Fed keeps interest rates unchanged
The Fed kept the benchmark interest rate unchanged at 5.25%-5.50% for the seventh consecutive time, in line with market expectations. The Fed's dot plot shows that the interest rate will be cut by 25 basis points in 2024. No official believes that there will be three or more rate cuts this year, compared with 10 previously. Four rate cuts are expected in 2025 (three rate cuts were expected in March). In the Federal Reserve FOMC statement, the committee strives to achieve maximum employment and 2% inflation in the long run. The committee judged that the risks to achieving the employment and inflation goals have become better balanced over the past year. The committee does not expect it will be appropriate to lower the target range for interest rates until it is more confident that inflation is moving toward 2% on a sustained basis. In assessing the appropriate monetary policy stance, the committee will continue to monitor the implications of new information for the economic outlook. If risks emerge that could impede the achievement of the committee's goals, the committee will be prepared to adjust the monetary policy stance as appropriate.
The annual rate of US CPI in May was 3.3%, lower than market expectations
According to Jinshi, the annual rate of U.S. unadjusted CPI in May was 3.3%, lower than the market expectation of 3.4%, falling to a three-month low. The annual rate of U.S. unadjusted core CPI in May was 3.4%, lower than the expected level of 3.5%, the lowest level since April 2021.
Terraform Labs agrees to pay $4.47 billion fine to SEC
According to The Block, Terraform Labs has reached a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and agreed to pay a $4.47 billion fine to the SEC. The SEC submitted a "proposed final consent judgment" on Wednesday, asking Judge Jed Rakoff of the Southern District Court of New York to approve the plan. According to the proposed judgment, Terraform will be required to recover $3.58 billion in illegal gains and pay a $420 million civil penalty, and its co-founder Do Kwon will be prohibited from serving as an executive or director of a public company. The SEC said Do Kwon must also pay $204 million to compensate damaged investors. According to previous news, on April 5, a New York jury ruled that Terraform and Do Kwon were suspected of deceiving investors in the sales statements of TerraUSD (UST), Luna and wLUNA. The SEC then filed a motion to recover $5.3 billion in illegal gains and civil penalties. At the end of May, Terraform and its co-founder Do Kwon "reached a settlement in principle" with the SEC.
Insider: OpenAI's annual revenue is expected to increase to $3.4 billion
According to people familiar with the matter, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told employees at a company-wide meeting on Wednesday that the company's annual revenue is expected to reach $3.4 billion. Altman said that the vast majority of revenue (about $3.2 billion) comes from OpenAI's products and services. OpenAI is also expected to generate about $200 million in revenue by providing access to artificial intelligence models through Microsoft Azure. According to previous news, OpenAI's annualized revenue will be $1.6 billion by the end of 2023. In recent months, OpenAI has been working to sell services to corporate customers to increase revenue from its artificial intelligence products.
Insider: Apple did not pay OpenAI for ChatGPT, but may share profits with paying users
According to Bloomberg, this week Apple reached a cooperation agreement with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into iPhone, iPad and Mac devices, but according to people familiar with the matter, Apple did not pay OpenAI for the cooperation. Instead, Apple believes that the value of promoting OpenAI's brand and technology to hundreds of millions of Apple devices is equal to or even higher than direct payment. ChatGPT will be available for free on Apple devices, but OpenAI and Apple can make a profit by converting free users into paying users. OpenAI's subscription plan starts at $20 per month, which includes additional features such as analyzing data and generating more types of images.
Ripple to use Axelar as bridge protocol for EVM sidechains
According to The Block, XRP Ledger, supported by Ripple, announced that it will soon launch a sidechain called "XRPL EVM Sidechain" and use Axelar as the exclusive bridge protocol. Axelar will allow users to convert XRP into encapsulated XRP (eXRP), which will be used as the native token for gas fees on the sidechain. Earlier, Ripple CEO announced that the name of Ripple's new stablecoin is RLUSD.
Tether to launch new category of digital asset products on June 17
Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said on the X platform that after a year of hard work, Tether will launch its new category of digital asset products on Monday, June 17.
Eigen Labs announces acquisition of Rio Network, a liquidity re-staking network
According to official news, Eigen Labs announced the acquisition of the liquidity re-staking network Rio Network. Eigen Labs said it will not build Liquid Retaking Token (LRT). Instead, Rio Network's code and intellectual property will be acquired by the Eigen Foundation and will be open sourced to better support new and under-development LRTs. The Rio team will join Eigen Labs and will focus on enhancing the EigenLayer ecosystem with other members of the Eigen Labs team.
Paxos cuts about 20% of its employees, financial situation is now good
According to The Block, stablecoin issuer Paxos has laid off about 20% of its employees, or 65 people. Charles ‘Chad’ Cascarilla, co-founder and CEO of Paxos, said in an internal email that the company is in good financial condition with more than $500 million on its balance sheet. The layoffs are intended to focus resources more on areas such as tokenization and stablecoins. Paxos has provided affected employees with 13 weeks of severance pay, three months of medical insurance subsidies, and three months of re-employment support. A person familiar with the matter said that after the layoffs, the number of employees at Paxos is currently between 200 and 300.
Biden campaign in talks to accept cryptocurrency donations through Coinbase Commerce: People familiar with the matter
According to The Block, citing people familiar with the matter, US President Biden's campaign team is discussing with people in the cryptocurrency industry to accept cryptocurrency donations through Coinbase Commerce. Coinbase Commerce allows merchants to accept dozens of cryptocurrency payments. Just a few weeks ago, Donald Trump began accepting cryptocurrency donations through Coinbase Commerce. It is reported that Biden's campaign team has begun to increase its engagement with the crypto community in recent weeks, shortly after Trump attracted attention for taking a pro-cryptocurrency stance. A person familiar with the matter said that people in Biden's core circle specifically told the Biden team that if they remained silent on the issue of cryptocurrency, they might lose the election. He emphasized that negotiations about the Biden camp accepting cryptocurrency donations are still "exploratory."
ZK Nation: ZKsync is under a massive and coordinated Sybil misinformation attack on X
ZK Nation, a subsidiary of ZKsync, posted on the X platform that ZKsync is suffering from an organized large-scale Sybil misinformation attack on the X platform. Thousands of robot accounts are involved in the attack, trying to mislead the public by spreading false information. ZK Nation conducted a rumor analysis on such misinformation and gave examples of misinformation claiming that funds allocated by some communities flowed into the hands of insiders. ZK Nation emphasized that these rumors are unfounded and the public should remain vigilant and look forward to further updates.
Bankless Co-founder: Most people are satisfied with zkSync’s airdrop
According to Bankless co-founder David Hoffman shared on the X platform, data from the Bankless community on Discord shows that most people are satisfied with the zkSync airdrop. However, those users who expressed disappointment were usually active on the zkSync Lite network or using the Argent wallet, and they believed there was an issue with the airslot eligibility check tool. These reasons for disappointment are significantly different from the disinformation campaign being driven by a large number of bot accounts on the X platform.
Blockchain Engineering Firm Equilibrium Group Launches Venture Capital Unit, Seeks to Raise Over $30 Million for First Fund
According to The Block, blockchain engineering company Equilibrium Group has launched its venture capital arm Equilibrium Ventures and its first early-stage fund, Equilibrium Ventures Fund I. Mika Honkasalo, investment partner of Equilibrium Ventures Fund I, revealed that the fund is seeking to raise 30 million euros (about 32.5 million U.S. dollars) and has raised about 20% of the funds (6.5 million U.S. dollars) in the first round of financing, and it is expected to complete all fundraising by the end of this year. Honkasalo said that the fund's supporters include Equilibrium Group itself, as well as Sebastien Borget of The Sandbox, Mask Network and Jigeum Capital. Equilibrium Group was founded in 2018 and has been investing from its balance sheet since 2020. The establishment of a dedicated venture capital department has always been a long-term plan.
Token distribution protocol Layer3 completes $15 million Series A financing, Electric Capital and others participate
According to The Block, the token distribution protocol Layer3 has completed a $15 million Series A financing, led by ParaFi and Greenfield Capital, with participation from Electric Capital, Immutable, Lattice, Tioga, LeadBlock, Amber and others. The project began raising funds for this round of financing in April and ended in May. This round of financing adopts the structure of equity plus token warrants. Layer3 also revealed its previously unannounced $370 strategic financing (raised in 2022), participated by Electric, ParaFi, Polygon's Sandeep Nailwal and other companies. The Series A financing brings Layer3's total financing to $21.2 million, as the company also raised $2.5 million in 2021. With the new financial support, Layer3 plans to expand its current team of 13 to 20 by the end of the year by recruiting talents in engineering, data science and business development departments. The project also hopes to expand its influence in the Asia-Pacific region (APAC).
According to reports, Layer3 is a token distribution protocol that enables projects to distribute their tokens to attract and retain users. Layer3 essentially unifies user activities across multiple blockchains and applications, enabling protocols to distribute tokens more efficiently. More than 100 crypto projects, including Uniswap, Base, Arbitrum, and Linea, are using Layer3's platform. The platform claims to have served more than 3 million independent users in 120 countries. Layer3 is also developing a new AI protocol for optimizing token distribution strategies, which is expected to be launched later this year.
Layer3’s Series A comes as its native L3 token was launched and airdropped this summer. Last month, Layer3 launched its “governance and utility token” L3 with a total supply of 300 million tokens. The initial airdrop will distribute 5% of the total supply, or 15 million tokens, to early adopters and CUBE minters. The airdrop snapshot was taken on May 10. Layer3 has allocated 51% of the total supply to the community, while details of the remaining allocation have not yet been announced.
Riot Platforms already holds more than 13% of Bitfarms shares and criticizes Bitfarms' "poison pill" plan for triggering a threshold lower than usual
According to The Block, Riot Platforms announced in a filing on Wednesday that it had purchased nearly 6 million shares of Bitfarms through the open market in the past week, raising its stake to 13.1%. At the same time, Riot CEO Jason Les criticized Bitfarms' "poison pill" plan. Les said in a statement: "Instead of approaching us privately and sincerely, Bitfarms responded by implementing an over-the-counter poison pill with a trigger threshold far lower than the usual 20%." Last month, Riot attempted to acquire all of Bitfarms' shares for a total equity of approximately $950 million. Bitfarms rejected the offer. Earlier this week, Bitfarms adopted a "poison pill" plan, stating that if an entity accumulates more than 15% of Bitfarms' shares between June 20 and September 10, the company will issue new shares to dilute the entity's shares.
The U.S. government, miners and other major entities hold a total of about 4.23 million BTC, accounting for 27% of the total adjusted circulating supply of BTC
According to Glassnode data, all major entities hold a total of 4.23 million BTC, accounting for 27% of the total adjusted circulating supply (i.e. the total supply minus BTC that has been idle for more than seven years). Among them: US spot ETFs hold 862,000 bitcoins; Mt.Gox trustees hold 141,000 bitcoins; the US government holds 207,000 bitcoins; all exchanges hold 2.3 million bitcoins; miners (excluding Patoshi) hold 706,000 bitcoins.
Curve founder Michael Egorov’s $140 million in CRV tokens at risk of liquidation
According to Arkham Intelligence’s disclosure on the X platform, Curve founder Michael Egorov is currently facing liquidation risk of $140 million in CRV tokens. Egorov borrowed about $95.7 million in stablecoins, mainly crvUSD, with about $141 million in CRV tokens as collateral in five accounts on five different protocols. The annualized interest cost to maintain these borrowings is as high as $60 million.
Of that, $50 million of the loans came from Llamalend, with an annual interest rate of about 120%. Since there is almost no remaining crvUSD available for lending on Llamalend, Egorov's three accounts already account for more than 90% of the borrowing on the protocol. If the CRV price drops by about 10%, these positions will be at risk of liquidation.
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