The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) achieved a legal victory in its battle against Coinbase on Wednesday when a judge decided that the claim accusing the cryptocurrency exchange of conducting unregistered securities sales is eligible for a jury trial. This ruling, made in a Manhattan federal court, led to a decline of approximately 3.79% in Coinbase’s shares.

In an interview with Fox Business on Wednesday, BlackRock CEO, Larry Fink, expressed his pleasant surprise at the outstanding performance of his firm’s spot Bitcoin ETF, the iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT).

Three prominent decentralized AI projects – Fetch.ai, Ocean Protocol, and SingularityNET – have announced their decision to merge and form the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance. This alliance aims to create an open-source, decentralized platform that challenges the dominance of Big Tech companies in the AI sector.

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• Federal Judge Rules That U.S. SEC’s Lawsuit Against Coinbase Can Move Forward
• BlackRock CEO: “I’m Very Bullish on the Long-Term Viability of Bitcoin”
• New AI Alliance Proposes $7.6B Merger of $FET, $OCEAN, and $AGIX Tokens to Form $ASI Token

Federal Judge Rules That U.S. SEC’s Lawsuit Against Coinbase Can Move Forward

 The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) achieved a legal victory in its battle against Coinbase on Wednesday when a judge decided that the claim accusing the cryptocurrency exchange of conducting unregistered securities sales is eligible for a jury trial. This ruling, made in a Manhattan federal court, led to a decline of approximately 3.79% in Coinbase’s shares.

The lawsuit, initiated by the SEC in June 2023, charges Coinbase with operating as an unregistered broker and exchange, with the regulatory body seeking to prohibit the company from continuing such activities permanently.

U.S. District Judge Katherine Polk Failla, in her decision, remarked that despite the modern terminology of “crypto,” the transactions in question are easily classified as securities by longstanding legal standards, nearly eighty years old.

Judge Failla specifically pointed out that Coinbase’s Staking Program involved the unregistered offering and sale of securities, according to the allegations. However, Judge Failla did decide to dismiss another of the SEC’s claims within the lawsuit, which argued that Coinbase functioned as an unregistered broker through its Wallet application offered to users.

Later on Wednesday, the SEC submitted Failla’s ruling in the Coinbase litigation to the records of another lawsuit it is pursuing in the District of Columbia’s federal court against Binance, another prominent cryptocurrency exchange. In this separate legal action, the SEC charges Binance with conducting several unregistered offerings and sales of crypto asset securities.

BlackRock CEO: “I’m Very Bullish on the Long-Term Viability of Bitcoin”

In an interview with Fox Business on Wednesday, BlackRock CEO, Larry Fink, expressed his pleasant surprise at the outstanding performance of his firm’s spot Bitcoin ETF, the iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT).

Fink mentioned that IBIT has become the fastest-growing ETF in history (with $13.5 billion in flows within its first 11 weeks of trading). The ETF’s success has surpassed even Fink’s own expectations. IBIT has been attracting an average of over $260 million in inflows per trading day, with a daily high of $849 million recorded on March 12.

Fink said: “We’re creating now a market that has more liquidity, more transparency and I’m pleasantly surprised. I would never have predicted it before we filed it that we were going to see this type of retail demand.”

The BlackRock CEO also reiterated his long-term bullish stance on Bitcoin, stating, “I’m very bullish on the long-term viability of Bitcoin.”

According to BitMEX Research, IBIT held over $17.1 billion in Bitcoin as of the close of business on March 26. The ETF took only two months to reach the $10 billion milestone, a feat that took the first gold ETF two years to achieve. Among the approved ETFs, only the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust holds more Bitcoin than IBIT, with $23.6 billion in BTC.

When asked if the launch of a spot Ether ETF could proceed, even if the SEC categorizes ETH as a security, he replied, “I believe so.” Including BlackRock, eight issuers have officially applied to the SEC for the approval of a spot Ether ETF.

New AI Alliance Proposes $7.6B Merger of $FET, $OCEAN, and $AGIX Tokens to Form $ASI Token

Three prominent decentralized AI projects – Fetch.ai, Ocean Protocol, and SingularityNET – have announced their decision to merge and form the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance. This alliance aims to create an open-source, decentralized platform that challenges the dominance of Big Tech companies in the AI sector.

The Artificial Superintelligence Alliance is the brainchild of three leaders in the decentralized AI space: Dr. Ben Goertzel, the founder of SingularityNET; Humayun Sheikh, the creator of Fetch.ai; and Trent McConaghy, the founder of Ocean Protocol. By combining their expertise and resources, they seek to accelerate the development of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) on the blockchain, ensuring that this transformative technology is accessible to all and not controlled by a select few.

One of the key aspects of the merger is the unification of the three projects’ native tokens – $FET, $OCEAN, and $AGIX – into a single token called $ASI. This new token will serve as the backbone of the merged decentralized AI network, which had a combined token value of $7.6 billion as of March 26.

The founders of the alliance believe that the development of AGI and Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) should be conducted in an open, transparent, and decentralized manner. By joining forces, they aim to create an AI ecosystem that prioritizes ethics, transparency, and direct collaboration between developers and users, minimizing the influence of centralized authorities and traditional gatekeepers.

BlackRock’s Ethereum-Backed Digital Money Market Fund Sees Over $240M in Its First Week

According to Bloomberg, BlackRock’s USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL), which was launched on March 20, has seen an influx of over $240 million. This tokenized fund, issued on the Ethereum blockchain, offers investments in cash, US Treasury bills, and repurchase agreements, issuing a cryptocurrency token, BUIDL, valued at $1 per token to represent share ownership.

BlackRock enables token holders to transfer BUIDL within digital wallets approved by Securitize, its partner for this venture. This move is in line with BlackRock Chairman and CEO Larry Fink’s vision of a future where all financial assets are tokenized.

Carlos Domingo, the CEO of Securitize, outlined to Bloomberg three primary use cases for the tokenized fund. It targets crypto companies managing treasuries on blockchains, including decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), supports crypto projects in developing derivatives of Treasury bills, and offers an alternative to stablecoins for use as collateral in borrowing and trading.

Bloomberg reports that crypto startup Ondo Finance has made a significant investment in BlackRock’s BUIDL, totaling $95 million. This places BlackRock’s fund in a growing field of tokenized money-market funds, which started with Franklin Templeton’s launch of the first US-registered tokenized fund in 2021. Unlike Franklin Templeton’s fund tokens, BENJI, which are not transferable between investors, BlackRock’s BUIDL tokens can be transferred between validated addresses, thanks to Securitize Markets’ regulatory compliance with the SEC and FINRA.

State of the Crypto by Top Tier Exchange Volume

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