President-elect Donald Trump has nominated the crypto-friendly Howard Lutnick to lead the U.S. Department of Commerce.Shares in the Japanese investment firm Metaplanet gained more than 15% on Tuesday after the company announced its latest bitcoin acquisition.Tokenization firm Securitize has introduced the “sToken,” a new way to gain liquidity from real-world assets while still earning a yield, using the ERC-4626 token standard.The following article is adapted from The Block’s newsletter, The Daily, which comes out on weekday afternoons.

Basketball hall-of-famer Shaquille O’Neal has agreed to pay $11 million to settle charges in a class action suit related to the Astrals NFT project he promoted.O’Neal, who is also part of a massive consolidated case against celebrity “brand ambassadors” for FTX, attempted to dismiss the case.

BlackRock’s IBIT, the largest Bitcoin ETF with nearly $45 billion AUM, was the first to be approved for options trading.Firms have been looking to list and trade options for their spot Bitcoin funds following the SEC’s approval of 11 BTC ETFs in January.

Key names, including former SEC Commissioner and Robinhood Chief Legal Officer Dan Gallagher, former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins and partner at Willkie Farr & Gallagher Robert Stebbins, could all be reportedly tapped to lead the SEC. As of Tuesday morning, a person familiar with SEC chairmanship talks said that Trump’s team had not yet made a decision.

The exchange said it will delist the token in December, though users will still be able to move the wBTC off the exchange.In August long-time custodian BitGo announced it was ceding partial control over the wBTC protocol in a “strategic partnership” with Justin Sun and the TRON ecosystem. Coinbase’s version of wrapped bitcoin, cbBTC, has seen its market cap grow to nearly $1.5 billion in a matter of months.

OpenLayer has raised $5 million from a16z CSX, Geometry, IOSG Ventures and others.The startup, co-founded by three former Robinhood employees, has developed an AI data layer.

iAgent deploys OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other large language models so that users can command the AI agent to complete Injective-based tasks.Users can create numerous, independent agents to accomplish individualized goals, such as one that tracks market data while the other enacts trades.

Howard Lutnick, CEO of global financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald, was one of the names tapped to lead the Treasury Department.Lutnick’s firm has served as a custodian for Tether since 2021.

Memefund ai16z planned to launch an AI token inspired by the ELIZA chatbot with a partner, but the project was frontran with “ai16zeliza” created by another entity.After ai16z partner “Shaw” posted that Eliza had been “set free,” launching a competing ELIZA token, whipsawing price action ensued, sparking a community debate.

If Paxos’ bid to acquire Finland-based regulated electronic money institution Membrane Finance is approved by regulators, the company would have access to the entire E.U. trading bloc.

Forta has launched Firewall, a new web3 security tool designed to identify and prevent smart contract exploits.Forta raised $23 million in 2021 and is backed by a16z, Coinbase Ventures and others.

Lattice, Anagram, Heartcore, DCG and Daedalus Angels also contributed to Barter’s seed financing. Barter intends to use the funds to grow its team and to continue developing AppChain, the firm’s DeFi tool that connects liquidity and order flow.

Immunefi, the leading on-chain crowdsourced security platform protecting over $190 billion in assets, is bringing its security expertise and elite community of researchers to sBTC with an upcoming \\\"At

When clients open accounts with Dakota, the platform automatically converts the funds into an “on-platform” stablecoin backed by U.S. Treasurys.Clients can also avoid paying fees when making ACH, Fedwire, SWIFT or SEPA transfers.

Securitize has introduced a new way to gain liquidity from real-world assets while still earning yield called the “sToken.” The token architecture, which uses the ERC-4626 standard, was built in collaboration with makers of the deUSD synthetic dollar, Elixir.BlackRock’s BUIDL token will be the first token issued by Securitize to be part of this “deUSD RWA Institutional Program,” with other assets planned to be introduced later.