Vanguard has said it doesn’t believe in crypto’s investment case, and it doesn’t allow bitcoin ETFs to trade on its platform.



But the fund giant’s new CEO, Salim Ramji, led BlackRock’s ETF business as the company spurred an industry double-take with its bitcoin ETF filing last year. 



So something’s got to give, right? 



Maybe not soon, but ultimately yes, according to Ric Edelman, founder of the Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals (DACFP).



Ramji was BlackRock’s global head of iShares and index investing before leaving the world’s largest asset manager in January. He started his career leading the firm’s corporate strategy and moved on to become its head of US wealth advisory.



Vanguard said Tuesday that Ramji would succeed Tim Buckley as chief executive on July 8. The firm had revealed in February that Buckley was set to retire by the year’s end.  



Though Ramji left BlackRock the month that US spot bitcoin ETFs gained Securities and Exchange Commission clearance, he was of course involved in the lead-up.



Fast-forward four months, and BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) has so far led the category with $15.5 billion of net inflows. IBIT trails the segment’s largest fund — the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust ETF (GBTC) — by less than $1 billion in assets under management. 



Read more: Strong start, slowing demand: The first 4 months of US spot bitcoin ETFs        



In a July 2023 interview on Bloomberg TV, Ramji said the company was “incredibly excited” about blockchain technology given its ability to remove considerable “friction” across the financial ecosystem.



The then-BlackRock executive likened the planned bitcoin product to its physical gold ETF — the iShares Gold Trust (IAU) — launched in 2005.



“The gold is held in custody in a vault, which is remote from us, but it’s now easier to transact in gold using our gold ETFs,” he said at the time. “We’re applying that same

Yes, Vanguard’s new CEO supported BlackRock’s bitcoin ETF launch

Circle’s looking to move across the pond. 



The USDC issuer confirmed to Blockworks that its parent company filed the “required paperwork with the High Court of the Republic of Ireland to redomicile the company to the US.”



Bloomberg first reported the news.



Earlier this year, Circle revealed that it confidentially filed for an initial public offering in the US in January of this year. The approach is common and has been used by other companies such as Airbnb and Uber. 



Read more: Circle confidentially files for US IPO



“The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined. The initial public offering is expected to take place after the [Securities and Exchange Commission] completes its review process, subject to market and other conditions,” the press release said at the time. 



This isn’t the first time that Circle’s expressed interest in a US IPO, though the move from Ireland could suggest that the company is pursuing the traditional approach to going public. 



Circle had previously expressed interest in going public through a special-purpose acquisition company or SPAC. The route — which requires the private company looking to go public to merge with an existing publicly listed shell company — was popular throughout 2021 and 2022. 



While the S-1 filed with the SEC hasn’t been publicly released yet, it shows that the company is pursuing the more traditional IPO model this time around. 



Per SEC rules, potential investors won’t be able to publicly view the S-1 filed with the regulatory agency until 15 days before the company starts its roadshow. This changes, however, to 15 days prior to the registration date if a company chooses to not pursue a roadshow.







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Circle says it plans to ‘redomicile’ company in the US

We find ourselves in a strange interregnum for crypto policy in the United States. 



On one side, Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler is ramping up an all-out war against the crypto industry, accelerating enforcement actions and saber-rattling, perhaps in anticipation of being replaced after November's elections. The aim seems straightforward: Let’s do as much damage to crypto while we have the chance. 



On the other side, a growing bipartisan group in Congress is working, ploddingly, towards new crypto-focused legislation in an acknowledgment that the current status quo is untenable. 



The slow and steady legislative pace gives Chair Gensler the chance to be the fox in the crypto henhouse while our lawmakers are occupied with other jobs on the farm. 



The insatiable campaign against crypto undermines the work that Congress has done so far to address crypto’s long-standing regulatory quagmire. It’s time the farmers regain control and flush the fox out.



Indeed, Congress has made notable progress towards addressing key regulatory issues, even if their efforts remain imperfect and incomplete. Some of the pieces of draft legislation could prove a net positive for the crypto ecosystem with considered revisions. Rep. Patrick McHenry and Rep. Maxine Waters' yet-to-be-released stablecoin bill has garnered decent bipartisan support and could reach a House floor vote this session. McHenry's FIT21 bill on crypto market structure is headed for a full-House vote at the end of May.  



Just last week, a bipartisan House coalition repealed the SEC's punitive SAB 121 accounting rules for crypto — a clear rebuke of Gensler's aggressive tactics, and a sign there is Congressional appetite to move quicker than the typical glacial speed they are accustomed to with core crypto issues. 



These moves demonstrate that lawmakers at least seem to grasp that if they don't act soon to rein in Gensler's crusade, they may end up protecting just a rump of

It’s time for Congress to protect the crypto henhouse

Robinhood’s European crypto branch launched Solana staking.



The feature will offer roughly 5% APY at launch, though that could vary as staking rewards change, Robinhood Crypto general manager Johann Kerbrat told Blockworks in an interview. 



This puts Robinhood Crypto a tick below Coinbase, which offers an estimated reward of 5.42% for Solana stakers. The Phantom wallet offers Solana staking with an APY as high as 7.58%.



The firm chose Solana for its first staking product because SOL’s one of the most popular tokens among its EU customers, and staking on Solana is simpler than on Ethereum, Kerbrat said.



Read more: Robinhood’s crypto trade volume rose 10% in February



(Bitcoin is the most-held crypto among EU customers, Robinhood said in a press release.)



Kerbrat mentioned that the company was drawn to Solana’s shorter bonding period — the amount of time it takes before newly-staked assets begin earning yield. Solana’s bonding period is roughly two days, while Ethereum’s varies from a few days to a few weeks.



When asked if Robinhood Crypto would add staking for additional assets — like Ethereum — in the future, Kerbrat said “we are definitely thinking about it,” but declined to go into specifics. 



Robinhood Crypto launched in December as a crypto trading app in the European Union. The entity is registered and regulated in Lithuania, according to a Robinhood blog post. The company’s crypto arm noted that its app is highly downloaded by users in Poland, Italy and Lithuania.



Read more: Robinhood looks to jumpstart crypto trading revenue via EU expansion



Robinhood Crypto lists 33 tokens, as opposed to Robinhood’s US trading app, which only offers 15 crypto assets — even fewer in New York and Texas. 



SOL and Solana memecoins including BONK and DogWifHat are available in the EU but not the US.



Robinhood’s US arm delisted Solana — among other cryptocurrencies alleged by the US Securities and Exchange

Robinhood enables Solana staking for customers in Europe

Hiya!



Markets may be down slightly, but that’s not the main thing bumming me out today. Last night, I took a train all the way up to Queens just to see the Mets blow a 9th-inning lead. What even is a “Phillie?”



Anyways, let’s talk Solana.







Pandora’s Box of L2s



Solana’s lack of layer-2s has long been a point of pride for some Solana supporters. 



Rather than relying on a fragmented and expanding network of blockchains to scale à la Ethereum, why not just move to a blockchain fast and cheap enough to keep everyone in the same building?



But since fast things can always be faster, and cheap things cheaper, the layer-2 bug appears to be coming for Solana. 



Zeta Markets announced a $5 million raise Tuesday, partially to build a DeFi layer-2 on Solana. Electric Capital led the round, which added to the $8.5 million Zeta Markets raised in a 2021 seed round led by Jump Capital. 



Zeta Markets currently runs a regular derivatives DEX — the fifth-largest on Solana, according to DefiLlama. By adding a layer-2 to the mix, it wants to make its DEX as fast as a CEX.



Zeta Markets founder Tristan Frizza told me that he’s always been a “monolithic chain maxi,” but when you’re letting traders take big leverage on derivatives, market makers want to see some really low latency.



“Solana does what, 400 millisecond block times? But these guys are used to like 10 milliseconds on Binance,” Frizza said.



Off-chain centralized exchanges can basically figure out the price of assets faster than decentralized exchanges, which are slowed down by the underlying blockchain’s throughput. In some cases, savvy arbitrageurs can exploit the momentary differences in price — to the detriment of DEX liquidity providers. 



So, there are justifiable reasons beyond snake oil sales for why Solana would want to build layer-2s. Still, it bears notice that Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko — who invested in this Zeta Markets round — appeared

Lightspeed Newsletter: Solana caught the layer-2 bug

On-chain social network infrastructure Lens is getting a new home.



The new Lens Network will build upon the work of the original Lens Protocol as one of zkSync’s ZK Stack hyperchains.



Lens Lab develops the protocol under the umbrella of Avara, which also built DeFi giant Aave.



But Avara CEO Stani Kulechov told Blockworks that the non-financial use cases of crypto — citing identity and online social interactions — have the potential to be even bigger.



“The way I think about finance and social [spaces] is that there are a lot of people who have financial capital, but everyone on the planet has social capital — the content we create, the relationships we create and the identities we interact with,” Kulechov said.



Read more: Web2 social media kinda sucks. So why aren’t people using Web3 platforms?



The ZK Stack chain will serve as a “central hub” for Lens, which, according to a blog post released Tuesday, will “seamlessly integrate with other EVM and non-EVM blockchains.”



A testnet release of the new network is still months away. The current version of Lens has been operational on Polygon’s PoS chain since May 2022.



The modular, open-source ZK Stack framework, based on the zkSync Era code, will provide Lens with horizontal scaling, connecting as many Lens chains as needed by zk bridges, according to Matter Labs CEO Alex Gluchowski.



“You can add one billion users and you will not lose any of the properties of verifiability,” Gluchowski told Blockworks. “Every single transaction of those millions and billions of users will be verified by every single Ethereum validator — which is the magic of zk,” he said.



Lens pioneered on-chain social infrastructure, but was initially conceived and developed at a time when zk rollup technology was still seen as years away from production at scale.



Read more: ZkSync launches rival to Optimism’s OP Stack



“We want to build something that enables open and fair social

Lens Network to migrate to zkSync

A Bloomberg headline recently claimed that "more than 90% of stablecoin transactions aren’t from real users,” sparking concern about the authenticity of transactions within the blockchain ecosystem. 



This isn’t the first time that the digital assets industry has faced scrutiny about an apparent lack of authenticity in transactions. Last year, the SEC accused Binance.US of inflating trading volumes. Way back in 2019, a study by Bitwise found that 95% of spot bitcoin trading volume by unregulated exchanges was faked. Both findings have their detractors.



This isn’t the first moral panic around crypto’s legitimacy, and it won’t be the last.



However, a deeper dive into this “more than 90%” figure reveals a more nuanced narrative. A narrative, in fact, that oversells the fraudulent nature of crypto and severely undersells the transformative nature of blockchain technology.



The cited source for this headline, a collaboration between Allium and VISA, introduces a dashboard that attempts to differentiate between "organic" stablecoin transactions initiated by end consumers and businesses versus transactions orchestrated by computer programs. 



This differentiation, while well-intentioned, fails to grasp the unique execution model of blockchain technology.



Blockchain technology operates on a fundamentally different paradigm compared to traditional payment rails. At its core, blockchains are decentralized, immutable ledgers maintained by a network of nodes. Transactions on blockchains are executed through smart contracts, which are self-executing agreements with contract terms directly written into code.



Unlike centralized payment systems where transactions are initiated and validated by trusted intermediaries, blockchain transactions are triggered by external actions interacting with smart contracts. These actions can be programmatically executed by automated processes — commonly referred to as bots — without the need to extend any trust

Stablecoins bots are a feature, not a bug

The upcoming US presidential election may spur bitcoin out of its current “consolidation phase,” according to Galaxy CEO Mike Novogratz.



Crypto will likely stay politicized until more Democrats pivot their anti-segment stance, he argued, meaning a change in administration could be significant for the space.



Novogratz said during a Tuesday earnings call that, following the approval of spot bitcoin ETFs and last month’s block reward halving, he believes bitcoin could keep trading between $55,000 and $75,000 in the near-term. 



The price of bitcoin (BTC) was at about $61,450 at 12:30 pm ET Tuesday.



“I think that’s probably where we are — certainly for this quarter and maybe next quarter — until either the Fed starts cutting rates because the economy finally slows or we get through the election.”



Read more: Macro headwinds could spur a ‘boring’ bitcoin summer — or something worse



The 2024 presidential election is likely to bring clarity to the crypto regulatory landscape as the segment has increasingly been politicized. Joe Biden and Donald Trump are set to face-off in a rematch as they did four years ago.



Just last week, the Biden administration said in a statement that the president would veto a resolution invalidating Securities and Exchange Commission’s Staff Accounting Bulletin (SAB) 121 if it reached his desk. The bulletin, introduced in 2022, says crypto custodians should report a liability and “corresponding assets” on their balance sheets for all custodied cryptocurrencies. 



“It just read to the crypto community as the Democrats saying no to crypto,” Novogratz said of the Biden administration's comments. “And it’s unfair; there are a ton of Democrats that are pro-crypto…but the power has been held by Elizabeth Warren on the Senate banking committee, [Gary] Gensler and a few others.”



The Galaxy CEO likened Democrats’ crypto opposition to party members bad-mouthing dogs.



“Can you imagine a

Bitcoin may stay in a 'consolidation phase' until US election: Novogratz

As the 2024 election looms, crypto-focused legislation is starting to make its way through the US House. But roadblocks in the Senate still loom. 



House members last week approved joint resolution 109 — which would invalidate the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Staff Accounting Bulletin (SAB) 121 — in a 228-182 vote. It’s the first time a crypto bill has made it to and passed the House in a floor vote. 



The resolution now moves on to the Senate, where the Democrat majority makes it unlikely to pass, although there were 21 Democrats who voted against their party and in favor of the resolution in the House. If the legislation does make it past the Senate, however, the Biden administration has said the president will veto the resolution. 



Read more: Biden backs Gensler as House advances resolution to power-check SEC 



​​“Limiting the SEC’s ability to maintain a comprehensive and effective financial regulatory framework for crypto assets would introduce substantial financial instability and market uncertainty,” the White House wrote in a statement last week. 



The House has passed several crypto bills out of Committee, but has failed to bring the vast majority of them to the floor for a full vote. The Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act, the Clarity for Payment Stablecoins Act, the Keep Your Coins Act and the Financial Technology Protection Act all survived markup, but have not been scheduled for a full vote. 



The Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act, known as the FIT act, last week advanced to the House Committee on Rules. It should be heading for a floor vote later this month, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., said.  



In the Senate, crypto-related bills, even those with bipartisan support, have yet to grab the interest of committee heads, who would need to add markups to their respective agendas. 



The Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act, backed by Elizabeth

Crypto bill update: What legislation is making its way forward? 

TRON DAO today announced that Google Cloud has joined its roster of Super Representative candidates on the TRON blockchain. Super Representatives are responsible for producing blocks and packing transactions to help ensure blockchain governance on the TRON network. 



This initiative builds on TRON’s collaboration with Google Cloud to make its data available on BigQuery, Google Cloud’s fully-managed, serverless data warehouse. Having TRON data on BigQuery equips developers with advanced analytics to dissect blockchain transactions and smart contract intricacies on the TRON network. 



It not only streamlines in-depth analysis for data-driven decision-making but also paves the way for more sophisticated decentralized applications (dapps). The scalability and cost-efficiency of BigQuery bolsters the TRON ecosystem, aligning with its vision of an accessible decentralized internet. 



TRON will also be using Google Cloud’s suite of solutions that empower the Web3 space including Compute Engine for scalable computing resources and Kubernetes Engine for managing containerized applications.



Dave Uhriyniak, Ecosystem Lead at the TRON DAO, expressed enthusiasm about this collaboration: "The initiative with Google Cloud represents a significant  step for TRON DAO in our journey towards decentralizing the web and making blockchain technology more mainstream. Google Cloud's becoming a Super Representative candidate underscores our shared vision for a secure, innovative, and decentralized future."



“At Google Cloud, we’re committed to making it easy for developers to build Web3 products on our efficient, secure, and reliable infrastructure. We look forward to providing this infrastructure for the TRON ecosystem,” said Rishi Ramchandani, Head of APAC Web3, Google Cloud.



With its high-performance blockchain that supports smart contracts, dApps, and a wide array of digital assets, TRON facilitates fast, low-cost transactions, making it an attractive platform

TRON DAO adds Google Cloud as a Super Representative candidate on the TRON blockchain

Degen chain, a layer-3 blockchain, hasn’t produced a block in over 42 hours. 



According to the last post on Degen’s X account, a resync was expected to be completed at around 9 am ET, or 6 am PT. Yet hours later, the network remains stalled. 



“Post-resync, they'll test the chain to ensure all data affected by the reorganization is restored. We apologize for the downtime,” the last post — which went up earlier Tuesday — said.



Degen’s chain explorer shows that no transactions have happened today, and that the last transaction took place two days ago.



Third-party infrastructure provider Conduit’s last post is nearly 24 hours old. 



Read more: What is Degen chain? The L3 built for the memecoin community Degen



“After a custom config change on Friday at [2 pm ET] 11 am PT, two Conduit chains, Degen and Proof of Play’s Apex, stopped posting batches for more than 24 hours. Upon resuming, the first batches triggered reorgs on both chains,” Conduit said.



“We’re working with both teams and Offchain Labs to restore service and minimize impact to users,” the post continued.



As previously reported by Blockworks, Degen chain was designed to let developers access the memecoin community, and has become especially popular with Farcaster users.



“Degen, an ERC-20 token launched in January 2024, has reshaped the Farcaster ecosystem by enabling Casters to reward others with Degen for posting quality content,” Degen’s site said.







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L3 Degen chain stopped producing blocks 42 hours ago

The state of Wisconsin’s investment board disclosed holdings in BlackRock’s bitcoin ETF on Tuesday. 



The 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows that the board bought $99 million, or roughly 2.4 million shares, of IBIT. The filing also revealed that the board holds roughly one million shares of Grayscale’s bitcoin ETF. 



According to its website, the agency is an investment organization that manages the Wisconsin Retirement System and the State Investment Funds alongside some smaller funds.



“SWIB has been successful in generating respectable returns and maintaining the trust of the beneficiaries and stakeholders of the funds we oversee,” the site said. 



SWIB declined to comment on the holdings in the disclosure. 



Investment managers are required to disclose their holdings in 13F forms if they manage $100 million or more. The filings show what firms bought and held through the last quarter. 



Read more: What 13F filings tell us about institutional appetite for bitcoin ETFs



Blockworks previously reported that BNY Mellon as well as BNP Paribas disclosed holdings, though both banks owned far less shares in comparison to Wisconsin’s disclosure on Tuesday. 



Paribas disclosed roughly 1,000 shares, and BNY Mellon had 20,000 shares of IBIT and 7,000 shares of Grayscale. 



Other investment managers have disclosed much larger holdings. Quattro Advisors, a Pittsburgh-based registered investment manager, disclosed 468,000 shares of IBIT, for example. 



On Monday, Wolverine Asset Management reported that it owned 874,000 shares of Fidelity’s bitcoin ETF. So far, that’s the largest Fidelity position that’s been disclosed. 



Investment managers have until mid-May to file their 13Fs. 



Updated May 14, 2024 at 3:05 pm ET: Noted that SWIB declined to comment, updated number of Grayscale shares.







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