TLDR Crypto 2024-07-24

BlockFi is finalizing its bankruptcy distribution, which would make customers and unsecured creditors whole. It was one of the first companies to go bankrupt after the collapse of FTX in November 2022. BlockFi can fully compensate customers partly because its $847 million in claims against FTX was monetized at a substantial premium to face value.

Spot ETH ETFs begin trading today in the U.S., with expectations of net inflows ranging from $750M-$1B per month for the first half year. These ETFs will trade on various exchanges and have varying post-waiver fees.

Circle STARKs are a new way to make blockchain proofs faster and more efficient. They use smaller numbers to optimize speed and a “circle” structure for calculations to overcome security challenges and reduce wasted space in computational traces. Researchers are looking at how to make these proofs more user-friendly for use with operations like hashing or signing.

Avail DA is the first modular DA layer that uses proofs and data availability sampling. It already supports integrations with all top L2 chains, RaaS providers, and frameworks. The AVAIL token is used to pay for DA fees and earn staking rewards. Avail also aims to become a permissionless unification layer for web3 through Avail Nexus' cross-chain transaction feature and Avail Fusion's shared security.

Since UnixwapX's launch almost a year ago, offchain liquidity has been integrated into the largest DEX, but the AMM still accounts for 60-80% of total volume. Despite lower fees and price settings on CEXs, ETH/USDC trading on Uniswap shows nearly 30% volume filled by the AMM, possibly due to stale prices and filler economics, indicating potential shifts with the move to L2s.

In a survey of over 3,500 US adults, Bitcoin ownership was found across political identities, ethnicity, income, and education levels. Owners tended toward young and male. People who owned Bitcoin had significantly higher knowledge and trust in it. Overall, Bitcoin owners, who make up 14% of the population, are moderate, average Americans.

Recently, incentive rewards on Aave created non-organic behavior that resulted in -330% APR for looping borrowers. Fluid, in contrast, is implementing a more sustainable approach by incentivizing ETH lenders rather than borrowers, enabled by its shared pool liquidity and vault system. Its flexible architecture allows more changeable markets to respond sustainably to user behaviors and avoid sudden disruptions.

In this post, Kofi discusses how he uses crypto in Ghana for daily transactions by converting USDT into mobile money using Binance P2P. He does this to avoid holding the rapidly devaluing Ghana Cedi and bypass unreliable local banking system(s) and costly international bank transfers.

Unbound Fund introduces a novel pathway to Portuguese/EU citizenship through an investment in Bitcoin worth €500K.

Bunni v2 testnet is live, introducing a new approach to liquidity with automated, customizable, and programmable features for liquidity providers (LPs).

MagicSpend is a new chain abstraction product from Coinbase that allows anyone to spend their Coinbase balance onchain.

Founders Fund backs Pudgy Penguins, Igloo Inc, and Abstract Chain due to their unique and profitable user acquisition strategy, which leverages physical retail partnerships with major stores like Walmart and Target.