🏦 Bitcoin price jumps on banking fears

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Markets

Bitcoin price jumps in the wake of First Republic Bank price crash (3 minute read)Bitcoin experienced a surge of over 3% in the past 24 hours as reports surfaced regarding another possible bank failure. This comes as First Republic Bank's shares dropped by more than 50% on April 25, causing fears of an imminent collapse. Experts noted that the rally in Bitcoin prices occurred immediately after news broke that bankers working with First Republic Bank anticipated the institution going into government receivership. Additionally, data from crypto analytics firm Santiment indicated that the correlation between Bitcoin and the S&P 500 may be dwindling, as the idea that Bitcoin is a safe haven amid the banking crisis has once again gained traction.

Binance US Walks Away From Voyager Deal, Cites Regulatory Uncertainty (3 minute read)Binance US has reversed its decision to acquire Voyager Digital's assets, despite a judge in bankruptcy court approving the roughly $1.3 billion restructuring deal. Voyager Digital described the move as "disappointing" in a tweet, adding that it would quickly return value to customers through direct distributions. This is not the first time Binance has walked away from a major acquisition. In November 2021, Binance's international affiliate and FTX failed to finalize a deal that would have saved FTX from bankruptcy, causing founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried to seek funding elsewhere.

FTX's LedgerX Derivatives Exchange Sold to Miami International Holdings in Bankruptcy Auction (2 minute read)Miami International Holdings' affiliate, M7 Holdings, has won the bankruptcy auction for crypto derivatives exchange LedgerX, with total proceeds expected to reach approximately $50 million for the debtors. Last year, FTX.US purchased Ledger Holdings, LedgerX's parent company, for $298 million, which included the crypto hedge fund LedgerPrime, which returned external capital to investors in September 2022. The sale of LedgerX comes after a challenging auction process with multiple delays, and while a hearing for the sale was initially planned for April 12, a filing on April 10 postponed it indefinitely.

Tech

Vitalik Buterin and Indian yogi Sadhguru discuss tech, identity and more (2 minute read)The reState Foundation hosted a virtual talk on April 25 featuring Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder and inventor of Ethereum, and Sadhguru, the founder of the Isha Foundation, a mystic from India. The discussion centered around the relationship between technology and human consciousness. Buterin emphasized that the core of blockchain technology is human coordination and interaction, aimed at helping different groups collaborate more effectively and trust each other. The conversation then turned to the growing gap between technological advancements and the ethical and conscious development of humanity, with the latter lagging behind.

Romania Enters Web3 With NFT Marketplace (2 minute read)Romania's National Institute for Research and Development in Informatics (ICI Bucharest) is set to launch an NFT trading platform called ICI D|Services, as part of the country's embrace of Web3 technology. The platform, which will be launched on April 26, aims to connect private and public institutions with individual users, and primarily functions as an NFT marketplace. Customers will be able to mint, manage, and trade NFTs, and the platform will debut with five collections designed in collaboration with popular Romanian sportspersons, organizations, and institutions such as the Romanian Olympic and Sports Committee and Bucharest's Central University Library.

Misc

NFL crypto disaster was ‘hundreds of millions of dollars’ off target as NFT market collapsed (3 minute read)In 2021, Dapper Labs signed a deal with the NFL and OneTeam Partners to create a non-fungible token (NFT) collection using video clips from the NFL. NBA Top Shot's success served as the inspiration for the plan, but by the time NFL All Day was released, Dapper Labs had already overestimated revenue, and it was clear they would not meet the minimum guaranteed requirements they had agreed to pay OneTeam Partners. The football-themed digital collectibles became available during a soft launch at the end of 2021, but NBA Top Shot's sales revenues had plummeted from $224 million in February 2021 to $47.6 million exactly one year later, and then to $2.9 million by February 2022, according to CryptoSlam!.

Bitcoin Whitepaper to Be Removed in Next Apple MacBook Update (2 minute read)According to a report by 9to5Mac, the forthcoming software update for Apple Macintosh computers will remove the Bitcoin whitepaper hidden inside the operating system since 2017. The whitepaper was discovered inside MacOS by a user called bernd178, who found it buried within the Image Capture Utility. The Easter egg, which is a term for a hidden feature, contained an image of the San Francisco bay and a PDF copy of the whitepaper. The file was not enabled by default and was only discovered in April 2021. However, the file will be removed in the upcoming software update, and a beta version of MacOS Ventura 13.4 already shows that the file is no longer present.

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