🏃 Morphing on

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Consensys is the lead investor in SharpLink’s $425 million raise. 

ICYMI: SharpLink is the publicly-traded gaming firm that’s planning on becoming the Ethereum version of Strategy, with Consensys CEO Joseph Lubin joining the board. So clearly no surprise that Lubin’s company would be interested in leading a raise. 

But it wasn’t just Consensys looking to get some exposure. ParaFi, Pantera, Electric Capital, Arrington Capital, and Galaxy Digital were just a few others involved in the private placement. 

Now to see how SharpLink executes, because that’ll be the real test. 

Meanwhile:

• Bitcoin’s trading around $105,000, 4% lower in the past week. 

• ETH’s managed to break a 5-month downtrend, with REV rebounding 40% to $49.5 million, per Blockworks Research.

• The overall crypto market cap sits at $3.3 trillion, a slight increase over the past day.

🔬 An inside look

Remember Morph? The L2 incubated by Bitget? I’ve got an update for you. 

CEO Cecilia Hsueh told me she’s stepping aside and moving into an advisor role. 

She added that she privately told the leadership that she planned to step down in March of this year.

“Since I’m the face of Morph, I don’t want to create too much damage [for] Morph,” Hsueh explained in an interview. “For the past two [to] three months, I haven't really been involved [in] the daily operation too much.”

However, she said that she only told employees about the upcoming changes after a Blockworks investigation was published last month.

Morph, Hsueh added, will now be led by Colin Goltra, who was previously the chief growth officer. Prior to the publication of the report, Hseuh said she had planned to make a formal announcement in June.

Hsueh said that Goltra was a “great” successor. 

“He has been in the space for more than 10 years, so even more experienced than me, and he's very close to both Asia and also Western markets,” she told Blockworks. 

Goltra told me he joined Morph at the beginning of this year. 

“Dragonfly, their talent team, kind of connected me in with Cecilia and Morph,” he said. “In late February, Cecilia decided to take a step back and sort of initiate…a transition of power.”

Since then, Goltra has worked with Foresight’s Forest Bai and other members of the leadership team to make the transition happen. 

Goltra said that Bai “doesn’t really have a formal role,” but has been a “key part of this transition.” Goltra added that Bai's long-term goal is to “not be very involved going forward,” but added that, due to the transition, he’d played a heavier role in Morph.

As for the future of Morph, Goltra wants to continue focusing on consumer crypto but wants to be more specific in the L2’s approach. 

“I think our first approach to that will be onchain consumer finance,” he explained. “Stablecoins…are having a moment. We've added on a ton of DeFi. We really want to make a big play in payments.”

As he takes on the CEO role, Goltra said that he’s spent the last few quarters focusing on what consumer crypto means and the direction he thinks will make Morph more successful. 

They plan to focus heavily on Asia, but also the US. The team would love “to expand that to more of a global mandate beyond that, but Asia and US are our best for now.”

Goltra declined to comment on the timing of a token launch, but told me that he’s looking at things “month to month,” mostly because the beginning of this year was choppy and not ideal for a token launch in his eyes.

The team is also not currently seeking to raise a Series A. “We retain the right to do so at some point,” but it’s just not a focal point for the L2 right now.

“I think we've definitely focused a lot on financial discipline, checking burn, checking expenses, and how we spend money on certain things. And so I think we're in good shape,” he noted.

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• The Ethereum Foundation is undergoing some internal changes and has reorganized its Research & Development arm, which resulted in some layoffs. 

• A new Reuters report claims that Coinbase knew about the data breach months before it publicly disclosed it in a SEC filing. 

• FalconX took a majority stake in hedge fund Monarq, Bloomberg reported.