Biden Screws Up ($)
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1️⃣ Biden Vetoes Crypto Bill
Following the ETH ETF approval, many hoped that Biden was changing his tune and would abandon his promise to veto the bill overturning the SEC's SAB 121 which makes it more difficult for entities like banks to custody crypto.
Well, that didn't happen.
Yesterday, Biden made good on his promise to veto the bill, much to the chagrin of the entire industry – a move that will likely cost the former President some support inside crypto, which has seemingly found an ally in candidate Trump. The presumptive GOP nominee's efforts to court the crypto voters by both hosting an event for his NFT holders and promising to commute the sentence of Silk Road Ross Ulbricht seem to be working despite Trump's mixed record on crypto.
But there's no question about Biden's record with crypto now. With this veto, Biden has explicitly aligned himself with Gary Gensler and indicated he will continue to have the SEC's back in their cavalier crusade against crypto.
2️⃣ Solana Celebrity Coins 😵💫
This week, crypto memecoins had their latest evolution – Celebrity Coins. Australian rapper Iggy Azalea, SoundCloud rapper Trippie Redd, Nigerian rapper Davido joined the ranks with famed olympian/failed gubernatorial candidate Caitlyn Jenner who launched their own insider-allocated tokens on Solana.
Besides generating discussion over how getting dumped on by insiders could possibly be seen as positive instances of “onboarding,” much controversy swirled around whether this was largely the work of a single crypto promoter who helped Jenner launch her own Solana meme coin earlier this week.
Crypto Twitter's most famed memecoin influencer, Ansem, attracted some flack for pumping up the hysteria, which led to a choice Vitalik retweet and plenty of pushback elsewhere.
3️⃣ Crypto Villain Court Cases Conclude
Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon has "reached a settlement in principle" — a non-binding, handshake agreement — with the SEC over LUNA’s collapse. The trial started in late March without Kwon, who remains in Montenegro. Both parties must file papers for a proposed final judgment by June 12th.
Meanwhile, former FTX co-CEO Ryan Salame was sentenced to 90 months in federal prison, three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay $11M in fines for his role in the exchange’s collapse. In the sentence, he pled guilty to unlawful political contributions, defrauding the Federal Election Commission, and operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business.
4️⃣ ETH Upgrade Set for Early Next Year
Ethereum core developers want to launch Ethereum's next hard fork upgrade by the end of Q1 2025.
The 'Pectra' upgrade will feature the EVM Object Format (EOF), a new way to organize, update, and execute smart contracts on the EVM, and PeerDAS, a data availability sampling solution. Developers also agreed to replace the account abstraction EIP-3074 with EIP-7702, enabling EOAs to function as smart contract wallets, which adds significantly more functionality. The final scope of the upgrade, which consists of the Prague upgrade on the Execution Layer and the Electra upgrade on the Consensus Layer, is still under discussion.
5️⃣ ETH ETF Are Coming Quick
Several more S-1 forms, required before the spot ETH ETFs go live, have trickled in from BlackRock and Franklin Templeton. The Bloomberg ETF analysts see this as a positive sign, indicating issuers and the SEC are working quickly toward spot Ethereum ETF launches. Other firms like ARK Invest, Fidelity, and VanEck are also in the process of filing amended S-1 forms. Given this movement, we may see the ETFs as soon as the end of June.
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It was another weird, wild week for crypto.
In this week's Rollup, we talk about it all. Celebrity coins landed on Solana, ETH ETFs are seeming to speed towards launch, and we've got a lot of thoughts on where ETH price is headed.
Listen in! 👇
📊 Market Uncertainty. It was a mixed week for risk assets, led by steep losses across the stocks earlier in the week and an end-of-week redemption pump on Friday. What happened this week in markets?
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