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The release of the JFK assassination docs has everyone on my timeline up in arms. 

Did the CIA really do it? Have we wasted thousands of hours on conspiracy theories just to get the answers we didn’t want? 

My more chaotic side enjoys the disarray as folks digest 80,000 pages. Or, rather, have AI digest it. 

Now who wants to sum it up for me? 

Meanwhile:

• Bitcoin’s up to $83,000 this morning, marking a slight uptick since yesterday. ETH, on the other hand, is up 6% after finally retaking $2,000.

• The global crypto market, however, is still down 1.2% over the past day to $2.71 trillion.

• DEX volume’s down slightly to $7B, a 1.2% decline over the past 24 hours, per Blockworks Research.

🔮 Secure the future

It’s been interesting to hear the Bybit hack mentioned more than a few times during a conference focused on the institutional adoption of crypto.

Obviously, it’s still a sore subject. One that is still top of mind for industry experts, too, like ZachXBT. 

In a Telegram message yesterday, ZachXBT said that the time spent freezing funds after the hack has been “eye-opening” and that the industry is "unbelievably cooked when it comes to exploits/hacks and sadly [I don’t know] if the industry is going to fix this itself unless the government forcibly passes regulations that hurt our enure industry.”

That’s not exactly what you want to hear from one of the biggest onchain experts in crypto. But it shows the importance of safety as we mull what a strategic bitcoin reserve really looks like and how banks can offer services around custody and stablecoins. 

Ledger CEO Pascal Gauthier told me he’s had a “number of institutions” reach out in the wake of the Bybit hack.

“Beyond custody, they’re looking for access to liquidity from self-custody or regulated custodians … Ultimately they are looking to de-risk, and we can offer them that,” he explained.

Security is, admittedly, something that the Ledger team is not only knowledgeable about but concerned with in the Bybit aftermath.

(Remember when CTO Charles Guillemet told us that it’s been the “worst year” for cybercrime already?)

“Security isn’t static, it’s constantly evolving,” Gauthier told me. “Security vulnerabilities are emerging at an alarming rate, with attackers exploiting them rapidly while organizations typically take months to implement fixes. Any trusted partner in crypto will continuously look for any vulnerabilities in their products so that you can have peace of mind. As a whole, industry standards for security need to be raised.”

Indeed, Gauthier is already warning institutional investors away from trying to use retail-grade products, urging them to start the right way with “true enterprise-grade self custody that has a governance layer.”

“Likewise, financial institutions must make tamper-resistant hardware like Secure Element chips or enterprise-grade systems foundations of any security strategy, while implementing comprehensive encryption and clear transaction signing protocols to prevent sophisticated attacks.”

Going forward, protection for investors should be the highest priority. Maintaining security at scale rolls into that, but we’ll have to see whether or not the industry can grow to adapt to new security needs.

Here’s the thing: security isn’t the sexiest conversation. But it shows a level of maturity in the industry that wasn’t even present at DAS London last year. 

If discussions are evolving to the point of discussing what’s actually viable, then it shows that we’ve left the more hypothetical stage and have entered the planning stage. 

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• Crypto market maker KeyRock has opened a US office as it eyes a global expansion.

• Miles Jennings has big shoes to fill over at a16z Crypto where he’ll take over as Head of Policy as the confirmation process begins for Brian Quintenz.

• Remember that Hyperliquid leverage trader? Well, they closed a $520 million short position in BTC for a $9.4 million profit.

⛵ Raise the mast

I have an announcement!

(I hope you read that in Ariana Grande’s Glinda voice from Wicked. If you didn’t, just pretend you did for my own amusement. Thanks.)

Anyway, there’s a new project in town. StableSea, founded by a group of ex-Block employees, built a way to provide global stablecoin offramping. So, basically, a firm comes to them and asks them to convert stablecoins to the local fiat. 

Right now, they’re focused on payment processors, banks, and neobanks. 

StableSea has raised $3.5 million in a round led by Kindred Ventures, with participation from DFS Lab and Ludlow Ventures. The firm’s fairly new and by that, I mean that they launched in January. 

Tanner Taddeo, CEO of StableSea, told me that they launched to solve a clear issue — something we love to hear in crypto. 

“When you actually go deep into the operations with companies as to why they're using stablecoin, it's really that if you use the correspondent banking system today to move money between JP Morgan in the US and Lloyds Bank in London” two things happen: A message is sent between the two via Swift and then the two have to reconcile their privately held ledgers. 

The use of stablecoins not only speeds up the time during which the transfer can take place, but simplifies and cheapens it, too.

If this isn’t catching your eye, that’s okay, as Taddeo told me some of the use cases they’ve seen are “brilliantly boring.”

StableSea plans to utilize the funds raised to grow, and Taddeo told me that they’d consider another raise either later this year or early next year, but they’re “set for a few years.” So any possible raises in the future will just be the firm striking “when the iron is hot.”

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Learn more at ZKsync.io/empire.

On our minds: Digital Assets Summit