Walt Disney has knocked metaverse plans off its priority list. The entertainment giant’s “next-generation storytelling and consumer experiences” division had been tasked with exploring metaverse strategies.
But now Disney is eliminating the entire division as part of its restructuring map, which entails reducing the headcount by nearly 7,000 across the company over the next two months.
Metaverse No Longer a Priority for Disney
According to a WSJ report, Disney’s CEO Robert Iger said that the layoffs would begin this week. The metaverse division had nearly 50 members, all of which have lost their jobs. Its head Mike White was promoted to the role of SVP of consumer experiences and platforms in February 2022 and was tasked with getting the entertainment company deeper into

Seychelles-based crypto exchange OKX has announced its plans to expand its presence in Hong Kong by applying for virtual asset licenses under the new regulatory regime as well as Type 1 and 7 licenses under the Securities and Futures Ordinance.
It also plans to establish a Hong Kong entity for launching virtual asset services in the region.
OKX’s Hong Kong Expansion
According to the official blog post, OKX said it has been working for more than a year to meet Hong Kong’s new regulatory requirements that seek to govern virtual asset service providers (VASPs), which will come into effect in June this year.
As part of its expansion plans in the city-state, the crypto exchange will launch two entities –
Hong Kong Fintech Company Limited – involved in applying for licenses to

Gucci announced a multi-year partnership with Yuga Labs, the company behind well-known NFT collections such as Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), CryptoPunks, and Meebits. The main aim is to explore “the intersection between fashion and entertainment in the Metaverse,” according to the press release.
With the latest move, the Italian high-end luxury fashion house is cementing its place as an early mover in Web3.
Gucci-Otherside
Robert Triefus – who happens to be Gucci’s senior executive vice president, corporate and brand strategy, and chief executive of Gucci Vault & Metaverse Ventures – hinted at a potential long-term commitment in the Web3 space in a recent fashion-tech summit.
According to the report by The Business of Fashion, Triefus compared the early frenzy surrounding

A&T Capital’s founding partner Yu Jun reportedly resigned from his position earlier this month. While the crypto fund cited “personal issues” as the reason, Jun has refrained from commenting on the matter.
According to a statement to Bloomberg, A&T Capital said that Jun, a veteran in China’s crypto investor community, is no longer involved with the company’s operations.
Jun was an investment director of Ant and assisted the Jack Ma-backed fintech empire to establish A&T Capital, which has been investing in offshore crypto projects since 2014. The exec had previously worked at OKX Investment as well.
However, several women took to social media over the past week to accuse Jun of sexual harassment sparking widespread outrage among Chinese crypto investors and developers.
The

Crypto exchange Binance announced the opening a new blockchain hub in Georgia. The establishment of this new “Web3 outpost” is expected to help Binance strengthen blockchain education and accelerate the adoption of crypto in the region.
Binance had forged several strategic partnerships, initiatives, as well as community events in the transcontinental country that is known for being crypto-friendly.
Blockchain Hub in Georgia
According to the official blog post, the blockchain hub will be used to attract talent to the sector and facilitate educational initiatives related to digital finance while furthering the development of the crypto ecosystem in the region. Currently, Binance’s Georgia team consists of 25 individuals, the platform expects to double down on hiring to add

Animoca Brands has established itself as one of the most prominent investors in NFT, blockchain gaming, and metaverse-focused firms. But its appetite for metaverse appears to have taken a hit.
In the latest development, the Hong Kong-based blockchain gaming giant has reportedly reduced the target for its metaverse fund by 20%. The report suggests that the company is scaling down its initiative in response to the volatility in the crypto sector.
The fund Animoca Capital, which was unveiled last November, had an initial target of around $2 billion but was later halved to $1 billion. According to Reuters, the latest reduction brings down its target to $800 million, meaning a 60% drawdown compared to the initial numbers.
In a previous interview, Animoca’s co-founder and

After a 2-year investigation, Hindenburg concluded Block (previously known as Square) “systematically took advantage of the demographics it claims to be helping.” The report accused the firm of facilitating “fraud against consumers and the government” as well as “avoiding regulation.” It further called Block’s loans and fees to be “predatory” in nature and designed to “mislead investors with inflated metrics.”
The US-based short seller said its research involved numerous interviews with former employees, partners, and industry experts, as well as an extensive review of regulatory and litigation records and FOIA and public records requests.
Hindenburg Report on Block
In a report released on March 23rd, Hindenburg claimed that Block “does not seem to offer a discernible

Scammers adapt better than we can imagine and change depending on the market situation. This revelation was made in a recently hosted webinar by prominent blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis wherein it gauged crime trends in the industry market during the crypto winter. The data gathered by the firm revealed how scammers adapted to the developments and volatility of the crypto market.
Not all scams behaved the same way in the context of the bear market. This time around, it was the free giveaway and romantic scams that managed to swipe money from victims’ pockets.
Scammers Post Terra Collapse
The data gathered by Chainalysis demonstrated ways in which scammers adapted to the developments and volatility of the crypto market. According to the firm’s cybercrimes research

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission has often talked about the purported “dangers” of crypto-assets while highlighting the need to strongly regulate the industry. It wasn’t until the FTX blow-up that the regulator stepped up its aggression.
In yet another instance stigmatizing the asset class, the securities watchdog has released a bulletin urging investors to exercise caution when dealing with cryptocurrencies.
SEC’s “Investor Alert”
The SEC’s Office of Investor Education and Advocacy cautioned investors against considering an investment involving crypto asset securities citing its “exceptionally volatile and speculative” nature. The post also pointed out that the crypto exchanges “may lack important protections for investors.”
The SEC explained that the

With the much-anticipated Shapella upgrade just around the corner, the Ethereum Foundation has increased the bug bounty.
According to the latest developers’ call, the reward was updated as part of the last-minute testing efforts.
Bug Bounty
In the 105th All Core Developers Consensus (ACDC) call, Security Researcher at the Ethereum Foundation – Fredrik Svantes – revealed that the maximum bug bounty for identifying a vulnerability in the Shanghai/Capella upgrade has been doubled from $250,000 to $500,000 between now and the time of the fork.
This isn’t the first time the organization has ramped up its bug bounty program. The Ethereum Foundation announced increasing the payouts fourfold ahead of the blockchain’s transition to proof-of-stake for all “Merge-related bounties for

Arbitrum’s much-anticipated token airdrop shook up the crypto space as on-chain activity of the popular layer-2 solution soared to levels not seen before. With the introduction of the ARB token, Arbitrum finally transformed into a DAO.
Meanwhile, the hunters of this cash rain raked in an impressive amount of ARB tokens. In the first hour alone, over 42 million ARB tokens were claimed. New data found two “super airdrop hunters” that received 1.4 million ARB, worth around $1.92 million, and 933,375 ARB, worth $1.28 million. Collectively, the two “hunters” acquired around $3.3 million via 1,496 addresses.
As per the blockchain analysis firm Lookonchain, the account that received 1.4 million ARB added the entire amount to the decentralized exchange Uniswap to provide

Telegram has added a new feature enabling users to send each other the world’s largest stablecoin, tether (USDT).
USDT runs on several blockchains, but for now, Telegram has added support for the stablecoin only on Tron.
According to an update on March 22nd, USDT-TRON – TRC20 – has been added to the popular messaging app’s wallet function, thereby expanding its payment capabilities for buying and selling crypto.
USDT is the third crypto-asset joining Bitcoin and The Open Network token as assets supported by the Wallet bot (TON).
Telegram’s announcement read,
“You can now buy, swap, and make P2P trades with Tether USDT (TRC20). You can also directly send USDT to your friends with no transaction fees.”
With the new integration, Telegram is competing against other social

The much-anticipated Arbitrum ARB governance token airdrop marks the beginning of its transition into a self-executing DAO governance, and the activity on the network has soared to levels never seen before.
The Ethereum-layer 2 scaling system that uses Optimistic rollups technology to facilitate faster and cheaper transactions has already been on a roll lately. The daily transaction on Arbitrum has now hit an all-time high of 1,312,052.
The last peak was registered a month back when the figures climbed 1,103,398, which was followed by a sharp reversal amidst an industry-wide drawdown, according to the data compiled by Arbiscan. But the airdrop news gave the figures the necessary boost.
DeFiLlama data further suggested that there’s nearly $2 billion locked inside

The banking sector could potentially undergo a much-needed revamp, but until then, investors appear to be scrambling for a safety net. As the traditional financial world is rocked by the Credit Suisse chaos and the failure of a series of US banks, investors have flocked to the largest stablecoin, Tether (USDT).
The turmoil has once again helped the controversial asset extend its lead.
Tether Market Cap
Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), Signature Bank, and Silvergate Capital, once served as a vital tripartite of lenders fetching deposits from crypto companies, all collapsed this year in a relatively short span of time. The demise of these entities highlighted the “un-stableness” of stablecoins.
The fintech firm Circle admitted a $3.3 billion exposure to SVB, which briefly dragged

MetaMask is integrating with crypto fintech platform MoonPay to expand its offering in Nigeria.
According to MetaMask developer ConsenSys, Nigeria happens to be one of the major markets for the crypto wallet service globally, ranking third in active mobile users. The latest move to gain a stronger foothold in the country comes in response to the inadequacies in the local financial system, as an estimated 90% of credit/debit card attempts to purchase crypto in Nigeria are declined.
Expansion to Nigeria
With MoonPay integration, MetaMask users in the African country will now be able to use instant bank transfers to buy crypto directly in a much faster and cheaper way. This new feature is available on the MetaMask mobile app and the Portfolio Dapp.
MetaMask’s Senior Product

Pushing on the new industry standard to boost transparency, OKX released its fifth proof-of-reserves (PoR) report. The latest edition demonstrated that the Seychelles-based crypto exchange holds clean assets worth $8.9 billion in BTC, ETH, and USDT.
Data shows that OKX’s wallets have 138,405 BTC, 1,325,259 ETH, and 3,264,352,204 USDT against user balances of 134,289 BTC, 1,284,812 ETH, and 3,199,251,622 USDT, respectively.
This proves that OKX is overcollateralized with a reserve ratio of 103% for Bitcoin, 103% for Ethereum, and 102% for Tether.
The report further highlighted that OKX holds the largest 100% clean asset reserves among major exchanges for the third consecutive month.
While the reserve ratios of Bitcoin and Ethereum noted a minor decline since the last report

Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was the backbone of many startups and venture capital funds around the world. Its collapse signifies the biggest banking failure since the 2008 financial crisis. While the crypto market has largely been spared from an adverse effect, the same cannot be said for the non-fungible token (NFT) space.
According to the latest edition of the DappRadar report, the NFT traders went “numb” in response to the banking turmoil in the United States.
NFT Space Amidst Banking Chaos
The NFT industry followed a steady upward trajectory for most of 2023. In fact, the sales recorded highs as the broader market recovered while mainstream adoption of NFTs also saw a spike. However, the collapse of SVB and the de-pegging of one of the largest stablecoins – USDC – was

On-chain analyst Lookonchain detected an address tied to the exploiter of the Ethereum-based lending protocol sent 100 Ether (approximately $171,700) to a wallet associated with Lazarus Group’s mammoth Ronin network hack.
While it is still unclear if the Euler exploiter is affiliated with the North Korean state-sponsored cyber threat group linked to the North Korean Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB), the interaction is peculiar as many community members had previously speculated that the notorious collective could be behind it.
Lazarus Group was initially sanctioned by OFAC in 2019 and has been involved in several exploits. In addition to the $625 million exploit of Axie Infinity’s Ronin network, it was also behind last year’s $100 million Harmony bridge hack.
Euler

Payment processing company Stripe announced signing agreements for a Series I fundraising of over $6.5 billion at a valuation of $50 billion.
Andreessen Horowitz, Baillie Gifford, Founders Fund, General Catalyst, MSD Partners, and Thrive Capital will participate in the funding round alongside new investors such as GIC, Goldman Sachs Asset and Wealth Management, and Temasek.
The Funding
Stripe intends to deploy the freshly raised funds to provide liquidity to current and former employees and address staff withholding tax obligations related to equity awards, resulting in the retirement of company shares that will offset the issuance of new ones to Series I investors.
Stripe said in a press release that it does not require this capital to run its business. Talking about the

The USDC depeg caused significant turmoil in the market last week. The stablecoin issuer Circle claimed that it has cleared “substantially all of the backlog of minting and redemption requests for USDC.”
In a recent statement, Circle said it had redeemed $3.8 billion of USDC tokens over the period and minted $800 million.
The Boston-headquartered company also went live with a new transaction banking partner for domestic US wires in and out on March 14.
Circle further revealed going live for international wires to and from 19 countries as well with the same partner the following day. The team expects to “bring more capabilities back online” starting this week.
Highlighting the events of the past week that affected the liquidity operations for USDC, the company said,
“Circle

Last week’s collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and the subsequent contagion appeared to have worked in favor of the decentralized exchanges as trading activity soared to levels not seen since November 2022.
According to the latest data from DeFiLlama, the daily trading volume on decentralized exchanges was up by an astonishing 255.36% over the past week and is inching closer to $60 billion, a level last seen four months ago. The figure reached almost $25 billion on March 11th as a result of investors scrambling to move money.
All the top decentralized exchanges were in the green, with the majority noting increases upwards of 100%.
Uniswap is clearly the largest decentralized exchange, as per the leaderboard, raking in a trading volume of $31.69 billion over the past

Coinbase is ramping up its expansion effort, with Singapore being the first stop. As part of its ambitious plan, the crypto exchange has announced forging a strategic banking partnership with Standard Chartered in the city-state to provide its users with an option to move funds between any lender and Coinbase.
The news comes amidst the crypto industry losing a number of banking on- and off-ramps due to the recent turmoil in the US banking industry.
Coinbase-Singapore
According to the official blog post, Singapore customers will now be able to transfer funds to and from their Coinbase account using any local bank in the city-state for free. The aim is to offer users more flexibility and control of their assets by enabling them to cash in or cash out of their Coinbase

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced the addition of key industry members to the newly constituted Technology Advisory Committee (TAC).
The official press release stated that the agency has appointed White House official Carole House as the new chair, while blockchain analysis company TRM Labs’ Ari Redboard has been onboarded as the vice chair of its Technology Advisory Committee.
Committee Members
The Technology Advisory Committee will be joined by executives from IBM, Amazon, CME Group, and Cboe Global Markets. Professors from university law schools, including Cornell, Washington College of Law, and the University of Michigan, have also been named in the list.
The TAC also features several members from the cryptocurrency industry, namely – Ava Labs

Omniscia, the auditing partner of Euler Finance, has released a post-mortem report on the same which stated that the vulnerability that was exploited by the malicious hackers originated from the decentralized finance lending protocol’s incorrect donation mechanism that failed to account for the donator’s debt health.
The vulnerable code introduced in eIP-14 brought about several modifications throughout the Euler ecosystem. This enabled the attacker to create an over-leveraged position and liquidate it themselves in the same block by artificially causing it to go “under-water,” said the firm in a statement.
The feature at the center of the vulnerability was not in the scope of any audit conducted by Omniscia.
An outside audit was responsible for reviewing the vulnerable

Blockchain security firm, Halborn has detected several critical and exploitable vulnerabilities impacting more than 280 networks, including Litecoin (LTC) and Zcash (ZEC). Code-named “Rab13s,” this vulnerability has put over $25 billion of digital assets at risk.
This was first detected in the Dogecoin network a year ago, which was then fixed by the team behind the premier memecoin.
51% Attacks and Other Issues
According to the official blog post, Holborn researchers discovered the most critical vulnerability related to peer-to-peer (p2p) communications which, if exploited, can help attackers craft consensus messages and send them to individual nodes and take them offline. Eventually, such a threat could also expose networks to risks such as 51% attacks and other severe

The decline of centralized entities has worked out well for their decentralized counterparts. Over the weekend, USDC witnessed a significant trading volume on several decentralized exchanges.
Uniswap, for one, reached its highest daily volume ever of $11.84 billion on March 11th. But it isn’t the only decentralized protocol that saw traction.
Decentralized Exchanges Register Impressive Growth
The development comes in the backdrop of Circle’s USDC de-pegging event that occurred over the weekend after the collapse of Signature, Silvergate, and Silicon Valley Bank.
Several centralized crypto exchanges, including Binance, Coinbase, Crypto.com, and Bitpay, halted payments and auto conversions in the stablecoin. This caused the stablecoin prices to fluctuate wildly, and gas fees

Japanese multinational automobile manufacturer – Nissan – has reportedly filed for four Web3-related trademarks at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) last week. The applications are for its Infiniti, Nismo, and Nissan brands.
According to the filing, Nissan intends to strengthen its foothold in the web3 space by creating virtual clothes, cars, headgear, trading cards, toys, tickets, and an online NFT marketplace for trading and minting NFTs.
The filing also covers “entertainment services” such as online video, images, artwork, tickets, audio, sounds, music, and trading cards. Nissan’s application covers software for creating, minting, sending, receiving, accepting, trading, storing, tracking, authenticating, and submitting NFTs and videos.
The company

The unprecedented injection of liquidity into the market from the Federal Reserve during that period was an attempt to stimulate an ailing economy.
But before that, crypto, which closely tracked the stock market’s movements, went into a downward spiral soon after. Bitcoin crashed from $8,000 to $3,750 in a matter of hours.
It was the “loaded” retail and amateur players that tapped crypto and meme stocks as markets recovered. Eventually, the asset class soared to new heights in 2021. While dramatic blow-off peaks and drawdowns of over 80% are not out of the norm, the last bull run managed to capture the attention of investors, both big and small, like no other.
Several public companies made significant investments in crypto. Overall, it was a record-breaking year for space.

Mark Zuckerberg-led social media giant – Meta – is developing a decentralized text-based app called Codenamed P92.
According to a report, users can log in to the new app through their Instagram credentials. The latter’s head, Adam Mosseri, has been roped in to lead the project. With the new app using existing Instagram data, including names, profile photos, and followers, among other things, this may not sit well with many since Meta has faced criticism in the past for its handling of user data and privacy issues.
Keeping this in mind, the company has also onboarded the legal department to work out privacy concerns before rolling out the app in public.
Decentralized Social Network
P92 will be based on a decentralized framework similar to that of Mastodon, which has

Decentralized proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain Hedera finally confirmed a security breach. In an update, the team behind the platform revealed that attackers managed to exploit the Smart Contract Service code of the protocol’s mainnet to transfer Hedera Token Service tokens held by victims’ accounts to their own.
It said the root cause of the issue has been identified by the team, and are working on a solution.
Hedera Exploit
Hedera further noted that the attackers targeted those accounts which were used as liquidity pools on multiple decentralized exchanges – including Pangolin, SaucerSwap, and HeliSwap – that utilize Uniswap v2-derived contract code ported over to use the Hedera Token Service to carry out the theft.
Hedera announced shutting down network services and