🟡 CZs legal show down

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Good Morning!

Binance Founder CZ could spend up to three years in prison, at least that’s what the US DOJ wants to happen. Meanwhile, the ETH ETF decision has been postponed by the SEC, and HBAR pumped 90% on misinterpreted news.

Let’s jump into the news. 👇️ 

Markets 

Binance Founder Changpeng Zhao Should Spend Three Years in Prison, DOJ Says (3 minute read)
The U.S. Department of Justice slammed Binance's ex-CEO, Changpeng "CZ" Zhao, advocating for a three-year prison stint for flouting federal sanctions and laundering laws. The lawyers at DOJ are also gunning for Zhao to cough up a hefty $50 million fine.

Meanwhile, Zhao's defense swings back hard, arguing for zero jail time. They cite his hefty fine payment and "extraordinary acceptance of responsibility" as reasons he should avoid prison, suggesting a home confinement in Abu Dhabi instead.

The DOJ's angle? This sentencing isn't just about Zhao—it's a global billboard warning that breaking U.S. laws, even if you're building a huge business, comes with serious consequences.

SEC delays making a decision on spot Ethereum ETF proposals (2 minute read)
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is hitting the snooze button again on the crypto world. They've decided to delay rulings on two hot-ticket Ethereum spot ETFs pitched by Grayscale and Franklin Templeton. The decision day for Grayscale's offering has been pushed to June 23, 2024, while Franklin Templeton's hopefuls will have to bite their nails until June 11, 2024.

And it's not just them; other crypto giants like VanEck and BlackRock are also stuck in this waiting game. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing or unexpected, if you’ll remember our coverage last year, the Bitcoin spot ETF was pushed back multiple times and ultimately got the green light, it just let the narrative run for longer (which can be a good thing for price).

HBAR token surges 90% amid confusion over BlackRock’s involvement (2 minute read)
HBAR's value skyrocketed by a whopping 90% after a big misunderstanding. The Hedera blockchain's native token surged when the HBAR Foundation's announcement was misconstrued to suggest that BlackRock was partnering with Hedera.

In reality, trading firms Archax and Ownera merely tokenized a BlackRock money market fund on Hedera—no partnership, no direct involvement from the financial behemoth. This mix-up sent the crypto world into a frenzy, fueled by influencers on X, racking up over 1.6 million views and 2,700 reposts.

BlackRock's $22.3 billion fund hasn't moved an inch towards blockchain. Chris O’Connor of Cardano Ghost Fund DAO called out the HBAR Foundation for their misleading hype, comparing it to bragging about a partnership just because you bought a high-end designer bag.

Airdrop Wednesday 🪂 

For those of you who have been farming airdrops (free money) over the past few months, a bunch of projects that we mentioned previously have already launched their tokens. Here’s what we’re focusing on at the moment.

LayerZero ❌ Too Late to start

LayerZero will launch at a HUGE valuation, but it is yet to be seen how many people the token will be distributed amongst.

This ones likely too late to start if you don’t already have some past activity. In our case, we’ve been farming for a while and are already happy with the volume bridged. If you’re in a similar situation, I’d recommend just pushing a couple of cheap transactions per week to keep activity up.

Our go to sites to push extra cheap transactions are:

L2Pass
L2Marathon
Gas.zip

The token is set to launch before the end of June so we’re in the final phases now.

Scroll ✅ Not too late to start

For a long time, we thought that Scroll wouldn’t introduce a points system and they would operate similar to ZKsync (not giving any details away in regards to criteria).

However, last week, the team at Scroll announced “Marks” which is essentially their own version of points. You can read the announcement below.

Some suggested actions from us include:

Scroll Native Bridge - This one is important, wait until ETH gas fees are low in order to pay less fees.
Buy Cheap NFTs - I’m talking the ones that cost less than $0.50, easy unique transactions.
Provide liquidity - This is for advanced users, we provide ETH/BTC because we’re already happy to be exposed to both coins.
Make some swaps - 241 farms Jumper at the same time.

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Misc

PayPal research proposes greener bitcoin mining (2 minute read)
PayPal research is tossing its hat into the green ring with a fresh report suggesting a clever way to clean up Bitcoin mining. As the crypto world faces heat for its hefty environmental footprint, PayPal’s brainstorm involves extra Bitcoin rewards for miners who go green.

Here’s the plan: Identify miners using low-carbon energy through "green keys" linked to their public keys, then reward these eco-friendly miners with special transactions that include a multisig wallet stuffed with extra Bitcoin. These transactions also come with lower fees to sweeten the deal, making them hard to resist for green miners aiming to scoop up more for less. PayPal's move, painting this scheme as an “indirect grant,” aims to shift Bitcoin’s dirty image towards something a little cleaner.

New Solana Network Update Scheduled for Late May (2 minute read)
Solana is rolling up its sleeves for a major network makeover with its upcoming v1.18 update, slated to hit the mainnet beta on May 27. Aimed at ironing out the network's nagging congestion problems, this update is a response to the traffic jam caused largely by bot-driven transactions swarming meme coin activities. These bots have been clogging the system, resulting in a surge of transaction failures. The Solana team, in collaboration with infrastructure company Anza, has already pushed version 1.18.11 onto the devnet, with validators now putting it through its paces. This update aims to keep Solana running smooth and speedy, tackling the congestion head-on to restore its efficiency.

Our Recommendations:

💻️ MEXC - Where we find and trade new coins with low fees
📈 TradingView - Software we use to chart Crypto.
🔐 Trezor - Our favorite hardware wallet to keep our Crypto secure.
🦑 Kraken - Where we buy crypto with cash / withdraw profit to our bank.

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