📅Bitcoin Ends Q2 Above $30,000

This week, Cami Russo was joined by Caitlin Long, the founder and CEO of Custodia Bank, a financial institution providing payment rails and custody for digital assets. Caitlin is also a staunch proponent of web3.

We explore the recent surge of institutional interest in crypto, regulatory pressure in the US, and whether US regulators are prioritizing investor protection or incumbent interests.

With more than 40% of survey respondents confessing they don’t know what cryptocurrencies are, Consensys’ Nick Nelson offers his thesis on why crypto has a public perception issue and how the community can help fix it.

Today, we're diving into the crazy world of plugins and how they can be a power-up for your AI chatbot experience.

And no, we’re not looking into holiday plans and workout routines, we’ve got a list of plug-ins you can use in your daily Web3 adventures.

Bitcoin ETFs: Adoption Boost OR TradFi Money Grab?

Some of the largest names in asset management, like Fidelity, and BlackRock are jumping into the race, and the SEC has even approved the first leveraged Bitcoin futures ETF. While TradFi giants smell money, the SEC continues to evaluate whether or not to approve ETFs that own Bitcoin directly. So let’s quickly recap what Bitcoin ETFs are, who the major players are, and explore what all of this really means.

• Crypto Markets End Q2 On A High Note Bitcoin Holds Above $30,000 While Ether Rallies 4%.
• Lido Governance Greenlights Revamped Revenue Sharing Program Lido now offers a tiered revenue-sharing program that allocates a portion of its 5% share of staking rewards to prospective partners. The move comes at a time when Lido’s increasing staking dominance is under intense scrutiny.
• Avalanche On-chain Activity Doubles in 2023 Avalanche has seen 60,000 daily active addresses as of early June, up from around 25,000 at the start of the year. Trader Joe, Stargate and WooFi are driving the resurgence in activity.
• dYdX Chain To Launch Testnet Next Week dYdX Chain will comprise a standalone Layer 1 blockchain based on Cosmos and its Tendermint proof-of-stake consensus protocol. Once the chain is live, dYdX will launch its v4 iteration on the network, transitioning the project away from the Ethereum network.

• BIS Leverages Curve’s AMM Technology For CBDC Test The Bank For International Settlements, a transnational financial institution colloquially known as the central bank of central banks, published its interim report for Project Mariana, a cross-border CBDC pilot program that leverages Curve’s AMM design.
• Prometheum Draws Scrutiny Over Compliance Claims Few people had heard of Prometheum before its CEO testified in the U.S. House two weeks ago and claimed there is a viable path for digital assets firms to comply with regulations, contradicting claims from industry heavy-weights like Coinbase.
• Polygon Plans To Merge PoS Chain With zkEVM The Bank For International Settlements, a transnational financial institution colloquially known as the central bank of central banks, published its interim report for Project Mariana, a cross-border CBDC pilot program that leverages Curve’s AMM design.

• Maple Finance To Offer Overcollateralized Loans To Web3 Businesses Maple Finance has unveiled a new direct lending arm in Maple Direct. CEO Sidney Powell says the company’s new lending arm will fill a hole for a Web3 industry that previously saw some $55B loaned from now-defunct centralized lenders like Genesis and BlockFi.
• Coordinape Brings Web3 Reputation On-chain With CoSoul Coordinape, a platform that enables Web3 projects to recognize and reward contributors, has rolled out CoSoul, an “on-chain marker” of holders’ work history Over 15,000 eligible users can claim the free soulbound NFTs on the Optimism Layer 2 network.

• Metaverse Projects Attract 44% Of 2023 Web3 Investments Investors are continuing to pour money into metaverse projects, with nearly half of this year’s VC investments going to the sector. According to DappRadar, venture capital firms invested $707M into metaverse projects in the first half of 2023, accounting for 44% of all web3 investments.
• DAI’s Reliance On USDC Drops Below 10% As MakerDAO Expands Bond Holdings MakerDAO’s DAI, the top decentralized stablecoin, has drawn down its USDC collateral to 9.4% after starting the year at 51%. Circle’s USDC is now the seventh-largest collateral asset backing DAI.
• CyberKongz Introduces ‘Stakeless Staking’ With ERC-721x The team behind CyberKongz published an upgraded version of the popular ERC-721 nonfungible token standard. ERC-721x was designed to add layers of security for NFT holders through non-custodial staking and multi-wallet authentication.

• Bored Ape NFTs Hit 18-Month Low ApeCoin, the token billed as the linchpin of the world’s most valuable NFT ecosystem, hit an all-time low of $1.93 on June 19, down 93% from its all-time high. The floor price of BAYC NFTs also dropped to its lowest level since November 2021.
• Layer 2 Network ZkSync Unveils ‘Hyperchain’ Vision With ZK Stack ZkSync, the zero-knowledge scaling solution from Matter Labs, has launched a customizable tech stack for creating ZK-powered Layer 2 and Layer 3 networks on Ethereum. The “ZK Stack” is based on the code for zkSync Era.
• Hermes Wins Injunction Against MetaBirkins NFT Creator A U.S. court has sided with French luxury fashion house Hermes, granting a permanent injunction against the MetaBirkin NFT collection for copyright violations. Court documents showed an eight-person civil jury delivered a unanimous verdict against MetaBirkins’ creator.
• Traders Short TUSD Stablecoin After Prime Trust Halts Withdrawals Traders have been heavily shorting TUSD, with more than $5M worth of short sitting on the Aave and Fuse money market protocols, according to Parsec.

• DeFi Sector Rockets Higher With AAVE and COMP Rallying 30% Many top DeFi tokens are outperforming the broader markets, with the native tokens of Uniswap, Aave, Compound, and Synthetix posting double-digit gains over the past 24 hours.