Weekly Market Highlights - A Busy End to May

24 May 2024

Macro/TradFi

The U.S. SEC officially approved 8 spot Ethereum ETFs, including products from BlackRock, Fidelity, Grayscale, and more. There is one more step before trading officially begins - the approval of the S-1 registration statements. 

Bitcoin and Ethereum ETPs have been approved for listing on the London Stock Exchange. The WisdomTree products will be among the first available to be traded, although only by professional and institutional investors, rather than retail. 

The U.S. House Of Representatives approved FIT21, marking the first time a major crypto bill has passed in Congress. It will now head to the U.S. Senate. The bill will establish a regime to regulate the U.S. crypto markets, and install the CFTC as the leading crypto regulator in the U.S.

Grayscale announced two new trusts, for Stacks ($STX) and Near Protocol ($NEAR), allowing their investors to continue diversifying their crypto exposure. 

The Trump Campaign announced last week that they will start accepting cryptocurrency donations, opening up a new source of funds and further courting the crypto community, as opposed to the more crypto-critical Biden campaign. 

Crypto

L1/L2:

Cosmos has introduced its cross-chain auction platform, Hydro. Hydro introduces a bidding and governance platform designed to enhance liquidity provision across the Cosmos cross-chain ecosystem. 

Ethereum L2 project, Taiko, has announced their genesis airdrop, with 5% of supply set to be distributed before mainnet launch. 

DeFi: Solana DEX aggregator, Jupiter, has kicked off its Giant Unified Market initiative to bring different investments like memes, RWAs, stocks, and forex into a single market.

Cross-chain bridge, deBridge, has announced their $DBR governance token. 20% of the 10B supply token is earmarked for the community & launch activities, including a genesis community airdrop. 

Liquid restaking platform, Kelp DAO, has raised US$9M at a US$90M valuation. 

Uniswap Labs and Across Protocol have introduced a new token standard, ERC-7863. jurisdiction