Kaiko Research: Monthly Market Report March 2021

Asset manager BlackRock (BLK) turned some heads earlier this week when an updated prospectus for its spot bitcoin ETF application included a disclosure that it had collected $100,000 in seed capital for the fund.Growing anticipation that U.S. authorities might soon approve one or more spot bitcoin ETF applications has been a sizable factor in the

Yesterday, Sam Bankman-Fried took the stand at his monumental criminal trial, but not for the benefit of the jury. Instead, in a marathon session, SBF took the stand and gave New York District Judge Lewis Kaplan a dry run of what certain — let’s call it controversial — testimony could sound like in court.Over the

Soccer great Cristiano Ronaldo faces a $1 billion class-action lawsuit linked to his commercial relationship with cryptocurrency exchange Binance.The suit, dated Nov. 28 and filed in the District Court for the Southern District of Florida, in Miami, alleges that Ronaldo "promoted, assisted in, and/or actively participated in the offer and sale of unregistered securities in

A federal judge "erred" in letting prediction market purveyor Kalshi list and trade election contracts, attorneys for the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission argued in a brief to an appellate court Wednesday, reiterating many of the arguments it made before the lower court. The district court judge overseeing Kalshi's suit against the CFTC ignored the

The lack of a two-way token bridge, a clunky decentralized exchange (DEX) experience, and a network being closed to the public have not deterred crypto traders from finding their way to Coinbase’s layer 2 blockchain in the hopes of unearthing a fortune.Base, built by crypto exchange Coinbase on OP Stack, launched its testnet in January…

Yuga Labs, the Web3 behemoth behind Bored Ape Yacht Club, has agreed to acquire Los Angeles-based Roar Studios as part of its efforts to expand its Otherside metaverse and create entertaining social experiences for Web3 communities.Roar Studios was founded in 2021 by entertainment executive Eric Reid and sits at the intersection of music, gaming and…

Developers of Polygon Labs on Wednesday proposed a restructuring of the governance mechanism for the upcoming Polygon 2.0 roadmap, which seeks to create multiple layer-2s on the network.Developers said the new governance structure would consist of “three main pillars,” each pertaining to a specific function.First would be the expansion of the Polygon Improvement Proposal (PIP)…

feature One of bitcoin’s most experimental startups has grown dramatically over the past year, highlighting both the opportunities and pitfalls of open source development. Now Adam Ficsor, co-founder of zkSNACKs – the firm behind the privacy-centric Wasabi Wallet – is stepping down from his role as CTO to focus on research as the company matures. “I…

Aug 31, 2020 at 21:32 UTCThe Tor Project, the nonprofit group behind the privacy-focused Tor browser, launched the Tor Project Membership Program Monday in a bid to increase the diversity of funds in their budget. The nonprofit laid off a third of its staff in April amid the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. Members…