All eyes were originally on FED's interest rate decision on Wednesday. But the SEC threw, almost as per usual, a couple of curveballs at the crypto industry. Read more in the Friday Focus below.

Top Stories

• FED hikes by 25 bps. All bitcoin narratives are still in play. 

• The SEC issued Coinbase a Well's notice for selling unregistered securities.

• The SEC sued Tron founder Justin Sun, and Terra founder Do Kwon arrested in Montenegro. 

Going into this week, most crypto investors' eyes were on Wednesday's FED interest rate decision. FED hiked 25 bps, lower than the intended 50 bps before the recent bank turmoil. 25 bps means that all narratives surrounding bitcoin are still in play, as described in our weekly market update. 

Before the interest rate decision on Wednesday, big news broke of the SEC issuing Coinbase a Well's notice. The controversy, from the SEC's standpoint, mainly revolves around whether staking services on Coinbase should be regarded as unregistered securities. 

Earlier in the day, news of the SEC suing crypto big dawg Justin Sun for securities fraud and market manipulation surfaced. In other crypto big dawg news, Terra founder Do Kwon has allegedly been arrested in Montenegro before being charged with fraud by U.S. prosecutors.

In other crypto news

• The much-anticipated Arbitrum airdrop took place. 42 million ARB of a max supply of 10 billion were claimed in the first hour, and prices soon dropped from $4 to just over $1. 

• The issuer of the decentralized stablecoin DAI, the MakerDAO, votes to retain USDC as the primary reserve currency even after the depeg.  

• The EU seeks crypto experts to help with the new MiCA law. 

• And famous fraud-revealing research group Hindenburg has a go at Jack Dorsey's Block in their latest report. 

What's new from our research analysts this week?

Bitcoin - a risk asset or a system hedge?

Bitcoin has surged amidst the backdrop of bank collapses and fears of contagion. Is bitcoin acting as a safe haven asset or simply reacting to expectations of potentially lower interest rates?

Read more in our weekly market update here.

Weekend Reading

Read Nic Carter's piece here.

Read about distributed systems here.