📊 Top Crypto VCs Liquid Holdings

Coinbase Sues the SEC | Maple T-Bill Pool

Marco Manoppo
April 26, 2023

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Good Morning,

CFTC is in talks with Binance. Coinbase sues the SEC. Binance US backs out of the $1B Voyager acquisition deal. It has certainly been an eventful week so far.

For those at Consensus 2023, have fun!

Let’s just pray that the “conference equals market dump” curse won’t repeat 🙏

In Today's Email:

What Matters: Coinbase sues the SEC 👨‍🦲
Case Study: Top crypto VC holdings 📊
Governance & Features: Maple T-Bill pool 💵

Narratives: Two things; pay attention to zkSync Era chain adoption and BTC critical support level at around $27,200.

WHAT MATTERS

Coinbase Sues the SEC

Decrypt

State of play: Coinbase has sued the SEC for clarity. The lawsuit is regarding a rule making petition that Coinbase filed in July 2022, asking the SEC to provide regulatory guidance for the crypto industry.

The SEC has not responded to the petition, but went on an enforcement action spree instead.
The petition in question asked whether or not existing securities rule-making processes could be extended to the crypto industry.
If the SEC declines to make a new rule for crypto, Coinbase can follow up with another lawsuit, attempting to make a Federal Court to force the SEC to create such rules.

Why it matters: It’s unfortunate, but legal battles and getting court precedents seem to be the best path for clear crypto regulations in the US.

For builders and investors: In general, there are three critical developments that need to happen for crypto to thrive in the US, which will massively help the industry’s global adoption.

Fight legal battles with regulators in the US.
Help set precedents in foreign court, such as when South Korean court rules that Terra Classic (LUNA) isn’t a security.
Expand market penetration and regulatory engagement internationally.

Investors and builders, depending on their size and access to capital, have different levels of responsibilities and actions that they can take regarding the above points.

Nonetheless, it’s more critical than ever for well capitalized crypto builders and investors to join forces and do the honorable fights of asking for a clear and sensible regulatory framework.

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH

BackScoop

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Why? SEA is one of the fastest-growing regions in the world by GDP, after China and India.

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Join 10,000+ of leading founders, investors, and operators, in SEA reading BackScoop every morning.

CASE STUDY

Top Crypto VC Holdings

Arkham Intelligence

State of play: Arkham Intelligence is an on-chain data analytics platform. Users of Arkham can create their own custom dashboards assessing specific on-chain metrics.

Today, we’re looking at a publicly available dashboard that keeps track of select crypto VCs’ wallets.

The VC firms being tracked and their top holdings are:

Paradigm: Heavy holdings on ETH and LDO.
- Paradigm seems to be fully onboard the ETH staking narrative; maximizing yield and participating in LSD protocols.
a16z: Heavy holdings in top DeFi protocols, with the largest one being UNI.
- a16z has been known as a very active participant in DAO governance.
Symbolic Capital Partners: Balanced holdings across ETH, USD stablecoins, and BTC.
- It’s a standard index-like holdings maintaining exposure in the crypto markets.
GSR Markets: Heavy holdings in GALA and HFT.
- GALA is a utility token used in the Gala Games ecosystem platform where players can earn crypto via gameplay.
- HFT is a cross chain swap that prevents MEV front-running.
ParaFi Capital: Heavy holdings in ETH and CBETH.
- Fully onboard the ETH staking narrative.
Spartan Group: Heavy holdings in C98, BETA, and GAL.
- C98 is a DeFi protocol with multiple products. It was started in Vietnam and has a big focus in Southeast Asia.
- BETA is money market DeFi protocol that allow users to borrow, lend, and short crypto assets.
- GAL is the governance token for Galxe, a DAO focusing on building web3 communities via on-chain credentials and NFT integrations.
BlockTower Capital: Heavy holdings particularly in NXM and MKR.
- MKR is a leading stablecoin protocol (DAI).
- NXM is a DeFi insurance platform. NXM has been the target of many criticisms throughout the years for inconsistencies in paying out claims.
Polychain Capital: Heavy holdings in COMP and ROOK.
- COMP is a leading lending protocol.
- ROOK is a neutral MEV marketplace. ROOK is an interesting play as the MEV ecosystem dynamics change on Ethereum.
Mechanism Capital: Heavy holdings in CQT.
- Covalent is a blockchain data provider that supports queries and infrastructure for 60+ blockchains. The CQT token is primarily utilized for governance and staking (earn fees from fulfilling API queries).
Pantera Capital: Heavy holdings in ETH and stETH.
- Fully onboard the ETH staking narrative.
Blockchain Capital: Heavy holdings in ETH, MATIC, AAVE, and UNI.
- It’s a generic high-level blue chip holdings across ETH and adjacent DeFi protocols.
Dragonfly Capital: Heavy holdings in BGB and LDO.
- BGB is the native token of Bitget exchange, which has been expanding aggressively in recent months. Dragonfly invested $10M in Bitget in April 2023.
- LDO is the native token of Lido, the most popular liquid staking protocol. Dragonfly invested $14.5M in LDO in August 2022.

Our take: Keeping track of crypto VCs’ wallets is one key way to be on top of the market.

Unlike traditional markets whereby there are different levels of access to trade data, which sometimes cause retail investors to know about a CEO stock sale days or weeks after it happened, on-chain data updates in real-time. Even a retail investor with $1,000 can see what the VC firms are doing.

Take a peek at our new referral reward at the bottom of this issue. Share this newsletter and receive our list of 100 smart crypto investors' wallet addresses 👇

FEATURES & GOVERNANCE UPDATE

Maple Cash Management Pool

Introducing the Cash Management Pool.
Specifically designed as an onchain cash management solution - the pool meets the liquidity, risk and accounting requirements of non-US DAOs, Offshore Companies and Web3 Treasuries.
— Maple (@maplefinance)
1:34 PM • Apr 19, 2023

Maple introduces on-chain cash management. The DeFi protocol aims to simplify access to US Treasury Bill. Currently, non-US DAOs, offshore companies, web3 treasuries, and HNWI can participate in the new Maple pool with direct access to T-bill yields.

The pool will pass 1-month US T-bill rate to participants.
Maple has partnered with Room40 Capital, a crypto hedge fund that will act as the sole borrower from the pool.
Crypto assets in the pool are held in a standalone SPV and custodied by a regulated primer broker.

Why it matters: DeFi expansion towards real-world assets will continue to become an important trend in the next few years. Crypto economy needs to be integrated further with the “real” economy for mainstream adoption to continue.

Other notable feature updates:

Cashmere goes live on testnet.
Iron Fish launches mainnet.
Flashbots introduces MEV-share beta.
GMX to integrate Chainlink.
Zilliqa launches EVM compatibility.
RocketPool launches the Atlas upgrade.
Bancor launches the Carbon AMM.
Maple launches the cash management pool.
Helium migrated to Solana.
Gnosis Safe launches on Celo.
1inch launches on zkSync Era.
ZigZag launches on Arbitrum.

QUICK BITES

CFTC in talks with Binance after launching legal action.
Binance US ends $1B Voyager deal.
Coinbase sues the SEC.
House FSC unveiled a stablecoin bill draft.
Terra Classic (old LUNA) deemed NOT a security by Korean Court.
Binance launches ETH liquid staking token.
21Shares-Ark refiles a spot Bitcoin ETF application.
Ex-Signature Crypto Personnels join Fortress Trust.
LedgerX sold for $50M to M7 Holdings.
Bybit implements mandatory KYC.
Deloitte posts hundreds of crypto job openings.
Arbitrum airdrops $120M in ARB tokens to DAOs.

MEME & NOTEWORTHY READS

Chia Jeng Yang’s read on unified stablecoin bridges.
Alliance DAO’s read on the convergence of AI and Web3.
Figment Capital’s read on accelerator zero-knowledge proofs.

Can you ask your co-founders for my $6 million?
“The time for change is now”
— Arthur Hayes (@CryptoHayes)
1:28 PM • Apr 25, 2023

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Disclaimer: All the information presented in this publication and its affiliates is strictly for educational purposes only. It should not be construed or taken as financial, legal, investment, or any other form of advice.