Alpaca Finance Institutional Newsletter #33
Highlights:
- Arbitrum proposal to return 700M ARB fails
- SEC Chair Gary Gensler testifies for the House Financial Services Committee
- TransUnion to begin providing identity-protected credit scoring for DeFi lending
To follow up on the Arbitrum controversy, the proposal seeking the return of 700 million ARB governance tokens to Arbitrum’s DAO treasury was rejected by a massive number of votes on April 15 with 84% of votes against it. A whale with 18M ARB token that voted against stated, “There is a balance that we need to try to accomplish between advocating for decentralization and preventing progress in the ecosystem. I believe that decentralization on its ideal form is nowhere to be seen in this industry yet.“
On the regulatory side, the SEC’s chairman, Gary Gensler, was questioned by the House Financial Services Committee about his inconsistent stance on whether Ethereum’s token, Ether, should be classified as a security or a commodity. Despite being previously described as both, Gensler evaded the direct questions posed by Chairman Patrick McHenry during the hearing. Gensler also claimed that sufficient regulations exist to govern digital assets, despite not being able to point to any location where anyone could find them. Meanwhile, Warren Davidson, a member of Congress, is proposing a bill that removes the SEC Chairman and replaces the role with an Executive Director. Davidson criticized the SEC’s failure to protect investors during the hearing, which he shared on Twitter.
TransUnion, a US credit reporting agency, has partnered with Spring Labs and Quadrata to provide credit scoring to decentralized applications (DApps) on public blockchain networks. This will allow DApps to access credit data upon the consumer’s request and protect the consumer’s identity on the blockchain. TransUnion claims it can offer credit scoring to almost the entire US adult population, helping reduce lenders’ risk and offer better terms to borrowers in DeFi.
News
- A16z’s hyped-up orange balls revealed to be an L2 rollup client
- TransUnion to begin providing identity-protected credit scoring for DeFi lending
- Belarus to decide on issuing CBDC by year’s end: National bank chair
- Ripple-based MoneyTap adopted by three Japanese banks
Products
- BTC price quotes now live on Twitter following eToro partnership
- Societe Generale subsidiary launches euro-pegged stablecoin on Ethereum
- Microsoft Azure Marketplace integrates on-ramp to blockchain data
- Crypto lender Maple Finance opens U.S. Treasury Bill pool for cash canagement
Regulation
- US Congress to introduce new draft bill for stablecoins
- Hong Kong court rules cryptocurrencies as property
- The European Parliament adopts crypto-focused MiCA legislation
- Ukraine plans to adopt EU’s new cryptocurrency regulations
Funding
- Core DAO partners with Bitget and MEXC to launch $200M ecosystem fund
- Aleph Zero launches $50M ecosystem funding program
- Unchained raises $60M to offer collaborative custody Bitcoin services
- Former Ethereum miner CoreWeave raises $221M in Series B
