Let's start this week as it should, with a great greeting from Prague, where the beer is cold, and the people are warm. This week we got some long waiting times if you think to unstake your ETH, there is some drama involving Bitrex, Coinbase and the SEC, and much more. Check everything below:

• Bitcoin: Chicago Mercantile Eschange Group will introduce new options for its standard and micro-sized BTC and ETH contracts, from May 22. As a Bitcoin cycle has on average 500 days, the low on this cycle was on November last year ($15760), and we are currently 140 days into the current cycle. How much can the BTC go up? I am full of hope about this time. Tesla was holding on its BTC in Q1, as they did not sell anything in the first 3 months of the year.
• Ethereum: On mainnet, with the Shappella upgrade, 5% of the validators are opting to unstake their ETH, and there is a 17 days waiting period for full withdrawal (a full node of more than 32 ETH), and 4.27 days waiting period for a partial withdrawal. The next upgrade is Cancun/Denneb, aiming to make transactions on rollups 10-100 times cheaper. On Optimism, we have Ethos Reserve allowing users to deposit collateral and borrow stablecoins earning up to 57% on the protocol Stability Pool. Lybra, let you do the same thing on ETH, if you deposit ETH or stETH with a colateral ration of 150%, to mint eUSD, earning 7.2% just by holdong it, and they are now present on skSync Alpha testnet too. Arbitrum and Optimism contributed with 45% of the transactions across layer-1 and layer-2.
• Altcoins: Crypto-derivatives trading volume rises for the third consecutive month since January 2022, accounting for 74% of the crypto-market volume in March. In the US a new bill seeks to regulate stablecoins and ban any unbacked token. If they plan to do bussiness in the US, they need to register or face one million dollars fine. Check a new privacy-centric L1 caled Namada, you may like it. Cardano (ADA) seems to do well. as TVL nearly tripled since the increased Dapp transactions and the adoption of new stablecoins, not to forget to mention the several Layer-2 scaling solutions deployed on mainnet and the sidechain activity. BNB Chain released a decent plan for 2023, with increased scalability through modular architecture, data storage with BNB Greenfield, and account abstraction infrastructure. Helium migrated to Solana, check your miners if they are still on the old blockchain. Polkadot onboarded 6 additional parachains, bringing their number to 41, and four forkless upgrades were enacted. If you are not risk-averse, check Ramses exchange or Arbitrum, last time you could get 7000% APRin RAM, if you provided liquidity.
• Blockchain games and NFTs: You can open your NFT packs in Genesis League, and you have a Legendary drop bonus decreasing with every passing week. On Splinterlands a Castle land NFT just sold with $16000. Riftwatchers packs may sell for DEC, if the proposal is accepted, and a new promo card may be unveiled on May 2nd.
• Good news: DEX volumes rise by 27%, as centralized exchange consolidation continues. Coinbase is set to launch an off-shore derivatives trading platform next week, as they received a license from Bermuda Monetary Authority. CCData updated exchange rankings for Arpil, with Bitstamp being the top centralized exchange, and Uniswap being the top decentralized exchange. The EU parliament endorsed the Markets in Crypto Act (MiCA), a milestone in the global regulation of digital assets. Societe Generale Crypto arm launched euro-pegged stablecoin (EURCV), while JPMorgan launchec its own stablecoin too in the US (JPM Coin). One of the major credit reporting agencies, TransUnion, has announced plans to offer credit scoring on public blockchains. And some sad news, 6M SPS and 8M DEC were stolen and dumped on the market from some old no longer used wallets. What happened there?
• Bad news: Crypto phishing attacks surged by 40% in 2022, from 3.5M to 5M detected attacks. Russia is vreating new institutions for crypto-mining and cross-border payments, working with Brazil, India, China and South Africa to develop their own currency to facilitate trade. There are some honeytraps with memecoins lately, some will only allow you to buy, but not to sell, some will set 100% transaction fees, so you will pay everything while selling and be left with zero. Check with some small amounts first, before going all in. The man who stole 50.000 BTC from Silk Road has been sentenced to one year in prison. All the BTC was seized. CashApp founder Bob Lee's murderer has appeared in court. Shaquille O'Neal was served papers on a class action lawsuit from the lawyers representing the FTX investors. Do Kwon, the LUNA guy, is charged with using false documents in Montenegro. The Tornado Cash developer was allowed to return home, but electronic monitoring devices are instaled in his home. Microsoft dropped Twitter from its advertising platform because it refused to pay API fees, then Elon want to sue Microsoft amid allegations that it used Twitter data to train its AI.
• Joke of the week: As Bitrex announced to shut down their US operations at the end of April, SEC served them a so-called Wells notice. Will they still be called into instance, since they exit the market? We will see, but this looks more like a power move to show how SEC is full of BS, even now, in the 24th hour of the day. Their problem seems to be that the exchange earned at least $1.3B from transaction fees, and SEC want some part of that money. Coinbase also received a Wells notice, and they criticized the regulators for not providing clarity on the rules they enforce. The Coinbase CEO said that he is ready to face the SEC in a long legal dispute, even sue them if necessary. SEC chair, Gary Gensler, testified before the House Financial Services Committee, suggesting that most tokens are securities and compliance with securities laws is mandatory. Now GOP lawmakers challenge SEC approach to crypto oversight. I was sure that, once you lose supremacy in such an important issue as crypto, some people will geel the pain and try to take US back on top. Too little, too late, i think! The measures taken by SEC to prevent banks from being able to custody digital assets were also questioned.

All the best,

George

Why not...

...have fun and win rewards on my favorite blockchain games (Splinterlands - Hearthstone-like card game) (Mobox - GamiFI NFT platform) and (X-Portal - Elrond all in one app, free NFTs, and more).

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