#Gate广场四月发帖挑战 Web3 Today’s Must-Read | April 8

Today’s Highlights
• FDIC plans to introduce new regulations, with stablecoin issuers being incorporated into federal oversight.
• Morgan Stanley’s Bitcoin ETF launches on Wednesday, with a 0.14% fee—lowest in the market.
• The Department of Justice is firmly pursuing privacy protocols; Tornado Cash developers are unlikely to withdraw their lawsuit.
• Circle’s fund, with $2.6 billion in assets, is massively migrating to the BNB Chain.
• FBI report: Over $70k lost to crypto scams last year, with minors severely affected.
• Solana officially steps in to enhance security, endorsing DeFi protocols within its ecosystem.
• Projects linked to Trump face sanctions and are under strict scrutiny.
• Aave’s core risk officer departs, risking a disruption in the $42 billion asset model.
• Lawmakers pressure the CFTC, predicting increased regulatory crackdown on market insider trading.
• Iran’s situation causes crypto prices to fluctuate; Bitcoin swings sharply around the $70k mark.

Today’s Analysis
Web3 is undergoing a violent transformation from a “wild frontier” to a “formal military exercise.” The most noteworthy signal today isn’t Bitcoin bouncing around the $70k level but FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) officially revealing its “takeover” strategy for stablecoin issuers. Through the GENIUS Act establishing federal oversight standards, the message is clear: stablecoins are no longer just outside the system as “vouchers,” but are now financial products subject to bank-like regulation.

Interestingly, FDIC explicitly excludes deposit insurance, effectively telling Circle and Tether that they can seek compliance but shouldn’t expect federal bailouts if things go wrong. This “regulate but not protect” stance is essentially forcing stablecoin issuers to align with the capital adequacy and transparency standards of traditional banks.

The real focus is that, as regulators tighten their grip, Wall Street giants are accelerating their “bottom-fishing” for industry influence. Morgan Stanley’s spot Bitcoin ETF offering an astonishingly low fee of 0.14% isn’t about financial innovation; it’s about dominating the client base and pricing power behind its $20 trillion management scale. When such giants enter the fray, early crypto-native funds will face enormous survival pressures.

Meanwhile, Circle is migrating 95% of its USYC assets from Ethereum to BNB Chain. This “liquidity migration” reflects an extreme hunger for efficiency and low costs in the market, even if it means leaning toward a more centralized ecosystem.

Interestingly, in this “institutionalization” wave, the traditional order of decentralized finance (DeFi) is collapsing. Chaos Labs suddenly exits risk management services for Aave, causing AAVE tokens to drop to two-year lows. This exposes a harsh reality: existing DeFi protocols remain highly fragile and dependent on centralized service providers when facing risks of $42 billion. Solana Foundation’s decision to directly provide tiered security services for ecosystem protocols is also a reluctant compromise—if public chains can’t offer the same security guarantees as traditional banks, institutional funds won’t commit large-scale deposits.

The core logic behind all this is clear: the “banking” of Web3 is irreversible. From FDIC’s regulatory proposals to Morgan Stanley’s low-cost ETF, and the DOJ’s crackdown on privacy protocols like Tornado Cash, all signals point to one inevitable outcome: future Web3 will either be integrated into the regulatory framework as an extension of traditional finance or continue to play a cat-and-mouse game with laws in the corners of privacy and censorship resistance.

For investors, the market now is less about code and community and more about who has lower compliance costs and stronger institutional backing. As for those still dreaming of “code as law,” the plight of Tornado Cash developers offers the coldest answer.