Quick Summary: BlackRock’s iShares Staked Ethereum Trust has accumulated $254 million in assets under management just one week after its Nasdaq debut. BlackRock’s iShares Staked Ethereum Trust (ticker: ETHB) has grown to $254 million in assets under management since launching on Nasdaq on March 12. Investors have added $146 million in new shares on top of the more than $100 million seeded by BlackRock Financial Management at inception.The fund stakes between 70% and 95% of its Ethereum holdings, returning 82% of staking rewards to investors through monthly payments. Validators include Figment, Galaxy Blockchain Infrastructure, and Attestant. ETHB carries a 0.25%…
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Quick Summary: The World Gold Council has unveiled a ‘Gold as a Service’ framework to standardize custody and issuance for gold-backed digital tokens. The World Gold Council has released a white paper, co-authored with Boston Consulting Group, proposing a shared platform for companies that issue gold-backed digital tokens. The framework, called Gold as a Service, would allow token issuers to access a common network for managing physical gold reserves rather than building their own custody arrangements independently.The initiative aims to improve confidence in tokenized gold through continuous audits and greater fungibility across products. Current market leaders Paxos and Tether have…
Quick Summary: Researchers in Australia have created a quantum battery prototype that charges faster as it grows larger, defying conventional battery physics. Scientists at CSIRO, RMIT University, and the University of Melbourne have unveiled the world’s first functional quantum battery prototype. The device charges, stores, and releases energy using quantum physics rather than chemistry, with findings published in Nature Light: Science & Applications.The prototype is a small layered wafer of organic materials charged wirelessly by a laser pulse lasting femtoseconds — a quadrillionth of a second. It then holds energy for nanoseconds, a gap that scales dramatically. Lead researcher James…
Quick Summary: A Coinbase Commerce page prompting users to enter seed phrases has raised phishing concerns among blockchain security researchers. Coinbase is facing scrutiny after a page linked to its Commerce product appeared to ask users to input plaintext wallet recovery phrases. Yu Xian, founder of blockchain security platform SlowMist, flagged the issue on X, calling the practice insecure and puzzling given the risks involved.Recovery phrases grant full control over self-custody wallets and should never be shared with third parties or entered on untrusted sites. Blockchain investigator ZachXBT noted the page was referenced in a Coinbase Help guide, which has…
Quick Summary: Opera has proposed replacing its cash-based Celo payments with 160 million CELO tokens, pending approval from the network’s onchain governance community. Opera, a Nasdaq-listed browser company, has proposed restructuring its commercial agreement with the Celo ecosystem, replacing US dollar quarterly payments with an allocation of 160 million CELO tokens. The change requires approval from Celo’s onchain governance community and would make Opera one of the network’s largest institutional token holders.Celo is an Ethereum-aligned protocol targeting mobile-first stablecoin payments in emerging markets. It transitioned from a standalone layer-1 blockchain to an Ethereum layer-2 network last year. Opera has partnered…
Quick Summary: Major League Baseball has partnered with prediction platform Polymarket and signed an integrity agreement with the CFTC to oversee the growing prediction market space. Major League Baseball has announced two separate agreements aimed at managing its presence in prediction markets. The league signed a memorandum of understanding with Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Michael Selig and named Polymarket as its Official Prediction Market Exchange. Commissioner Robert Manfred described the deals as necessary steps in managing the rapidly growing sector.The announcements come as federal and state lawmakers scrutinize prediction market platforms. Congress has proposed legislation targeting Polymarket over bets…
Quick Summary: Hashi, a new Bitcoin finance protocol built on Sui, lets BTC holders earn yield through onchain lending, with BitGo, Bullish and FalconX among early participants. Hashi, a new Bitcoin-based lending protocol developed primarily by Mysten Labs, is set to launch on the Sui blockchain later this year. BitGo, Bullish, and FalconX have committed to early participation, alongside custodians Ledger and Cubist.The protocol allows Bitcoin holders to borrow stablecoins against their BTC holdings while earning yield through onchain lending. It uses multi-party computation custody and smart contracts to manage collateral, with audits and formal verification planned before launch.A Sui…
Quick Summary: Singapore ride-sharing firm Ryde will allocate a portion of its corporate reserves to Bitcoin, Ether, and Solana amid a challenging crypto treasury environment. Ryde Group, a Singapore-based ride-sharing and carpool platform, has announced a crypto treasury strategy, allocating a portion of its corporate reserves to Bitcoin, Ether, and Solana. The company cited the evolving macroeconomic environment as its rationale, saying digital asset exposure offers greater flexibility in treasury management.Specific allocations and purchase timing will be determined by an internal governance team. Crypto holdings will be stored with a third-party custodian, while a dedicated investment committee and a separate…
Quick Summary: Animoca Brands has invested in Ava Labs and partnered to support Avalanche-based projects focused on real-world assets and digital identity in Asia and the Middle East. Animoca Brands has made a strategic investment in Ava Labs and formed a partnership to accelerate projects building on the Avalanche blockchain. The collaboration targets sectors including real-world assets, digital identity and entertainment, with Animoca offering advisory support and access to regional networks across Asia and the Middle East.The initiative aims to connect developers with capital and distribution channels, particularly for tokenized assets and identity systems targeting institutional and government-backed deployments. Projects…
Quick Summary: BTQ Technologies has deployed the first working implementation of BIP 360 on a Bitcoin quantum-resistant testnet, but adoption remains a social challenge. BTQ Technologies, a quantum computing and cryptography firm, has released the first functional implementation of Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 360 (BIP 360) on its Bitcoin Quantum testnet. The system lets developers, miners, and researchers test quantum-resistant transactions in a live environment with over 50 miners and more than 100,000 blocks mined.BIP 360 uses a method called Pay-to-Merkle-Root (P2MR), which limits public-key exposure during transactions, reducing the information available to a potential quantum attacker. However, BTQ president Christopher…
