TLDR Crypto 2024-05-10

Robinhood received a Wells Notice from the SEC indicating the SEC will proceed with civil enforcement despite meeting with the SEC 16 times to discuss registering as a special purpose broker-dealer for crypto assets. Vlad Tenev, Robinhood's CEO, criticized the SEC's approach as "regulation by enforcement" and emphasized the importance of defending both Robinhood's position and customer's right to access crypto.

Binance's market surveillance team, hired to prevent manipulative trading, found that VIP customers like DWF Labs engaged in pump-and-dump schemes and wash trading. The team also discovered that Binance maintained secret internal trading accounts. After these findings, Binance fired the investigator and kept DWF Labs as a client. The SEC has accused Binance of misleading U.S. investors about its risk controls.

Octane is an open-source, modular implementation of the EVM designed to simplify the integration of the EVM into any blockchain application. By incorporating technology from Cosmos and Ethereum, it is capable of sub-second finality, low query latencies, and high transaction throughput. It will be used for creating Layer 1 networks and decentralized sequencers for L2s.

Orb Labs has launched Orby, a chain abstraction provider that simplifies interactions across different blockchains by unifying user accounts and assets, enabling transactions on any chain. Orby provides two main tools: OrbyEngine, a Smart RPC endpoint for connecting and managing accounts across chains, and OrbyKit, an SDK that allows dapps to provide their users with a chain-agnostic experience regardless of which wallet is being used.

Vitalik Buterin discusses how Ethereum has traditionally used gas to manage computational resources (computation, storage, data transmission, and cryptographic proof generation) and represent them as a cost metric. He argues that this approach has some limitations given it doesn't effectively describe the limits of each computational resource. By shifting towards a "multi-dimensional gas system", Ethereum will be able to better align costs with the actual demands and capacities of these computational resources.

RWA tokens reached an all-time high market capitalization of $2.7 billion in February and are expected to grow as BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and Tether join the narrative. Though stablecoins are the biggest RWA sector, others like commodities, equities, and stocks are beginning to be released. Onchain private credit has already seen $4.4 billion in tokenized loans through protocols like Centrifuge, Maple, and Goldfinch. Real estate tokenization, spearheaded by Parcl and RealT, simplifies property fractionalization and property acquisition.

This post discusses how fully onchain games have the potential to create new gaming experiences by solving challenges that have not been addressed by traditional games. Some of these challenges include creating assets with real value from day one, facilitating efficient value transfer between players, and enabling high-stakes spending.

Donald Trump- and Joe Biden-inspired memecoin prices have risen significantly over the last 24 hours. The MAGA coin is up 44% and the Biden coin is up 22%. This rally seems to stem from Trump recently announcing that his campaign will accept crypto donations.

Binance has denied recent allegations of market manipulation by DWF Labs, which resurfaced following reports of $300 million worth of wash trading in 2023.

Despite controversy, there's a push for more Blast-native assets, reflecting a trend toward creative assets amidst crypto's memecoin season.

The FTX bankruptcy case highlights the issues with "dollarization" in crypto bankruptcies.

Robinhood's first-quarter notional crypto trading volume was $36 billion, leading to revenue of $126 million.