Good Morning,

The man who can move the market with a single sentence says crypto is finally going mainstream, Gary Gensler shocks all of crypto with his recent live interview, a massive series C just came through the pipeline, and more 👀📢

Happy Almost Friday – Let’s dive in.

As you will notice we changed some things up in this email layout wise. Let us know in the poll at the bottom what you think!

Market Snapshot

As of 4/16/25. Data per CoinMarketCap.

  • Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell delivered a speech at the Economic Club of Chicago, addressing the economic implications of recent U.S. tariff policies

  • Macro: Powell warned tariffs could slow growth and he signaled a "wait and see" approach to interest rates

    • Fed won’t adjust rates until the full tariff impact is clear

    • Stocks dropped sharply: The Dow fell ~700 points, S&P 500 lost ~120, and Nasdaq dropped over 500 points following his remarks

  • Crypto: Bitcoin and the broader crypto market faired much better but also dipped, reacting to economic uncertainty and Powell’s cautious tone

Headline Roundup
The major headlines driving crypto markets

TOP HEADLINE: Fed Chair Jerome Powell says crypto is going mainstream with regulatory clarity during yesterdays address

UNDER THE RADAR: The SEC dropped 10 major crypto cases in Q1 2025

  • Eric Trump to headline at Consensus 2025 discussing his crypto mining venture (CD)

  • VanEck proposes bitcoin-linked bonds called ‘BitBonds’ to offset $14T of U.S. debt (CS)

  • Gary Gensler shockingly says Bitcoin may be around for a long time in recent live interview (X)

  • Mantra CEO John Mullin says the project plans a comprehensive burn plan following 90% token crash (CD)

  • Bybit ends service for multiple web3 offerings as part of strategic pivot (CS)

  • Semler Scientific to pay $30M SEC settlement with bitcoin collateralized loan from Coinbase (CD)

  • OKX expects to launch services in America through a phased approach (BL)

  • Circle stablecoin USDC reaches $10B with latest 250M token mint on Solana (DF)

  • Bitwise lists 4 bitcoin and ether exchange traded products on London Stock Exchange (CT)

  • Meliuz, a Brazilian fintech, proposed expanding its bitcoin reserve strategy (RT)

  • Courtyard is becoming a top platform that puts trading cards on-chain using NFTs (BL)

  • Merkle Standard and Hashbranch deploy 13,000 mining units in strategic collaboration (BM)

M&A Announcements

  • Futureverse team nears 200 with acquisition of NFT startup, Candy Digital (AX)

Venture Capital

TOP DEAL: StepStone Group leads $153M Series C for Bitcoin mining computer manufacturer and infrastructure company, Auradine (DF)

  • Trump’s World Liberty Financial opens NYC office with $25M investment from DWF Labs (BL)

  • ZND, a digital finance platform operated by European digital asset exchange zondacrypto, secured a $20M token investment commitment from Rollman Management Digital (FN)

  • Cyber.Fund alongside other top crypto venture investors back Resolv Labs with $10M seed round (CD)

  • A16Z CSX and Delphi Ventures co-lead $6M seed for decentralized AI startup ORO AI (PN)

  • Neutrl raises $5M from STIX, Accomplice and others for hedge-fund style yield strategies (CD)

  • Glider scores $4M in strategic funding round from a16z CSX, Coinbase Ventures, Uniswap Ventures, and others (BW)

  • Embr Labs meme application raises $1.8M pre-seed funding round led by Robot Ventures and Lattice Fund (PN)

Launches

TOP HEADLINE: Nubit launches Bitcoin Thunderbolt solution on mainnet that finalizes transactions speeds nearly 250x (DF)

  • Solana token launchpad LaunchLab by Raydium goes live to compete with Pump.fun & PumpSwap (DT)

Regulation

TOP HEADLINE: China debates national policy of handling seized cryptocurrencies from criminal activities (CS)

  • Panama City government says it voted to become the first public institution to accept crypto for public services (BM)

  • Oklahoma state senate rejects bitcoin reserve bill (CS)

  • A judge agreed to pause an ongoing lawsuit between 18 Republican state attorney generals and SEC (CD)

  • Russian Finance Ministry eyes stablecoin use case due to USDT restrictions (CS)

Cybersecurity

TOP HEADLINE: U.S. Secret Service and Canadian Officials team up for Operation Avalanche, discovering a phishing scam of $4.3M (TB)

  • Leader of House of Commons Lucy Powell’s official X account hacked to promote fake meme coin (DT)

  • A Google services phishing attack is targeting crypto holders (X)

Extra Reads

Chart of the Day

Ethereum gas usage has surpassed ETH price for the first time ever

Meme Dump

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