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Coinbase’s Layer 2 System Base Gets a Marketplace Linked to Gas Revenue

The runaway success of Base, the Coinbase-owned Ethereum overlay blockchain designed for faster, cheaper transactions, has prompted the creation of a market linked to the fluctuating cost of the total gas needed to power the network, allowing speculators to bet on recurring utility spikes on the layer 2 system.
Taking a cue from the way traders speculate and hedge in traditional energy markets, Alkimiya, a startup backed by Coinbase Ventures as well as firms like Dragonfly and Castle Island Ventures, enables users to go long or short on the cost of transactions being included in blocks, or “blockspace” – a representation of the storage and computational capacity of a blockchain.
“Paying for blockspace is like paying for other energy sources, such as cars paying for petrol or aeroplanes paying for jet fuel,” said Alkimiya founder Leo Zhang in an interview. “Traditional energy markets have developed that allow airlines to hedge against their jet fuel price, for example, and we think there should be a better price discovery mechanism for how people price and use this core energy resource, which is blockspace.”
Launched in August 2023, Base has outperformed its layer 2 rivals, generating over $14 million in the last month. Increased activity on Base means the cumulative gas paid to the network can fluctuate dramatically, from as low as 10 ETH to as high as 200 ETH in a single day.
Unlike many other blockchains, Base does not have a token and has no plans to issue one. Alkimiya’s smart contracts allow users to bet on how the cost of Base blockspace might fluctuate thanks to the introduction of AI agents, for instance, or on-chain events like the arrival of a particular memecoin, NFT or airdrop.
Under the hood, Alkimiya uses a very common decentralized finance (DeFi) architecture where an oracle tracks the gas being consumed by users on Base, and a system of smart contracts facilitate the accounting and logic, Zhang explained.
“A user can purchase this contract that tracks the total amount of gas paid to the Base roll up itself,” Zhang said. “And the reason this is doable is because it’s entirely transparent. There’s no centralized exchange where everything is in a black box.”
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Trump’s Memecoin Dinner Questioned by Top Democrat on House Judiciary Committee

A senior Democrat in the House of Representatives, Jamie Raskin, joined his name to lawmakers seeking answers about President Donald Trump’s recent dinner for top investors in his memecoin, sending questions directly to Trump.
Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, has been a vocal critic of the president and becomes the latest of many from his party to probe details about the event, which they’ve called out as evidence of White House corruption. Because Raskin is in the minority party, his demands are unlikely to lead to further congressional action unless they regain the House or Senate in next year’s elections.
«I write today to demand that you release the names of all the attendees at this dinner and provide information about the source of the money they each used to buy $TRUMP coins, so that we can prevent illegal foreign government emoluments from being pocketed without congressional consent,» Raskin wrote this week to the president, joining many counterparts in the Senate in seeking the information, including Senators Elizabeth Warren, Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal.
«We deserve to know who is paying for access to our president, and what steps you took to ensure that the funds you receive are legitimate and legal, rather than the proceeds from foreign states or monarchs or illegal activities,» Rasking said, specifically highlighting Tron founder Justin Sun, a guest who was a major early investor in Trump’s family crypto operations.
Read More: Democrats Threaten Lawsuits, Join Protests Ahead of Trump Memecoin Dinner
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FTX Repayments May Have Positive Market Impact: Coinbase

The FTX Recovery Trust will begin distributing over $5 billion in cash and stablecoins to creditors starting on Friday, with funds expected to land in accounts within the next three business days via BitGo and Kraken.
And there’s a chance this wave of repayments will help lift the crypto market, analysts at Coinbase wrote in a report on Friday.
It’s the second major round of repayments following the exchange’s collapse. The first, which began on Feb. 18, returned roughly $7 billion to creditors with claims under $50,000. That did little to lift broader crypto markets at the time, which remained under pressure from macro headwinds.
This latest wave of distributions comes as investor sentiment has shifted, the analysts said. Payments will arrive in stablecoins, offering recipients immediate on-chain liquidity, instead of cash and crypto. That could influence whether the funds are reinvested.
There’s also a broader sense of optimism in crypto markets, thanks in part to a rally in major assets and increased political clarity around regulation. Institutional players, in particular, may feel more comfortable acting on incoming funds, especially as Congress moves closer to passing legislation that would define the roles of U.S. regulators overseeing digital assets.
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Judge Declines to Order DOJ to Review Records in Roman Storm Case

The federal judge overseeing Roman Storm’s prosecution declined to order the Department of Justice to review its records for any materials it might have missed that would help the Tornado Cash developer at the end of a 30-minute hearing Friday morning, though she told the government it should not have any disclosure issues.
Judge Katherine Polk Failla also ruled that there were no Brady violation concerns with the Department of Justice’s conversations with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) about whether mixers needed to register as money transmitters — the conversation that prosecutors pursuing Samourai Wallet developers had with FinCEN officials, but not the prosecutors on Storm’s case — one of the DOJ representatives said in the phone conference on Friday.
If the judge had found that prosecutors had withheld information, it could affect the case moving forward.
«I’m not going to require a further review based on the representations made that there’s no additional material of this type, and based on my views that I don’t believe the material was exculpatory,» she said.
«There’s a difference between ‘this is something I’d like to know’ and ‘this is a Brady violation,'» the judge said, referring to a Supreme Court precedent that requires prosecutors to share any and all information that might help a defendant with the defendant’s team.
Storm’s defense attorneys argued during the hearing that they needed to know when the prosecutors in their case learned about the FinCEN conversation.
«They do plan to say they’re charging a conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitter,» said defense attorney Brian Klein. «My question is who are they supposed to be licensed with? … this is all in the same issue. They’ve only dropped one subpart … but they’re still going to say they’re charging an unlicensed money business.»
Thane Rehn, a prosecutor who worked on the DOJ case against Sam Bankman-Fried, said that his team wouldn’t argue that Tornado Cash needed to secure a license.
«The word ‘license’ doesn’t apply here and the jury won’t be instructed on licensing issues … what we intend to prove at trial is the defendant knew they were transmitting funds derived from criminals,» he said.
The judge did at multiple points ask the prosecutors if they planned to change any other theories or charges in the weeks leading up to the trial, saying doing so might be unfair to the defense. The trial is supposed to kick off in less than two months.
Read more: DOJ Will Still Pursue Roman Storm Case Despite Blanche Memo, Prosecutors Say
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