The Block
Quick Take Celestia founder Mustafa Al-Bassam has spoken about his earlier life as a member of hacker group LulzSec. He described his favorite hack, which took place while on a live radio show.
Quick Take EigenLayer-based Ethereum restaking protocol Renzo raised $3.2 million in seed funding led by Maven11. It was an equity with token warrant round and brought Renzo’s valuation to $25 million, Lucas Kozinski told The Block.
Quick Take: Taiko launched its final testnet, Katla, before its expected mainnet release by the end of Q1 2024. Katla introduces a new rollup design called multi-proof based contestable rollup, combining aspects of Optimistic and ZK-rollups.
Quick Take: The Aave governance forum is considering a proposal to deploy Aave v3 on Neon EVM. The proposal was made by the Neon Foundation and the Aave Chan Initiative. Currently in the “temperature check” phase, it invites feedback from the Aave community.
The bitcoin long-short ratio has hit a multi-month high.Onchain data shows the majority of derivatives traders have taken a bullish stance in the past 24 hours, according to Coinglass data.
Quick Take The growing adoption of tokenized funds is raising the efficiency of investing in assets like government bonds and signals “untapped market potential,” according to analysts at Moody’s. Tokenized funds necessitate fund managers to have more technological expertise, the analysts said.
Quick Take Crypto investment products witnessed record trading volume of $17.5 billion last week, according to CoinShares. These products also saw $1.18 billion worth of inflows, though fell short of the $1.5 billion record set when futures-based ETFs launched in October 2021.
Quick Take A United Nations report published Monday suggested that USDT has become a prominent payment method for money laundering and scams in Southeast Asia, according to the Financial Times.
The Crypto Fear and Greed Index fell to the “neutral” level after staying in the “greed” phase since late October.
Quick Take This week, Coinbase will face the SEC in court, a shortened week of ETF trading begins, $150 million in tokens are unlocked, and the World Economic Forum holds its annual meeting in Davos. Here are the most important events coming up this week in crypto.
