Good Morning,

Here's a quick preview of today’s content: Circle moves forward with plan to go public, UK leads 2025 global crypto adoption so far, corporations continue to raise for bitcoin treasuries, tourists could soon use crypto cards in Thailand, Wall Street enters the Bitcoin lending business in a big way, and so much more.

Hump Day Pump Day! Let’s dive in.

Market Snapshot

• Ethereum surged past $2,600 in Asian trading, driven by strong institutional ETF inflows and rising DeFi activity

• Bitcoin and luxury watches, once correlated, have diverged with Bitcoin up +56.9% while watches have declined

• As of Tuesday afternoon, the S&P 500 rose +2%, and the Nasdaq Composite increased by +2.5%, recovering from Friday's losses

Headline Roundup
^{_{The major headlines driving crypto markets}}

• Wall Street bank Cantor debuts its bitcoin lending business with $2B backing (CD)

• A third arrest has been made in the Manhattan Bitcoin kidnapping/torture case - see full details of the arrest here

• Circle dismisses Coinbase and Ripple acquisition offers with plans to go public via an IPO at $5B valuation (TB)

• First ever SUI ETF application has been filed by 21Shares to list on Nasdaq (DF)

• Satoshi Nakamoto nears the top 10 richest people in the world as his 5% of the bitcoin supply are valued at $120B (DF)

• A bill for the U.S. to acquire 1M BTC has been proposed by Senator Cynthia Lummis - full details on the bill here

• Public gaming company SharpLink $SBET ( ▼ 3.17% ) stock jumps 400%+ after $425M ETH Treasury announcement as Consensys CEO joins the board (DT)

• Strive Asset Management, tied to Vivek Ramaswamy, raises $750M via PIPE financing to fuel bitcoin purchase (DT)

• Trump Media creates $2.5B offering for corporate bitcoin treasury (TB)

• The Blockchain Group re-ups their bitcoin count with $72M purchase, nearing 1.5k holdings (DF)

• Remixpoint, a Japanese energy and auto company, targets 1,000 BTC holdings (DF)

• Gemini survey reveals global bitcoin adoption was led by a 6% increase in the UK (CD)

• Bank of Korea is considering linking deposit tokens to the public blockchain (CN)

• Bitlayer announces 3 major partnerships to improve defi on the bitcoin blockchain (CD)

• Sygnum gains CFTC Chair Chris Giancarlo as policy advisor (TB)

• Proposal to nearly double the Ethereum gas limit without a hard fork is backed by 150k+ validators (DF)

• The Bitcoin Conference looks to break its bitcoin price curse in 2025 (CD)

Venture Capital

• Stanford ecosystem blockchain fund Builders Fund announces $28M oversubscribed Fund I (AI)

• Stablecoin payments startup Beam closes $7M Series A led by Castle Island Ventures (AX)

• Echo and Hivemind make $1.5M strategic investment into Ducat for bitcoin-native stablecoin (DS)

• Asigna completes $3M raise from lead investors Hivemind and Tykhe Block Ventures for bitcoin-native smart multisig solution (BM)

• Adam Back leads $2.2M investment into H100 Group for bitcoin purchases (MSN)

• Bitcoin-based capital markets platform Avalon Labs gets backing from Yzi Labs in undisclosed funding round (DF)

Launches

• Plasma launches 10% public token offering at $500M valuation on new ICO platform Sonar (TB)

• StarkWare launches next gen hardware zk prover over a year after initial announcement (BW)

• Block launches Bitcoin payments on Square terminals live at The Bitcoin Conference in Vegas (DF)

Regulation

• Crypto regulation clarity in Africa incentivized Blockchain.com to enter (CD)

• Thailand is exploring legislation to allow crypto-linked credit cards for tourist payments (DT)

• Crypto companies flagged as high risk for money laundering in Luxembourg (TV)

• South Korea turns to crypto to win over young voters in Presidential election (CT)

Cybersecurity

• Google study indicates that Bitcoin is far less safe from quantum technology than predicted (CB)

• Crypto security firm Dedaub release post-mortem report on $223M Cetus hack (CT)

• Rap group Migos has Instagram account hacked to threaten Solana co-founder with private images and data leaked (AY)

Extra Reads

• Addresses once believed to have been controlled by Satoshi are now sitting on up to 1,125,150 BTC, equivalent to $123.3B right now - why Satoshi might still hold the keys to $123B BTC

• Gemini’s State of Crypto report found that memecoins and a friendlier US are helping to drive crypto adoption globally - here’s the full breakdown of why

Chart of the Day

Bitcoin whales holding > 10k BTC have become net sellers as retail continues to buy

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