Ben Strack

4 days ago | mail.blockworks.com | Jeffrey Albus |Casey Wagner |Ben Strack |Kate Irwin

Byron’s away, but Katherine Ross from the Empire newsletter will be here all week to keep you entertained. Today, the Queen of Scoops returns to regale us with part 2 of the drama involving the layer-2 incubated by Bitget and the spicy leadership changes underway at Morph. (You can find part 1 here). If you like this edition, you’re in luck. You’ll get a lot more like it when you give the Empire newsletter a subscribe.

5 days ago | blockworks.co | Ben Strack

The SEC's move to halt proposed crypto ETFs that would allow staking likely won't help or hurt other issuers' efforts to unlock that feature for their own funds, industry watchers argue. Registration statements for the Rex-Osprey ETH Staking ETF and the Rex-Osprey SOL Staking ETF went effective on May 30 "without resolution of staff comments," the SEC wrote in a letter that day.

5 days ago | blockworks.co | Ben Strack

Stablecoin issuer Circle is upping the number of shares it plans to offer as the company gets set to go public on the New York Stock Exchange. The company is offering 32 million shares of Class A common stock, according to a Monday filing. That includes 19.2 million shares offered from selling stockholders, for which Circle will not receive proceeds from. Circle expects the initial public offering price to be between $27 and $28 per share, it added in the disclosure.

1 week ago | mail.blockworks.com | Byron Gilliam |Jack Kubinec |Ben Strack |Kate Irwin

In her eviscerating review of Thomas Piketty’s Capital, Deirdre McCloskey laments that “for reasons I have never understood, people like to hear that the world is going to hell, and become huffy and scornful when some idiotic optimist intrudes on their pleasure.”  “Pessimism sells,” she observes.

1 week ago | blockworks.co | Ben Strack

With Circle's IPO in progress and the wrap of yesterday's inaugural Stablecon event in NYC, it's a great time to talk about stablecoins. If you haven't heard of them, the living-under-a-rock quip is probably warranted. I bet that's a peaceful life, though, so in some ways I envy you. But a misconception from those in the know?