TradFi, Vitalik's Time Cover, & the DeFi protocol taking over web3

GM, and welcome to RollCall by Rollfi! 

Bringing you the biggest stories in crypto from the past week. 

Traditional Finance is betting on crypto

A few weeks ago, we talked about how crypto-hater Ken Griffin and his firm Citadel were considering market-making in cryptocurrencies. 

Now, other larger financial institutions are making headlines in the crypto space. 

BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager with AUM (Assets Under Management) of almost $10T (yes, T, as in Trillion) announced this week that they will begin looking to offer crypto services as demand rises amid the Ukraine-Russia conflict. Of note, BlackRock's CEO Larry Fink mentioned that "A global digital payment system, thoughtfully designed, can enhance the settlement of international transactions", and "Digital currencies can also help bring down costs of cross-border payments".  Our thoughts exactly, Mr. Fink. Give us a shout anytime.

Also making headlines this week were Goldman Sachs and Ray Dalio's famed hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates. Goldman executed the first-ever over-the-counter in the form of a bitcoin non-deliverable option and Bridgewater is reportedly planning to back an external crypto fund.

Expect to see more and more moves into cryptocurrencies by traditional financial institutions as customer demand increases and larger firms set the tone.

Other stories from across web3

• Late last week Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum, was featured on the cover of Time Magazine. Vitalik discussed a few of his worries about the current state of crypto including high transaction costs and people making risky bets they can't afford. Although the piece

• Stargate, the DeFi multi-chain bridge protocol that promises to solve the bridging trilemma reached $2B in TVL (total value locked) within a week and is rapidly approaching $3B.

• Bitcoin is becoming more closely correlated to the S&P 500. Some are viewing Bitcoin, along with traditional equities as a hedge against inflation. This makes sense in our view as Bitcoin, as opposed to Ethereum, is more so a store of value.

Reads from the week:

The crypto/web3 space is vast and expanding quickly. It can be hard to sort through it all but there are some contributors putting out some really great work. Here are the best things we've read this week across the web3 universe. Heavy on the DAOs this week.

• Nawaz Ahmed of The Inquisitive VC interviewed Imran Khan of Alliance DAO. The two talked about the future of DAOs, how DeFi Alliance was formed, and what Imran is excited about in the crypto space.

• Let’s DAO It: Co-ops, DAOs, and the Way Forward for Collectives

• Dan McCarthy, Partner at Paradigm, wrote a great explainer on token compensation for people looking to join web3 startups and DAOs.

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