- LSE announces launch of new crypto ETNs as BTC ETFs reverse outflow trend: The London Stock Exchange announced this week that they plan to launch BTC and ETH ETNs by the end of May, signaling further ongoing interest in crypto-related products. Coupled with a reversal in BTC ETF outflows, these developments have helped to renew market optimism and push the price of BTC back above the $70K level, a +15% rise from the low of $61K only one week ago.
- BlackRock steps further into digital assets with launch of BUIDL: The BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund, called BUIDL, will allow qualified investors to earn U.S. dollar yields paid out through blockchain technology, with the fund holding its assets in cash, U.S. Treasury bills, and repurchase agreements. Following BlackRock’s announcement, the tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) sector received increased attention, leading to outperformance this week.
- DOJ charges, CFTC enforcement action, lead to 15% outflows at Kucoin: KuCoin, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, saw a 15% drop in the exchange's assets following news that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) had charged KuCoin and two of its founders with violating U.S. Anti-Money Laundering (AML) laws. Also this week, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) also announced it filed a civil enforcement action against Kucoin.
- Merger news emerges among three of the biggest AI-related tokens in the space: On Wednesday, Bloomberg M&A announced that three of the biggest AI-related tokens in the space, SingularityNet, Fetch.ai, and Ocean Protocol, are in talks to merge their tokens into one single AltSignals (ASI) token in a bid to improve their efforts at developing a decentralized AI platform. Following the merger, the fully diluted value (FDV) would be ~$7.5B.
🇪🇺Topic of the Week: What is MiCA?
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