Gensler & Memecoins: DeFi Week of April 17

This week we had the serious issue of the regulatory landscape for crypto in the US on one extreme, and a memecoin rally on the other, with a Gensler coin to bridge both ends (lol).

SEC chair Gensler dodged the question of whether ETH is a security while testifying on Capitol Hill. The SEC has sued crypto exchange Bittrex for allegedly selling unregistered securities, and is revisiting a potential rule change that may categorize many DeFi protocols as exchanges. Also, Congress is set to discuss a revived stablecoin bill on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, memecoins like PEPE rallied over 500x in just a few days. The excitement has called the attention of NFT traders, who are now trying their skills in the shitcoin arena.

In the unfortunately common “hacks” beat in crypto, an unknown wallet-draining exploit has security researchers perplexed after siphoning over $10M over the past five months.

And speaking of hacks, we have a sobering analysis — according to data we crunched, DeFi protocols that suffer hacks rarely recover, even if they keep building.

In markets, BTC and ETH are down about 10% in the past 7 days.

And in this week’s podcast, Cami Russo spoke with Maple Finance founder Sidney Powell, about creating a compliant DeFi which can help bring institutions over.

Enjoy!

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Podcast

Bringing Institutions and Businesses to DeFi

Sidney Powell is the co-founder and CEO of Maple Finance. Maple is a DeFi platform that offers uncollateralized loans and facilitates interactions between institutional borrowers and lenders. In our conversation we dive into Sidney’s background, how uncollateralized loans work, how the bear market affected Maple, the benefits of blockchain-based financial systems and more.

DeFi Alpha

Looping Staked ETH with Metronome Smart Farming

Defiant Video

💥Is it Meme Coin season? 🐸 (PEPE COIN, WOJAK COIN, AIDOGE COIN, & MORE?)

It seems we have the beginnings of a new meme coin season upon us. It’s been a rough couple of months for meme coins, but most have been on a tear over the past week. Maybe you want to know what’s pumping, or maybe you want to know about the latest hare-brained tokens — either way, we’ll get beyond the blue-chip meme coins today to give you an overview of crypto’s least-serious land.

🚨Bittrex Sued By The SEC (SECURITIES: ALGO, OMG, DASH, TKN, NGC, IHT)

The SEC alleges Bittrex sold unregistered securities such as Algorand’s ALGO token, OMG, DASH, TKN, NGC and IHT. Those tokens should be considered securities because the people who bought them “invested in a common enterprise” and had a “reasonable expectation of profit based on the efforts of others, according to the SEC.

🐸What’s next for Meme Coins? ($PEPE, $WOJAK) // Testimony of Gary Gensler

Friday

• Most DeFi Protocols Fade After They’re Hacked, Analysis Shows A survey of the top five hacks in dollar terms shows that each protocol’s total value locked is down by at least 96 since it was hacked.

• Tornado Cash Developer To Be Released Next Week Alexey Pertsev, a developer of the sanctioned privacy mixer Tornado Cash, will be released from jail on April 26 but will remain under house arrest until his trial, according to CryptoCanal founder Eléonore Blanc.

Thursday

• NFT Traders Turn To Flipping Memecoins Could it be that NFT holders craving for an adrenaline rush that JPEGs just aren’t delivering in this market, are turning to memecoins? Some say yes.

• Synthetix Volume Surges on Optimism Incentive Program Volume on Synthetix is surging after the decentralized derivatives exchange started distributing Optimism tokens.

• Société Générale Launches Euro Stablecoin In one of the most significant efforts by a major financial institution to embrace blockchain technology, a subsidiary of Societe Generale, Europe’s 7th largest bank, has launched a euro-pegged digital asset.

Wednesday

• Unknown Exploit Has Drained Over $10M In The Past Five Months A sophisticated wallet drainer has stolen more than $10M worth of assets since December 2022 across 11 different blockchains.

• KyberSwap Discovers Critical Bug In ‘Elastic’ AMM Kyber Network, a decentralized exchange and aggregator operating on multiple chains, instructed liquidity providers (LPs) to withdraw their liquidity from KyberSwap’s Elastic platform after discovering an undisclosed vulnerability on Apr. 17.

Tuesday

Markets & TVL

• PEPE Rallies 500x As Investors Pile Into New Wave Of Memecoins PEPE, a new Ethereum-based token named after the cartoon character turned memetic icon Pepe the Frog, has ascended to a market capitalization of $86M in less than five days, making it the sixth-most valuable memecoin, going by a list from CoinGecko.

• Gensler Refuses To Call Ether A Security At Congressional Hearing SEC Chairman Gary Gensler repeatedly declined to say whether Ether, the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency, is a security during a Congressional hearing Tuesday.

• Uniswap V3 To Launch On Polygon zkEVM Uniswap, the leading decentralized exchange by trade volume, is poised to deploy its V3 iteration on Polygon’s newly launched zkEVM Layer 2 network after a unanimous governance vote.

Monday

News

• SEC’s Bittrex Lawsuit Says ALGO, DASH are Unregistered Securities Decentralization doesn’t exempt a protocol or token from SEC oversight, the regulator suggested in a lawsuit filed against crypto exchange Bittrex on Monday.

• “Everybody” Should be Concerned About the SEC’s Proposed Rule Change for DeFi “Everybody,” from decentralized exchanges to open source developers should be worried about a proposed rule change from the SEC, said Miller Whitehouse-Levine, CEO of the DeFi Education Fund.

• Congress Revives Stablecoin Bill Some stablecoin issuers would have to register with U.S. authorities and provide monthly proof their tokens are fully backed by cash and other easy-to-sell assets, according to a draft bill that lawmakers will discuss at a hearing on Wednesday.