Good Morning Ambirers, it does indeed feel sometimes like the world is yours for the taking, doesn't it? Well even degens have to win sometimes!

Talking about degens, how about an update on our little experiment? The W3OF portfolio has been holding, eh, fine, albeit it seems we bought the top when we started. Next week we might rebalance the portfolio a bit and search for gems. Thing is we can’t do anything without your voice, so if you want to nominate a token, jump to our Discord community and join the convo.

Remember, one of you chads is taking home 40% of the entire portfolio at the end of our experiment, so don’t keep the alpha to yourself!

Here's what we've got today:

• ⛓️ Blackrock's Ethereum-powered market fund gets over $250M in the first week

• 👿 SEC vs Coinbase and XRP update

• 😢 Jailed for our sins: Tornado Cash dev looking at 5 years in prison

• ✊ Crypto AI takes on big tech with a $8 Billion merger

Blackrock's Ethereum-powered market fund gets over $250M in the first week

March 20 marked the launch of BlackRock's USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL).

• BUIDL is a tokenized fund powered by Ethereum blockchain, offering investments in cash, US Treasury bills, and repurchase agreements.

• Each token or share of the fund is represented as $1 value with the ticker BUIDL.

• In just this first week since launch, BUIDL has already seen an influx of over $240 million, according to Bloomberg.

The fund is made available to qualified investors through Securitize Markets LLC and offers unique benefits such as transparent and instantaneous settlement, wider access for investors to on-chain offerings, and the ability for transfers across platforms.

BNY Mellon's support also provides interoperability between digital and traditional markets.

Token holders are able to transfer BUIDL within approved digital wallets through BlackRock's partner, Securitize.

This move aligns with BlackRock's Chairman and CEO Larry Fink's vision of a future where all financial assets are tokenized 🪙 

That indeed seems to be one of the direction crypto is heading, with many experts expecting a tokenized economy to become the norm in the future.

Blackrock's partner, CEO of Securitize, outlined three primary use cases for BUIDL - supporting crypto companies managing treasuries on blockchains like DAOs, developing derivatives of Treasury bills for crypto projects, and serving as an alternative to stablecoins for use as collateral.

The institutions are here frens 👀 but what comes after that? Can we grow forever? Food for thought.

‘SEC vs. Coinbase and XRP’ update

SEC's crackdown the crypto industry continues with two updates in major cases against Coinbase and Ripple.

In the case against Coinbase, the judge rejected SEC's claim that their wallet was functioning as an unregistered broker.

The ‘Staking Program’ offered by Coinbase was ruled to likely constitute an investment contract, making it a potential offering of unregistered securities.

Coinbase was asking judge to dismiss the case, but their request was also rejected 🙅 

🙄 In the meantime, SEC is also demanding a hefty fine of $2 billion from Ripple Labs, the devs of XRP. Further details are yet to be revealed, but Ripple Chief Legal Officer Stuart Alderoty stated that the SEC will be asking for this amount as fines and sanctions.

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has accused SEC of repeatedly acting outside the law and punishing both Ripple and the entire industry.

👉️ He also pointed out SEC chairman Gensler's indifference to the "FTX scam".

Garlinghouse said that there is no precedent for such a high fine without any allegations or findings of fraud or recklessness.

Ripple plans to respond to this development in court next month.

The war between SEC and the crypto world continues, with both sides standing their ground firmly ⚔️ 

The impact of these cases on the overall crypto market is yet to be seen, but the articles have already caused a slight reaction in price (not anything significant, though) 📉 

Will this bring about greater clarity and industry guidelines, or will it lead to more confusion and obstacles? 🤔 Time will be the judge of that.

At this moment, SEC has been dragging XRP devs through courts for more than 4 years.

Jailed for our sins: Tornado Cash dev looking at 5 years in prison

Tornado Cash issue was and is probably one of the biggest topics in DeFi, with many users asking themselves, how far should we go to protect privacy 👇️ 

Can the balance between privacy, decentralization and crime be managed effectively?

And while most in crypto space won't have a definitive answer, it seems that the Dutch law decided that they should be the ones to answer it.

• Tornado cash dev was arrested in August of 2022 and has been held since then on allegations of supporting North Korean hackers.

• Prosecution is arguing that he should face up to 64 months in jail.

Meanwhile, the developer has defended himself by saying that the Tornado Cash protocol is an open-source project and he cannot be held responsible for how others choose to use it.

• Alex also argued that VPN and other privacy-enhancing protocols are used every day and their use for public internet hotspots is even encouraged by the Dutch government.

• Plus, no one can really disagree that the industry is NOT regulated in the right way, seeing how hard it is for devs to know where they stand legally 🤦‍♂️ 

The outcome of this trial could have far-reaching implications for the entire industry, way beyond the fate of one dev.

It could set a precedent for how open-source project developers are treated in the future and may even discourage innovation in the DeFi space.

Many are closely watching this case and hoping for a just verdict, one that takes into account the complexities of privacy and decentralization. Here's hope 😥 

Crypto AI takes on big tech with an $8 Billion merger

Three big (by crypto standards) crypto AI companies are looking to merge their tokens in a bid to develop one decentralized AI platform 🤖 

SingularityNET, Fetch.ai and Ocean Protocol are all engaged in talks to merge their tokens into an ASI token, which is expected to have a fully diluted value of approximately $7.5 billion.

Pending approval from both companies' communities, the potential deal might be officially announced by next Wednesday.

• Although the three individual platforms will continue to operate independently, they are set to collaborate under the guidance of a Superintelligence Collective headed by Ben Goertzel, the founder and CEO of SingularityNET.

• Humayun Sheikh, the CEO of Fetch.ai and an early investor in DeepMind (the AI company that Google acquired in 2014), is expected to take on the role of chairman.

About time?

🤔 Tech giants like Microsoft Corp. have invested heavily in consumer AI technology, which is hard to ignore, given its potential to transform the way we interact with tech in general.

Seeing crypto trying to unite to have a fighting chance against big tech is an intriguing development, especially given the idea of decentralized AI technology being developed using blockchain.

The AI race isn't over yet, and it’s good to see that the crypto community is determined to make its mark on this field 🏁 🏁 

Other worthy reads:

SBF got 25 years in jail. Good luck bud, don’t drop that soap:

London stock exchange will be trading BTC and ETH ETNs

here’s an article about differences between ETFs and ETNs btw

Some alpha on FTM’s Sonic upgrade:

MEMES

That's all for now, frens.

We'll meet in a week! And remember, the market conditions are temporary, but our commitment to building a better Web3 is here to stay. Thanks for joining us, and we look forward to seeing you back next week. Cheers!

Yours, The 🔥 Team

Brought to you by Ambire: The Only Web3 Wallet That You’ll Need!