Today's Headlines:
Bloomberg: Musk's xAI to Complete Financing This Week, Valued at $18 Billion
Crypto Trading Platform Arbelos Completes $28 Million Financing, Led by Dragonfly
Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Decreases by 5.63% to 83.15T, Expected to Decrease Again Next Time
Regulatory News
-
According to The Block, the US House of Representatives voted to pass a resolution aimed at overturning the SEC's announcement of cryptocurrency custody accounting standards. The vote was 228-182, with the majority of Republicans in support and 21 Democrats voting in favor. The announcement, first issued in 2022, has sparked controversy over the past year. It requires cryptocurrency custodians to record customer-held cryptocurrencies on the balance sheet as liabilities. The cryptocurrency industry is concerned that this move may hinder bank protection of digital assets. It is currently unclear whether this resolution will become law. However, the White House released a "government policy statement" on Wednesday, stating that President Biden will veto the resolution. The White House stated, "Restricting the SEC's ability to maintain a comprehensive and effective financial regulatory framework for crypto assets will bring serious financial instability and market uncertainty." The resolution may be submitted to the Senate Banking Committee and then voted on by the full Senate.
-
According to Watcher.Guru, Donald Trump announced that he is accepting cryptocurrency donations in the form of US presidential campaign contributions. Trump stated, "Biden doesn't even know what cryptocurrency is. If you like cryptocurrency, you better vote for Trump." Trump also promised to stop the US hostility towards cryptocurrency and embrace it.
Later, influenced by Trump's remarks, the Meme coin named TRUMP surged over 26% in 24 hours.
-
According to Ab Media, Taiwan recently passed a new regulation called the "Anti-Fraud New Four Laws," aimed at further strengthening the crackdown on fraudulent activities and strictly regulating anti-money laundering measures. This set of laws includes the Anti-Fraud Crime Prevention Act, the Anti-Money Laundering Act, the Technology Investigation and Protection Act, and the Communication Protection and Supervision Act, aiming to comprehensively enhance the government's ability to prevent various criminal activities. The amendment to the Anti-Money Laundering Act specifically targets virtual asset service providers, including three main amendment directions. First, any virtual asset service provider that fails to complete anti-money laundering registration will face up to 2 years in prison. Secondly, the law also adds special money laundering crime patterns, targeting the use of virtual asset accounts and third-party payment accounts as money laundering tools, with sentences ranging from 6 months to 5 years and a maximum fine of 50 million New Taiwan dollars.
AI
Bloomberg: Musk's xAI to Complete Financing This Week, Valued at $18 Billion
According to Bloomberg, Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup xAI is set to complete its latest round of financing this week, with a valuation of approximately $18 billion, and Sequoia is one of the potential investors. Bloomberg reported last week that xAI is expected to raise $6 billion (about 43.38 billion RMB) in the new round of financing, initially estimated at $30 billion, but the valuation has soared due to the subsequent participation of a large number of investors. Earlier, sources told Bloomberg that participants in this financing battle also include Musk's confidants at Sequoia Capital and Future Ventures, as well as other undisclosed investors. The new round of financing will help xAI gain more AI computing resources to compete with openAI and Anthropic: Musk recently stated that the next generation Grok model of xAI is being trained on 20,000 NVIDIA H100s, and the future demand for AI GPUs for Grok 3 will increase to 100,000 units.
Project Updates
Grayscale CEO: Company Will Focus on Spot Ethereum Products
According to DL News, Grayscale Investments CEO Michael Sonnenshein stated at an event hosted by the Financial Times in London on Wednesday that the company will focus on converting its Ethereum Trust Fund into spot ETF products; the company is withdrawing its application as many futures products are already available to investors; sometimes we apply for products, which does not necessarily mean they will enter the market. Sonnenshein said that while it is difficult to know the US SEC's view on Ethereum, Grayscale "optimistically believes that the SEC will make the right decision for investors." He added, "Grayscale's Ethereum Trust is already a company that submits reports to the SEC. We submit 10-K and 10-Q (disclosed documents to the SEC), and we have always been a company that promotes regulatory agencies to further include cryptocurrencies in the regulatory scope." Yesterday, Grayscale withdrew its application for an Ethereum futures ETF from the US SEC.
Today's Headlines:
Uniswap founder Hayden Adams posted on X platform, stating that cryptocurrency founders and venture capitalists need to stop setting valuations of over $1 billion on projects in the early stages of development and before the tokens are released, until they truly deserve that valuation. Building something worth 7-9 figures is an incredible achievement, and not every project needs to be a unicorn right at the start. Hayden Adams also stated, "Perhaps a bit naive, but I believe that as a founder, raising funds at a fair valuation (real talent wants room to grow), and as a venture capitalist, investing at a fair valuation (limited partners want room to grow) can make more money. It's just harder to do so."
Decentralized social media platform friend.tech announced on X platform that in the coming days, they will begin returning 2/3 of the protocol fees in Club Key exchange transactions to APP users. 0.5% of the value of each exchange transaction will go to the Club chairman, and the exchange traders will collectively pay 0.5% less. This announcement was made in advance to give users time to reconsider their votes. This change will use the recommended fee feature in the Clubs contract. Other clients will be able to decide where the recommended fee for each transaction goes.
ZeroLend: Airdrop Claim Range Expanded to Wallets Holding at Least 1 earlyZERO by the End of May
Decentralized multi-chain lending protocol ZeroLend announced on X platform that they have uploaded over 450,000 wallets to the airdrop claim website. Previously, at least 20,000 earlyZERO tokens were required at the time of the snapshot. Now, wallets holding at least 1 earlyZERO token have been added to ensure compliance with the 1:1 conversion of earlyZERO to ZERO. It is expected that most of the airdrop allocations will be officially completed, but there may still be some areas that need to be addressed.
Injective Plans to Establish Layer-3 Network "inEVM" on Arbitrum
According to CoinDesk, Injective Labs announced plans to launch its independent Layer-3 network "inEVM" on top of Arbitrum's Layer-2 technology. The network will connect the Ethereum, Cosmos, and Solana blockchains, using the Arbitrum Orbit toolkit to enhance interoperability and composability. "inEVM" is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), providing developers with new opportunities to build applications within the Ethereum Layer-2 ecosystem.
Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin published an article titled "Multi-Dimensional Gas Pricing," discussing the importance and feasible paths of introducing a multi-dimensional gas pricing mechanism in Ethereum. Vitalik pointed out that currently, Ethereum simplifies the pricing and limits of all resources into a single dimension of Gas, which, while simplifying market design, also leads to significant efficiency losses. If the network needs to manage n different resources, a single-dimensional Gas could lead to a throughput loss of up to n times. EIP-4844 introduced multi-dimensional pricing for the first time in Ethereum, adding a dedicated Blob data area with its own price and limit. This improvement reduced the cost of Rollup by 100 times and increased transaction volume by over 3 times, while the theoretical maximum block size only increased slightly.
The article also discussed the necessity of using multi-dimensional Gas when introducing storage proofs for stateless clients. Due to the quantum security risks of the Verkle tree scheme, the community hopes to switch to Binary Merkle trees and STARK, but their proof generation speed is much slower. By independently pricing and limiting storage access, stability can be ensured while avoiding cost issues caused by raising Gas prices. Additionally, Vitalik proposed two approaches to implementing multi-dimensional Gas pricing: 1. The simpler approach is to set resource limits for each transaction, valuing Gas based on the larger of the consumed data and computational resources, as suggested by EIP-7623. 2. The ideal but more complex approach is to establish a dynamic adjustment mechanism for each resource similar to EIP-1559.
Vitalik emphasized that introducing multi-dimensional Gas at the EVM level will bring a certain level of complexity, but it is worth the trade-off to safely improve the scalability of Ethereum L1. The community still needs to further explore more elegant designs in terms of economic feasibility and developer friendliness.
Yves La Rose, CEO of EOS Network Foundation (ENF), stated on X platform, "Our current goal is to complete the coding, auditing, and testing of the new EOS tokenomics model and submit it for MSIG (multi-signature proposal) to deploy it on the mainnet by the end of May. After this initial activation phase, our goal is to launch EOS staking rewards by the end of June." Earlier reports indicated that the main content of the new EOS tokenomics proposal is to control inflation with a fixed token supply of 21 billion, and to burn 80% of the total future supply.
io.net: Ignition Season 1 Points Now Live
DePIN protocol io.net in the Solana ecosystem announced on X platform that Ignition Season 1 points are now live.
Puffer Finance Announces Official Launch of Its Mainnet
Ethereum liquidity staking protocol Puffer Finance announced on X platform that the Puffer mainnet has officially launched. The mainnet release marks the fourth chapter of the Crunchy Carrot mission. Users can now deposit ETH, stETH, or wstETH. Puffer Finance also stated that the over-centralization of LST could threaten the decentralization of Ethereum, leading to risks such as transaction censorship, manipulation of MEV extraction, and impact on block times. These behaviors threaten the network's integrity and decentralization. To address this issue, all stETH deposits will be converted to ETH in the coming weeks to provide funding for a new wave of diversified validators.
Financing News
Modular Blockchain Sophon Raises $60 Million Through Node Sales
According to The Block, the modular blockchain platform Sophon, based on zkSync, raised $60 million through node sales. Investors include Maven 11, Paper Ventures, Spartan Group, and SevenX Ventures. The sale offered the purchase of 200,000 nodes using a tiered pricing model, with each node priced between 0.0813 ETH and 2.0556 ETH.
CRYPTO STARTUP LAGRANGE RAISES $13 MILLION IN SEED ROUND LED BY FOUNDERS FUND
According to CoinDesk, the crypto technology startup Lagrange, backed by Peter Thiel, has successfully raised $13 million. The company focuses on developing advanced encryption solutions aimed at enhancing data security and privacy protection. In addition to Founders Fund, Lagrange's seed round financing includes participation from Archetype Ventures, 1kx, Maven11, Fenbushi Capital, Volt Capital, CMT Digital, Mantle, and Ecosystem. Lagrange Labs is a crypto startup based on the Ethereum EigenLayer re-collateralization platform. Leveraging its proprietary technology, Lagrange provides a new encryption method that offers a higher level of data protection for both enterprise and individual users without sacrificing performance. The funding will be used to further develop its encryption technology and expand its market influence.
CRYPTO TRADING PLATFORM ARBELOS RAISES $28 MILLION IN FUNDING LED BY DRAGONFLY
Crypto trading platform Arbelos Markets has announced the completion of a $28 million funding round led by Dragonfly Capital, as reported by CoinDesk. This round of financing also includes participation from FalcolnX, Circle, Paxos, Polygon, and Deribit. Arbelos Markets will use this funding to enhance its trading capabilities in the derivatives and over-the-counter markets, focusing on serving institutional clients such as hedge funds and venture capital firms. The company's focus is to provide necessary trading liquidity for these institutional participants and act as a counterparty for products such as options and futures. Co-founders Joshua Lim and Shiliang Tang, with backgrounds in traditional finance and cryptocurrency trading, plan to use this funding to drive further development and innovation while improving the transparency and risk management capabilities of the trading platform.
WEB3 GAME DEVELOPER SEEDS LABS RAISES $12 MILLION IN SEED ROUND
Web3 game developer Seeds Labs has announced the completion of a $12 million seed round, with participation from Avalanche's Blizzard Fund, Solana Foundation, Krust, Hashkey Capital, UOB Ventures, Signum Capital, IVC, and Emoote, as reported. Seeds Labs, founded in 2021, is set to release its flagship product, the global cross-platform Web3 game "Bladerite," later this month.
KEY DATA
ROBINHOOD'S Q1 CRYPTO TRADING VOLUME UP 224% YEAR-OVER-YEAR
According to The Block, Robinhood announced its first-quarter earnings report on Wednesday. Revenue from trading increased by 59% year-over-year to $329 million. Robinhood attributed this mainly to $126 million in cryptocurrency revenue, a 232% increase, and $154 million in options revenue, a 16% increase. Driven by the rise in stock and cryptocurrency valuations, Robinhood's assets under custody (AUC) increased by 65% to $129.6 billion. Net profit increased to $157 million, compared to a net loss of $511 million in the same period last year. Earnings per share were $0.18, higher than analysts' estimate of $0.6. Revenue was $618 million, exceeding analysts' estimate of $549 million. Notably, nominal cryptocurrency trading volume increased by 224% year-over-year to $36 billion.
MakerDAO stated on X platform that in the past two months, the DAI supply has surged by nearly 1 billion tokens. In April, DAI set a new record with an on-chain trading volume of $636.72 billion, becoming the largest stablecoin by on-chain trading volume for the month. The Dai Savings Rate (DSR) has also shown positive momentum, with steady growth in recent months, and total deposits exceeding $2 billion last week.
DATA: 6 HONG KONG VIRTUAL ASSET ETFs TRADED ABOUT HK$19.04 MILLION TODAY, DOWN 27% FROM YESTERDAY
Hong Kong stock market data shows that as of the close of trading, the six Hong Kong virtual asset ETFs traded about HK$19.04 million today, a decrease of 32.18% from yesterday. Among them, the Huaxia Bitcoin ETF (3042.HK) traded HK$4.0287 million, the Huaxia Ethereum ETF (3046.HK) traded HK$0.8167 million, the CSOP Bitcoin ETF (3439.HK) traded HK$9.1015 million, the CSOP Ethereum ETF (3179.HK) traded HK$2.4537 million, the Foresight HashKey Bitcoin ETF (3008.HK) traded HK$2.4565 million, and the Foresight HashKey Ethereum ETF (3009.HK) traded HK$0.1824 million.
According to SoSoValue data, the US Bitcoin spot ETF had a total net inflow of $11.5409 million yesterday (May 8, Eastern Time). The Grayscale (GBTC) ETF had a net outflow of $0.00 yesterday, with a historical net outflow of $17.487 billion. The Bitwise ETF (BITB) had the highest single-day net inflow of $11.5409 million, with a total historical net inflow of $1.758 billion. As of the time of writing, the total net asset value of the Bitcoin spot ETF reached $51.504 billion, and the ETF net asset ratio (market value as a percentage of total Bitcoin market value) reached 4.25%, with a historical cumulative net inflow of $11.74 billion.
BITCOIN MINING DIFFICULTY DECREASES BY 5.63% TO 83.15T, EXPECTED TO DECREASE AGAIN NEXT TIME
Mempool data shows that Bitcoin mining difficulty underwent a 5.63% decrease to 83.15 T at 19:00 today (block height 842688). The next difficulty adjustment is expected to decrease by 6.39%.
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
