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The defunct crypto hedge fund has claimed over $1 billion against Genesis, which itself filed for bankruptcy in January.

London-based Arch Insurance International, a syndicate member of Lloyd’s of London, has authorized Evertas to increase its coverage limit for a single policy for crypto custodians and exchanges.

The Crypto and Digital Assets All Parliamentary Group released its long-awaited inquiry into crypto on Monday.

A previous approval was annulled by a higher court after it was determined the Terra founder’s finances were not sufficiently assessed in the first decision.

The Ethereum blockchain’s daily average gas fee — the flexible toll charged to conduct a transaction or execute a smart contract — is trending toward a two-month low after surging to expensive highs amid last month’s memecoin trading frenzy.

According to on-chain data from The Block, the average transaction fee on Ethereum — using a seven-day moving average — has dropped to $7.34 from a high of over $20 last month. The last time fees were this low was April 17, when the metric hit $6.57.

The story remains the same when measured in gwei, a denomination of ether equivalent to one billionth of a whole coin. Data from Dune Analytics user @hildobby shows the daily median gas price dropped to 24 gwei from a high of over 140 gwei last month. The last time prices were the same was on April 12.

Ethereum DEX trading increased demand for block space

Driving gas prices in May was the rise (and return) of memecoin trading, which pushed The Block’s DEX to CEX ratio — a comparison of spot trading volumes on decentralized exchanges against centralized exchanges — to an all-time high of over 20%. The ratio has since fallen back under 15%.

Because centralized exchanges are traditionally somewhat slow to list memecoins — many of which openly have little to no value outside of pure speculation — traders flocked to decentralized exchanges, such as Uniswap, to trade the likes of Pepe and others. The demand for block space to execute decentralized swaps for memecoins was primarily responsible for the increased Ethereum transaction fees.

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Atomic Wallet said Monday that “less than 1%” of its monthly active users were impacted in the weekend breach.

ALSO: The bitcoin options put/call ratio across exchanges has sunk to 0.47, suggesting that fewer investors are seeking downside protection against price declines than they had prior to the passage of a bill to raise the U.S. debt ceiling.

Episode 52 of Season 5 of The Scoop was recorded with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Tangent Ventures Co-Founder Jason Choi.

Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Please send feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblock.co.

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Jason Choi is the co-founder of Tangent Ventures and the host of Blockcrunch podcast.

In this episode, Choi shares why Hong Kong’s new Virtual Asset Service Provider (‘VASP’) licensing regime represents an “unapologetically bullish” shift in tone from regulators.

Although the new laws effectively lift Hong Kong’s prior ban on retail crypto trading, Choi still thinks it will take some time for Hong Kong to become a dominant hub for crypto:

“A lot of crypto startups are effectively unbanked, especially startups that have to deal with crypto assets directly in high frequency such as exchanges… Without more banks actively supporting crypto businesses, it’s a very hard to really thrive for crypto businesses.”

During this episode, Chaparro and Choi also discuss:

• The Asian VC landscape
• What’s next for Web3 gaming
• Crypto market liquidity

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This episode is brought to you by our sponsors PayPal and CleanSpark.

About CleanSpark

CleanSpark (NASDAQ: CLSK) is America’s Bitcoin Miner™. Visit cleanspark.com/theblock to learn more about the CleanSpark way.

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The embattled crypto lender’s ETH staking maneuver could potentially lengthen the waiting time to activate new validators in the Ethereum network to 44 days, one observer noted.

Ether and other major cryptos spent much of the day in positive territory.