Blackrock Integrates Onchain Money Market Fund

Plus Bitcoin Difficulty Hits Record High Pre-Halving

Author

Nathaniel Whittemore
April 12, 2024

The Breakdown First Five - Friday, April 12, 2024

Welcome back to The Breakdown First Five — the 5 most interesting and/or important stories in bitcoin, crypto, and markets to start your day.

Blackrock Integrates Onchain Money Market Fund

5. ‘Buy Bitcoin’ Sign To Be Auctioned

The infamous ‘Buy Bitcoin’ sign will be auctioned off, with private offers already coming in above 5 BTC. The sign was flashed during a 2017 congressional hearing behind then Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. At the time, Bitcoin was trading at just $2,400 and Yellen midway through the first attempt to escape the zero lower bound. Final bids for the sign will be entertained in two weeks time at Pubkey New York.

4. London Coining

A London Mayoral candidate wants to hand every citizen £100 in crypto. Brian Rose, the host of London Real wants to do this through a token launch, backed by a £1 billion liquidity pool funded through a tax on banks. The idea is to get people more comfortable with crypto through using it. If you were wondering where we are in the cycle, we’re at the point where a political candidate proposes a memecoin. 

3. Building a Bridge

Chainlink have launched their first consumer facing product which they’re pitching as the safest cross-chain bridge. The bridge uses the CCIP design which uses distributed transaction verification instead of the usual mutlti-sig infrastructure. Bridge hacks represent about 50% of value lost to exploits since 2016, so an upgrade to security could yield massive benefits for the industry. 

2. Difficulty Up Into Halving

The final difficulty adjustment prior to the halving has come in at 3.9%, pushing difficulty to all time high. Since the beginning of the year, hashrate is up 24% with mining difficulty up 20%, demonstrating that miners are not slowing down into the halving. Currently the halving is expected to arrive just after midnight on April 20 in UTC, but it’s borderline whether the most amusing halving date will occur.  

1. Blackrock’s Onchain Integration

Blackrock’s onchain money market fund has been plugged into the broader ecosystem. Circle has added smart contract support for the fund, offering onchain redemption into USDC. Since it was launched three weeks ago the fund has attracted $288M in AUM, largely targeting crypto firms. This new feature promises to make the fund more useful as a cash management solution for firms who need on demand liquidity. Wall Street is beginning to play with the money legos.