Happy Saturday!
DL News’ Isabel Hunter and Ana Curic are in Montenegro, where they reported that the US wants Terra founder Do Kwon’s extradition after he was detained last week. Follow their coverage for exclusive updates.
Earlier in the week, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission went after crypto exchange Binance with a raft of charges, including illegally allowing Americans to trade on its platform. There’s more to come for Binance, market observers told us.
Meanwhile, the Securities and Exchange Commission chair Gary Gensler appeared before lawmakers and defended his agency’s oversight of crypto, arguing the industry is rife with conflicts of interest.
Fidelity may beat hiring goal for a 500-strong crypto unit in sign of finance land grab
In a scoop on Friday, Trista Kelley revealed that investment giant Fidelity Investment is on track to exceed its target to hire more than 100 new workers to its digital asset unit from last year to the end of the first quarter. That will bring the team’s total headcount beyond the 500-person mark.
Meet the Montenegro prosecutor set to take the first crack at Do Kwon in court
Ana and Isabel secured another exclusive for us on Friday with an interview with Haris Šabotić, the Montenegrin prosecutor who is set to be the first lawyer to face Kwon in court.
He told them that, while Kwon is wanted by both the US and South Korea for his role in the Terra collapse last year, Šabotić is only concerned with charging the Terraform Labs founder for using forged documents.
Hydra Ventures – an investment DAO that invests in investment DAOs – raises $10m
Eric Johansson wrote about Hydra Ventures, an investment DAO which has raised $10 million to invest in investment DAOs. Pretty meta, eh? Backers include venture capital firm 1kx, Consensys, Collab+Currency, Wicklow Capital, and Seed Club Ventures.
Euler hacker returns $176m of stolen funds amid ‘ongoing’ negotiations
Tim Craig and Eric reported that DeFi protocol Euler Finance has managed to recover around 84% of nearly $200 million in stolen funds. How? The thief gave much of it back, while also begging for forgiveness. The mea culpa may not help them though: law enforcement could pursue them for a different reason.
BlackRock’s tokenisation push is just the start — private asset boom may hit $290tn
I wrote about the potential for tokenisation in private assets, a market sized roughly at $290 trillion. Individual investors may be able to buy Apple stock, but it’s much harder to invest in the next unicorn. A number of players in the private equity space are making moves to tokenise their funds and make them accessible to a broader set of investors.
