The market value of USDC returns to US$30 billion. A giant whale that has been dormant for 14 years sells 1,000 BTC.

Golden Weekly is a weekly blockchain industry summary column launched by Golden Finance. The content covers key news of the week, mining information, project trends, technology progress and other industry trends. This article is one of the weekly news articles, giving you an overview of the major events in the blockchain industry this week.

Headlines

▌USDC’s market value returned to above US$30 billion, setting a record since May 2023

According to Coingecko data, the market value of USDC has returned to above US$30 billion. At the time of writing this article, it hit US$30,057,019,111, setting a record since May 15, 2024.

▌The giant whale that has been dormant for 14 years sold 1,000 BTC 20 hours ago, making a profit of about US$60 million

According to Spot On Chain monitoring, a dormant whale The whale woke up after 14 years and deposited all 1,000 BTC ($67.1 million) into Coinbase about 20 hours ago at $67,116, allegedly causing the recent market crash. The whale minted these BTC in 2010 when the price was below $0.28, suggesting the whale may have just made over $60 million in profits.

▌Microsoft and Ant Digital will participate in the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s digital currency project

According to the South China Morning Post, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) announced Launch the wholesale central bank digital currency (wCBDC) project pilot, which is the world's first platform for tokenized deposits, tokenized assets and central bank digital currency settlement. It will also form an architecture community to develop common standards. According to people familiar with the matter, companies such as Microsoft and Ant Digital will join the community. Public information shows that Ant Digital will launch the Web3 technology brand ZAN for Hong Kong and overseas markets in 2023 to provide Web3 technical services to compliance agencies. Its products can help developers reduce development costs and technical risks.

▌The US SEC accused Binance.US in a new document of failing to provide relevant materials as required

The US SEC and Binance.US submitted a Joint status report detailing ongoing investigative efforts. SEC lawyers said in the filing that Binance.US did not fully comply with requests for information about its customers’ assets and other matters, and that Binance.US employees did not provide all requested discovery materials and failed to answer questions or otherwise resolve outstanding issues. There is limited help available with requests. The regulator said Binance.US failed to prove to it that Binance Global employees were unable to access U.S. customers’ assets. Binance.US said in the same joint report that it had “fulfilled its obligations” by answering all of the SEC’s questions and that further disclosure requests exceeded the limits of the consent order.

Policy

▌SEC Chairman refused to give any hint on whether to approve a spot Ethereum ETF

In an interview with Yahoo Finance on Friday, U.S. SEC Chairman Gary Gensler was asked about the ten companies that have submitted Ethereum spot ETF applications and whether he believed the summer court ruling involving Grayscale was a "precedent." Gensler declined to make any hint about this, saying: "I don't want to prejudge any one application, and as you said, we have 10 applications in front of us, I will not prejudge that. But to your question, we will Consider the facts and circumstances and the circumstances before us.”

▌U.S. court rules that trading certain crypto assets on Coinbase is a securities transaction

Before Coinbase In the product manager's brother insider trading case, a U.S. court ruled that trading specific crypto assets on Coinbase was a securities transaction, while the crypto industry and Coinbase have always argued that cryptocurrencies are not securities and do not fall within the jurisdiction of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. This is also not the first time a U.S. court has ruled on whether sales of certain cryptocurrencies are unregistered securities, regardless of whether they occur on a secondary platform such as an exchange. According to previous news, Nikhil Wahi, the brother of former Coinbase product manager Ishan Wahi, was sentenced to 10 months in prison for insider trading. Prosecutors said Ishan Wahi provided information about tokens that were about to be listed on Coinbase to Nikhil Wahi and his friend Sameer Ramani, and Nikhil Wahi and Sameer Ramani profited from buying the tokens in advance through insider information.

▌The Taiwan Financial Supervisory Commission plans to propose a draft special law on virtual currencies in September

According to Lianhe News Network, Taiwan Financial Supervisory Commission Chairman Huang Tianmu said that the Financial Supervisory Commission The Council plans to propose a draft law targeting virtual currencies in September this year. The purpose of this bill is to more effectively regulate the virtual currency market and ensure the safety of investors. In addition, Huang Tianmu also mentioned the issue of using virtual currency to commit fraud, indicating that strict administrative penalties will be imposed on individual currency dealers and overseas currency dealers. Regarding the possibility of Chinese people investing in overseas Bitcoin ETFs, Gao Jingping, deputy director of the Securities and Futures Bureau, said that relevant research results will be announced in April.

▌Virginia legislators in the United States passed an encryption-friendly bill and will establish an encryption working group

Virginia legislators in the United States voted 97 on March 4 The majority in favor passed Bill 339, which proposes the creation of a working group dedicated to studying the entire crypto ecosystem and making recommendations to promote the technology’s expansion. The upcoming crypto working group will consist of 13 members, five from the Senate, five from the House of Representatives, two non-legislative citizen members from the blockchain industry and one non-legislative citizen representing local government, with a deadline of 2024 The state also recently introduced crypto mining legislation on November 1, 2020, which aims to exempt crypto miners from the requirement to obtain a money transfer license.

Blockchain Applications

▌UniSat: Development work related to cursed inscriptions has been completed< /p>

UniSat stated on social platform X that the UniSat App is undergoing a security review and Google Play review process. In addition, UniSat has launched a proposal for self-minting and burning functions to lay the technical foundation for the issuance of stablecoins on the BRC-20 protocol. UniSat has completed the development work related to Cursed Inscription and is now in the testing phase and will be launched soon.

▌zkLink launches US$20 million ZKL funding program to support Layer 3 ecological application development

Zero-knowledge Layer 3 infrastructure provider zkLink announces the launch of US$20,000,000 The ZKL Grant Program to support developers building on zkLink, the grant program promotes innovation and growth within the zkLink ecosystem by providing financial support to outstanding developers and teams working on projects leveraging zkLink technology, grants will Based on the proposed project’s potential impact, technical feasibility, and whether it matches zkLink’s mission of improving the privacy and scalability of blockchain technology. It is reported that applications for the ZKL funding plan will be open from March 11, 2024 to June 11, 2024, and zkLink plans to notify successful project parties on June 15.

▌Wormhole: Plans to use W as the governance token of its yet-to-launch Wormhole DAO

According to the airdrop details released by Wormhole, this airdrop includes 500,000,000 W is used for users using Wormhole ecosystem applications on more than 30 Wormhole connected blockchains, as well as approximately 117,305,000 W community users such as Wormhole Discord users, various NFT communities, Monad communities, and Pyth stakers. Wormhole added that it determines eligibility for the airdrop based on each user’s length of time participating in the protocol as well as “cumulative volume of messages and transfers, consistency of usage throughout the lifetime of the protocol, and engagement.” Additionally, the protocol plans to use W as the governance token for its yet-to-launch Wormhole DAO. It is reported that the maximum supply of W will be 10 billion, but only 1.8 billion will be circulated initially.

▌Vitalik Buterin: Supporting Reddit's attempt at contributor ownership

Vitalik Buterin quotes on Warpcast "Description of directional stock plan in Reddit IPO (U.S. citizens only) )" posted, "Strongly support Reddit's attempt at contributor ownership. I know this is entirely a matter of regulation, not Reddit itself, but it makes me sad. This is why we support Crypto, this is a global economy." According to previous news, Reddit submitted an IPO application on the New York Stock Exchange and stated that it would invest part of its excess cash reserves in Bitcoin and Ethereum, and may continue to make such investments in the future.

▌BitDeer launches cryptocurrency mining chip SEAL01

BitDeer, a technology company in the field of blockchain and high-performance computing (Nasdaq: BTDR) launched its first cryptocurrency mining chip SEAL01, designed using 4-nanometer process technology. In testing, the chip reached an energy efficiency ratio of 18.1J/TH.

▌The off-chain governance voting platform Snapshot launches a new function Boost

The off-chain governance voting platform Snapshot launches a new function Boost, allowing DAO to use ERC -20 tokens are awarded to voters to incentivize voting participation. This feature allows DAOs to select tokens and amounts for voter rewards, choose a lottery or proportional distribution mechanism, and define eligibility parameters. The DAO can also customize the winning rate and set a cap for large token holders. Currently, Boost has launched private beta versions to some DAOs. Snapshot hopes this new feature will help address voter apathy that occurs when only a small percentage of token holders vote on DAO proposals.

Cryptocurrency

▌Bitcoin breaks through 70,000 US dollars and continues to hit new highs

The market situation on the 8th of this month showed that Bitcoin once exceeded US$70,000 per coin, rising 3.93% within the day, continuing to hit new highs.

▌Data: Ethereum mainnet fee revenue this week was approximately US$200 million, the highest in the past two years

IntoTheBlock’s market report on Friday The Ethereum network’s revenue surged to a nearly two-year high this week as a speculative frenzy over meme coins fueled blockchain activity. IntoTheBlock data shows that Ethereum mainnet network fee income reached US$193 million this week, the highest figure since May 2022, an increase of 78% from last week. On the other hand, the increase in activity makes blockchain very expensive for users. IntoTheBlock noted that Ethereum’s average transaction costs (gas fees) rose to $28 this week, making it “unaffordable” for many users.

▌DAI savings rate increased to 15%

According to the governance forum update, Maker DAO voted to approve an increase in the stable rate of mortgage assets such as ETH and WBTC vaults. and many other proposals, the adjusted stable rate range is 15% to 17.25%. In addition, SparkLend DAI borrowing annual interest rate will increase from 6.7% to 16%; the PSM cooling-off period for increasing the debt limit will be shortened from 24 hours to 12 hours, thereby increasing USDC deposits and DAI minting throughput; DSR will be increased to 15% to Make holding DAI more attractive, boosting demand and easing downward price pressure; GSM pause delay will be reduced from 48 hours to 16 hours to allow for faster implementation of future adjustments. These changes will be implemented in the Maker protocol on March 10, 2024 at 19:55 UTC.

▌BTC founder Satoshi Nakamoto ranks 21st on the Forbes Global Rich List

Bitcoin Magazine editor Rizzo published an article on the X platform saying that when the BTC price When it exceeded $65,000, BTC founder Satoshi Nakamoto ranked 21st on the Forbes Global Rich List.

▌Bitcoin’s market capitalization surpassed Meta and jumped to the ninth place in the world’s mainstream asset market capitalization

According to 8marketcap data, as Bitcoin continues to rise strongly in recent times , its current market value has reached US$1.337 trillion, surpassing Meta Platforms (previously Facebook, with a market value of US$1.27 trillion), and jumping to the ninth place in the world's mainstream asset market value.

▌The market value of Ethereum jumped to the 24th place in the global mainstream asset market value

According to 8marketcap data, as Ethereum continues to rise strongly recently, its current The market value has reached US$438.98 billion, surpassing Mastercard (market value of US$437.05 billion) and jumping to the 24th place in the world's mainstream asset market value.  

Morgan Stanley is evaluating adding a spot Bitcoin ETF to its platform, according to CoinDesk.

▌"Fortune": Binance.US laid off two-thirds of its staff after the US SEC lawsuit, and revenue plummeted 75%

< p> According to Fortune magazine, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) previously filed a lawsuit against Binance. In a court document released in December last year, Binance.US Chief Operating Officer Christopher Blodgett revealed that since Since June last year, Binance.US has had to lay off more than 200 employees, equivalent to two-thirds of its total workforce, due to SEC actions. Binance.US’s trading volume and business in general have collapsed, Christopher Blodgett said in testimony, noting that the trading platform’s revenue fell by about 75% after the SEC sought an injunction to freeze assets last June. A spokesperson for Binance.US did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Important economic developments

▌Federal Reserve Chairman Powell: An interest rate cut may be appropriate at some point this year

Federal Reserve Chairman Powell said that it may be appropriate to cut interest rates at some point this year; the Fed remains highly concerned about inflation risks; we do not expect that lowering policy interest rates will be appropriate until there is greater confidence that inflation can sustainably decline toward 2%.

▌Federal Reserve Chairman Powell: Fully aware of the risks of cutting interest rates too late

Federal Reserve Chairman Powell said that he is fully aware of the risk of cutting interest rates too late. The risk of a late rate cut, and if the economy develops as expected, we will carefully consider gradually lifting the restrictive stance of policy this year.

▌Spot gold hit a record high, with the latest quote being US$2,136.7 per ounce

According to Reuters quotes, spot gold hit a record high, with the latest quote being US$2,136.7 per ounce. $2136.7.

▌The probability that the Federal Reserve will keep interest rates unchanged in March is 96.0%

According to CME "Fed Watch", the Federal Reserve maintained interest rates at 5.25% in March - The probability of keeping the 5.50% range unchanged is 96.0%, and the probability of cutting interest rates by 25 basis points is 4.0%. The probability of keeping interest rates unchanged by May is 74.0%, the probability of a cumulative 25 basis point interest rate cut is 25.1%, and the probability of a cumulative 50 basis point interest rate cut is 0.9%.

Disclaimer: As a blockchain information platform, Golden Finance publishes articles for information reference only and not as actual investment advice. Please establish a correct investment philosophy and be sure to increase your risk awareness.