3F has completed a $4 million seed round financing, led by Maven 11

April 24: Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) announced it will release 5.8 million kiloliters from its national oil reserves, with a portion of the reserves set to begin release on May 1 amid the Iran crisis.

April 24 Per CoinDesk, prediction market platforms have long claimed their products are financial instruments—not gambling—but Wisconsin disagrees. In a recent lawsuit targeting Kalshi, Coinbase, Polymarket, Robinhood and Crypto.com, the state cited the firms’ own marketing materials to label them unauthorized gambling sites. “Masking illegal activity behind a flimsy facade does not make it legal,” Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul said in a Thursday statement. The core of the lawsuits is straightforward: Are the contracts regulated by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as financial instruments, or classified as gambling activities subject to state gambling laws? The outcome will decide whether the fast-growing market is overseen by uniform federal rules or split among U.S. states, with regulation falling to local gambling bodies. The dispute is all but certain to end up before the Supreme Court.

Fox News reports: Nike said Thursday it will lay off roughly 1,400 employees across its global operations team. In a memo to staff, COO Venkatesh Alagirisamy noted the cuts will primarily hit Nike’s technology division—spanning North America, Asia and Europe—and represent less than 2% of the company’s global workforce. “This isn’t a new direction—it’s the next phase of work already in progress,” Alagirisamy wrote. The comments come as Nike restructures its business via a series of layoffs.

April 24 — Per HyperInsight Monitoring (via its Telegram channel @HyperInsight), crypto trader neoyokio.eth on Hyperliquid expanded their leveraged long position in CHIP by 3x in early trading today. The position size rose from $2.2M to $3.4M, with an average cost basis now at $0.098. Current unrealized loss: ~$120k (-11%). The address currently holds leveraged long positions in four tokens (ASTER, CHIP, MON, TAO) with a total notional value of $24.8M. Its largest holding is ASTER (avg entry ~$0.636), making the trader Hyperliquid’s top ASTER bull. Address: 0x15271757b398cd1d3d7cca05c4f7b0c159afa7c2

April 24 — Farside monitoring data shows U.S. Bitcoin spot ETFs recorded a net inflow of $223.3 million yesterday, while Ethereum spot ETFs posted a net outflow of $75.9 million.

April 24 — According to Al Jazeera, Kenneth Katzman, a former Iran analyst at the Congressional Research Service (CRS) in Washington, D.C., has stated that Iran has not received new oil exports amid U.S. blockades of Iranian ports. However, Tehran currently holds 160 million to 170 million barrels of oil in "floating storage" on ships worldwide. Katzman noted: "I’ve learned from an Iranian professor that based on these inventories, Tehran can maintain revenue flows through August despite the U.S. maritime blockade. There’s a long stretch from now to August — can Trump hold on that long? Probably not. So he may need to consider drastic escalation to get the outcome he wants, or else accept a deal less favorable than he’d prefer."