The Block
Quick Take Nader Al-Naji, 32, raised more than $257 million from the “unregistered offers and sales” of a native token, called BTCLT which is on the blockchain-based platform BitClout, the SEC alleged on Tuesday. Al-Naji lied to investors about where their funds went and spent more than $7 million on personal items including rent on a six-bedroom Beverly Hills mansion and “extravagant cash gifts” to family, the agency said.
Quick Take Tap-to-earn game Hamster Kombat said in a new whitepaper that 60% of its token airdrop will be dedicated to players. The Hamster Kombat team claims it will be the largest airdrop in the history of crypto and said they are “actively working on making the airdrop happen,” which was originally slated to occur this month.
Quick Take Vitalik Buterin wished Ethereum a happy birthday on Tuesday, exactly nine years after the network launched. However, there is some debate about when to celebrate the network’s anniversary, which is sometimes also dated to the publication of the whitepaper.
Ethereum’s lower name recognition and smaller market cap could lead to its exchange-traded funds receiving inflows as low as 15% of bitcoin’s, an analyst at Sygnum Bank said.The analyst added that the aggregate assets under management (AUM) for Ethereum ETFs over the next 12 months could be around $5-10 billion.
Quick Take Movement Labs has joined Polygon’s AggLayer, designed to facilitate interoperability across the Polygon 2.0 network of Ethereum Layer 2 chains. The collaboration coincides with Movement’s launch of its public testnet ahead of a mainnet deployment later this year.
The Goldman Sachs CEO joined CNBC for an interview from the Summer Olympics in Paris, France.“I’ve always said I think it’s a speculative investment,” David Solomon said. “I don’t see a real use case.”
Ethereum is poised for larger price swings than bitcoin, with its volatility premium widening to 8%, analysts said.Analysts favor Ethereum accumulation due to its cost-effective spot price and robust performance amid wider crypto market fluctuations.
Quick Take Blackbird Labs, the firm building out the web3 restaurant app Blackbird, launched a new platform. Blackbird Pay is a payment and check settlement network for restaurants.
Quick Take The NFT startup Mintify raised $3.4 million from ARCA, Cumberland, Psalion and other participants. Mintify is building infrastructure for an NFT order book for gaming, art and real-world asset markets.
Quick Take Polychain Capital and Lightspeed Faction led a $7 million seed round in the web3 AI cloud startup Hyperbolic. Hyperbolic aims to reduce the resources spent on AI computing by aggregating GPU computing power. The firm uses blockchain technology to ensure its network runs in a secure and authentic manner.
