Top stories

SVB Financial Group Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy

SVB Financial Group filed a voluntary petition for a court-supervised reorganization under Chapter 11 to preserve value. SVB Securities and SVB Capital's funds and general partner entities are not included in the filing.

HSBC UK Bank acquires Silicon Valley Bank UK Limited (SVB UK) for £1.

Circle's $3.3 Billion of USDC Reserve Risk Removed, Cleared All Backlog Requests

Circle says its $3.3B USDC reserve deposit held at Silicon Valley Bank, about 8% of the USDC total reserve, is fully available.

Circle also announced has cleared substantially all of the backlog of minting and redemption requests for USDC as of March 15. 

Coinbase Likely To Launch Global Crypto Trading Platform

US based crypto exchange Coinbase is reportedly in talks to introduce a trading platform for its overseas customers.

OpenAI Partners With Payment Firm Stripe to Monetize ChatGPT

OpenAI will use Stripe Inc. to take payments and subscriptions for its artificial intelligence tools ChatGPT and Dall-E, which it’s trying to monetize after capturing the public imagination.

Euler Finance Hacked for Over $195M in a Flash Loan Attack

Euler finance faced a flash loan attack on March 13, with the attacker managing to steal millions in DAI, USDC, staked Ether (StETH) and wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC).

Euler attacker has begun to transfer funds to Euler Finance. 3,000 ETH has been returned so far.

Global regulations

Crypto Assets To Become a Separate Category in the UK Tax Forms

Treasury introduces a separate category for crypto assets into the tax return forms. The particular line should appear in the tax forms in 2024-25. 

India Imposes Money Laundering Regulations on Crypto Industry

The move will require cryptocurrency exchanges in India to conduct due diligence on transactions and report suspicious or high-value transactions to the authorities, as the nation expands the Prevention of Money Laundering Act to digital assets.

China Saw Over 59,000 NFT-Related Complaints in 2022

The complaints related to NFTs rose from 198 in 2021 to a whopping 59,700 in 2022. A majority of the complaints pertained to price manipulation, exorbitant transaction fees, issues with refunds, random banning of customer accounts and non-delivery after purchase. 

European Parliament Passes EU Digital Wallet Legislation

The EU-wide framework would give citizens access to public services, and they would have their own wallet. The legislation includes zero-knowledge-proof technology to protect users’ privacy.

Australian Regulator Accepts PayPal Unit’s Undertaking for Money Laundering Laws

 It accepted an enforceable undertaking from payments giant PayPal Holdings' (PYPL.O) local unit to ensure its compliance with the country's anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing laws.

Crypto weekly price action

Research and technology

Choosing Guardians for Multisig and Social Recovery Wallets

Vitalik Buterin discusses the benefits of using multisig and social recovery wallets and the importance of choosing guardians who can minimize the risk of losing their keys and colluding to steal money.

Zero Knowledge Proof Research by OKX Ventures

ZKPs ( Zero-knowledge proofs ) have proofed more use cases, inceptions like zkBridge and data index, and other flourishing opportunities in cryptography, as we can learn from the ZK Layer 2 leaders such as Starkware and scroll.

Relationship Between Generative AI and Web3

We will discuss how Generative AI and Web3 technologies are changing the notion of scarcity, how they are impacting niche users of this product, data streams, and possible model monetization.

Metaverse Real Estate Development

One of the most interesting aspects of the Metaverse is the concept of virtual real estate development. We will explore what Metaverse real estate is, how to build it, and the benefits of doing so.

Fundraising and investment

Stripe Secures $6.5 Billion in Series I at a $50B Valuation

rimary investors include existing Stripe shareholders—Andreessen Horowitz, Baillie Gifford, Founders Fund, General Catalyst, MSD Partners, and Thrive Capital—as well as new investors including GIC, Goldman Sachs Asset and Wealth Management, and Temasek.

Whampoa Group Launches Whampoa Digital with $100M to Invest in Web3

Whampoa Digital will invest in equity and tokens of products and services that enable as well as facilitate the mass adoption of Web3. 

Ark Raises $16.3 Million for New Crypto Fund

ARK Crypto Revolutions U.S. Fund LLC raised $7.3 million from nine investors, while the ARK Crypto Revolutions Cayman Fund LLC raised almost $9 million from one backer. 

Digital Fashion Firm DressX Raises $15 Million in Series a Funding

The round, which closed at the end of February, also featured participation from Slow Ventures, The Artemis Fund, Red Dao and Warner Music.

Stablecoin Issuer CNHC Raises $10 Million

KuCoin Ventures led the deal. Other investors included Circle and IDG Capital.

Viral Quotes

“If a government bans drugs, it should also ban cryptos”

— Johan Van Overtveldt, member of European Parliament

“I think you want to be long Gold and Silver <…>, and you want to be long Bitcoin, like Bitcoin was built for this environment” 

— Novogratz, Galaxy Digital CEO

"Crypto did not force SVB and Signature into bankruptcy. In my view, Fed policy was the primary culprit. Because of a VC funding drought and higher yields on money market funds, deposits left the US banking system." 

— Cathie Wood, CEO of ARK Invest