😱 BlackRock's stealing your Bitcoin!

GM Legends,

What a wild 24 hours it’s been as Bitcoin god candles to $30,800, Zucks vs Musk cage fight and Mr J Powell has publically said “crypto appears to have staying power” and “we do see stablecoins as a form of money.”

Ladies and gentlemen, could this be the start of the “we are so back” bull run?!

Today, let’s dig into whether or not tradfi is saving crypto or stealing our Bitcoin.

PS. We’ve just added the first LARP Pass Research paper to the referral program that’s hidden somewhere in this email. Refer 1 friend, get them to sign up and receive “LARP Research: A Tapioca DAO Bullcase.”

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Need to know.
If you’ve only got 2 minutes.

The big story.
🤔 Did BlackRock just save Bitcoin?

DeFi insights.
🖼 Lybra Finance shares V2 assets
📅 Vertex Protocols announce Wintermute Ventures as strategic partner
🫠 GM degen podcast: BlackRock wants your BTC & the OP vs ARB debate

In the news.
🐮 Zucks challenges Musk to a cage fight 
🐻 Gods Unchained joins Epic Games Store
👨🏻‍💼 What the FED?! The FED becomes bullish on stablecoins

Plus Twitter reads from @Crypto_McKenna, @HsakaTrades and @zerototom!

🔥 The big story.
To make you think.

🤔 Did BlackRock just save Bitcoin?

Or did they FUD us out of our bags to buy the dip to launch their own crypto-related products?

A coincidence? I think not!

Wall Street made us paper hand our bags, liquidated traders and allowed the institutes to buy the dip all in preparation for a “miracle bull run” to potentially occur.

We’ve gone from “It’s so over” to “we are so back” as euphoria hits and the tradfi saviours swoon in to “make crypto great again.”

Meanwhile in the SEC tea room…

So how did we get here?

Long story short, the narrative has been to get rid of the unregulated crypto exchange criminals performing illegal activities and roll the red carpet for the Wall Street Giants.

Crypto prints and it’s time for them to get a slice of the pie.

The turning point…

• BlackRock filed for a spot BTC ETF… which is actually a trust that acts like an ETF.

• Wisdom Tree applies and Invesco reapplies for a BTC ETF

• Deutsche Bank wants a Digital Asset License in Germany

• Rumours of Fidelity buying out GrayScale

• And after the September announcement, EDX Markets gets launched by Wall Street Giants Citadel, Charles Schwab, Fidelity & Co.

Remember this? I wouldn't be surprised if we saw an announcement from Nasdaq soon.

Oh and is that 3AC OPNX exchange meme even a thing anymore?

And what does this actually mean?

It means PUMP my bags!

But be cautious as tradfi are now ready to take their slice of the pie because let’s be honest, would the largest asset manager really make a play like this if they weren’t at least 100% sure of its success?

Spot ETFs and exchanges will need to hold the underlying asset, Bitcoin, meaning they’ll need to be accumulating their bags at range lows so they don’t have a break-even price of $$29,803 as Michael Saylor’s Microstrategy does.

The BTC: Short Squeeze Ratio chart suggests that someone(s) has been loading up rather than Mr Market Maker hunting the liquidation zones.

And for once… it isn’t Saylor or El Salvador buying the dip of the dip.

If history is a sign of the future, $GLD has albeit slow-mooned since listing on the NYSE. Could Balaji’s Bitcoin to $1,000,000 prediction finally be on the cards? Probably not but it’s fun to speculate.

EDX Markets is here to put the “TRUST” back into crypto, for institutes at least, giving them a safe “regulator-friendly” environment to trade crypto assets.

Essentially EDX Markets becomes the non-custodial platform for tradfi to buy and sell crypto assets without having to worry about the debacle that occurred when FTX tried to do too many things at once.

Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Bitcoin Cash will feature first on the platform…

“... because until there is more regulatory clarity, we don’t want to trade something that’s potentially a security,” EDX CEO, Nazarali said in April. “Regulators really like that we don’t take that risk.”

Wait… Gary… isn’t Ethereum a security? Hmmmm

Ahhh I see what's happening here, it’s all good news for us normies, right?

For your current crypto bags, maybe… but it would put the most popular coins into the control of those that the decentralisation movement was supposed to be moving away from. BlackRock managed $10 trillion in assets and, in theory, market buy ALL the Bitcoin that's left on exchanges today.

Yeah, the most powerful fund could control Satoshi's vision and his Bitcoin.

EDX Markets is here to make MURRRICA great again by solving the issue created by the criminally operated current crypto exchanges on US soil (I say this tongue in cheek btw!)

Our take.

Like anything, there's good, there's evil and then there’s the game of whales which appears to be as momentum shifts towards tradfi as this is a free money trade for them.

Yea, this brings tradfi in to buy our bags, but not necessarily the normies. Normies will buy and invest in the ETFs via tradfi routes, NOT by UniSwap, Binance or Coinbase.

What this may allow for is to give confidence back into the normies who came, got rekt and left. The pain of the last bull run rekt’age is slowly fading as investment accounts and cash under the bed have been replenished ready to gamble on that next 100x.

That being said… are stable coins next on the SEC’s firing line?

👀 DeFi insights.
Project updates, governance reports and industry secrets.

The world of DeFi.

• AvaLabs - Set to launch AI Chatbot AvaGPT to answer Avalanche network queries. (Decrypt)

• Camelot DEX - V3 AMM goes live. (Twitter)

• DefiLlama - Create a crypto calendar to help you keep up to date. (Twitter)

• GND - Announces $gETH. (Twitter)

• Lybra Finance - Shares V2 supported assets. (Twitter)

• Protectorate Protocol - Release Event Horizon FAQ to go live on mainnet June 23rd 2PM UTC. (Twitter)

• Savvy DeFi - @blueclarityone from $JOE reviews week 1 of Savvy DeFi’s Liquidity Campaign happening at Trader Joe. (Twitter)

• Swell Network - Reaches 7,000 Voyagers, 25,000 ETH TVL as Swells @AbishekFi, releases some Pearl Voyage Alpha plus 50 pearls bonus. (Twitter)

• UniDex Finance - V3 perps aggregator information thread. (Twitter)

• Vertex Protocol - Vertex’s AMM goes live as the team introduces Liquidity Pools plus announces a strategic partnership with Wintermute Ventures. (Twitter)

• Zora Network - The NFT creation platform built using the OP stack goes live. (Twitter)

Governance updates.

• Balancer - Governance vote passed to officially make wstETH/ma3wETH core pools on Balancer. (Twitter)

• Polygon - Proposal to upgrade Polygon PoS to a zkEVM validium goes live. (Twitter)

• Raft Fi - Twitter thread list of all their current proposals. (Twitter)

🫠 GM degen.
The latest GM degen podcast.

Today Grant and Mike chat about how BlackRock wants your Bitcoin as the market turned bullish on the news of ETG filings plus a look at the great OP vs ARB debate as Optimism takes the lead.

Spotify | YouTube | Twitter

🗞 In the news.
The important bits.

• Binance Labs’ incubation investment announcement includes Bracket_Labs_, dappOS_com, kryptoskatt, mindnetwork_xyz and zkPass. (Binance Blog)

• Gods Unchained joins Epic Games Store next to gaming giants Fortnite and League of Legends. (The Block)

• MakerDAOs grows U.S. Treasury bond holdings to $1.2 billion after buying $700m more increasing their real-world asset exposure. (The Block)

• Billionaire brawlers as Zucks challenges Musk to a 1 v 1 in the cage with Musk tweeting “i’m up for a cage fight if he is.” Whilst also highlighting his special move “The Walrus.” (The Verge)

• Ripple Secures Major Payments Institution License in Singapore, allowing further customer use of its crypto-enabled On-Demand Liquidity service. (The Block)

• “The Rise of Blus: A Nouns Movie” is set to be the first animated film funded by a DAO. (Coindesk)

• U.S. Treasury Purchases to Resume in Circle's USDC Reserve Fund Managed by BlackRock.(Coindesk)

👨🏻‍💼 What the FED?!

J Powell just got bullish on stables. Here’s a useful summary of what he spoke about yesterday.

🐥 Twitter reads.
In case you missed it.

@Crypto_McKenna, empty your mind and release your inner bear market PTSD.

@HsakaTrades, the prophecy is coming true.

@zerototom shares his Ethereum thesis.

And on that note, thanks for reading, catcha apes in the next edition!

blocmates team 🫡

🤝 A final word.

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