribute idle GPU computing power to participate in model training through incentive mechanisms. The Hermes series of open source models developed by the team have been recognized by the community, and have published multiple research papers in collaboration with Diederik P. Kingma, a founding member of OpenAI.
Elon Musk’s xAI holding company is in talks with investors to raise about $20 billion for its newly combined artificial intelligence startup and social media business, according to people familiar with the matter. If the deal goes through, it would be the second-largest startup financing round in history, according to data provider PitchBook, second only to OpenAI’s $40 billion financing earlier this year.
People familiar with the matter said the size of this round of financing may exceed $20 billion, but the total amount has not yet been finalized and the terms may still change. This round of financing will bring the company's valuation to over $120 billion. The current financing negotiations are still in the early stages and the company aims to complete the fundraising in the next few months. XAI Holdings, announced in March this year, is a merger of the X platform (formerly Twitter) and Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI. A person familiar with the matter said that part of the new funds may be used to repay the debt incurred when Musk took Twitter private (later renamed X). This huge financing not only highlights investors' enthusiasm for artificial intelligence companies, but also confirms Musk's status as a business tycoon and political influencer.
