Look at simplicity
According to Xinhua Finance on January 10, on Tuesday local time, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (hereinafter referred to as "SEC") posted on social media X that it had approved the application of the Bitcoin spot ETF to be listed on a national exchange in the United States, and also stated that the approved ETF will continue to be regulated to ensure that compliance measures can continue to protect investors.
As soon as this major news came out, the cryptocurrency market was immediately immersed in an atmosphere of joy and happiness.
But soon, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler posted on his personal X account that the SEC's official account was hacked and posted unauthorized posts, and the SEC did not approve the listing and trading of Bitcoin spot ETFs. Subsequently, the SEC's official account also issued the same statement and deleted the previous post. During this period, Bitcoin fluctuated sharply by more than $3,000, and more than $40 million of funds in the entire network of cryptocurrencies were liquidated in one hour.
Scenario 1: Approval of all applications at the same time
Cryptocurrency investors and ETF analysts generally believe that the SEC may approve all 11 spot Bitcoin ETF applications at the same time to avoid the appearance of favoritism. If this happens, fierce competition may occur in the market and asset management companies will engage in fee wars.
Scenario 2: Rejection/postponement of all applications at the same time
Although unlikely, it’s still possible that the SEC will reject all applications. The SEC has blocked similar fund offerings several times in the past, citing concerns about the risk of fraud and market manipulation. However, if the SEC rejects this round of applications, it will have to come up with a different reason, as the court requires the SEC to reconsider similar applications.
It is worth mentioning that two U.S. senators asked the SEC to provide a report to Congress on the X account violation that occurred on January 9. In a letter to SEC Chairman Gary Gensler on the same day, Senators J.D. Vance and Thom Tillis described the incident as a "serious concern" about the Commission's internal cybersecurity procedures. They pointed out that the incident runs counter to the Commission's triple mission of protecting investors, maintaining fair, orderly and efficient markets, and promoting capital formation. It is not clear whether the SEC will delay the ETF approval as a result.
Scenario 3: Making a split decision
The SEC can make approval or rejection decisions on some applications while deferring decisions on others. Asset managers and exchanges have spent the past few months updating their applications to comply with the SEC’s feedback. The SEC may reject applications that don’t follow its guidelines while approving those that do.
Another scenario is that the SEC may approve the exchange's 19b-4 application first, and then suspend the asset management company's S-1 and S-3 applications. This is because the SEC has never approved multiple ETFs that hold the same assets at the same time. The two departments may work on different timelines, which may cause trouble for the fund.
Summarize
There are multiple possible scenarios for the approval of the first Bitcoin ETF in the United States. Whatever the SEC decides, it will have a significant impact on the cryptocurrency market, and investors and analysts will be watching the development of this event closely. Once the Bitcoin ETF is approved, the crypto market in 2024 will definitely be "blooming". Next, let's learn about the focus of the star Starknet! Quota is scarce
Starknet is launching $STRK token! Are you ready?
@Starknet from the ZK-Rollup camp is about to launch the $STRK token. The launch date is expected to be January 22, 2024, when the STRK token will be used as TX fee in the mainnet operation process. Stay tuned.
01
Project Introduction and Vision
StarkWare is a solution developed based on STARK's zero-knowledge proof technology and focused on the blockchain industry. It is committed to promoting the development of secure, trustless and scalable blockchain applications to ensure a safe, fast and seamless user experience on Ethereum.
StarkWare has developed two products, StarkEx and StarkNet. StarkEx is an independent licensed Validity-Rollup (also known as "ZK-Rollup"); StarkNet is a permissionless decentralized ZK-Rollup.
Starknet runs as an L2 network on Ethereum, enabling any dApp to achieve unlimited computational scale - without compromising Ethereum's composability and security, first of all due to Starknet's reliance on STARK, the most secure and scalable cryptographic proof system;
Secondly, Starknet contracts and Starknet operating system are written in Cairo language, which can support the deployment and expansion of any use case.
02
Features and advantages
When asked about the features and advantages of the project in a media interview, Eli Ben-Sasson, co-founder of StarkWare, replied: StarkWare has a first-mover advantage in terms of the huge transaction volume and carrying capacity among all L2 solutions. In addition, the ZK-STARK system and the Turing-complete Cairo programming language are regarded by the team as the advantages of the StarkWare project that distinguish it from other Layer2 public chain projects.
Huge transaction volume and carrying capacity
According to StarkWare’s official website, as of May 4, 2023, the current cumulative transaction volume of the StarkWare project is US$947 billion, and the total locked value (TVL) is 552 million.
Compared with the Polygon project, which is known for its rich ecological scale, according to its official website, Polygon's current cumulative transaction volume is US$2.44 billion.
In January 2018, StarkWare raised $6 million in seed round financing, with investors including Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin (V God), Paradigm, Pantera Capital PolyChain;
In July 2018, the Ethereum Foundation invested $12 million in StarkWare;
In October 2018, the company raised USD 30 million in Series A financing, with Sequoia, Paradigm, Scalar Capital, Multichain Capital, Intel Capital, Semantic Ventures, Pantera and others participating in the investment;
On March 24, 2021, the B round of financing was US$75 million, with Sequoia, Wing Venture Capital, Paradigm, and Pantera Capital continuing to participate in the investment, including Three Arrows Capital, DCVC, etc.;
In November 2021, it raised US$50 million in Series C funding with a valuation of US$2 billion, led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from well-known crypto venture capital firms such as Paradigm, Three Arrows Capital, and Alameda Research.
On May 25, 2022, StarkWare completed a $100 million Series D financing round with a valuation of $8 billion. This round of financing was led by Greenoaks Capital, Tiger Global and other institutions, and the funds raised will be used for product and business development and ecosystem development.
03
Foundation and Tokens
StarkWare believes that although StarkNet is mature and secure in terms of technology, it still needs to be more decentralized so that it can achieve the status of a public good like Ethereum. The StarkNet Foundation will grant StarkNet a one-time token grant to maintain public goods as a non-profit organization.
The StarkNet token is used to operate, maintain and protect this ecosystem. It will be used in governance, transaction payments and participation in consensus mechanisms.
StarkNet Token Distribution
04
Starknet Funding
Currently, Starknet's company Starkware has disclosed a total of 7 rounds of financing, with a total financing amount of US$273 million, and a valuation of US$7.9 billion in the D round of financing.
Among them are many venture capital funds that we are familiar with, such as Sequoia Capital, Tiger, Paradigm, Coinbase, etc. In the seed round, Vitalik Buterin and the Ethereum Foundation also participated in the financing. The financing lineup is very luxurious.
05
Team Information
According to the official website, there are currently 78 employees, 7 technical consultants, and 5 traditional consultants. The two founders, Ben, have in-depth research in cryptography and zero-knowledge proof. He is also the co-inventor of Stark and Zerocash protocols and the founding scientist of Zcash. The other founder is a serial entrepreneur who has founded many technology companies and has rich entrepreneurial and corporate management experience. The team has comprehensive capabilities.
06
Summarize
StarkNet Advantages
Unlike other ZK rollups like zkSync, StarkNet is not a “zkEVM” — meaning smart contracts (which power your favorite Dapps on Ethereum like Uniswap and OpenSea) must be written in StarkNet’s own programming language, Cairo.
Cairo is a very powerful language that is optimized for ZK rollups. It allows you to do everything you can do on the EVM, and more, because the computational cost is much lower.
This creates entirely new possibilities that were not possible on the blockchain before, such as true blockchain gaming!
StarkNet quota is extremely scarce. There are only two factions on Ethereum Layer 2, one is the OP series: OP and ARB belong to the OP series! The other faction is the ZK (zero-knowledge proof) series, ZKS, Linea, Stark all belong to this series. At present, the valuation of StarkNet has reached 10 billion, and it will definitely be a dazzling star when it goes online!
Look at simplicity#etf #BTC #Starkent
