Dogecoin is a playful cryptocurrency popularized by adopting the Shiba Inu internet meme.

Dogecoin

Casey Wagner

Rumors have been circulating that Tether may be the subject of a federal investigation.&nbsp;



The Wall Street Journal is alleging that the US government is investigating Tether. In an <a href="https://www.wsj.com/finance/currencies/federal-investigators-probe-cryptocurrency-firm-tether-a13804e5">article</a> published last week, citing unnamed sources, the Journal reported that federal investigators in Manhattan are looking into alleged anti-money laundering violations and whether illicit actors have used the cryptocurrency to fund illegal activities.&nbsp;



Tether categorically denies the allegations.&nbsp;



“It is wildly irresponsible for WSJ to write articles with reckless allegations with such certainty when no authorities have gone on the record to confirm these rumors, and no sources are named,” a Tether spokesperson said in a statement on Friday. “These stories are based on pure rank speculation despite Tether confirming that it has no knowledge of any such investigations into the company.”



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/doj-binance-tether-terror-funding">Lummis, Hill push for ‘swift’ DOJ action against Binance, Tether&nbsp;</a>



The report comes months after conservative nonprofit Consumers’ Research launched a campaign against Tether, alleging the stablecoin is “used by the world’s worst actors.” Executive director of Consumers’ Research Will Hild told me Tuesday that the WSJ article is “yet another confirmation of the need for Tether to undergo and release an audit by a credible third party.”&nbsp;



“Consumers should be wary of Tether&#8217;s involvement with unsavory and criminal actors from across the world, and it raises questions as to why they are so desperate to keep them on the platform,” Hild added.&nbsp;



<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/tether">Tether</a> CEO Paolo Ardoino over the <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/tether-ceo-breaks-down-reserves-backing-usdt-stablecoin">weekend</a> assured the public that Tether’s reserves for USDT are safe and plentiful. He said the company has around $100 billion in US Treasurys and 82,000 bitcoin, plus 48 tons of gold.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/tether-q2-2024-earnings-report">Tether reports net profit of $5.2B in H1 2024</a>



To be clear, the WSJ article makes no allegations that Tether has lied about or violated any laws regarding its reserve assets. The company in 2021 <a href="https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/8450-21">settled</a> with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/tether-settles-with-cftc-for-42-5m">for $42.5 million</a> over its “claims that USDT was fully backed by US dollars.”&nbsp;



Ardoino added that Tether has <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/tether-freezes-funds-doj">historically worked with law enforcement agencies</a> to combat fraud. He said the company has “voluntarily blocked” almost 2,000 wallets associated with suspected illegal activity.&nbsp;



Tether in September <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/vc-vet-joins-abra-board">brought in Jesse Spiro</a>, a PayPal veteran, to head up its government affairs team.&nbsp;



“Jesse will be responsible for leading policy and engagement efforts with lawmakers, regulators and key stakeholders,” Tether wrote in its <a href="https://tether.io/news/industry-leader-jesse-spiro-joins-tether-as-head-of-government-affairs/">announcement</a>.&nbsp;



Sounds like he might be very busy.



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Tether denies it is being investigated by US government 

Ben Strack

This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance">subscribe</a>.



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Bitcoin’s price reached roughly $73,500 after 3 pm ET on Tuesday. It dipped to about $72,600 by 4 pm ET — up 4% from 24 hours ago.&nbsp;



This surge to just below BTC’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-all-time-high">record high</a> (above $73,700, set in March) comes as capital continues to pour into US spot bitcoin ETFs. Another $479 million of net new money entered that category on Monday, Farside Investors <a href="https://farside.co.uk/bitcoin-etf-flow-all-data/">data</a> shows.



Those funds have seen $22.5 billion worth of net inflows since launching in January — with nearly $3.9 billion, or 17%, of those gains coming since Oct. 11.&nbsp;



“I think that is people recognizing that the train may leave the station sometime around the election,” Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan said during an X space late last week.&nbsp;



Hougan’s firm — a crypto-focused asset manager that offers <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitwise-europe-acquisition-crypto-etps">both</a> a BTC and ETH ETF — regularly meets with institutions about possible crypto allocations. The number of meetings that have led to such an allocation have gone up “significantly” in recent weeks, he explained.



A portion of these institutional players have embraced what he called “crypto sleeves,” Hougan added during the X space — exposure not just to a bitcoin fund, but perhaps an allocation to another that holds ETH and additional exposure to MicroStrategy or bitcoin miners. “[It’s] the idea of treating crypto the same way you treat stocks, which is you don’t just buy Nvidia; you buy a basket,” he said.



Beyond institutional buy-in, bitcoin investors are betting on governments continuing to debase fiat currencies, Hougan noted in a CIO <a href="https://experts.bitwiseinvestments.com/cio-memos/the-dual-drivers-of-bitcoins-value?utm_medium=email&amp;_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8ck3N09VZri0LX3rA64nBW4B89ao6lIJcHGfga_g3H9Y03Am_2nUP7gXl19-P4DQYFOvfL-b9adq_qxWTMIBXQas320g&amp;_hsmi=331329998&amp;utm_content=331329998&amp;utm_source=hs_email">memo</a>. But, he argues, BTC does not need the dollar to collapse to hit $200,000, adding: “It can get there just by capturing a sliver of gold’s existing market.”



Thoughts differ on <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-price-predictions-election">the trajectory</a> of crypto prices from here in the case of a Trump or Harris victory. But perhaps we won’t have to wait for the election to wrap up before seeing BTC notch a new all-time high.



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Record BTC price in sight as bitcoin ETF flows surge

This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance">subscribe</a>.



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A week out from the US election, the CEO of blockchain infrastructure firm Paxos is imploring the next presidential administration to be better than the last (when it comes to crypto).&nbsp;&nbsp;



Charles Cascarilla’s open letter to Donald Trump and Kamala Harris doesn’t say much that hasn’t been said before.&nbsp;



But perhaps the letter hits a little different as voters — millions of which <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/political-candidates-cannot-ignore-crypto-voters">own crypto</a> — get set to cast their ballots next week. And, just days ago, Stripe’s $1.1 billion <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/stripe-bridge-acquisition-stablecoin-infrastructure">acquisition</a> of Bridge sends a signal that non-crypto companies recognize the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/empire-newsletter-dydx-founder-comeback">compelling benefits</a> of stablecoin-based payments.&nbsp;



Cascarilla’s <a href="https://paxos.com/2024/10/28/letter-to-vice-president-kamala-harris-and-former-president-donald-trump/">letter</a> addresses familiar key points: While the US is an “inhospitable” place for financial innovation, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/micar-foreign-stablecoins-advantage-in-europe">the EU</a>, UAE and others have capitalized on those “missteps” via regimes “that support safe innovation.”&nbsp;



The “<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-overreach-failure-debt-box">regulatory overreach</a>, questionable <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/banking-sector-uncertainty-crypto">banking policies</a> and onerous and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/nft-artists-sue-sec-regulatory-uncertainty">needless</a> legal actions” in the US have resulted in “enormous costs in <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-wrong-about-crypto-asset-securities">wasted time</a> and money,” Cascarilla adds.&nbsp;



To that point, Consensys on Tuesday revealed cuts impacting 20% of its workforce.



“Multiple cases with the SEC, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/consensys-lawsuit-against-sec-dismissed">including ours</a>, represent meaningful jobs and productive investment lost due to the SEC&#8217;s abuse of power and Congress&#8217;s inability to rectify the problem,” Consensys CEO Joe Lubin <a href="https://consensys.io/blog/consensys-path-to-long-term-sustainability-and-decentralization">wrote</a>. “Such attacks from the US government will end up costing many companies that have been investigated, sued or sent <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/uniswap-responds-to-sec-wells-notice">Wells Notices</a>, many millions of dollars.”



While Trump has said he would <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/donald-trump-speaks-bitcoin-2024">fire</a> SEC Chair Gary Gensler, Harris has not made any such statement. Blockchain Association’s Ron Hammond <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/forward-guidance-newsletter-interest-rate-cuts">previously told me</a> the industry is waiting for more clarity on that from the VP.&nbsp;



In the meantime, digital dollars will continue to move offshore until there is a stablecoin framework that drives innovation, Cascarilla wrote.



The positive note from the Paxos CEO: “Thankfully, there is bipartisan interest in fixing this broken status quo.”



Hammond said earlier this month he believed the chance of a stablecoin bill getting passed by the end of 2024 was 30%. That’s not exactly great. But at least it’s higher than the Yankees’ World Series title odds at this point.



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An industry CEO’s final plea to Trump, Harris 

Jack Kubinec

This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">subscribe</a>.



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The crypto-friendly asset manager VanEck has partnered with Kiln to begin staking SOL, the pair told Lightspeed exclusively.



Kiln is an enterprise staking service that boasts integrations with outfits like <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-cloud-partial-staking-kiln-eth">Coinbase</a> and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/institutions-get-in-line-for-staking-bitcoin-with-babylon">Babylon</a>.&nbsp;



With the move, VanEck will now offer regulated access to solana staking rewards on top of the price of SOL. VanEck is one of a few firms offering regulated solana funds in Europe.&nbsp;&nbsp;



2024 has been a bullish year for crypto, and the fresh market cycle was largely driven, at least initially, by the long-awaited approval of spot bitcoin ETFs in the US. The products — which give investors exposure to bitcoin’s price in a regulated wrapper — have already seen <a href="https://blockworks.co/bitcoin-etf">tens of billions</a>-worth in inflows since getting the SEC’s approval in January. The ETFs trading partly drove bitcoin to a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-all-time-high">new all-time high</a> this year, the only major crypto to set a new mark during this market cycle.&nbsp;



Ether ETFs were also approved this year, though the second crypto to get a spot ETF had <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/education-required-to-spur-eth-etf-outflows">less inspiring flows</a>. Still, altcoin ecosystems are hoping to catch some of the ETF magic, and firms are lining up behind what looks like a logical next crypto ETF in solana.&nbsp;



VanEck and 21Shares both <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/lightspeed-newsletter-spot-solana-etf-filing">applied for spot SOL ETFs</a> this summer, though talks have <a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/311937/sec-talks-etf-issuers-concerns-solana-security-source">reportedly</a> stalled over the SEC’s concerns that solana is a security. The filings have been <a href="https://fortune.com/crypto/2024/07/09/vaneck-and-21shares-file-for-solana-etfs-a-bet-on-a-trump-victory/">cast</a> as a bet on a Trump victory and a more crypto-friendly regulatory regime taking over sometime in 2025.&nbsp;



For the moment, the major market for regulated solana products is in Europe. 21Shares’ solana staking ETP is currently the third-largest in Europe with over $1 billion in assets under management (AUM), <a href="https://www.etfbook.com/dashboards/crypto-etp-eu">according</a> to etfbook.com. CoinShares and Valour also have solana ETPs with AUMs of around $300 million.&nbsp;



VanEck’s European solana fund is more minor, <a href="https://www.vaneck.com/fi/en/solana-etn/">with</a> around $84 million in AUM. Adding staking rewards via kiln may be a play to grow that number. Notably, neither of the US solana spot ETF applications contained staking rewards after approved ether ETFs had staking stripped out.&nbsp;



VanEck head of digital asset research Matthew Sigel told me he agrees staking rewards will become table stakes for solana ETPs in Europe. In the US, “tell me who wins the election” first, Sigel said in a direct message.



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VanEck begins SOL staking with Kiln partnership

Macauley Peterson

This is a segment from the 0xResearch newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/research">subscribe</a>.



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Stacks, a Bitcoin-adjacent network often referred to as a layer-2, executed a scheduled hard fork early Tuesday following the September <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/stacks-nakamoto-upgrade-bitcoin-layer-2s">Nakamoto upgrade</a> activated by network miners.



“I think it went as smoothly as we could have hoped,” said Muneeb Ali, Stacks co-founder, on a live <a href="https://x.com/Stacks/status/1851267796706943449">X space</a>. He added that developers in New York were up all night monitoring the fork.



The Nakamoto upgrade increased the alignment of Stacks with Bitcoin’s finality by further binding Stacks blocks to Bitcoin blocks. Stacks uses a consensus mechanism called <a href="https://docs.stacks.co/concepts/stacks-101/proof-of-transfer">Proof of Transfer</a> (PoX), where transactions and Stacks blocks are anchored to Bitcoin.



With the Nakamoto upgrade, this connection is strengthened. So a reorg in the Stacks blockchain would now require changes in the Bitcoin blockchain, according to Rena Shah, VP of product and operations at Trust Machines.



“It is a fundamental shift,” Shah told Blockworks. “You have to try to <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/glossary##">51% attack</a> Bitcoin L1 before you&#8217;re able to do the same activity on Stacks.”



This dependency on Bitcoin makes the Stacks blockchain more secure, as Bitcoin’s high security and resistance to reorgs (given the substantial <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/glossary/#hash-ratepower">hash power</a> of bitcoin miners) provide Stacks with added resilience.&nbsp;



Attempting a reorg of the Bitcoin blockchain is extremely challenging, due to both the financial and computational costs involved. This means Stacks is indirectly protected by Bitcoin’s immutability, so the Nakamoto upgrade effectively made Stacks reorg-proof.



“That might be the beauty of Stacks as an L2 for Bitcoin because it’s always kind of adhered to the ethos of Bitcoin,” Shah said. She noted the upgrade paves the way for sBTC, Stacks’ version of bitcoin, the asset.



Other features of the upgrade include faster transaction processing — Stacks now produces blocks approximately every six seconds — which enhances usability for developers and users, and improves the overall experience on the Stacks network. The upgrade also limits opportunities for miners to profit from rearranging or prioritizing transactions (<a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/glossary/#miner-extractable-value-mev">MEV</a>), which contributes to a fairer, more transparent network.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The future of sBTC</h2>



Granite, a new Bitcoin-focused DeFi protocol incubated by Trust Machines, <a href="https://www.granite.world/blog/granite-bitcoin-defi">came out of stealth</a> last month, aiming to address the limitations of custodial BTC offerings for use in DeFi. The not-yet-launched app will leverage the sBTC Bitcoin bridge enabled by the Nakamoto upgrade.



The platform should allow BTC to interact directly with DeFi dapps in a decentralized and permissionless manner. Like <a href="https://blockworks-research.beehiiv.com/p/bitcoin-defi-expands-bob">other new noncustodial offerings</a>, sBTC users will be able to lend, borrow and earn yield on their bitcoin while minimizing counterparty risk.



Traditionally, using BTC in DeFi has required custodial solutions or <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitgo-wbtc-custodial-changes">wrapped BTC</a> assets, exposing users to substantial counterparty risks.



More recently, Babylon has <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/0xresearch-newsletter-babylon-btc-staking-deposits">attracted interest</a> as a way to direct staking yields to BTC holders, albeit with a risk of <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-staking-babylon">slashing</a>.



Granite, however, follows a no-rehypothecation model. User collateral remains untapped and fully controlled by the owner, ensuring that BTC does not become entangled in protocol dependencies, or what its developers call a &#8220;borrower-centric&#8221; DeFi model.



Granite also introduces &#8220;soft liquidations,&#8221; an approach <a href="https://resources.curve.fi/crvusd/liquidations/">pioneered by Curve</a> that allows collateral to be liquidated only enough to maintain solvency and prevent catastrophic losses. Additionally, position tracking and push notifications allow users to manage positions without constant monitoring, a quality-of-life feature that’s uncommon in DeFi.



Another defining characteristic of Granite is its risk-tranched liquidity provisioning, which allows liquidity providers (LPs) to tailor their risk exposure. By choosing junior or senior tranches, LPs can manage their participation according to risk tolerance, with a reserve protecting all LPs as a first line of defense against market downturns.



Historically, only about 1% of BTC has been engaged in DeFi due to security concerns, according to Ali. “Granite’s security-oriented approach creates an opportunity to begin unlocking the remaining 99% of BTC capital,” he said. As with many other “<a href="https://blockworks-research.beehiiv.com/p/bitcoin-defi-is-heating-up">Bitcoin DeFi</a>” endeavors, Granite aims to make bitcoin a productive asset within the DeFi space, rather than merely “digital gold,” driving new waves of adoption in the process.



“The base case of bitcoin as money becomes more solidified when things like Stacks happens, so this is going to be good for Bitcoin,” Ali said.



Stacks is also <a href="https://x.com/Stacks/status/1837125070453403845">working</a> to bring sBTC to Solana.



The launch comes as <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-price-predictions-election">BTC is retesting</a> its June highs above $71,100. Stacks’ native token, STX, is up over 5% on the day, although it is still down about 50% from its all-time high of $3.84 reached April 1 this year.



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Stacks fortifies Bitcoin ties with Nakamoto upgrade

Katherine Ross

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">subscribe</a>.



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$71,000.



Bitcoin’s managed to retake $70K after months of trying. We haven’t seen it above this level since it carved out a fresh all-time high in spring.



And now — just a week before the US election — we’re enjoying a small breakout. However, Ledn’s John Glover believes that we need to see a two-day close above $73,000 before he expects any real moves higher.&nbsp;



But if bitcoin manages to hold on to that level, expect a “rapid move towards $80,000.”



Still, he’s not so sure we’ll go any higher. When <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/btc-price-action-technical-analysis">we previously chatted with him</a>, he thought he could see a move toward $87,000. That’s off the table as of right now, though he still believes there’s a possibility of hitting $100,000 by the end of Q1 next year, or into the start of the second quarter.



Here’s the thing though: There’s a lot of volatility to digest.&nbsp;



“Notably, option premiums and estimated daily volatility for both the US stock market and bitcoin are projected to rise significantly around 6-8 November, when the results of the elections are expected to be delivered,” Bitfinex analysts <a href="https://blog.bitfinex.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Bitfinex-Alpha-128.pdf">wrote</a> in a report yesterday.&nbsp;



“Bitcoin, in particular, may experience even greater volatility than other risk assets, largely due to its perception as the ‘Trump Trade.’ This term, which has gained considerable traction in recent weeks, serves to reflect the market’s view of how BTC will fare dependent on the outcome of the election,” they continued.&nbsp;



According to a Kaiko report, a sentiment shift recorded in September could show a potential price move just days after the election.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXd-1N9-62_jAKbNAu6593wf7e-UDxXZ4OG9zsh36_-KqNHWJjFuLYyWwfFN1kDz1zbvwciFLeHLPPfBVCCN7HK4yUSoQ1Y3lj5UlWslz_SmwVfZj3RGxoxWiPCgF-nUin6c-x7TOOp6guew7PX_UTx8HLKB?key=GfK9FWXi4y-1hEFhsyYgOcAa" alt=""/></figure>



In the chart above, “a steeper right skew on the November 8 expiry (orange) suggests increased demand for call options and expectations of rising prices,” Kaiko analysts said.



One thing’s for sure, with just one week until the election, there’s still a lot of time to see some serious price action.



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Bitcoin is enjoying a small breakout, but election volatility still to come

Carl Vogel

Opinions are like assholes; everyone has one. Polls have long been the predominant method to capture public opinion and collective insight, largely because they offer a quick and scalable way to gauge public sentiment on a variety of topics. However, they are also subject to low engagement, spam and chicanery. Just ask the UK how it ended up with a research vessel named “Boaty McBoatface.”



Opinion markets offer an alternative way to address the flaws in traditional polling. They can be a superior method to gauge market sentiment because they obviate the failure modes of traditional polls through blockchain-enabled capabilities like economic incentives, social credibility and credentialing.&nbsp;



Beyond gauging sentiment or merely wagering on the outcome of events in prediction markets, opinion markets can be used to influence the outcomes themselves. Everyone from AI agents to big brands can use them to mine insights and make decisions in a way that is transparent, efficient, globally accessible and highly engaging.



Read more from our opinion section: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/without-web3-media-credibility-will-crumble">Implement Web3 solutions now, or the media’s credibility will crumble</a>



Opinion markets are not new. One famous example is the “Keynesian Beauty Contest,” which was popularized by economist John Maynard Keynes. In this thought experiment, contest participants were shown photographs of people in a newspaper and asked to select the faces they believed others would find the most attractive. Participants who successfully chose the most popular faces were awarded a prize.



For the sophisticated, the goal was not to choose based on individual preferences, but to predict which faces would be the most popular overall.



When applied to the stock market, one of Keynes’s core insights was that participants can get trapped in an “infinite loop” of trying to out-predict what others will select, showcasing the challenges of investing based on market sentiment vs. fundamentals.&nbsp;



However, I posit two more insights. The polls effectively codified the UK’s collective definition of beauty, and people loved playing the game! Unlike the largest opinion market in which few have an edge — the stock market — everyone believes they have an advantage in many aspects of regular everyday life, such as determining who’s prettiest. For example: “Who is a better match for Taylor Swift than Travis Kelce?” (We all know they are an odd match.) “What is the best French restaurant in Manhattan?” “Which of these outfits is best for a first date?” These are all examples of markets where certain individuals believe they have an advantage, making them more likely to participate.



While the stock market represents a narrow goal of economic valuation with well-defined frameworks for valuation (e.g. discounted cash flow models and P/E ratios), opinion markets can have a broad range of subjects, objection functions and analysis methods. This of course creates a much more qualitative (vs. quantitative), relatable set of markets for broad appeal.



Beyond the fun market examples discussed above, opinion markets represent a major opportunity for businesses to gauge sentiment and build loyalty with their customers in a hyperlocal way.



For example, Starbucks could submit, “What street corner would be best for a new store?” Netflix could ask, “What should be our next city for ‘Love is Blind’?” A creator may ask, “What product should I review next?”&nbsp;



Today, corporations spend billions of dollars trying to identify these answers with advanced analytics teams. Opinion markets could provide a fast (and in many cases more accurate) answer while simultaneously creating direct meaningful engagement with customers.&nbsp;



Read more from our opinion section: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-innovation-suffering-inside-closed-networks">Crypto is becoming the same broken system it promised to fix</a>



In addition to the shortcomings of polls discussed earlier, they do not have intrinsic virality the way economic markets do. In an age of infinite content, gamification of opinion markets with economic outcomes will drive radically more engagement and virality than polls.



What will these opinion markets look like, and can we trust their outputs? The “wisdom of the crowd” is a well researched phenomena, suggesting that collective decision-making, when aggregated, often leads to more accurate outcomes than individual judgments. Unlike traditional polls or one-off surveys, crypto-based markets offer new primitives, such as economic incentives and participation history, to increase accuracy. We don’t know what the end-state will be, but the most effective form-factor will be determined by an explosion of research and experimentation, and the crypto advantages will undoubtedly produce better outcomes.&nbsp;



Read more from our opinion section: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/political-candidates-cannot-ignore-crypto-voters">Political candidates can no longer ignore crypto voters</a>



The next generation of crypto builders will have the opportunity to create products that transform how we engage with public sentiment, forecast trends and make decisions — both as individuals and as communities.



The final question is: How will opinion markets <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ai-future-is-decentralized-compute-networks">evolve in an age of AI</a>, where advanced algorithms can sift through massive datasets to predict social outcomes? AI agents will undoubtedly participate alongside human users, contributing their data-driven insights to the mix. I think rather than replacing human judgment, AI will compete with it to create a dynamic interplay between machine intelligence and human intuition. This will make opinion markets a unique arena for collaboration and competition between AI and human participants.



Opinions are like assholes; everyone has one. Does yours stink? Wanna bet?



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Forget polls — crypto-based opinion markets are the future of collective wisdom

David Canellis

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The exchanges are decentralizing.



Kraken is positioning its upcoming Ethereum layer-2, Ink, as a venue built specifically to onboard new users to the DeFi space. Existing Kraken customers would form the bedrock of that brave new world.



Coinbase’s own blockchain, Base, meanwhile has carved out its existence by encouraging anyone to build anything and everything onchain — “literally anything under the sun,” as Ink founder Andrew Koller put it to Jason Yanowitz on <a href="https://blockworks.co/podcast/empire/04ce2c92-9583-11ef-80ce-7f8336a83820">today’s Empire podcast</a>.



Rather than shaping a place to run your ice cream truck or dog walking service onchain, Ink is opting to focus more on specific DeFi use cases.&nbsp;



“We want to take our decade-and-a-half experience of centralized order books and get those things onchain somehow, make it so that onchain users tap into that, and vice versa,” Koller said.&nbsp;



That means good UX, less clicks and increased security.&nbsp;



“Sequencer-level security so that people don’t even know that rugs exist, or don’t even know that drainer contracts exist. That would be an absolute dream come true, so I think the hyperfocus on the DeFi theme first is where we’re going to take ours.”



It could all lead to blurred lines between CeFi and DeFi. Perhaps offchain and onchain balances could be connected in some way, so that Kraken users could use their CEX balances as collateral in DeFi lending apps running on Ink, for example.&nbsp;



We’ve seen the early effects of this convergence already. Coinbase began shifting all user USDC deposits over to Base earlier this year, pushing the network’s stablecoin supplies from under $1 billion to almost $4 billion today.&nbsp;



And so begs the question: Could exchange chains grow so successful that they accidentally render their parent exchanges obsolete?&nbsp;



Going by trading volumes, it’s not such a crazy thought.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe__UQoNKAVwcwVyOZUT6oIQ6ffXQNoWeK6cKV5G2cpX-1sMCV30Fr6wegdh-DcSyRp9N9ctHk0yKzHCxh0dVhF5stdWEJaHz2tfHmcb-s4CTpBr3EPXyIvIDeQrRWJFTu9OG90g2sxubt6fJ1oZub7Vs0?key=GfK9FWXi4y-1hEFhsyYgOcAa" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Base eclipsing Coinbase = the snake eating its tail?</figcaption></figure>



Base DEX volumes — which mostly come from Aerodrome and Uniswap — have actually now eclipsed Kraken’s, as shown on the chart above.



The 30-day moving average of Base DEXs (in blue) is currently about $873 million, compared to $630 million for Kraken (in purple), per CoinGecko data.&nbsp;



Granted, reading too much into trading volumes on super-cheap chains like Base can be a bit silly, given how prevalent wash trading can be (one academic paper <a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3689631">claims</a> to have identified $27.5 billion in wash trading on Uniswap v2 and v3 Ethereum pools — where it’s much more expensive than Base).



User assets could be another way through. We probably won’t get to see how much cash and crypto Kraken custodies on behalf of its users until it potentially goes public.&nbsp;



From SEC filings, we know that Coinbase safeguarded user assets worth over $273 billion at the end of June.&nbsp;



Barring $4.2 billion in cash, practically all of it was digital assets, the equivalent of over 11% of all cryptocurrency in existence at the time.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcpZXFotQPUrxOTIiwY6-4JSavNV8BCJrNWUVzDeUDiebkoK4tqtvwQREiVHkmPAOOZdRNDUH2YqlLdkKsc_ftRoyptGtspzr9gfki3PSmaIzIWRXxDklZhbUMaZIvQ6UFhuiWF928s1WkXuGDF4BAhq79h?key=GfK9FWXi4y-1hEFhsyYgOcAa" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Slowly, then all at once</figcaption></figure>



Base, meanwhile, had $7.2 billion economic value onchain — equal to 70% more than the Coinbase user cash, but less than 3% of the crypto kept on the exchange itself.



It’s not exactly possible to port the entirety of Coinbase user crypto over to Base, considering how much of it would be in bitcoin, ether and other layer-1 assets.&nbsp;



Still, it’s not unrealistic to see the gap closing more rapidly from here. Especially now that Kraken is spurring a competitive and friendly rivalry. 



And if just one of them succeeds, it could make CEXs a Web2 relic, just like the rest of it.



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Could exchanges decentralize themselves out of existence?

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It’s a big week for stocks, with five of the Mag 7 companies slated to report earnings this week: Alphabet (Tuesday), Microsoft (Wednesday), Meta (Wednesday), Apple (Thursday) and Amazon (Thursday).&nbsp;



The Qs will be a good proxy to watch this week, as about 32% of QQQ’s holdings are in the above five stocks. The fund has lagged the Nasdaq Composite over the past 30 trading days (1.8% returns for QQQ vs. the Nasdaq’s 2.4%), but strong earnings reports from these tech giants could be enough to bring the index out of this resistance zone.&nbsp;



Corporate earnings generally have a packed schedule this week, with 169 companies in the S&amp;P 500 due to publish quarterly results. Ford, Visa, Uber, Exxon and Mastercard are among the big names also sharing reports in the coming days.&nbsp;



Of the roughly one third of S&amp;P 500 companies that have already reported, 75% published earnings per share that were above analysts’ estimates, FactSet data shows. Meanwhile 59% have reported better-than-anticipated revenue for the third quarter.&nbsp;



“Q3 earnings season is thus far marginally better than the recent past in terms of revenue and earnings beat amounts, but it still lags long-run averages by a considerable margin,” DataTrek Research co-founder Nicholas Colas said. “Even still, earnings are good enough to support current S&amp;P levels since they support expectations for further improvement in Q4 and into 2025.”



We’ll have to wait and see if this rally can last.



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Major earnings week sets up stocks for potentially breakout 

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As the work week kicks off, bitcoin clocked another Monday surge — this time to $69,000.&nbsp;



We had reported on BTC <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/btc-future-price-movements">eclipsing $69k</a> earlier this month, before <a href="http://v">retreating</a>. Similarly to a week ago, the asset dropped today following its breach of that mark. It settled at roughly $68,980 by 2 pm ET — flat over the week, but up 1.5% from 24 hours ago.&nbsp;



VanEck crypto research head Matthew Sigel noted this morning on CNBC that bitcoin, which had lagged with low volatility before the 2020 election, is doing the same now. Four years ago, there was a high-vol rally for BTC after the election.



Forward Guidance’s own Felix Jauvin briefly weighed in on those thoughts via X:



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">That’s my quant <a href="https://t.co/Guc9DBLwTG">https://t.co/Guc9DBLwTG</a>&mdash; fejau (@fejau_inc) <a href="https://twitter.com/fejau_inc/status/1850900746587562148?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 28, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



“What we think is that once the election result is finalized, Moody’s is going to downgrade US sovereign debt and that could be a catalyst for bitcoin to catch up,” Sigel said.



Those wanting to know who will win probably <a href="http://v">won’t get much help</a> from the polls.



Two polls published Sunday showed VP Kamala Harris with a slight edge over challenger Donald Trump (51% to 47% among likely voters in an ABC News <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/harris-regains-slight-lead-nationally-electoral-college-holds/story?id=115083875">poll</a>, and 50% to 49% in <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-harris-poll-gender-gap/">one</a> by CBS News).&nbsp;



We previously noted how various polls last week (by <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/24/presidential-election-is-a-dead-heat-though-trump-leads-harris-big-on-economy-says-cnbc-survey.html?utm_source=forward-guidance.beehiiv.com&amp;utm_medium=newsletter&amp;utm_campaign=a-hawkish-50bps-cut&amp;_bhlid=2efe0d11818c5c8ef75ba5443d37c202013da70e">CNBC</a>, the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/trump-leads-harris-wsj-poll-779f8516?mod=googlenewsfeed&amp;utm_source=forward-guidance.beehiiv.com&amp;utm_medium=newsletter&amp;utm_campaign=a-hawkish-50bps-cut&amp;_bhlid=07b152ef5b66094385774799b11ab5b42680bc3f">Wall Street Journal</a> and <a href="https://elections.harrisx.com/public/HarrisX_Overnight_Poll_Oct_21_24_1_day.html?utm_source=forward-guidance.beehiiv.com&amp;utm_medium=newsletter&amp;utm_campaign=a-hawkish-50bps-cut&amp;_bhlid=206cee5b740da167679f3c228d093fbf934bd2bc">HarrisX/Forbes</a>) had Trump leading by two percentage points. Going by the New York Times’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/us/elections/polls-president.html">polling average</a>, Harris’s less than one-percentage-point lead is her smallest since mid-August.



Republican poll gains could account for some of the big net inflows bitcoin ETFs have seen of late (roughly $3.4 billion since Oct. 11), according to <a href="https://blog.coinshares.com/volume-206-digital-asset-fund-flows-weekly-report-0be04a4470cf">CoinShares</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“All else equal, BTC is likely to run higher into the election to front-run a potential <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/on-the-margin-newsletter-republican-sweep-markets">Trump win</a>,” said GSR research head Brian Rudick.



While he expects a crypto price surge if Trump is indeed elected, longer-term post-election BTC price gains will depend on whether the former president delivers on his <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/on-the-margin-newsletter-trump-crypto-promises">crypto promises</a>.&nbsp;



The market “knee-jerk reaction” is likely lower if Harris wins, but downside could be limited (and the market may even move up) for several reasons, Rudick explained. Two of those are that the uncertainty of the winner will no longer exist and Harris appears set to be <a href="https://x.com/intangiblecoins/status/1845845163588907486">more crypto-friendly</a> than the current administration.&nbsp;



“And third, prices are roughly around the levels as [they were] when politicians first began to embrace crypto, suggesting there isn&#8217;t too much priced in for a more positive US stance,” Rudick said.



For Ledn CIO John Glover, the focus remains on BTC’s technical levels.&nbsp;



“If it breaks $73,000, I anticipate upward momentum regardless of immediate political outcomes,” he told me.



Not far off from Rudick, Glover views a Trump-spurred lift or Harris-driven pullback as more likely temporary responses, given what he expects to be insubstantial crypto policy differences from the administrations.&nbsp;



He expects BTC to aim for $80k after the election dust settles, with a possible retreat below $70k before pushing toward $100k in late Q1/early Q2 2025.&nbsp;



Glover added: “BTC’s trajectory is driven more by the increase in overall demand as investors continue to add bitcoin to their investment mix than by political changes in the 6- to 12-month horizon.”



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BTC hits $69K again 8 days from election. What’s next?

This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">subscribe</a>.



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The decentralized AI training network Grass went live with its airdrop this morning, and the GRASS token distribution brought Solana wallets to heel.&nbsp;



Grass’ creators claim to be carrying out one of the most widely-distributed airdrops in history, and the token has been heavily farmed because participating required no financial stake from users. The popular Solana wallet Phantom <a href="https://status.phantom.app/incidents/242213">saw</a> its backend go down six minutes after the GRASS airdrop went live, and Backpack CEO <a href="https://x.com/armaniferrante/status/1850909635034947863">alluded</a> to difficulty with the wallet stemming from the claim. Solflare CEO Vidor Gencel said the wallet saw “minor degradation and automatically scaled up.”



“We&#8217;re currently aware of some issues affecting users on Jup.ag, when using 3rd party wallets,” the popular Solana swap platform Jupiter <a href="https://x.com/JupiterExchange/status/1850906728986247535">wrote</a> on X.&nbsp;



At first glance, Phantom and others’ struggles might seem related to the RPC protocols that allow crypto programs to interact. But at least two Solana’s RPCs seemed to weather the storm.



Mert Mumtaz, CEO of the popular Solana RPC platform Helius, said the company’s RPCs are “fine,” and Phantom’s downtime appeared to be stemming from elsewhere. Brian Long, co-founder of Solana RPC service Triton One, told me its RPCs “took a hit during the event and recovered quickly thereafter.”



Grass — the token and the network — live on Solana. The Solana network itself did not <a href="https://explorer.solana.com/">appear</a> to experience degraded performance during the airdrop. SOL itself still fell slightly on the airdrop news, from $177 to $175.



Users had trouble claiming the GRASS airdrop at first as wallet providers struggled to keep up with the surge in usage. Markets on centralized exchanges responded well to this fact, sending the token price up to $1.00 on KuCoin before dropping precipitously throughout the morning.



With 100 million tokens being distributed, the airdrop still amounted to tens of millions of dollars-worth in new tokens.



GRASS is meant to power the Grass network, which is being developed by Wynd Labs. Grass rewards users for sharing their unused internet bandwidth, which the protocol uses to scrape web data. Large datasets of this kind are useful for developing AI models, which are trained on data scraped from the web. Wynd’s leaders argue that Grass’ network accumulates better data than large-scale web scrapers, which may be blocked or run into falsified data.



Wynd Labs <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/blockchain-artificial-intelligence-fundraise">raised $3.5 million</a> in seed funding led by Polychain and Tribe Capital in December 2023.



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Solana wallets buckle as 2.8M addresses angle for Grass airdrop

Donovan Choy

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The total NFT market cap today is about <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/nft">$3.6 billion</a>, down hugely from its heady 2022 peaks.



Speculative NFT markets are dead, but the use cases of NFTs are not.



Non-fungible tokens as a data format and a unique digital identifier, in the technical sense, continue to be used in productive, non-speculative ways that do not necessarily translate to a number-go-up chart.



Take podcasts for instance. <a href="https://x.com/podsdotmedia">Pods.media</a> provides podcasters a way to easily tap into an alternative monetization stream by letting fans mint NFTs of their podcast episodes. Users mint their favorite podcast NFTs for reasons of altruism, or just because it’s no big deal to pick up a one-time free digital collectible.



Since launching a year ago, Pods has <a href="https://x.com/podsdotmedia/status/1840064720017260796">onboarded</a> 75+ podcasts and racked up more than $1 million in podcast episode mints across 120,000 collectors.



One of Pods’ biggest podcasts on its platform, Mint Podcast, has seen 250k+ NFTs minted across 69,789 unique collectors. Mint Podcast has raised about <a href="https://dune.com/queries/3398749/5704012">$476,885</a> in sales since it started using Pods in April 2024.



$477k is not life-changing money, but it’s a tidy sum for a little-known podcast in an industry where there’s an oversaturated podcasting supply side.



But the real use case of NFTs there goes beyond a simple revenue stream.



Having pushed his podcast audience towards a simple NFT mint with Pods, Adam Levy, the face behind Mint Podcast, was able to construct a comprehensive social graph of his anonymous audience.



To create a granular onchain composition, Levy targeted his 90k-strong audience with the use of Bello. The Web3 marketing analytics product, which he co-founded, spawned out of a hackathon at ETH Amsterdam.



“I learned that a high percentage of my onchain audience were also Zora collectors. With that information, I was able to tap the interests of my podcast listeners (with Bello) based on their wallet onchain’s history,” Levy tells Blockworks.



“I took action by doing more Zora-centric podcast episodes, which translated to another 40-50% more downloads on podcast content.”



In effect, NFTs enabled Levy to meet his users where they were once they took the first step of minting an episode.



As opposed to sending generic mass emails, Levy’s strategy enables the tailored outreach to podcast audiences who were active Lens or Farcaster users, directly in their social media DMs, or Coinbase Wallet users through the XMTP messaging protocol.



It also allows podcasters to curate their podcast content or sponsorships around trending content being minted in real time.



Picture having the hard evidence that 80% of your dedicated podcast audience interacted with a certain DeFi or NFT contract in the last six hours. Then imagine pushing out a podcast episode or marketing message crafted around that very topic in the very next hour.



It’s a plethora of onchain information that would not have been possible for any traditional podcaster using Spotify or Apple Music, Levy said.



“I don&#8217;t really care about my reach on Twitter or my audience on Instagram any longer — I care more about the wallets that collect my content because now I have ways to engage them in a permissionless manner where I can never be shadowbanned across any platform.”



Aside from podcasting, NFTs have also been used to fight counterfeit and fraud in the luxury goods sector.



Since 2021, the Geneva-based non-profit Aura consortium gives luxury brands a way to offer consumers an easy way to trace a product’s lifecycle and authenticate products onchain with NFTs.



It’s a purely non-speculative use case applying the immutable properties of NFTs to combat hundreds of millions of dollars worth of fraud and counterfeit in a $300 billion dollar industry.



Aura has brought onchain more than <a href="https://auraconsortium.com/news/blockchain-aura-surpasses-50-million-products">50 million</a> luxury goods from luxury watches, suitcases, shoes, cars, jewelry and furniture for over 50 luxury brands from the likes of Cartier, Dior, Prada, Mercedes-Benz and more.



Brands pay Aura licensing fees to use either a private or public blockchain option, though 90% opt for the former for data security and privacy reasons.



Traceability represents one of the big challenges in the luxury industry, in part due to laws like the EU’s Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation <a href="https://commission.europa.eu/energy-climate-change-environment/standards-tools-and-labels/products-labelling-rules-and-requirements/ecodesign-sustainable-products-regulation_en">(ESPR)</a> and France’s Anti-Waste for a Circular Economy<a href="https://www.scantrust.com/france-agec-law-decree-2022-748-how-to-comply/"> (AGEC)</a> that put more scrutiny on a product’s lifecycle, Romain Carrere, CEO of Aura Blockchain Consortium told Blockworks.&nbsp;



There are countless other cases of NFTs being used for productive purposes, like unlocking new revenue streams for adult creators by <a href="https://mintstars.com/how-it-works">MintStars</a>, or raising funds and codifying intellectual property for niche science projects by Bio, as I’ve <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/0xresearch-newsletter-science-funding-onchain">written previously</a>.&nbsp;



More on this in a future 0xResearch edition.



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NFTs in action: A podcaster’s unique method for engaging his fanbase

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Ethereum and Solana will go down as one of crypto’s greatest rivalries.



ETH bears would say Vitalik’s modular scaling roadmap — which has now <a href="https://l2beat.com/scaling/summary">spawned</a> more than 100 satellite blockchains — is doomed to accrue little value to the base asset.&nbsp;



After all, what’s the point in pushing onchain activity away from mainnet and onto smaller networks, if that activity doesn’t somehow translate to higher ETH prices?



Solana has otherwise made huge strides concentrating its community on just one chain — to the point that Solana’s DEX volumes have now eclipsed that of Ethereum mainnet plus 13 others.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfcZiXWSEHSuRMy7m_vdHJidLw22U8oft6afJXMde6Z4W2H6h6JKpdp9l12voHECYe0dpUZjj1WACjtDtkc5gLL00-0teZGSK1key4ORyh0K-vJoqRmpgwCpmiR9iFK3-pWSICnxl5_l-FE_ax4kI1MQNU6?key=4fqjyYWPdzp6TLBSSXYEsQ" alt=""/></figure>



The chart above shows Solana’s DEX volume market share against Ethereum and 13 layer-2s over the past 18 months, including Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, Scroll, Mantle, ZKSync, Polygon, Polygon zkEVM, World Chain, Zora, Linea, Blast and Arbitrum Nova.



In the past two weeks, Solana DEXs have handled $45.1 billion in volume, largely propelled by all-time <a href="https://defillama.com/protocol/raydium?volume=true&amp;groupBy=weekly&amp;tvl=false">highs</a> on Raydium. Ethereum and its orbiting networks have seen less than $40.2 billion (only!).



We know that memecoin traders are driving a huge portion of that volume, whether it’s within the Ethereum context or on Solana (over 80% of weekly DEX volume on Solana is memecoins, per <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/analytics/sol?dashboard=sol-dex&amp;interval=weekly">Blockworks Research</a> data).



It’s however the first time that Solana has handled more weekly DEX volume than this particular slice of the Ethereum ecosystem.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXebJkmExzwriqWcvfYPwoqf2cF7asC77RlXVXmmPkg78EAYiy7lKY0mwq40sg6A_ZZN_fcJa2XXy1-N8ucrpCrFsrFMCq20knlkVqu2PGsyoeABYmQEaF7NmV5e3v0TEUlWMESW2wBhD3G_SPUim6o4f-8f?key=4fqjyYWPdzp6TLBSSXYEsQ" alt=""/></figure>



What this means is that the public perception of both SOL and ETH (and to some extent all the other layer-1 base assets out there) rests on whether:



<ol class="wp-block-list">
<li>Memecoin traders will gravitate toward those ecosystems, and</li>



<li>Prices for the native cryptocurrencies will go up as a result.</li>
</ol>



With bitcoin — which leads the market right now — perhaps range-bound until the US election plays out, tracking price growth can be a noisy process.&nbsp;



So, tracking price ratios between two assets can show more realistic trends. The ETH/BTC ratio, for instance, is at its lowest point since April 2021. That reflects a market that has bought into the Bitcoin value prop more than it has for Ethereum’s, at least during our current bull cycle.



Meanwhile, both the SOL/ETH and TON/ETH ratios have hit new highs in the past few months, as shown by the chart above, with the former still at those levels.



One wonders, then if crypto markets are really so efficient that they’ve picked the right winners.



To which I’d say: Do you want to be right, or do you want to make money?&nbsp;



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One of crypto’s greatest rivalries boils down to memecoins

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">subscribe</a>.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Are we really about to see the takeoff of GameFi?



It might be slightly too early to tell — though I hosted an hour-long X Spaces the other week that ended up primarily focusing on gaming — but I gotta say it looks far more promising this cycle when compared to the last time around.&nbsp;



We’ve <a href="https://empire-31ed59.beehiiv.com/p/pwn-to-earn-is-here?utm_source=empire-31ed59.beehiiv.com&amp;utm_medium=newsletter&amp;utm_campaign=pwn-to-earn-is-here&amp;_bhlid=fe9cf80c65bd43529a8f3faf10af1ee63e95013b">previously written about Off the Grid</a>, but I want to zoom out and look at GameFi as a whole. Right now, the sector is facing a “pivotal phase of expansion,” according to a <a href="https://research.nansen.ai/articles/future-of-gamefi-in-web3">report</a> from Nansen and Slice Analytics. 



I caught up with Slice co-founder Tim Conrad on gaming, given the attention bump it received from not only Off the Grid but <a href="https://www.ubisoft.com/en-us/help/champions-tactics-grimoria-chronicles/purchases-and-rewards/article/release-information-for-champions-tactics-grimoria-chronicles/000105558">announcements</a> from huge players like Ubisoft, which are angling for exposure through their own releases.



Although, the recent shift in popularity hasn’t come without its hurdles.



“So last cycle, you had the hype phase of the curve, and nobody had enough time to invest the money and time to build a really good game. I think Axie infinity was probably well above its time, and that&#8217;s probably why it drew so much attention,” Conrad said.&nbsp;



“But it still really lacked that AAA kind of gameplay and experience there … I think that that [the bear market] was the best thing that could have ever happened in the GameFi space. It allowed these triple-A games … to spend that time building, and now we&#8217;re seeing the fruits of those labors. And I think it&#8217;s drawing a lot of attention.”&nbsp;



A <a href="https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/blockchain-gaming-market-report?ref=blog.bake.io">report</a> from Grand View Research estimates that the sector could hit $301 billion by 2030.&nbsp;



Conrad explained that the figure may not be that far off. He said it’s “basically” based on the&nbsp; “acceleration that we&#8217;re seeing from 2021 and the kind of investment that we&#8217;re seeing, in addition to the teams joining, the amount of games that are launching — all that combined, looking into a projected outcome.”



It all depends on a few things, including communities.&nbsp;



“I think that&#8217;s really important to build that community, especially with gaming,” Conrad told me.&nbsp;



“We&#8217;re seeing the Epic Game store start working with Web3, this is all fantastic. One thing we took a closer look at is what type of community all these games are really growing. And one of the biggest challenges [was] when a new game that hasn&#8217;t even launched yet has like a million followers on [X]. It&#8217;s a little suspicious, and it makes you realize that a lot of these metrics really need to be scrutinized further,” he explained.&nbsp;



“Metrics can be changed like that, but we have to do our best to kind of filter through that noise and really evaluate what is a real metric, and what is something that we shouldn&#8217;t put so much weight into.”



Now as to what metrics matter the most, well, that might all be figured out once there’s a bit more maturity in the space.



<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity"/>



Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.



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Crypto gaming may be on the cusp of fresh growth

The biggest deal this week wasn’t a venture capital raise. Instead, it was the announcement that Stripe is buying stablecoin platform Bridge for $1.1 billion.&nbsp;



There’s been a lot written about the deal and what it means, and we wrote about it from numerous angles here at Blockworks focusing on the Solana impact, what it means for crypto and whether or not this could open the door for more merger and acquisition activity.&nbsp;



Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, in a <a href="https://x.com/patrickc/status/1848393059559502177">post</a> earlier this week, said, “<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/stablecoins">Stablecoins</a> are room-temperature superconductors for financial services. Thanks to stablecoins, businesses around the world will benefit from significant speed, coverage and cost improvements in the coming years. <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/stripe">Stripe</a> is going to build the world’s best stablecoin infrastructure.”



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/stripe-bridge-acquisition-stablecoin-infrastructure">Stripe looks to build ‘world’s best stablecoin infrastructure’ after Bridge buy&nbsp;</a>



Empire co-host Santiago Santos <a href="https://blockworks.co/podcast/empire/4164753c-9261-11ef-b1b7-270f254cfcb9">praised</a> Collison’s words, calling the post “one of the best tweets I’ve ever seen.”



“There&#8217;s this whole universe and part of crypto that people outside of crypto don&#8217;t appreciate unless you&#8217;re using it. But very few people are using it because they&#8217;re distracted in this noise that crypto is just a casino,” Santos said, talking about stablecoins and their use cases.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/lightspeed-newsletter-bridge-solana-vc">Stripe’s $1.1B acquisition: Implications for Solana and crypto VC</a>



But the Stripe/Bridge deal wasn’t the only piece of <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/empire-newsletter-dydx-founder-comeback">M&amp;A activity</a> this week. Crypto custodian Komainu — which is backed by Nomura — also <a href="https://komainu.com/resources/komainu-agrees-to-acquire-propine-in-singapore-to-expand-its-footprint-in-asia-ex-japan">announced</a> that it was acquiring Propine, a rival based in Singapore.&nbsp;



The deal amount was not disclosed.&nbsp;



On the funding front, we saw Azura — a DeFi platform — <a href="https://x.com/azura/status/1848712029244428443">announce</a> a $6.9 million round alongside its launch.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Our goal is to allow anyone, from anywhere, to trade any asset—enabled by DeFi. Considering the scope of this problem, we&#39;ve decided to establish a new category: The first application and interfacing standard enabled to support any blockchain and any protocol. 2/ <a href="https://t.co/OgxGSZMi83">pic.twitter.com/OgxGSZMi83</a>&mdash; Azura (@azura) <a href="https://twitter.com/azura/status/1848712032239157687?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 22, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Notable news:</h2>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Shuttle Labs <a href="https://x.com/GeniusTerminal/status/1849105492754452559">said</a> it raised $6 million to build Genius, a self-custodial crypto exchange. Investors included CMCC, Flow Traders and Anthony Scaramucci’s SALT.</li>



<li>MoonWalk Fitness <a href="https://x.com/moonwalkfitness/status/1849481961137377538">announced</a> a $3.4 million seed round led by Hack VC. Binance Labs, Flowdesk and Reciprocal Ventures all participated.</li>
</ul>



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Funding Roundup: Stripe buys Bridge for $1.1B, Azura bags $6.9M

The co-CEO and chief technology officer of crypto market maker GSR have exited the firm, the company revealed this week.&nbsp;



Rich Rosenblum, who co-founded the company more than a decade ago, has stepped down “to pursue entrepreneurial opportunities,” GSR said in a Wednesday X <a href="https://x.com/GSR_io/status/1849138871876923579">post</a>.&nbsp;



“His visionary leadership and innovative approach have played a pivotal role in shaping our strategic direction and establishing <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/gsr">GSR</a> as a leading player in the cryptocurrency market,” the company wrote.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/copper-okx-name-new-executives">Crypto Hiring: Copper, OKX name new executives</a>



John MacDonald, GSR’s CTO since January 2022, will also be leaving the firm.&nbsp;



It is unclear where Rosenblum and MacDonald will work next. A GSR spokesperson did not return a request for comment about who could replace the executives.&nbsp;



The moves come after <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/jump-crypto-president-resigns-gsr-adds-ceos">Rosenblum and Xin Song became co-chief executives</a> on July 1. GSR said at the time that then-CEO Jakob Palmstierna would transition to a president role and lead the company’s client franchise.&nbsp;



As for C-suite additions, crypto trading firm BlockFills appointed Amy Shelly as its chief financial officer and promoted Neil Van Huis to lead the company’s strategy.&nbsp;



Shelly formerly spent about six years — from 2016 to 2022 — as CFO for the Options Clearing Corporation (OCC).



Her new firm “solves fragmented liquidity problems through aggregation and matching algorithms, and provides an end-to-end software suite that simplifies all aspects of the trade lifecycle for institutions,” Shelly said in a LinkedIn <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/amy-shelly-cpa_crypto-cryptocurrency-liquidity-activity-7254897695796994049-4Xme/">post</a>.



Van Huis, a director at BlockFills since 2018, now carries the chief strategy officer title. As a founding partner, Van Huis was tasked with building out global trading relationships and driving new business.



The two executives step into their new positions as the firm “prepares to launch international offices, expands the BlockFills product offering and positions itself for major growth in the institutional digital assets space,” the company said in a statement.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/on-the-margin-newsletter-inevitable-institutional-digital-assets-involvement">Digital assets involvement becoming “inevitable” for more institutions</a>



<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/coinshares">CoinShares</a>, a crypto asset manager that recently established a New York office, is hiring for roles in sales, marketing, operations and compliance.&nbsp;



These upcoming hires will support the Europe-focused firm’s “commitment to scaling US operations” after the company <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinshares-buys-valkyrie-fund-business">acquired Valkyrie’s crypto ETFs</a> earlier this year, the company said this week.&nbsp;



Another crypto-related player, meanwhile, has cut staff, Blockworks has learned.



Nova Labs, the company behind the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/helium">Helium</a> Mobile cell network, laid off 36% of its workforce in August, Lightspeed’s Jack Kubinec <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/helium-parent-company-layoffs">reported</a> Friday.&nbsp;



One person familiar with the situation said the layoffs were done to focus more on Nova Labs’ core cellular business. A former employee estimated the company had 105 employees at the time of the cuts.



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Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.



Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/onthemargin">Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter</a>.



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