Happy Monday!

The BlackRock ETF news has ebbed, and spot volumes for crypto have followed suit with a 25% decrease on the week. Despite the slowdown, the weekend saw more legal fireworks, as well as a massive $120 million hack of Multichain protocol, which saw stablecoin issuers Circle and Tether freeze millions in vulnerable funds.

Here’s a few stories from Sunday we found interesting.

Spot crypto volumes drop 25%

Daily spot crypto volumes fell from $19.4 billion to $14.2 billion on a seven day moving average this week, according to The Block.

The drop follows an increase in activity surrounding finance giant Blackrock’s June push for a spot Bitcoin exchange traded fund.

Analytics startups raise $20m

Web3 startups drew close to $20 million in raises last week, as data analytics and privacy protocols garnered particular interest.

The largest raises were $6.5 million towards data provider CryptoQuant, and $4 million to Binance labs-affiliated Web3Go.

Ordinals snag NFT market share

Ordinals — Bitcoin’s answer to Ethereum-based NFTs — have neared their competitors in terms of sales since their April launch.

Bitcoin Ordinals shot past 10% of NFT buyer market share, and several Ordinals projects are tracking in the top ten NFT projects across all markets.

Crypto.org validator loses $9m in hack

A Crypto.org network validator lost $25,000 worth of the network’s CRO token in a hacker-instigated “slashing” event.

A slashing event takes place when a validator on a network authorises the same transaction twice, and is subsequently penalised by the network. In this case, a hacker assumed control of the validator and double-signed transactions, which incurred a 5% penalty.

Litecoin rally encourages Bitcoin holders

Bitcoin-derived token Litecoin has climbed 90% over the past year, which some commentators say could be bullish for Bitcoin.

The optimism is fueled by an event called halvening, which slows the distribution of a token in scheduled increments. Commentators say that Bitcoin’s upcoming halvening may affect the coin’s price in a similarly positive way to Litecoin, which “halved” in 2022.

What we’re reading about around the web

Nearly 190,000 people work in crypto, more than 50% located in the West — Blockworks

Crypto code commits drop despite rising prices — Decrypt

Elizabeth Warren’s anti-crypto crusade may bolster Wall Street’s land grab in Bitcoin market — DL News