Weekly Report | Forbes Reveals Heina Chen as Binance's Behind-the-Scenes Financial Steward; What New Features Does Uniswap V4 Have?

整理：饼干，ChainCatcher

"What Important Events Happened This Week (6.12-6.18)"

1. U.S. Judge Rejects SEC's Request to Freeze Binance.US Assets; U.S. Congress Members Propose to Remove SEC Chair

A federal judge overseeing the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) case against Binance and Binance.US has denied a temporary restraining order to freeze the assets of the U.S. trading platform. This will allow Binance.US to continue operations while discussing the restraining order with regulators and requesting mediation involving Binance, Binance.US, and the SEC.

After the meeting, Binance, Binance.US, and the SEC announced an agreement that Binance.US will take measures to ensure that no Binance member can access the private keys of its various wallets, hardware wallets, or root access to Binance.US's Amazon Web Services tools. Additionally, they will share details about their business expenditures, including estimated costs, in the coming weeks.

According to Reuters, citing sources, Binance.US has conducted a round of layoffs after being sued by the SEC, with about 50 people being let go, though the number or qualifications of affected employees could not be verified. Insiders told Reuters that employees from Binance.US's legal, compliance, and risk departments were laid off. Furthermore, Binance.US has hired four lawyers from the law firm Milbank LLP, including former co-head of the SEC's enforcement division George Canellos, to defend against U.S. allegations of operating an illegal securities exchange.

According to Fox News, two Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives have submitted a bill to restructure the SEC and remove SEC Chair Gary Gensler. The bill proposes redistributing the chair's powers to other commissioners, adding a sixth commissioner to the agency, and establishing an executive director position to oversee daily operations. Additionally, Patrick McHenry, chair of the House Financial Services Committee, announced that two hearings related to SEC oversight will be held on June 22, Beijing time, aimed at reviewing and discussing the SEC's regulatory work and its oversight responsibilities over trading and markets. (Source Link)

2. BlackRock's iShares Submits Spot Bitcoin ETF Application to SEC

Fund management giant BlackRock's iShares has submitted an application for a spot Bitcoin ETF called "iShares Bitcoin Trust" to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Coinbase Custody Trust Company is the custodian of the Bitcoin held by the trust, while BNY Mellon is the cash custodian and trust administrator.

Insiders revealed that BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF will use Coinbase Custody for pricing. Morgan Creek's founder stated that BlackRock is applying for a redeemable Bitcoin trust, which competes with GBTC.

According to Finbold, BlackRock has a record of 575-1 in getting its ETFs approved by the SEC. This means the SEC has approved 575 of BlackRock's ETFs, rejecting only one in October 2014 when the company sought approval for actively managed ETFs that do not require daily disclosure of holdings. (Source Link)

3. FTX Creditor Claims Website Launched, Applications to Open Around July 3

The FTX creditor claims website is now accessible, indicating that FTX has scheduled a hearing for the motion to set the deadline for customers to submit proof of claims on June 29, 2023, at 1:00 PM in court. The website will launch around July 3 after a court order related to the motion is signed. (Source Link)

4. Bitcoin Protocol Ordinals Launches "Recursive Inscriptions," Allowing Inscriptions to Exceed 4MB Limit

Raph, the new chief maintainer of the Bitcoin protocol Ordinals, recently merged the "recursive inscriptions" update 2167 proposed by Ordinals creator Casey Rodarmor into the Ordinals code on GitHub. According to developer Leonidas.og's interpretation, inscriptions can now request the content of other inscriptions using the special "/-/content/:inscription_id" syntax. This simple change unlocks many powerful use cases.

For example, instead of separately inscribing 10,000 JPEG files for a PFP collection, which would be quite expensive, you can inscribe 200 features from the collection and then create 10,000 inscriptions, each using a small amount of code to request the features and render the images programmatically. The result is the same. The artwork is just stored on-chain in a more efficient way, potentially saving over a million dollars in transaction fees.

Additionally, it is possible to fully inscribe many code packages on the Bitcoin chain, as the code (in text form) is small, allowing inscription sizes to exceed the Bitcoin block size limit of 4MB, enabling complex 3D video games to be fully on-chain on Bitcoin. (Source Link)

5. Venus Protocol Update Tweet: BNB Chain to Exclusively Take Over BNB Bridge Attacker's Positions

The lending protocol Venus Protocol on BNB Chain has deleted a previous tweet regarding "if BNB reaches the liquidation threshold, the BNB Chain team will take over BNB positions on Venus," and has reissued the following statement:

"In November 2022, BNB Chain submitted a governance proposal approved by the community, allowing the BNB Chain core team to exclusively take over the positions of the BNB Bridge attackers to ensure the safety of these assets and prevent any further impact and liquidation. Whitelisted wallets initially held $30 million in USDT to prevent losses on Venus and provide additional support through this Venus governance approval mechanism." (Source Link)

6. China International Bank Issues Tokenized Notes Worth 200 Million Yuan on Ethereum

UBS Group announced that China International Bank, an offshore investment banking institution under the Bank of China Group, has issued digital structured notes initiated by UBS and placed with its Hong Kong clients, totaling 200 million yuan. UBS Group stated that this transaction marks the first such product in the Asia-Pacific region that complies with Hong Kong and Swiss laws and is tokenized on Ethereum. (Source Link)

7. Data

• Bitcoin's market capitalization dominance has risen to over 49%, reaching a new high since May 2021.
• BUSD's market capitalization has fallen to $434 billion, down 74% this year, with DAI becoming the third-largest stablecoin.
• There are approximately 50 days until the Litecoin halving, expected to occur on August 3, 2023.
• Robinhood's cryptocurrency trading volume in May decreased by 43% month-on-month to $2.1 billion.
• On-chain analyst ZachXBT has received over $700,000 in donations, with ETH accounting for 56.7%.
• Binance and Tether have exchanged 1.25 billion USDT-TRX for USDT-ETH.

"What Interesting Articles Are Worth Reading This Week (6.12-6.18)"

1. "Forbes Investigation: Who is Binance's Behind-the-Scenes Financial Steward Heina Chen?"

In this investigative article by Forbes, Guangying "Heina" Chen currently serves as a director for eight major companies under Binance and is a signatory on dozens of bank accounts registered in 27 entities across 13 countries/regions, overseeing the company's finances and accounts that have processed $148 billion in deposits and withdrawals since 2019. Sources say, "Heina is a trusted person of CZ; she is the gateway to Binance's treasury, and she is the real CFO."

2. "What New Features Does Uniswap V4 Offer?"

This article features an interpretation by Uniswap founder Hayden Adams of the new features in version 4, which will allow for customizable liquidity pools through "hooks," native support for dynamic fees, the addition of on-chain limit orders, or the use of time-weighted average market makers (TWAMM) to disperse large orders.

3. "Gary Gensler's Crypto Game: Stealing the Spotlight from Congress to Illuminate the SEC's Path"

SEC Chair Gary Gensler is attempting to disrupt Congress's normal agenda with his actions and is accused of trying to obstruct legislative efforts. However, there is currently no clear evidence or regulations to determine whether Gensler's actions are improper. Fortune published an article about how the SEC chair manipulates the media to cover up Congress's actions in the crypto space and outlines the timeline. The article is intriguing, and we may glean some insights into the regulatory direction in the U.S.

4. "Stay Away from Cross-Chain Bridges; Vitalik Advocates for Atomic Swaps: But Are They Really Useful?"

While advocating for the use of DeFi, I find myself using CEX for these so-called "cross-chain transactions." In fact, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has repeatedly emphasized "keeping assets on the chain they originated from and using atomic swaps to transfer value between different chains."

It sounds simple, but the reality is far from straightforward. What exactly are atomic swaps? How do they work, and can they truly replace centralized exchanges? This article will explore these questions.

5. "Exclusive Interview with DFINITY: ICP is a Victim of SBF's Capital Operations; Much of Web3's Future Lies in Asia"

DFINITY, a "super project" that has raised nearly $200 million, has seen its native token ICP maintain a downward trend since its high launch in 2021, leaving investors who entered at dozens of dollars, even $100, with little hope of recouping their investments.

Now that 2023 is quietly halfway through, when browsing DFINITY's official blog, we find that the project has not experienced the same discontinuation as some "runaway" projects; this former giant has not halted its development progress.

6. "A New Landscape for Crypto Banks is Forming After the Collapse of Silvergate and Signature"

Two months after the collapse of Silvergate Bank and Signature Bank, the pressure on the U.S. crypto industry continues to mount, and a new banking landscape is forming behind crypto companies. This article categorizes and lists some of the banks that cryptocurrency companies are turning to.

7. "What is Binance's Latest Launchpool Project Maverick?"

After launching for a month, Maverick, which once ranked among the top three in Ethereum mainnet trading volume, has a TVL of less than one percent of Uniswap and Curve. The current AMM sector faces significant limitations. One is the low capital utilization of AMMs, and the second is that impermanent loss has not been fundamentally resolved, while the Maverick protocol has timely entered users' sight.