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The latest price moves in bitcoin (BTC) and crypto markets in context for April 5, 2023. First Mover is CoinDesk’s daily newsletter that contextualizes the latest actions in the crypto markets.

Judges at the High Court in London said they didn’t have the resources to explore the issue fully.

San Francisco police said yesterday they are still hunting the killer of Bob Lee, the 43-year-old chief product officer of MobileCoin, creator of Cash App, and the former CTO of payments company Block (previously called Square).

Lee was found at about 2.35 a.m. on the 300 block of Main Street in San Francisco, near the entrance to the Oakland Bay Bridge, on April 4, after police responded to a report of a stabbing.

“Officers arrived on scene and located a 43-year-old adult male victim suffering from apparent stab wounds. Officers rendered aid and summoned medics to the scene. The victim was transported to a local hospital with life-threatening injuries. Despite efforts by first responders and medical personnel, the victim succumbed to his injuries,” the San Francisco Police Department said.

No arrests have been made and the police have made a call for witnesses and help from the public.

“This remains an active investigation,” police said.

Lee became the chief product officer at MobileCoin in 2021. The product was added as a beta test feature on the messaging app Signal in the UK. It allows users to send “digital cash” payments to each other in such a way that all information about the transaction is private and unseeable by Signal. The feature requires people to buy MobileCoin tokens to send a payment and cash it out in fiat to realize its value upon receipt. It was designed specifically for mobile phone and Signal users.

Lee created CashApp in 2013. The mobile payments app lets users send money to each other. It also offers a wallet and cold storage for Bitcoin, allowing users to buy, sell, and send Bitcoin via the Lightning network.

Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter and Block, said in a post on Nostr, “Heartbreaking.. Bob was instrumental to Square and Cash App.”

Bill Barhydt, CEO of mobile crypto wallet company Abra, said “Bob was a dad, the former CTO of Square where he created Cash App & CTO of Mobile Coin.  He was a generous decent human being who didn’t deserve to be killed,” in a post on Twitter.

Police asked anyone with information about the incident to call 1-415-575-4444.

© 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.

To better chronicle the Ethereum blockchain’s transition to a proof-of-stake network, CoinDesk in 2020 started its own validator – nicknamed Zelda. We plunked down the 32 ETH (roughly $15,000 at the time) and laid the technical groundwork. With staking withdrawals due to start April 12, we take stock of the project.

The decline indicates renewed risk appetite in the crypto market.

Open interest, which can be used to determine market strength behind price trends, jumped to all-time highs in dogecoin terms.

BTG Pactual, one of Latin America’s largest investment banks, has introduced a dollar-backed stablecoin through its crypto platform Mynt.

The total market capitalization for tokenized gold has again topped $1 billion. It currently stands at $1.02 billion after rising another 2.4% over the past 24 hours — during which time the trading volume for tokenized gold surpassed $25.5 million.

It’s a tight race for the title of top tokenized gold asset. The market capitalization for PAX Gold is currently almost $523 million, while Tether Gold’s is nearly $499 million. The next closest competitor, according to CoinGecko, is Perth Mint Gold Token, which has a significantly smaller market cap of $2.46 million — essentially rendering this niche of the market a two-horse race.

Both PAX Gold and Tether Gold have seen 24-hour market price increases of over $2,000 — in line with the price of the underlying asset, gold. The former token has increased by 2.7% and carries a slight premium, while Tether’s offering has increased by 1.9%.

The market-cap milestone for tokenized gold crypto assets comes as the price of gold jumped to a 13-month high — topping $2,025. (Industrial metals, conversely, are sliding.)

What is tokenized gold?

PAX Gold and Tether Gold, as the names imply, are tokens pegged to the price of gold. Because they utilize the same distributed ledger technology as Ethereum, they offer investors and traders the ability to easily self-custody and trade on centralized exchanges.

PAX Gold is issued by New York-based fintech firm Paxos Trust Company. Tether Gold, as the name implies, is issued by Tether — which also issues the dominant USD-pegged stablecoin, USDT.

Kraken and Binance are the top markets for PAX Gold among major centralized exchanges, while Bitfinex dominates the Tether Gold market.

Decentralized exchange Uniswap also technically offers trading for the tokens, but with significantly less liquidity.

Safe haven assets in a western banking crisis

Though the “big-even” number of $1 billion seems significant, this isn’t the first time tokenized gold tokens have hit this milestone. In fact, it spent much of 2022 well above the $1 billion market — though it fell through in August 2022 and didn’t return until last month.

“$1 billion is still relatively little,” explained The Block’s CEO Larry Cermak, adding: “The likeliest reason is that some crypto whales prefer to hedge their crypto exposure with gold, and use these tokens instead of storing gold bars in their safes.”

Indeed, concerns over a potential western banking crisis have seen investors flock to gold as a safe-haven asset. These concerns may also be benefiting bitcoin — which is often considered to be the gold-standard of the crypto market, if not itself akin to “digital gold.”

“The simplicity of crypto as digital bearer assets solves for the immediate counter-party risks that bank customers are dealing with, but customers also require stability of value,” Bernstein’s Gautam Chhugani said.

© 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.

Decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap has been forked by developers after its Business Source License (BSL) expired on April 1.

The 1 million instantly withdrawable ether has become a point of concern for the market.