GM to all Blockworks Research ladies and gents!

Yours truly has now been at the firm for slightly over a month, and I can wholeheartedly say that this is the most euphoric newsletter I’ve gotten to write to this date. A lot is happening in the market right now.

I’d argue the most significant event comprises XRP becoming the fourth most valuable token yesterday, flipping BNB for the first time in over two years. This follows a U.S. federal judge partially siding with Ripple Labs in a lawsuit that was filed by the SEC and alleged that XRP was issued as an unregistered security offering. Following the news, Coinbase and Kraken also quickly announced that they’ll relist XRP.

Although the institutional sales of XRP by Ripple were determined to be an unregistered securities offering, it was found that the programmatic sales were not in violation of securities regulations. In other words, XRP sales were deemed non-securities when performed through secondary markets. Consequently, the token is up ~66% in the past 24 hours, with the broader crypto market skyrocketing as well. Some other notable price increases within the last 24 hours include LDO at ~26%, ETH at ~7%, and SOL at ~33%. Our favorite stockenized token, Coinbase, saw its share price break $100, ending the trading day at $107, a ~24% increase during the day.

The ruling also affects U.S. venture capital funds. To acquire tokens on the private market, funds will likely have to convince projects to make the appropriate filings, which can be messy and costly. This implies that either capital raising will have to migrate to other parts of the world or billions in U.S. risky investments must move into a more regulated market.

So, what else is driving bullish prices? Well, many believe the worst macro tightening is over, with more rate cuts possibly coming next year. Institutional adoption is more prevalent than ever, beginning with Blackrock applying for a spot Bitcoin ETF. Most speculators are washed out of the market, with a lot of tokens not having to worry about sell pressure, with the exception of certain coins with high unlock schedules. And finally, it feels as though the market is heavily under-allocated outside of Bitcoin and Ethereum—the best case scenario would be that folks start piling into shiny alt-coins at an accelerated pace.

That’s enough bull posting from me for one day. Enjoy your weekend!

– Brick

I guess this is it for Multichain. Earlier today, the official Twitter account tweeted for the first time in a week, and the news wasn’t positive. The CEO Zhaojun has been detained by the Chinese police since May 21, and nobody has been able to establish contact with him. More shockingly, it was revealed that the CEO and his family held all the private keys and servers for the assets under Multichain’s custody, which explains the ~$130M worth of withdrawals we wrote about last week. Currently, “the team’s funds and access to the servers are with Zhaojun and the police,” according to the Multichain tweet. Blockworks News has a detailed breakdown of the events, which can be found here.

The project is shutting down services and is looking to take down its website. The MULTI token has been trending downwards since late April, and the token price has decreased by ~5% in the past 24 hours. The news also affected wrapped tokens issued by Multichain on other blockchains. Earlier this week, USDC on Fantom shortly recovered from ~$0.50 to ~$0.94 before dropping back to the ~$0.55 level. Following the latest news, the price has again decreased, and the token currently trades at ~$0.20. Ouch.

The Reserve protocol is a permissionless platform where users can deploy, mint, or redeem synthetic assets (RTokens) that inherit the properties of the underlying collateral backing, with the added benefit of over collateralization that RSR Stakers can opt into providing.

Be sure to check out our full report to learn how RTokens are enabling anyone to permissionlessly deploy synthetic assets with customizable governance, revenue share, and collateral models. This report was unlocked by the Reserve Protocol team.

Arbitrum Stylus: The Dual VM

Arbitrum Stylus will allow developers to code smart contracts in Rust, C, and C++, alongside EVM languages facilitating cheaper dapp interactions and attracting a more extensive developer base. Additional languages will be supported in the future.

Reserve Protocol: Decentralizing the Creation of Money

Ripple didn’t win, but it definitely didn’t lose: Where the SEC case goes next

It’s been a good few days for XRP holders, but Ripple still has much to defend in court

Multichain: Arrested founder and family held all the keys

‘All the team’s funds and access to the servers are with Zhaojun and the police,’ the Multichain team said

The insights, views and outlooks presented in the report are not to be taken as financial advice. Blockworks Research analysts are not registered broker/dealers or financial advisors. Blockworks Research analysts may hold assets mentioned in this report, further outlined in the Firm’s Financial Disclosures.

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🟣 Max Long Babyyy