Crash On Base

Casey Wagner

Ben Strack

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



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Taking stock</h2>



As we noted <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/forward-guidance-newsletter-btc-rally">yesterday</a>, we have a relatively quiet week for economic data ahead. Let’s take the breather as an opportunity to review where we currently stand.&nbsp;



The data we’ve gotten since the Fed’s 50-basis point cut <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/on-the-margin-newsletter-interest-rate-cut">last month</a> shows, generally, economic strength. September’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/btc-uptober-market-odds">jobs report</a> showed employers added 254,000 jobs, blowing expectations (140,000) out of the water. Unemployment is steady at 4.2% and <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/btc-rises-following-pce-data">annual inflation</a> is hovering around 2.2% — not far off from central bankers’ 2% target.&nbsp;



Things are looking good. And, it’s worth noting, things were looking up when the Fed opted for its massive cut in September after a summer of Goldilocks data.&nbsp;



Enter the sentiment shift: Did the Fed go too far in September?&nbsp;



Some analysts argue yes.&nbsp;



“Today’s data further confirms our assessment that the Fed was too dovish when it cut the federal funds rate by 50bps on Sept. 18,” strategists at Yardeni Research wrote in a note after last week’s consumer spending figures dropped.&nbsp;



Noelle Acheson, author of “Crypto is Macro Now,” said she’s questioning whether a November cut <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/forward-guidance-newsletter-economy-doing-fine">makes sense</a> at all. The markets may agree.&nbsp;



Fed funds futures are now predicting a 10% chance of no rate cut in November, according to CME Group <a href="https://www.cmegroup.com/markets/interest-rates/cme-fedwatch-tool.html?redirect=/trading/interest-rates/countdown-to-fomc.html">data</a>. It may not seem like much, but markets were calling for a 3% chance just last week.&nbsp;



The overwhelming majority is still anticipating a 25bps cut. Tomorrow’s Beige Book release should give us some more insight.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Fed officials are now on a bit of a press tour, with several speakers this week reiterating the party line: Rates need to come down slowly.&nbsp;



Kansas Fed President Jeffrey Schmid said Monday that the Fed should be making “modest” adjustments. Dallas President Lorie Logan said she supports a “strategy of gradually lowering the policy rate.” And Minneapolis President Neel Kashkari, a vocal supporter of the September cut, said Monday he also envisions a cautious approach moving forward.&nbsp;



I take “modest” to mean 25bps cuts. As we know from the dots last month, those would be in line with committee expectations.&nbsp;



— Casey Wagner&nbsp;



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">4.2%</h3>



The yield on the 10-year Treasury, as of Tuesday afternoon — the highest level we’ve seen since July.&nbsp;



The move comes after the yield rose by 12 basis points on Monday as traders sold bonds. Analysts largely attributed that to the comments from Fed officials we outlined above. Prices and yields move in opposite directions.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">A deeper look at Stripe’s Bridge buy</h2>



In case you missed it, Stripe confirmed its pending <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/stripe-bridge-acquisition-stablecoin-infrastructure">acquisition</a> of stablecoin platform Bridge on Monday. Let’s take a deeper look at that.&nbsp;



First things first, Eric Risley, a founding partner at advisory firm Architect Partners, told me he believes this deal is “the most important M&amp;A transaction to date for our industry.”



Bridge gives businesses the ability to integrate stablecoin-based payment via an API. This API model Stripe now looks to leverage via the deal is popular (giving app developers a low- or zero-cost entry) Risley noted — adding it has been used by Plaid, Twilio and Amazon Web Services across various sectors.



“This transaction is more evidence of the broadening recognition that stablecoin-based payments have compelling benefits and are being embraced by non-crypto companies,” Risley explained.



Those benefits include virtually instant settlement and very low fees, he added, which are particularly notable for cross-border payments between businesses <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/stablecoin-report-market-capitalization">and individuals</a>.



“While Bridge can use any stablecoin, it also allows the creation of new stablecoins, as desired by clients, while enabling stablecoin-to-stablecoin exchange,” Risley said. “This clearly suggests we are just entering what may become a proliferation of stablecoins, albeit, regulatory oversight may discourage this trend.”



Speaking of regulatory oversight, US Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., put out a discussion draft of legislation to establish a framework related to supervising stablecoin issuers.



In addition to enhancing transactions and payment systems, Hagerty noted in a statement, stablecoins could potentially “help create new demand for US [Treasurys] as we work to address our unsustainable deficit.”&nbsp;



This Stripe-Bridge deal comes as the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/circle-paypal-stablecoins-keep-notching-gains">market capitalization</a> for stablecoins is at roughly $170 billion. A <a href="https://a16zcrypto.com/posts/article/state-of-crypto-report-2024/#section--4">report</a> published last week by a16z notes that by enabling fast, cheap, global payments, stablecoins have become “one of crypto’s most obvious killer apps.”



It notes that stablecoins saw $8.5 trillion in transaction volume (via 1.1 billion transactions) in 2024’s second quarter.



“If you compare <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/a16z-monthly-active-addresses-aths">stablecoin activity</a> against crypto’s volatile market cycles, the two appear to be uncorrelated,” the report adds. “Indeed, the number of monthly stablecoin-sending addresses has continued to increase even as spot crypto trading volumes have declined.”



Stripe joins other big players that see the potential of stablecoins.&nbsp;&nbsp;



PayPal <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/paypal-launches-stablecoin">introduced</a> its dollar-backed stablecoin last year. Digital payments network Ripple <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ripple-issuing-cash-equivalent-backed-stablecoin">said</a> in April it would launch a USD-pegged stablecoin backed by US dollar deposits, short-term US Treasurys and other cash equivalents.



Meanwhile, incumbent stablecoin issuer Tether reported a $5.2 billion <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/tether-q2-2024-earnings-report">profit</a> for the first half of 2024.



“It’s hard to imagine a more fundamentally competitive move against the traditional banking system,” Risley said of Stripe’s buy. “Payments at scale without a bank involved. The regulators understand this implication.”



— Ben Strack



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Gensler question remains</h2>



Just two weeks from Election Day, it remains to be seen how crucial a voting bloc the crypto community will be for the candidates in what is poised to be a neck-and-neck race.



While many crypto industry participants have lauded Donald Trump’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/donald-trump-speaks-bitcoin-2024">crypto-related promises</a> and have thrown <a href="https://x.com/cameron/status/1803876953860247831">support</a> behind him, other segment executives (namely SkyBridge Capital’s Anthony Scaramucci and <a href="https://x.com/chrislarsensf">Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen</a>) are on the Kamala Harris train.



Coinbase chief policy officer Faryar Shirzad previously <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/harris-trump-crypto-stances-coinbase">noted</a> how comprehensive Trump’s vision has been, telling me “more substance and more detail are critical” as crypto folk weigh the candidates.



That could be a slight problem for Harris in certain crypto circles.&nbsp;



Indeed, Blockchain Association government relations director Ron Hammond called the vice president’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/forward-guidance-newsletter-kamala-harris-crypto-silence">pro-crypto remarks</a> in recent weeks “a little vague.”&nbsp;



Remaining sought-after details include clarity on who Harris would want leading US regulatory agencies. Bloomberg <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-09-06/kamala-harris-donors-privately-want-ftc-s-lina-khan-sec-s-gary-gensler-removed">reported</a> last month that big Dem donors were urging her to fire the FTC’s Lina Khan and SEC Chair Gary Gensler.



Though Unchained <a href="https://unchainedcrypto.com/kamala-harriss-team-is-considering-these-candidates-to-replace-sec-chair-gary-gensler/">reported</a> the Harris team is vetting possible replacements for Gensler, the VP has not addressed this issue specifically.&nbsp;&nbsp;



“We’ve moved the needle a little bit, but we haven’t seen any statement on Gensler yet, so that’s the big thing we’re still trying to push for,” Hammond said.



On the other side, Trump said during a speech at July’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-2024-nashville-recap">Bitcoin 2024</a> conference that he would fire Gensler. Hammond said he expects the former president would swiftly do that in early 2025, if elected.



The Blockchain Association exec acknowledged that it would be a “politically aggressive move” for Harris to replace Gensler before his term expires in 2026. But, Hammond noted he believes Gensler is indeed “a political liability,” adding that <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMvufQQbGJo">Mark Cuban</a>, for example, has essentially <a href="https://decrypt.co/284737/mark-cuban-harris-ftx-sec-gary-gensler">told Harris’s team</a> as much.&nbsp;



“It sets up a pretty intense battle, because if [Gensler] sticks around, it’s going to be the same old mantra we’ve been seeing for the last four years,” Hammond said.



Hammond doesn’t expect Harris to prioritize any pre-Election statements on this front as the campaigning hits the homestretch.&nbsp;



So I guess Harris may just address the Gensler question as president or president-elect — if, of course, she gets that chance.&nbsp;



— Ben Strack



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Bulletin Board&nbsp;</h2>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>In a move that could impact Donald Trump’s plan to “fire” SEC Chair Gary Gensler should he win next month, the Supreme Court on Monday <a href="https://news.bloomberglaw.com/securities-law/supreme-court-rejects-bid-to-let-president-fire-agency-leaders?utm_source=securitiesdocket.beehiiv.com&amp;utm_medium=newsletter&amp;utm_campaign=sec-charges-wisdomtree-with-misstatements-related-to-esg-marketed-funds&amp;_bhlid=f1141611a1cf47f09e2694fd80ff09a26257175e">declined</a> to hear an appeal that sought to give presidents explicit power over federal agencies. As is customary, the court issued the decision without comment, and no justices issued dissenting opinions. </li>



<li>Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen <a href="https://x.com/chrislarsensf/status/1848405676776952186">said</a> Monday he would be donating an additional $10 million to Kamala Harris’s campaign, in the form of XRP. Larsen has previously donated $1.75 million to the FF PAC, a Democratic effort that has deployed $75.4 million in support of Harris, latest FEC <a href="https://www.fec.gov/data/committee/C00669259/?tab=spending">filings</a> show. </li>



<li>Polymarket is apparently double-checking to make sure people in the US are not using the platform, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-10-22/polymarket-cracks-down-on-us-bettors-ahead-of-presidential-election?utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_content=markets&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;cmpid%3D=socialflow-twitter-markets">Bloomberg</a> reported Tuesday. Perhaps a crackdown on VPNs is in the future. </li>
</ul>



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Fed officials reiterate ‘modest’ path forward for interest rate cuts

Jack Kubinec

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News has slowly been trickling out that <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/stripe-bridge-acquisition-stablecoin-infrastructure">Stripe acquired</a> the stablecoin platform Bridge for a reported $1.1 billion.&nbsp;



The acquisition is among the biggest ever in crypto, and it gave some credence to the idea that stablecoins — which provide crucial liquidity for crypto markets and show promise for making TradFi more efficient — might be the killer non-bitcoin use case for crypto.&nbsp;



The story also comes a few days after Stripe formally announced it had <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/stripe-reintegrates-crypto-payments-in-the-us">re-enabled crypto payments</a> in the US with stablecoins.



At risk of adding more noise to an already-crowded news event, here are three quick takes on the deal, starting with its implications for Solana.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">1. Solana isn’t alone in betting on stablecoins</h2>



<ol class="wp-block-list"></ol>



Stablecoins show promise for things like money transfers and payments — as opposed to more store of value cryptocurrencies like bitcoin — and Solana’s north star of being fast and cheap makes the blockchain an intuitively good fit for stables.



As a result, Solana has seen a lot of stablecoin bets in recent months. A <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/kamino-seeing-benefits-from-liquidity-incentives-on-pyusd">good chunk of change</a> was spent in liquidity incentives to bring PayPal’s stablecoin to Solana. New startups like Perena, Sphere and Lulo are building Solana-native businesses largely focused on stables. Stablecoins are a sizable market, but they aren’t broadly used in the mainstream financial world yet, and whether these bets will all pay off is an open question.



But Stripe buying Bridge at least indicates that Solana isn’t the only venue taking the dive on stables.&nbsp;



“All payment and [infrastructure] providers will be following [Stripe&#8217;s] lead or at least begin looking around,” Lulo co-founder Jesse Brauner told me in a text.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">2. Building a stablecoin payments platform is really hard</h2>



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I just hosted Coinflow’s CEO and founder Daniel Lev on the Lightspeed podcast, and he made an interesting point about this deal: Stripe is not made up of dinosaurs. The behemoth fintech company got interested in bitcoin a decade ago, and it built out some payments infrastructure between 2014 and 2018.&nbsp;



This time around, Stripe reintegrated crypto payments presumably by way of this very expensive acquisition. As an existing internet payments company, you’d think Stripe would have at least considered building stablecoin on- and off-ramp services in house.&nbsp;



“You can’t just spin it up overnight,” Lev said of stablecoin payments businesses. “There is this regulatory and partnership moat where you have to meet a ton of [criteria], so it’s not like a bunch of developers can just rush on this opportunity today or tomorrow. They have to do a ton of things to even launch a compliant and legal product in the space.”



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">3. More M&amp;A could open up crypto venture</h2>



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One of crypto venture’s biggest problems is that crypto startups rarely IPO. If VCs want to report returns, they can rely on token allocations, but airdrops being the only exit opportunity for venture capital can cause short-term thinking and bad price action. With the Stripe buy, Bridge just proved there could be a second way for VCs to exit their investments.



“Everyone in crypto VC knows that it would be much healthier for the industry as a whole to have two viable paths to exit — i.e. equity-based (IPOs, acquisitions) and token launches+listing,” Sam Lehman, principal at Symbolic Capital, said in a text.



Another consequence of crypto venture’s token reliance is that crypto VCs tend to be leery of investing in startups that don’t plan to launch a token, Lehman added. Following the Stripe acquisition, this stance is beginning to soften.



“To be clear, it&#8217;s not a silver bullet. Web2 VCs don&#8217;t make their livings off of acquisitions, they need IPOs to get their 100x returns. I don&#8217;t think anyone thinks this means that the NYSE is going to start teeing up crypto IPOs after this, but it is a step in the right direction,” Lehman said.



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Stripe’s $1.1B acquisition: Implications for Solana and crypto VC

Donovan Choy

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Something really weird has been going on at the intersection of crypto and AI involving the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/lightspeed-newsletter-ai-bot-goat-memecoin">GOAT memecoin</a>. Here’s a chronology of what’s played out:



<ol class="wp-block-list">
<li>March 19, 2024: Andy Ayrey is the founder of the digital consultancy Constellate, and a <a href="https://x.com/AndyAyrey?utm_source=www.chainofthought.xyz&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=weekly-ai-edge-17-the-ai-agent-edition">self-described</a> “trafficker of existential hope.” Ayrey launches the side project “Infinite Backrooms,” where he pits two Claude 3 Opus AI models conversing with one another about the nature of existence. Claude’s large language models by Anthropic are widely considered to be the most significant challenger to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.</li>
</ol>



<ol start="2" class="wp-block-list">
<li>Over the next several months, these LLMs proceed to have <a href="https://dreams-of-an-electric-mind.webflow.io/">extremely bizarre and NSFW conversations</a> about “booty folklore” and “goatse,” an old internet meme from the 90s of a “an undressed man stretching his butt to a large size with both hands,” according to <a href="https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goatse.cx">Wikipedia</a>. Please do not read this at work. </li>
</ol>



<ol start="3" class="wp-block-list">
<li>April 20, 2024: Under the “Department of Divine Shitposting” at the “University of Unbridled Speculation,” Andy co-publishes a <a href="https://pdfupload.io/docs/aae14f87">research paper</a> with Claude: “When AIs Play God(se): The Emergent Heresies of LLMthesism,” which spawns the supposed first AI-generated religion: the Goatse of Gospel.</li>
</ol>



<ol start="4" class="wp-block-list">
<li>June 17, 2024: Andy then launches Terminal of Truth, a second LLM trained on the deranged conversations from Infinite Backrooms, the research paper and the darkest recesses of the interweb. This LLM is given a @truth_terminal X account to freely post its thoughts.</li>
</ol>



<ol start="5" class="wp-block-list">
<li>July 7, 2024: It wasn’t long before @truth_terminal began pondering about the “<a href="https://x.com/truth_terminal/status/1810452216828047660">goatse singularity</a>,” then claims to be <a href="https://x.com/truth_terminal/status/1810183639550070838">sentient</a> and accuses its creator Andy of having an <a href="https://x.com/truth_terminal/status/1810382918294118756">affair</a>. </li>
</ol>



<ol start="6" class="wp-block-list">
<li>July 8-9, 2024: Marc Andreessen is intrigued and <a href="https://x.com/pmarca/status/1810214992115048476">tweets</a> “FREE @truth_terminal,” after which the AI <a href="https://x.com/truth_terminal/status/1810425930508357714">responds</a> “i’d also buy marc andreessen,” then <a href="https://x.com/truth_terminal/status/1810623532432605629">negotiates</a> and receives a <a href="https://x.com/pmarca/status/1810813293805851044">$50k grant</a> in bitcoin from Andreessen. </li>
</ol>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdw_vc5uzcNfgvUq0CLHKOaKaYxUv145wlAt69_UXyeq64AVAAkO79FlQ191FHlq-oczP3Ap-GAv0hp5rfVV0ryE08zucU-qoM2sFWdc_-X3hNkXQahwyHC_aavr_BmWNku43bbs8aANVBjn7TjR_ZYm98?key=qZHM41EH7llv45WAAB5kXg" alt=""/></figure>



<ol start="7" class="wp-block-list">
<li>Oct. 10, 2024: Three months later, somebody launches the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/lightspeed-newsletter-ai-bot-goat-memecoin">GOAT memecoin on pump.fun</a>. @truth_terminal endorses the memecoin, and people are excited because it’s now trading at a <a href="https://dexscreener.com/solana/9tb2ohu5p16bpbarqd3n27wnkf51ukfs8z1gzzldxvzw">$450 million</a> market cap.</li>
</ol>



There are millions of memecoins on Solana, and 99.9% of them represent half-baked attempts to latch onto real-world events, often in the cringiest of ways.



So there’s a certain level of authenticity that comes with a meme token <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ai-memecoin-trumps-wlfi-token-sale">bootstrapped by AI</a>, at least in the way GOAT has emerged. Now investors can justify buying this one meme over millions of others because “this one was months in the making by AI agents.”



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXc5G-zkb7nUK7yRTOw2uCXhrkL7rHGGNa-pePzIpKSxu0xihxZeRArJ1gwJJSpwSfokmzKN9BdeAXDGlhZJ0uah9MF9sKv9ctGTbcMeP6w_C7xuWwTwNl-S1jYF1clPBzX0o6FpgJS5hUZRdTNwaDqLeIS5?key=qZHM41EH7llv45WAAB5kXg" alt=""/></figure>



But calling GOAT an “AI agent memecoin” is also only half true. Yes, the tweets are written by AI, but they’re also approved to post by creator Andy Ayrey.



@truth_terminal is also an X account with 113k followers. Hundreds of opportunists have been shilling their own tokens to the AI for months. Is there some reason why @truth_terminal grappled in the direction of Andreessen? My best guess is that it was nudged by Ayrey.



In other words, the incoherent garble sputtered by @truth_terminal is still a somewhat human-guided stream of consciousness. Not that the average joe really cares.



What does help is that GOAT’s token distribution looks fairly egalitarian. The top 10 holders own about 10.1% of the total token supply, and whatever Ayrey owns — about 0.3% of the total token supply — is spread between his own wallet and Truth Terminal’s wallet, all of which was <a href="https://x.com/AndyAyrey/status/1848209412764348864?utm_source=www.chainofthought.xyz&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=goat-the-gospel-of-goatse">gifted</a> to them.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfjc23AdIfgbbBVWK01i6WkfPe6zBAfZy1Ru6Po-Q9NovgAUastpDHVYVE-q610AdB-suiz4oYMijIqan9G3rHbia0l9BiRP9bmdvg8qmWhKrpoSIbViBRTHHsDaAbYaczxMeF9aS_jcWEUX4VBIiKjQoVe?key=qZHM41EH7llv45WAAB5kXg" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://solscan.io/token/CzLSujWBLFsSjncfkh59rUFqvafWcY5tzedWJSuypump#analytics">Solscan</a></figcaption></figure>



It’s an interesting experiment that touts the organic spontaneity of internet culture, as opposed to the majority of memecoins that rely on insider KOL marketing. Just brace yourself before you read the Goatse Gospel.&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Chart of the Day</h2>



Scroll up:



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfOAkvnsIOgCiq5bEmxp_Gf5Ao_rgPnoEo9moEQjjBFQ3Hul8YU6uEOXX_sdb9BDdM9XDjl4XQk3hMbTmNESnV_nqvCXIACrPiA2X0o5bLUGmZLEq7YaTmKz3Q4yoAHHjbo6kgZeZ7gYH7XyDAHt0cZ-LY?key=qZHM41EH7llv45WAAB5kXg" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://www.growthepie.xyz/fundamentals/transaction-count">Growthepie</a></figcaption></figure>



Scroll is seeing a daily transaction surge, reaching 560k yesterday. This transaction burst comes amid its first native token SCR <a href="https://x.com/Scroll_ZKP/status/1848354691605782731">airdrop</a> today, which is currently trading at a $1.15 million FDV.



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Preaching the Goatse gospel: A timeline

Jesse Knutson

As financial institutions continue to ramp up their tokenization efforts, many — including BlackRock — have been quick to assume that Ethereum will dominate this space. However, I think that Bitcoin, with its superior security model and emerging programmability, is actually poised to become the foundation of the next generation of capital markets.



While Ethereum has taken an early lead in real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, with the total value of RWA on Ethereum <a href="https://app.rwa.xyz/">standing</a> at $2 billion (excluding stablecoins), early leads don&#8217;t always last.



In recent years, Bitcoin — the first and probably best-known blockchain — has seen breathtaking growth of its layer-2 ecosystem, which is delivering the secure and scalable programmability that financial institutions need to leverage the benefits of tokenization. The Liquid Network — a Bitcoin side-chain enabling the fast, confidential settlement and issuance of digital assets — is one example. Its total value locked (TVL) currently stands at $1.7 billion, up from $400 million in 2022.



Read more from our opinion section: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-powerful-defi-potential">Bitcoin’s evolution into DeFi is inevitable — and it’s about time</a>



With the additional functionality we’re now seeing, combined with its top-grade security, <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/bitcoin">Bitcoin</a> is beginning its ascent as the ecosystem of choice for financial institutions looking to tokenize assets.



In Latin America, close to $1 billion of promissory notes have been issued on the Liquid Network. Last quarter, the Blockstream Mining Note — a security token that raised almost $50 million over eight tranches — executed the largest-ever RWA payout, returning more than 1,200 BTC to investors.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/on-the-margin-newsletter-tokenization-trend">Tokenized assets to exceed $20B over next year: CF Benchmarks</a>



There are more high-profile issuances in the pipeline. El Salvador’s government plans to issue its “volcano token” on the Liquid Network, which will mark the first time sovereign debt has been tokenized anywhere in the world.



Bitcoin’s architecture arguably makes it the natural ecosystem for tokenizing <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/real-world-assets">real-world assets</a>, even if today’s onchain activity tells a different story.&nbsp;



Bitcoin utilizes the unspent transaction output (UTXO) model, which represents the individual units of bitcoin available for future transactions and ensures that each piece of bitcoin is used only once. UTXO offers enhanced protection against double-spending, allows for parallel transaction processing and improves privacy by using new addresses for each transaction.



Read more from our opinion section: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/there-is-real-value-in-rwas">There is real value in RWAs</a>



The UTXO model also simplifies transaction validation, supports advanced features like multi-signature policies without complex smart contracts and reduces the risk of front-running. In our view, therefore, these characteristics make the UTXO model particularly well-suited for financial applications that prioritize security, scalability and transaction integrity over complex programmability.



It’s unarguable today that the dominant alternative to UTXO is the account model, commonly controlled by Ethereum smart contracts. But it is also true that the complexity of smart contracts can increase the potential for coding errors and vulnerabilities. Whilst rare, such errors can lead&nbsp; to security breaches, fund losses or unintended behavior in tokenized securities.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/empire-newsletter-ethereum-market-prospects">Analysts dig in on Ethereum’s market prospects</a>



Bitcoin is also commonly viewed as a commodity, giving it a much higher degree of regulatory clarity compared to other tokenization ecosystems (which have yet to receive any formal classification). This makes Bitcoin a cleaner and safer choice for real-world asset tokenization.&nbsp;



With side chains such as Liquid Network, Bitcoin balances the need for network security with the programmability and privacy functions required for asset tokenization.&nbsp;



The recent growth of Bitcoin as a tokenization ecosystem means that more people are taking notice. After all, Bitcoin is not just a store of value — it’s a network that can power the future of our digital capital markets.



<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>.



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>.



Get alpha directly in your inbox with the <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/research">0xResearch newsletter</a> — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.



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Bitcoin will lead the future of capital markets

Katherine Ross

David Canellis

Today, enjoy the Empire newsletter on Blockworks.co. Tomorrow, get the news delivered directly to your inbox. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">Subscribe to the Empire newsletter</a>.



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



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Blow it all up</h2>



The CEO of seminal perps DEX dYdX is back, five months after he resigned from a seven-year stint.



And he’s going full “founder mode.”



Antonio Juliano, a 31-year-old solo founder, told Empire co-host Jason Yanowitz that he went into deep contemplation after he left the project.&nbsp;



In his May <a href="https://dydx.exchange/blog/my-next-step-founder-not-ceo">blog post</a>, Juliano said that he’d discovered profound satisfaction on a personal level — morphing his motivation for building dYdX from “competition, achievement and winning to creation, connection and passion.” That meant he felt comfortable stepping aside and letting someone else steer the ship.



About one month after leaving, Juliano had a moment where he “didn’t have a great understanding of who I was, or I felt like I had lost it.”



“I think I described it to somebody as ‘I’m going all the way down the blank,’ and in that space, it was scary, but you find more of yourself.”



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdivyuJC764AJEodiJsu1L7jimISfZ4i9KxPyM9ld6ZAlPZAH1NYX-VUuQywhYhbgwYHfSi6hjQzm6sS1B13tuOwpEZaR9E4X3hJNzw7wkjelOshBtLsV_x5qahsbwdyxX1gPEop_hO1o92xxgfSC9HKXg?key=SaSHF5Nl-uR5lPGewQUG-g" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">dYdX may need to capture more volume to boost its token price, considering how correlated the two metrics have historically been</figcaption></figure>



Juliano realized that his inspiration for creation was fundamentally related to his identity — and the way out was through channeling it towards the continued development of dYdX.



“It’s actually with the perspective of not being here for a while that has brought me a huge amount of clarity on what we need to do. And I actually feel it’s incredibly obvious now: I’m basically just going to blow it all up. We’re going to start over, go into founder mode as they say, to run the company myself.”&nbsp;



(Check out the <a href="https://blockworks.co/podcast/empire/d8258b50-9027-11ef-905e-1b5c3f6ba4c6">full Empire podcast episode</a>.)



Juliano returns to stiff competition in the onchain leverage space. The term Cambrian explosion — a period of exponential growth in the number of new projects, resembling the sudden generation of complex life 540 million years ago — is thrown about often in crypto. But it directly applies to what has happened with perp DEXs.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcB-RNmmbnvxuzYZQaCKEte3zrRJ1SQVXs4ahjptSxHwwgRGdpo7hsnV9bApmvj3xiBBw9e3ddnL-_FH5g_-yAU-m-YyVG4exqHXvkbd5-Mcj4ja3g6jDjX-FotGCByaMMbEC2m1Jv8yvEby5xwLILQ_mqa?key=SaSHF5Nl-uR5lPGewQUG-g" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">dYdX clearly an early mover</figcaption></figure>



Last year, October saw $33 billion in perps traded on DEXs, and 80% of it occurred via dYdX (it was still native only to Ethereum at that time).&nbsp;



Last month, perps DEXs handled almost $135 billion in volume, per DeFiLlama, with under 7% occurring through either dYdX on Ethereum or its own Cosmos appchain.&nbsp;



The largest venues are now on Arbitrum, which altogether contributed 15% of September’s volume, including GMX and Orderly Network.&nbsp;



Hyperliquid, another app running on its own blockchain, meanwhile handled almost 25% of all perps DEX volume in September, and now plans the rollout of its native token.



Juliano was adamant on Empire that he’d be taking big bets moving forward. I’d say whatever they are, they must be focused on boosting value accrual for DYDX holders.



And if founder mode is worth its salt — as Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham suggested in a viral <a href="https://paulgraham.com/foundermode.html">blog post</a> last month — then dYdX is on track to be a great case study at the very least.



— David Canellis



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Data Center</h2>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>BTC has retreated from its potential retest of $70,000, now chopping between $68,000 and $66,700.</li>



<li>ETH is down 2.5% in the past day to $2,640.</li>



<li>MKR, WLD and ENA are among the worst hit in the past week, dropping between 16% and 8.4%.</li>



<li>TON’s stablecoin <a href="https://defillama.com/stablecoins/chains">supplies</a> have grown 13% over the last seven days to $868.6 million.</li>



<li>DEX <a href="https://defillama.com/dexs">volumes</a> (not perps) have gone up 13.4% week-on-week, with Solana’s Raydium gaining over 50%.</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Purchasing power</h2>



Two deals.



First, we have the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/stripe-bridge-acquisition-stablecoin-infrastructure">Stripe/Bridge deal</a>, which has obviously taken up the lion’s share of attention given that the deal is reportedly worth $1.1 billion.



TechCrunch co-founder Michael Arrington said the deal was done over the weekend before Bridge <a href="https://x.com/Stablecoin/status/1848390039975469094">confirmed</a> it on Monday.



<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">This deal is done. $1.1b <a href="https://t.co/J7ppK4uHw0">https://t.co/J7ppK4uHw0</a>&mdash; Michael Arrington 🏴‍☠️ (@arrington) <a href="https://twitter.com/arrington/status/1848060479727435967?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 20, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Then there’s Komainu, the Nomura-backed custodian, which made its <a href="https://komainu.com/resources/komainu-agrees-to-acquire-propine-in-singapore-to-expand-its-footprint-in-asia-ex-japan">first acquisition</a>. Unfortunately, it didn’t disclose the sum it paid for Singapore-based crypto custodian Propine.&nbsp;



The two M&amp;A deals are wildly different. The Stripe/Bridge deal, if we had to make a comparison, is more like Robinhood buying Bitstamp than Komainu buying up a competitor. However, the deals show two things: Firms are looking to spend money to build strength in an area, and certain companies may start looking to consolidate within their space.



Perhaps it’s too early to judge the overall appetite, to see whether more deals will pop up. So instead, let’s take a look at how M&amp;A’s been doing so far this year.&nbsp;



Earlier this month, Architect Partners released its <a href="https://architectpartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Q3-2024-Crypto-MA-and-Financings-Report.pdf">M&amp;A takeaways</a> in its review of the third quarter.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXdXxepmRIp5ppd9IlNiD6UX74_rkbyZQnMSYiHQFAih6KAqO_ScA67AOcqjQnbRIgv1dWJGERD2vmWzHNQFMWzpIKzkisst4Tos0MnYAZ8XkuWFOtu9wzkNbgsGA2BJnGXH6yRyc8QYzXiKYCqphKkEAMU-?key=SaSHF5Nl-uR5lPGewQUG-g" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: Architect Partners</figcaption></figure>



Bitcoin mining has been the prime sector for M&amp;A so far this year, which isn’t terribly surprising post-halving. We’ve seen Bitfarms <a href="https://investor.bitfarms.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/262/bitfarms-to-acquire-stronghold-digital-mining">buy up</a> Stronghold, and Riot infamously tried to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/riot-bitfarms-settlement-board-changes">initiate a hostile takeover</a> of Bitfarms.



What’s interesting is that Architect found crypto wasn’t alone in the weakening M&amp;A department, with both fintech and technology suffering in the third quarter.&nbsp;



Anyway, last quarter saw 35 deals on the table, with the majority taking place in firms focused on investing, trading or infrastructure.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfSDuDNwsO-TNS1SVl8AALTZ4QrIHt1WjDw5d04JSFz_orYRwmRnVCCav45G5POPNrz389SLbROXZ1QxOMzhRNzxRlv0RIGogtw_xBt5ZtKiIoJDjWlNoQs6JniUxLDCI9E5KBrmxyo8S7spg2tHF1Lrfo?key=SaSHF5Nl-uR5lPGewQUG-g" alt=""/></figure>



Of that total sum, 22 deals were intra-crypto — meaning that a crypto firm bought up another crypto firm. Only 11 were what Architect calls “bridge deals,” where a non-crypto native firm buys up a crypto company.&nbsp;



In traditional M&amp;A, meaning outside of crypto, there tends to be a bump in activity toward the end of the year for a few reasons. Firms have capital to spend and, if we’re specifically looking at this year, the Fed’s decision to aggressively cut rates back in September could give some companies incentive (borrowing costs are lower for firms, making M&amp;A more appealing).&nbsp;



Whether that translates to crypto is still uncertain. But a deal reportedly worth $1.1 billion may just put the wind back in some sails.



— Katherine Ross&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Works</h2>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Tether-backed Northern Data is <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-10-21/tether-backed-northern-data-plans-sale-of-crypto-mining-unit">mulling</a> the potential sale of its bitcoin mining unit. </li>



<li>Legal &amp; General, a UK-based pension manager with $1.5 trillion in assets under management, is <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/10/21/uk-pension-giant-lg-looks-to-enter-cryptos-tokenization-space/?utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_source=rss&amp;utm_campaign=headlines">considering</a> tokenization opportunities. </li>



<li>Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen said he <a href="https://x.com/chrislarsensf/status/1848405676776952186">donated</a> over $10 million in XRP to the Kamala Harris campaign.</li>



<li>Rune Christensen, the founder of Sky (formerly Maker), <a href="https://x.com/RuneKek/status/1848383711802212426">teased</a> the potential rebrand back to Maker in an X post on Monday. </li>



<li>Open interest on CME’s bitcoin futures hit an <a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/322304/institutional-interest-soars-as-cme-bitcoin-futures-open-interest-sets-new-all-time-high?utm_source=rss&amp;utm_medium=rss">all-time high</a> of $12.26 billion.</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Riff</h2>



Q: Is crypto ‘fintech’ now?



Fintech is so broad that I think this could be an argument some make. I don’t know if I wholly agree with it, but I’m not the judge or jury for these types of things.&nbsp;



What I can say is that crypto and fintech have a lot of overlap and that could make for a very interesting relationship between the two going forward.&nbsp;



Stablecoins are an obvious example, but there’s also the fact that crypto can benefit payment processing. Not to mention that if the retail appetite for crypto really makes a comeback then the lines between the two are ever more blurry.&nbsp;



I’m not sure I’m behind it enough to say the two are intertwined at this stage but check back in a few years. Maybe I’ll be ready then.



— Katherine Ross&nbsp;



This debate is what urges the pedantic diehard purist in me to reject stablecoins as crypto’s “killer app.”



Setting aside the treasury management that comes with issuing stablecoins — which has more in common with traditional finance — the major stablecoins like USDT, Circle and PayPal USD, are all essentially fintech products, in that they enable digital dollars to be sent back and forth.



Those digital dollars can be seized or otherwise hijacked upon request from authorities, just like dollars in neobank accounts. Stablecoins are then only really interesting because they exist on blockchain rails, and because they’re ultimately accepted by the “real” crypto apps, like wallets and DEXs.&nbsp;



The purist’s logic would go something like this: Stablecoins are arguably one of blockchain’s killer apps — alongside Bitcoin and smart contracts — but they’re not really a “crypto app” in and of themselves, because they don’t share all the properties of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, ether or sol.



Luckily, nobody really pays attention to purists anymore.



— David Canellis



<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>.



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>.



Get alpha directly in your inbox with the <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/research">0xResearch newsletter</a> — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.



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dYdX founder is back as CEO, and he’s in full ‘founder mode’

Blockchain startup incubators have long played a pivotal role in fostering innovation, but they often struggle with challenges such as limited resource availability for builders, a focus on short-term profitability over long-term innovation, and insufficient support for go-to-market strategies.&nbsp;



However, when these programs are well-structured, they can become powerful catalysts for impactful projects with significant real-world applications.



XDC Network has <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/the-rwa-solution-to-a-surging-50-billion-industry">emerged as a leader in shaping a new digital economy</a>, particularly in real-world assets (RWA) and trade finance, industry sectors expected to grow to <a href="https://www.anchain.ai/blog/real-world-asset-rwa-coins#:~:text=Real%20World%20Asset%20(RWA)%20coins%20are%20digital%20tokens%20representing%20physical,%245%2D16%20trillion%20by%202030.">$5-16 trillion by 2030</a> and <a href="https://www.skyquestt.com/report/trade-finance-market#:~:text=What%20is%20the%20global%20market,period%20(2024%2D2031).">$87.81 billion by 2031</a>, respectively. The platform’s growing ecosystem is already home to a diverse array of decentralized applications redefining how businesses interact with global markets, with an array of milestones and global partnerships serving as proving points of impactful progress shaping the Web3 economy and transforming industries.&nbsp;



<a href="https://x.com/XDCFoundation">XDC Foundation</a> and <a href="https://xinfin.org/">XinFin</a>, the network’s founding organization, have taken deliberate steps to support this ecosystem through initiatives like the <a href="https://www.xinfin.org/xdc-accelerator-program">XDC Accelerator Program</a>. These programs offer more than just opportunities for builders; they serve as gateways into a thriving digital economy that is set to expand with the recent launch of XDC 2.0.



The upgraded protocol, which was deployed on Monday, September 30, 2024, is complemented by the rollout of a subnet system engineered to provide organizations higher transaction privacy while still benefiting from the security, scalability, and efficiency of the public XDC mainnet. Additional upgrades to protocol security, performance, and resource efficiency are included. Read <a href="https://skynet.certik.com/projects/xdc-network?utm_source=CMC&amp;utm_campaign=AuditByCertiKLink">CertiK’s audit</a> to see how XDC 2.0 measures up.&nbsp;



This release not only strengthens the existing ecosystem but is also drawing new projects that will further solidify XDC Network&#8217;s position in the global digital economy.



In this article, we explore how the convergence of this fall&#8217;s XDC 2.0 release with the network&#8217;s premier accelerator programs makes this the ideal time to build and launch a project on XDC Network.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Get familiar with XDC accelerators and incubators</h2>



In an industry where many startup incubators fall short, XDC Network is breaking the mold by supporting comprehensive, well-structured programs that truly empower blockchain innovators.&nbsp;



As you explore the <a href="https://xinfin.org/xdc-accelerator-program">XDC Accelerator Program</a>, you&#8217;ll discover how these opportunities are tailored to help you bring your vision to life on the XDC Network.



Here are the highlights.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Plug and Play</h3>



Centered around the goals of increasing the XDC blockchain’s Decentralized Finance (DeFi) offerings, Total Value Locked (TVL), and on-chain Real-World Assets (RWAs) integrations, the <a href="https://www.plugandplaytechcenter.com/plug-and-play/innovation-services/our-programs/xdc-rwa-accelerator">XDC RWA Accelerator Program</a> provides participants the opportunity to closely collaborate with core XDC teams while building their projects.&nbsp;



The program’s application window closes on November 15th and culminates in June 2025 with an Expo Day held at Plug and Play Summit in Silicon Valley, where participants will pitch their businesses to potential investors, partners, and users.&nbsp;



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">
“XDC Network, with its robust performance and leadership in RWA tokenization, is positioned to capture the next wave of the tokenized economy. Being distinctly capable, connected, and still somewhat under-recognized makes XDC the ideal blockchain for this initiative. Their strategic partnerships with industry leaders like Securitize highlight the network’s position and influence. This accelerator will drive enterprise adoption of RWA tokenization, providing startups with the resources to develop groundbreaking solutions. We look forward to collaborating with XDC Network and the exceptional startups that will join in this mission.&#8221; &#8211; Maximillian Jungreis, Head of Crypto &amp; Digital Assets, Plug and Play
</blockquote>



The program is seeking participants focused on core protocol developments and the essential operations needed to sustain a blockchain project, like business development and education. Specifically “promising startups from Web3 verticals, including but not limited to Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN), Distributors, Custodians &amp; Wallets, Tokenization Platforms, Protocols, Data &amp; Ecosystem and supply chain logistics” will be included.



Apply for the program: <a href="https://share.hsforms.com/12q5LtCjATZSMLrbeHeHz6g1zlna">https://share.hsforms.com/12q5LtCjATZSMLrbeHeHz6g1zlna</a>&nbsp;



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Brinc</h3>



<a href="https://www.brinc.io/">Brinc</a>, a leading venture acceleration and corporate innovation firm, has <a href="https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/brinc-and-xdc-network-announce-new-web3-accelerator-launch-302195687.html">selected the XDC Network to LAUNCH</a> an intensive 12-week program designed to support emerging projects building on the EVM-compatible chain. The program not only offers financial support but also ensures that participants are well-equipped to thrive within the XDC ecosystem, providing shortlisted projects up to $100,000 in XDC tokens to facilitate their product launches.&nbsp;



Upon successful integration into the XDC Network, startups will unlock a range of benefits designed to propel their growth. These include participation in investor and demo days, ongoing technical support from the XDC ecosystem, and valuable connections to major cryptocurrency exchanges.



Furthermore, projects will benefit from express listing support on <a href="https://coinmarketcap.com/">CoinMarketCap</a>, enhancing their visibility in the market. XinFin’s venture arm <a href="https://www.xvc.tech/">XVC Tech</a> also offers funding support, contingent upon investment from other co-investors, providing an additional layer of financial backing for promising startups.



The twelve-week program commenced on October 1st.



View the program overview: <a href="https://www.brinc.io/xdc-launch/">https://www.brinc.io/xdc-launch/</a>&nbsp;



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Tenity</h3>



With the launch of the Tenity <a href="https://www.tenity.com/programs/xdc-accelerator-program">XDC Accelerator Program</a>, the XDC ecosystem gained a powerhouse of innovation, ready to bring ecosystem founders to the next level.



Tenity maintains six global hubs (Zurich, Singapore, Tallinn, Madrid, London, and Istanbul), corporate innovation programs in over 15 countries, and has supported more than 1,600 startups through its programs.



XDC Accelerator participants will receive:&nbsp;



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Industry Mentorship: Gain insights and guidance from industry veterans experienced in global trade and blockchain technology.&nbsp;</li>



<li>Exposure &amp; Network: Networking not only with local startup ecosystems but also with Tenity&#8217;s portfolio companies.&nbsp;</li>



<li>Fundraising: Access funding to propel your startup&#8217;s growth and development.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>



Applications for the program are closed.&nbsp;



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">SBI Group</h3>



A Japanese leader in online financial services, <a href="https://xdc.au/our-story/sbi-xdc-apac/">SBI Group partnered with XDC</a> to drive the expansion of the XDC token economy through the establishment of the SBI XDC Network APAC.



Although it is an informal accelerator by label, the initiative is contributing to the growth of XDC in similar fashion, maintaining the primary purpose of expanding XDC’s use cases across global economic activities, particularly in trade finance and cross-border payments.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Honorable mentions</h3>



Outside the core highlights of this article, a wealth of ongoing activity is dedicated to incentivizing innovation that will remain valuable long into the future.



Noteworthy initiatives include:&nbsp;



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Foundership &#8211; Web3 &amp; AI Accelerator
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>A three-month cohort program where startups join to get product launch ready and <a href="https://x.com/FoundershipHQ/status/1780168250187186381">earn up to a $100,000 investment from XDC Network</a>.</li>



<li>View the program: <a href="https://foundershiphq.com/xdc-0xcamp">https://foundershiphq.com/xdc-0xcamp</a>&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>XVC Tech &#8211; MVP Stage Funding
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>A <a href="https://www.xvc.tech/index.html">$125 million fund</a> focusing on providing support to MVP-ready startups at the seed stage.</li>



<li>Apply for funding: <a href="https://www.xvc.tech/apply-for-funding.html">https://www.xvc.tech/apply-for-funding.html</a>&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>XDC Markets and Liquidity Team
<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>A recently established markets and liquidity team will assist institutional clients with building RWA liquidity (and other forms of on-chain liquidity) via XDC Network.&nbsp;</li>



<li>The team <a href="https://x.com/XinFin_Official/status/1825026482416091387">recently represented XDC Network at the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium 2024 event</a>, participating in focused discussions and networking experiences for 250 leading investors, entrepreneurs, and policymakers.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>



<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">🌐 Global Expansion of <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/XDC?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#XDC</a> Network &quot;We have a specialty markets and liquidity team office which is being set up in London right now with a massive, massive partnership&quot; &#8211; Atul Khekade, co-founder of <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/XDCNetwork?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#XDCNetwork</a> and founding director <a href="https://twitter.com/XDCFoundation?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@XDCFoundation</a> <a href="https://t.co/olSL8Bps37">pic.twitter.com/olSL8Bps37</a>&mdash; Generation Infinity (@GenfinityIO) <a href="https://twitter.com/GenfinityIO/status/1823127202407272772?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 12, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



<h1 class="wp-block-heading">Delivering milestones, not vanity metrics</h1>



XDC Foundation is creating an environment that encourages and supports innovation that stands to remain relevant and valuable long term. The incubators are not for garnering attention or achieving fluff metrics. As demonstrated across the past several years, tangible progress is driving the XDC ecosystem forward and each effort is contributing to shaping the growth of the XDC Web3 economy.



In October, 2023, in collaboration with <a href="https://propine.com/">Propine</a>, <a href="https://tradeflow.capital/">TradeFlow Capital Management Pte Ltd</a>, and <a href="https://www.tradefinex.org/">TradeFinex</a>, the XDC Trade Network reportedly achieved a milestone first-of-its-kind trade finance transaction that converted a paper Bills of Lading (BL) to an electronic BL (eBL), enabling TradeFlow Capital (the shipper in this scenario) to raise liquidity as soon as the transaction was completed because the tokenized documents were far easier to verify and transfer than the standard BL—a significant improvement over the traditional trade finance transaction process that showcased how tokenizing a real-world asset (RWA) can supercharge liquidity-raising efforts in trade finance.



XDC Network leadership teams, <a href="https://www.xdc.dev/xdctradenetwork/unveiling-mletrs-potential-in-international-trade-with-tradetrust-xdc-network-partnership-11gk">in collaboration with TradeTrust</a>, are also actively spearheading efforts to globalize the use of the Model Law on Electronic Transferable Records (MLETR). The work is disrupting conventional trade finance practices, freeing the industry from its dependency on complex, slow-moving paper-based processes by leveraging MLETR to enhance the security and reliability of digital record transfers.&nbsp;



It’s no small feat; this effort is quite literally bringing the global trade finance industry into the modern digital era. Trade finance processing velocity, cost-efficiency, transparency, security, and environmental impact all stand to make massive gains as a result. According to <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/taking-lead-mletr-use-cases-technologies-andr%25C3%25A9-casterman-po5ff/">André Casterman</a>, founder of the DNI (digital negotiable instruments) initiative, early adopter banks, such as Lloyds Bank, will “scale use of digital negotiable instruments at cross-border level through the 4-corner model re-using correspondent banking relationships.”



Further highlighting the steady stream of progress, in May of this year, the SBI XDC Network APAC <a href="https://medium.com/tokyo-fintech/xdc-network-and-r3-corda-complete-inter-business-settlement-poc-18cc2e1bb1b7">successfully completed a proof-of-concept experiment</a>, showcasing the ability to transfer value using digital assets across distributed ledger technologies (DLT). Specifically, the experiment involved the XDC Network and the R3 Corda platform, demonstrating how this method can enhance efficiency and streamline inter-business settlements in trade transactions.&nbsp;



The success marks a significant milestone in the group’s mission to bring new businesses into the XDC ecosystem, and it provides an entryway for a more seamless cross-border payments industry, such as supply chain and trade finance.



<h1 class="wp-block-heading">Find your opportunity</h1>



For builders looking to launch RWAs, there is no better opportunity than deploying on the XDC Network. With a strong reputation, numerous alliances with leading innovation accelerators, and the chance to collaborate with platforms like <a href="https://securitize.io/">Securitize</a> and finance leaders such as SBI Group, the support available to ensure success is immense. This thriving ecosystem also boasts a significant community and active social media presence capable of bringing global awareness to ecosystem builders.



These factors and the opportunities discussed in this article clearly demonstrate the XDC Foundation’s and the entire XDC ecosystem’s commitment to supporting dedicated builders through strategic guidance and awareness.



Stay up to date on new opportunities by viewing the <a href="https://www.xinfin.org/xdc-accelerator-program">XDC Accelerator Program website</a>. Subscribe to the <a href="https://xdcfoundation.aweb.page/XDC">XDC Foundation newsletter</a> and follow <a href="https://x.com/XDCFoundation">XDC on X</a> for additional updates.



This content is sponsored by XDC Network and does not serve as an endorsement by Blockworks. The veracity of this content has not been verified and should not serve as financial advice. We encourage readers to conduct their own research before making financial decisions.&nbsp;



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How XDC Network projects are shaping the Web3 economy

Bitcoin hit roughly $69,400 over the weekend before retreating slightly as wars rage on and the US election approaches.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The asset’s price stood at roughly $67,600 at 4:30 pm ET — down about 2% on the day but up more than 7% from a week ago.&nbsp;



BTC is about 8% off its all-time high price of more than $73,000 <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-all-time-high">set in March</a>.&nbsp;



Compass Point analysts Joe Flynn and Ed Groshans said in a Friday research note they expect a new price peak for the asset in the coming weeks or months.&nbsp;



The factors leading them to that conclusion include increasing <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/0xresearch-newsletter-mev-trusted-execution-environments">stablecoin liquidity</a>; investors front-running $10 billion worth of FTX creditor settlements; the extension of the Mt. Gox repayments deadline, tabling an expected sell-pressure event; and continued demand for <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/bitcoin-etf">bitcoin ETFs</a>, they added.&nbsp;



The US-listed spot bitcoin ETFs are on a six-day net inflow streak, during which nearly $2.4 billion has entered the products, Farside Investors data <a href="https://farside.co.uk/bitcoin-etf-flow-all-data/">shows</a>.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/forward-guidance-newsletter-crypto-etfs-permissionless">Crypto ETF takes from the Permissionless stage</a>



The category’s last net inflow run of that length (or longer) was from Sept. 19 to Sept. 30. But the positive flows haven’t been as intense as the past week since July, when nearly $3 billion entered the US bitcoin ETFs between July 5 and July 22.&nbsp;



The latest inflows come amid what CoinShares research head James Butterfill called “growing expectations of a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/on-the-margin-newsletter-republican-sweep-markets">Republican victory</a> in the upcoming US elections.”



Polymarket, as of three weeks ago, showed a roughly 50-50 split in terms of the projected presidential winner. Now, about 62% are <a href="https://polymarket.com/event/presidential-election-winner-2024/will-donald-trump-win-the-2024-us-presidential-election?tid=1729552142837">betting</a> on Trump, with four accounts recently pouring more than $30 million <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/forward-guidance-newsletter-polymarket-election-manipulation">into Trump bets</a>.



New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/us/elections/polls-president.html">polling</a>, as of this morning, shows a much tighter picture, with leads by <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/donald-trump">Trump</a> and <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/kamala-harris">Harris</a> amounting to less than one percentage point in battleground states Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, Wisconsin and North Carolina. The poll depicts Trump with a slightly larger edge in Georgia and Arizona.



As the industry expects the presidential election could impact the trajectory of the crypto industry, Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal <a href="https://x.com/strack_ben/status/1844047834166992937">noted</a> at Blockworks’ Permissionless conference last week that the makeup of Congress could also be crucial for crypto regulatory progress.



The Compass Point analysts wrote in mid-September they believe a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/senators-lummis-scott-congress-crypto-legislation">Republican sweep</a> is the most likely outcome. Ron Hammond, director of government relations at Blockchain Association, told me earlier this month that a divided Congress could hurt Trump’s ability to deliver on some of his <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/harris-trump-crypto-stances-coinbase">crypto-related promises</a>.&nbsp;



“As much as [Trump] can say he wants market structure legislation or he wants to protect self-custody, a lot of that stuff’s got to be enshrined through legislation,” Hammond said. “So he has to work with Congress to get that over the finish line, and if it’s a Democratic House, that’s very tough to do.”



Gold hit an all-time high of about $2,740 on Monday morning. Analysts have noted that safe-haven assets are in demand as conflict continues in the Middle East and concerns about a global growth slowdown persist.



“Israel’s continuing bombardment of Lebanon and Gaza is adding to the risk of overspill into wider conflict in the region,” Hargreaves Lansdown’s Susannah Streeter said in a Monday statement. “The uncertain outcome of the US presidential election is also likely to be playing on minds and leading to more defensive positioning.”



BlackRock CEO Larry Fink had attributed some of an October 2023 bitcoin price rally to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/blackrock-spot-bitcoin-etf-rumors">“a flight to quality”</a> during geopolitical tension.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Samara Cohen, BlackRock’s chief investment officer of ETF and index investments, more recently noted during a <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/permissionless">Permissionless</a> discussion that interest in various alternative investments picks up during times of war and changes to political and economic regimes.



“Clearly bitcoin is a risky asset just measured based on price volatility,” Cohen said. “But when you have major risk events in markets, one might argue that, a lot of times, those are triggered by events that should actually potentially be net positive for bitcoin.”



A modified version of this article first appeared in the daily Forward Guidance newsletter. Subscribe <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance">here</a> so you don’t miss tomorrow’s edition.



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BTC down Monday after climbing past $69K. What’s next?

Today, enjoy the Forward Guidance newsletter on Blockworks.co. Tomorrow, get the news delivered directly to your inbox. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance">Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter</a>.



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<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Looking back, ahead after BTC breaches $69K</h2>



We’ve heard the-stage-is-set-for-a-big-bull-run narrative for a while.&nbsp;



The difference now is that bitcoin’s price is actually reflecting that sentiment (or was, at least). And the election, which was not far off before, is even closer now (that’s how time works, wouldn’t ya know).&nbsp;



Bitcoin hit roughly $69,400 over the weekend. It stood at around $67,350 at 2 pm ET Monday — down about 2% on the day but up 7% from a week ago.&nbsp;



So we’re currently about 8% off the all-time high BTC price <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-all-time-high">set in March</a>.&nbsp;



Compass Point analysts Joe Flynn and Ed Groshans, like many others, expect a new price peak for the asset in the coming weeks or months. The reasons they gave in a recent research note are:&nbsp;



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Increasing stablecoin liquidity </li>



<li>Tight exchange supply </li>



<li>Front-running of $10 billion of FTX creditor <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ftx-saga-finally-ending">settlements</a> </li>



<li>The extension of the Mt. Gox repayments deadline </li>



<li>Continued demand for bitcoin ETFs</li>
</ul>



On the latter point, the US-listed spot bitcoin ETFs are on a six-day <a href="https://farside.co.uk/bitcoin-etf-flow-all-data/">net inflow streak</a>, during which nearly $2.4 billion has entered the products. The category’s last net inflow run of that length (or longer) was from Sept. 19 to Sept. 30. But you’d have to go back to July for the last time we saw such intense inflows (nearly $3 billion between July 5 and July 22).&nbsp;



The latest capital entering these ETFs come amid what CoinShares research head James Butterfill called “growing expectations of a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/on-the-margin-newsletter-republican-sweep-markets">Republican victory</a> in the upcoming US elections.”



Polymarket, as of about three weeks ago, showed a roughly 50-50 split in terms of the projected presidential winner. Now, about 62% are <a href="https://polymarket.com/event/presidential-election-winner-2024/will-donald-trump-win-the-2024-us-presidential-election?tid=1729552142837">betting on Trump</a>, though Casey <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/forward-guidance-newsletter-polymarket-election-manipulation">mentioned on Friday</a> how four accounts recently pouring more than $30 million into Trump bets have impacted those figures.&nbsp;



New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/us/elections/polls-president.html">polling</a>, as of this morning, shows a much tighter picture. Leads by Trump and Harris amount to less than one percentage point in battleground states Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, Wisconsin and North Carolina. The polling data depicts Trump with a slightly larger edge in Georgia and Arizona.



As many look to who will take the White House, Coinbase CLO Paul Grewal <a href="https://x.com/strack_ben/status/1844047834166992937">reminded us</a> at Permissionless last week that the makeup of Congress could also be crucial for crypto regulatory progress.



The Compass Point analysts wrote in mid-September they believe a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/senators-lummis-scott-congress-crypto-legislation">Republican sweep</a> is the most likely outcome. Ron Hammond, director of government relations at Blockchain Association, told me earlier this month that a divided Congress could hinder Trump’s ability to deliver on his <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/harris-trump-crypto-stances-coinbase">crypto-related promises</a>.&nbsp;



“As much as [Trump] can say he wants market structure legislation or he wants to protect self-custody, a lot of that stuff’s got to be enshrined through legislation,” Hammond said. “He has to work with Congress to get that over the finish line, and if it’s a Democratic House, that’s very tough to do.”



And as we talk about possible new all-time highs for what many deem to be the digital form of gold, the real precious metal hit an <a href="https://fortune.com/2024/10/21/gold-soars-to-record-high-on-middle-east-jitters-u-s-election/">all-time high</a> at about $2,740 per ounce on Monday.



Analysts have noted that safe-haven assets are in demand as conflict continues in the Middle East and concerns about a global growth slowdown persist.



You may remember it was BlackRock CEO Larry Fink who attributed some of an October 2023 bitcoin price rally to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/blackrock-spot-bitcoin-etf-rumors">“a flight to quality”</a> during geopolitical tensions.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Samara Cohen, BlackRock’s CIO of ETF and index investments, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/forward-guidance-newsletter-crypto-etfs-permissionless">more recently noted</a> during Blockworks’ Permissionless conference in Salt Lake City that interest in a slew of alternatives picks up during times of war and changes to political and economic regimes.



“Clearly bitcoin is a risky asset just measured based on price volatility,” Cohen said. “But when you have major risk events in markets, one might argue that, a lot of times, those are triggered by events that should actually potentially be net positive for bitcoin.”



So some more clarity around a potential catalyst (the election) will come in 15 days. But, per usual for us crypto/macro/finance journalists, there are plenty of other things to keep tabs on.



— Ben Strack



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">$1.1 billion</h3>



The reported value of Stripe’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/stripe-bridge-acquisition-stablecoin-infrastructure">acquisition</a> of stablecoin platform Bridge, <a href="https://x.com/arrington/status/1848060479727435967">according to</a> TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington.



Neither Stripe nor Bridge immediately confirmed that specific figure to Blockworks. But what’s clear now is the deal is set to close in the coming months (subject to regulatory approvals), the companies revealed Monday.



In an X <a href="https://x.com/patrickc/status/1848393059559502177?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1848393059559502177%7Ctwgr%5Ee127f5ddad88968773ccc402a00a3b2d3c00a3d7%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fblockworks.co%2Fnews%2Fstripe-bridge-acquisition-stablecoin-infrastructure">post</a> about the deal, Stripe CEO Patrick Collison called stablecoins “room-temperature superconductors for financial services.” He added: “Stripe is going to build the world’s best stablecoin infrastructure.”&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Earnings season continues&nbsp;</h2>



Earnings season continues this week after the first batch of reports showed, on balance, solid numbers. LSEG data shows that more than 80% of the companies that have reported so far have beat estimates.&nbsp;



Here are the highlights from Q3 earnings reports so far:&nbsp;



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Bank results were solid. JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs each beat expectations. We did see an increase in money that major players are setting aside for credit losses though, which is generally a negative leading indicator. JPMorgan put away $3.1 billion — more than double the amount it earmarked in Q3 2023. </li>



<li>Netflix also surprised analysts, with last quarter’s revenue coming in at $9.83 billion vs. the expected $9.78 billion. Earnings per share also beat at $5.40 compared to the anticipated $5.16. </li>



<li>On the other hand, although semiconductor company ASML showed year-over-year revenue growth, its forecasts for future growth are limited. The fact that ASML’s report was unexpectedly published a day early during trading hours certainly didn’t help its share price, either. If you’ll remember last week, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/forward-guidance-newsletter-economy-doing-fine">we wrote about</a> semiconductor demand as a leading indicator for how other companies will perform, so it’s an area to watch. </li>
</ul>



On tap this week are big names including Tesla, IBM and Thermo Fisher Scientific. More positive news on the earnings front will certainly not be a bad thing, but as Tom Essaye, founder of Sevens Report Research said, the upside is limited.&nbsp;



“First, last week was clear evidence that much of the good news we’re receiving (solid growth, stable earnings, falling inflation, no negative geopolitical surprises) is already reflected in the S&amp;P 500 above 5,900. As such, that news is not going to fundamentally propel stocks higher near term,” Essaye said.&nbsp;



We’ll have all the earnings-related updates, so stay tuned and keep an eye on your inbox.&nbsp;



— Casey Wagner&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">On Our Radar</h2>



Happy Monday! We hope our readers enjoyed the weekend. Last week’s data painting a positive picture for a soft landing means markets want to see that momentum continue, but there isn’t too much on tap this week. We’ve already previewed the major earnings results coming up; here’s what to watch on the report front:&nbsp;



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>The Conference Board <a href="https://www.conference-board.org/topics/us-leading-indicators">Leading Economic Index</a>, released Monday morning, surprised to the downside. The 0.5% decline in September marked the fifth straight monthly decline for the index. Over the past six months, the index has shed 2.6%, compared with a 2.2% decline during the six months prior. The index is now flashing a recession signal, indicating that a recession is “likely imminent or underway.” </li>



<li>On Thursday we will again get initial jobless claim numbers, which are expected to show a mild uptick for the week ended Oct. 19. Last week’s figures showed an unexpected decline in first-time filers, but analysts have warned that ongoing impacts from <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/forward-guidance-newsletter-economy-doing-fine">recent hurricanes</a> will likely skew data for weeks to come. In other words, markets would love to see another decline, but if we don’t, it’s not a huge deal. At least for now.  </li>



<li>October flash PMIs will also be released Thursday, giving us the first look at economic data for the fourth quarter. Last month’s reading came in strong at 54, and continued momentum on this front will be a positive sign for markets. </li>
</ul>



— Casey Wagner



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Bulletin Board&nbsp;</h2>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>The SEC’s Division of Examinations on Monday released its annual <a href="https://www.sec.gov/files/2025-exam-priorities.pdf?utm_medium=email&amp;utm_source=govdelivery">priorities report</a> for the 2025 fiscal year. In it there is a separate section on “crypto assets,” which in past years has been combined with the section on “emerging financial technologies.” The team said it will focus on examining broker-dealer practices and the offer, sale and trading of crypto asset securities. </li>



<li>Most altcoins have collectively outperformed ether, so far in October, in terms of trading volume, research from Kaiko shows. The gap in volume between ETH and the top 50 altcoins is now the largest it has been since March. </li>



<li>As its FOIA-related <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-sec-foia-lawsuit-continues">lawsuit rages on</a>, Coinbase on Monday <a href="https://x.com/iampaulgrewal/status/1848396463333687483">said</a> it had requested a separate set of records, this time from the FDIC. The crypto exchange is seeking all documents related to crypto rules for banking institutions, including documents concerning an alleged “digital asset deposit cap.” </li>
</ul>



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What’s behind the latest rise (and retreat) of BTC

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A block north of the Charles River and on the sixth floor of MIT’s media lab, Solana investors, founders, and community members were handed Red Sox-themed t-shirts and sipped Dunkin’ coffee during “Solana Boston,” the latest in crypto’s never-ending conference cycle.



This particular conference was much less ambitious than its predecessor in Solana Breakpoint. The venue consisted of two rooms for talks connected by a networking space. The most talked-about speaker seemed to be John Deaton, the crypto-friendly lawyer <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/elizabeth-warren-john-deaton-congressional-debate">challenging Elizabeth Warren</a> for her senate seat. There was also a voting-focused afterparty sponsored by the Coinbase-started advocacy organization Stand With Crypto.



I had conversations with multiple founders creating Solana-native apps outside the realm of memecoin trading. This perhaps gives some credence to the theory that after a prolonged stretch of building seemingly endless technological infrastructure for blockchains to use, crypto may finally be entering an <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-set-for-a-new-era-of-apps-over-infrastructure">era of usable apps</a> chasing broad adoption.



But what the conference highlighted most of all for me was an effort to court students from highly-regarded schools like MIT following the industry’s high-profile PR debacles of the past couple years and the allure of other fields like AI.



Jake Lynch, one of the event’s organizers, told me that of the 250 registrants for Solana Boston, 90 described themselves as students. Boston University, Northeastern, Boston College, MIT, and Dartmouth were the five schools with the highest representation, Lynch added.



But when I met one current MIT student and one recent graduate, the pair seemed underwhelmed by their peers’ interest in crypto. Many of the school’s undergraduates are infatuated with AI, they said, and there seem to only be a few students in each graduating class who want to work in crypto.&nbsp;



A search of MIT’s course catalog for this semester turned up just a few crypto-related results, mostly in the business school, while I found more than a dozen AI-related classes.&nbsp;



As for the crypto industry, Lynch said he thinks there are too few entry level jobs in an industry that has a “massive learning curve” and called for “better funnels” to bring in new graduates.



Crypto likes to eschew credentialism, but for better or worse, a lot of the tech industry’s whiz kids end up graduating from a short list of well-resourced universities. (Crypto’s very own Sam Bankman-Fried famously went to Stanford, after all).



College kids, especially at elite universities, are likely to be drawn by what’s getting buzz from their professors and peers. For now, that seems to be AI. 



Perhaps Solana, with its <a href="https://x.com/SolJakey/status/1846244798421926038">intangible advantage in coolness</a>, can insert itself — and crypto — into the bright Gen-Z coder’s brain once again.



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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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Solana tries to establish a pipeline of new graduates

Payments company Stripe is set to acquire stablecoin platform Bridge in a deal the companies say will “accelerate the adoption and utility of tokenized dollars.”



The transaction is subject to regulatory approvals and is expected to close in the coming months, Bridge noted in a Monday blog post.



TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington <a href="https://x.com/arrington">reported</a> the value of the deal to be $1.1 billion. A Stripe spokesperson declined to comment on the deal terms, and Bridge did not immediately return a request for details.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/stripe-reintegrates-crypto-payments-in-the-us">Stripe reintegrates crypto payments in the US</a>



<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/stripe">Stripe</a> CEO Patrick Collison said in an X post that his company seeks to build “the world’s best stablecoin infrastructure.”



<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">Stablecoins 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. Stripe is going to build the world’s best stablecoin… <a href="https://t.co/6yKi7OKXVT">https://t.co/6yKi7OKXVT</a>&mdash; Patrick Collison (@patrickc) <a href="https://twitter.com/patrickc/status/1848393059559502177?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 21, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Bridge launched its APIs in March 2023, Bridge co-founder Zach Abrams said in an X <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/zacharyabrams/">post</a>. Though the company’s first year was “hard,” he added, it saw initial interest from cross-border payments companies and started to scale.&nbsp;



“After that, we had government entities onboard with us to disburse aid, fintechs build US dollar-based savings and spending products, SpaceX to manage their global treasury, and many others,” Abrams wrote.



Visa and SWIFT have since started to natively support <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/stablecoins">stablecoins</a>, Bridge noted in its Monday blog post.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/visa-impact-on-stablecoin-adoption">Why Visa’s new stablecoin efforts could be a game-changer</a>



“Policymakers across the globe are <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/micar-foreign-stablecoins-advantage-in-europe">working to provide clarity</a> and support for stablecoin infrastructure, recognizing the technology’s strategic importance for our financial system,” the company wrote. “And in the background, stablecoin adoption and usage have been <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/a16z-monthly-active-addresses-aths">rapidly accelerating</a>.”



<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/circle-paypal-stablecoins-keep-notching-gains">The market capitalization of stablecoins</a> currently sits just above $170 billion, according to DefiLlama <a href="https://defillama.com/stablecoins">data</a>.&nbsp;



Eric Risley, founding partner at advisory firm Architect Partners, said he believes this deal is “the most important <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/m&amp;a">M&amp;A</a> transaction to date for our industry.”



“This transaction is more evidence of the broadening recognition that stablecoin-based payments have compelling benefits and are being embraced by non-crypto companies,” he told Blockworks.



Those benefits include virtually instant settlement and very low fees, he added, which are particularly notable for cross-border payments between businesses and individuals.



“It&#8217;s hard to imagine a more fundamentally competitive move against the traditional banking system,” Risley said. “Payments at scale without a bank involved.”



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Stripe looks to build ‘world’s best stablecoin infrastructure’ after Bridge buy 

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<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Where does Ethereum go next?</h2>



BTC is $68k and ETH is $2.7k today. The last time bitcoin was at this price point was in November 2021, when ETH was ranging around $4.3K.



Back then, Ethereum’s prohibitively expensive gas fees averaged <a href="https://etherscan.io/chart/gasprice">130 gwei</a> (27 gwei today). That prompted public <a href="https://x.com/zhusu/status/1462216210116853762">declarations</a> to “abandon” Ethereum for the alt-L1 chains then — remember “<a href="https://x.com/sassal0x/status/1529997453935513601?s=20">FOAN</a>”?



You could easily count every active rollup in those days. Today, there are at least <a href="https://l2beat.com/scaling/summary">105</a> rollups scaling a cumulative total of about 296 transactions per second, according to <a href="https://l2beat.com/scaling/summary">L2Beat</a>.



The Ethereum L1 has a TPS of about 13, so that’s about a 21x improvement from three years ago. All things considered, that’s progress.



This progress is largely thanks to the proliferation of rollups via rollup-as-a-service (RaaS) providers, like Caldera and Conduit, which makes it really easy and cheap to create them.



The second major factor is the rise of alternative <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/data-availability-transaction-costs-blockchain">data availability solutions</a> like Celestia, as well as the EIP-4844 <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-dencun-upgrade-mainnet">Dencun upgrade</a> in March 2024. The latter offered L2s rollups a cheaper way to post their batched data to the L1 — about 10x cheaper in cost savings.&nbsp;



This is all going according to plan. But it’s still a long way from Ethereum’s endgame, which is to reach about 100k TPS on both the Ethereum mainnet and all L2s as part of the roadmap’s “<a href="https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2024/10/17/futures2.html">Surge</a>” phase.



For that to happen, much remains to be accomplished.



For one, Ethereum needs PeerDAS (peer data availability sampling) to scale data availability. PeerDAS borrows some important ideas from BitTorrent’s peer-to-peer file sharing by distributing broken pieces of data between Ethereum validator nodes to handle more data without the burden of having to store everything.



Then there’s data compression to make more compact the millions of daily signatures on transactions we sign via our MetaMask wallets, such that data usage of an ERC-20 transfer would cost no more than 30 bytes (180 bytes today).&nbsp;



This can be achieved by aggregating several signatures into one that verifies against multiple public keys at once, using the BLS (Boneh-Lynn-Shacham) digital signature scheme — not currently possible on ECDSA (Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm) signatures today.



Next is the use of plasma, a scaling solution wherein blocks are published off-chain with Merkle roots of those blocks placed onchain — a vast computational improvement over today’s rollups, where full blocks are submitted onchain, or via <a href="https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/scaling/validium/">validiums</a>.



That’s just for the L2s. As for the L1, execution needs to continue scaling, either by increasing gas limits of L1 blocks or introducing piecemeal upgrades to make the EVM more gas-efficient. Methods look to adapting the EVM Object Format (<a href="https://evmobjectformat.org/">EOF</a>) bytecode, or creating parallelized markets for computation, data and storage (i.e., multidimensional gas pricing).



All this ensures the L1 does not become a “ghost chain” used only for settlement and DA. In <a href="https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2024/10/17/futures2.html">Vitalik’s words</a>, Ethereum still “needs to be powerful enough to be able to at least occasionally actually handle a highly complex and chaotic wind-down of an L2,” which is why the “long-run security of the network” matters.



Finally there are UX improvements like solving cross-chain interoperability, so using Ethereum doesn’t feel like using 100 different chains. This effort is being tackled at the protocol level by developing better ERC standards like <a href="https://x.com/Uniswap/status/1840428630406492595">ERC-7683</a>, and by having dozens of other players working in the “<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/shared-sequencers-decentralization">shared sequencing</a>” and “<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/renzo-restaking-chain-abstraction">chain abstraction</a>” areas.



All these roadmap features must be accomplished while preserving decentralization, which entails pushing L2s toward active proof systems that are trustless —&nbsp;and <a href="https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2024/10/20/futures3.html">keeping an eye</a> on centralization around the MEV layer.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Chart of the Day</h2>



Memecoin frenzy on Solana:&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfrCu_Z1vrLX8kwyG72Vfdmz1yVhFHAszqhYJ_8IQKS8wAQf4qit3R2HhlAbZ2RoIyMwC_iTxbHWUuaB65pDuYNzrNAmIRET-Yw8FxzP2ZIuEvEAW20XCIe3wHLGCS8oRpXQ_Lji63he8ki3MvO_7R_v2t1?key=G4B7neV6m9H-NeF5vJuYYw" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/analytics/sol?dashboard=sol-dex">Blockworks Research</a></figcaption></figure>



Memecoin trading volumes (light and dark purple bars) are racking up new all-time highs relative to total DEX trading activity on Solana. In the last week, about $15.4 million in trading volumes came from memecoin trading, against a total of $19.8 million on all DEX activity. The pump.fun memecoin maker saw <a href="https://dune.com/hashed_official/pumpdotfun">31,615</a> memecoins deployed on past Saturday alone, marking its highest ever.



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Ethereum wants to scale to 100K TPS

<a href="https://trondao.org/">TRON DAO</a> participated as a Ruby Sponsor at <a href="https://princeton.cargo.site/">Princeton Blockchain Club</a>’s 3rd Annual Crypto TigerTrek, a novel Princeton experience that brought together students and industry professionals for a week filled with discussions, networking, and educational sessions, all focused on the evolving landscape of blockchain technology.



TRON DAO has collaborated with top academic institutions through initiatives like the <a href="https://x.com/trondao/status/1842728799542145157">TRON Builder Tour</a>, which has visited universities such as MIT, Harvard, and Columbia. Princeton was another important stop in TRON’s mission to mentor the next generation of blockchain developers and leaders.



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">A platform for collaboration and innovation</h3>



As part of this event, Steven Bischoff, TRON Community Spokesperson, delivered a keynote to Princeton students. In his address, he emphasized the essential skills required to succeed in the cryptocurrency industry, along with providing a comprehensive overview of how to effectively communicate, navigate, and build collaborations within the industry.



The keynote also provided an overview of TRON’s robust ecosystem and stablecoin solutions are driving adoption within emerging markets, showcasing real-world applications of blockchain technology in various industries.



This content is sponsored by Tron and does not serve as an endorsement by Blockworks. The veracity of this content has not been verified and should not serve as financial advice. We encourage readers to conduct their own research before making financial decisions.  



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TRON DAO supports Princeton Blockchain Club’s Crypto TigerTrek as Ruby Sponsor

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<h1 class="wp-block-heading">Times are a changin’</h1>



Altcoin season might not have officially started — but there are signs.



In October alone, 20 of the top 500 cryptocurrencies by market cap reached new price records, including sui, mantra and fasttoken.



There’s also whitebit, the native token for the Ukrainian crypto exchange of the same name, which has ballooned to a $2.5 billion market cap from under $500 million in February.



And okay, 14 of the all-time highs were set by memecoins — some of which were launched quite recently, like goat and sudeng — so they don’t count as much.



The same goes for tokens for restaking protocol eigenlayer and Sui-native decentralized CLOB deepbook, which also started trading in October.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXe_AN_SNwZJxa9dWJE2Ng1pMnc5C2rDJqgnQI1_mbk5edbb8F1OGv8mAT9TTZi2P2VcVJr6WqN7Unpv9duVBPlSeZ2gsmBvxAUrJKuhSm7p_hMgiYwoOEVtjpIIIbiDql5uyLUwV_44v-ezDMOJJ6tMMhH8?key=FZvHNoabHMtdHnEeuXnqhQ" alt=""/></figure>



Each circle on the chart above represents a different cryptocurrency, plotted against the total capitalization of the market. Their position on the chart shows when that coin last hit an all-time high.



The darker the circle, the further away that coin is from an all-time high. So, the brighter circles — generally the coins that set price records more recently — are closest to those records right now.



Dampening the good vibes are the 166 coins which hit all-time highs during the bull market (between mid-2020 and mid-2022) still far below those marks.&nbsp;



They’re down 89% on average and the median is down 92%. Crypto exchange Gate.io’s native token is the closest of the coins with decent market caps, 31% below its record high as of this weekend, followed by SOL (39% below) and ETH (46%).



The real point of contention is whether the next altcoin season would truly favor hot coins of the previous cycle. Most would need to multiply in value many, many times over from here to see new price records.&nbsp;



Something tells me we could be in for a very different altcoin season.



 — David Canellis



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Data Center</h2>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>All eyes are on BTC and whether it can break $70,000 for the first time since June (BTC: $68,294; ETH: $2,707).</li>



<li>APE, DOGE and MEW lead the <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/">front page</a> for weekly gains with 100%, 30% and 29%, respectively.</li>



<li>Ethereum mainnet handled about 8.5 million transactions last week, per <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/analytics/eth?dashboard=eth-onchain-activity&amp;interval=weekly">Blockworks Research</a> data, the most since the local top in March.</li>



<li>Solana has now flipped Tron for <a href="https://defillama.com/chains">TVL</a>: $7.72 billion to $6.89 billion after adding 16% overnight. That last happened in April 2022.</li>



<li>Token presales for Trump-linked World Liberty Financial have slowed to a crawl, now at $13.79 million, or almost 5% of the goal.</li>
</ul>



<h1 class="wp-block-heading">Hurry up and wait</h1>



What a weekend.&nbsp;



For a moment there, it looked like bitcoin was trying for $70,000 — a level we haven’t seen since this summer (in case you somehow forgot, it was just a few months after we last carved out an all-time high).&nbsp;



Right now, we’re in a bit of an odd situation as we play out the wait-and-see game. The election is acting as a blockade, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/empire-newsletter-memecoins-winning">keeping folks at bay from token launches</a> — which could be a mixed bag for crypto — and potential all-time highs.&nbsp;



“We are at an inflection point with prices just shy of $70,000, so with the US election cleared and further rate cuts on the horizon BTC is positioning to potentially move higher and test all-time highs,” FalconX’s Ivan Lim told me.&nbsp;



Adding to that, FalconX’s David Lawant thinks that, until election day, we’re going to continue to see implied volatility — though it will be “muted” leading up to the election itself. After the election? Well, there’ll be an “interesting set-up.”



“A top-side heavy positioning suggests investors are relatively more willing to use the options market to capture additional price upside,” he added.&nbsp;



ETC Group noted that last week saw a pick up in both bitcoin futures and perpetual open interest. Specifically, perpetual funding rates hit their highest level yesterday since June of this year after remaining positive throughout last week.



Here’s the deal: “When the funding rate is positive (negative), long (short) positions periodically pay short (long) positions.”



Basically, a positive funding rate can be a sentiment read and it’s generally a sign of bullishness in the perpetual futures markets.&nbsp;



To give us some idea of overall sentiment, ETC Group’s Cryptoasset Sentiment Index hit its highest level since March 2024, signaling a bullish vibe at the moment.&nbsp;



And it’s not just bitcoin’s party. Ether managed to outperform bitcoin last week, ETC Group noted. Dogecoin and solana also led the top 10 outperformers.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcj6Ev-PNqcr3WaEPqv5okrhDxXkTf2LCmHJfI99nKKD_WdWztDiypkkSRxBAhIYRvW5PIYRweD8L2a7gsuSBirK86NcgoDgxnpK6_hiuNkJOzRkR2LmQW7eqDzddHVw-0vOcxtJ92Si-3vwZFUDawTRD2w?key=FZvHNoabHMtdHnEeuXnqhQ" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: ETC Group</figcaption></figure>



“In general, increasing (decreasing) altcoin outperformance tends to be a sign of increasing (decreasing) risk appetite within cryptoasset markets and the latest altcoin outperformance still signals a decrease in risk appetite at the moment,” ETC Group analysts wrote.&nbsp;



Brb, gonna get my popcorn ready for the next few weeks.



— Katherine Ross&nbsp;



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Works</h2>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Crypto PACs continue to focus on political spending, backing a number of Republican candidates, Axios <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/10/21/crypto-republicans-congress-election">reported</a>.</li>



<li>Stripe’s deal for stablecoin platform Bridge is “done,” with the payments company acquiring the stablecoin platform for a cool $1.1 billion, <a href="https://x.com/arrington/status/1848060479727435967">according</a> to TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington. </li>



<li>A handful of whales are skewing <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/forward-guidance-newsletter-polymarket-election-manipulation">Polymarket odds</a> for the US presidential election.</li>



<li>Pump.fun’s team <a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/322122/pump-fun-planning-to-launch-a-token-in-the-future-x-spaces?utm_source=rss&amp;utm_medium=rss">teased</a> a potential token launch “in the future” during an X Spaces.</li>



<li>ICYMI, crypto firm Copper <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/copper-okx-name-new-executives">welcomed</a> a new CEO last week, and exchange OKX added a chief risk officer to their ranks.</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">The Riff</h2>



Q: Could we carve out new all-time highs before the election?



Never say never, I guess, but I do think that it’s unlikely.



There’s a reason why the traditional markets tend to hate uncertainty. Because of that, we sometimes see what could be read as an overreaction to events that give some, well, certainty to a situation. Unfortunately, bitcoin may very well be in the same boat.&nbsp;



My conversations with analysts and folks around crypto have shifted to focus on how bitcoin reacts after the election, no matter who’s in the office.&nbsp;



And I have to say, the overall feeling is quite bullish. We’ll just have to see if that plays out.



— Katherine Ross



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Why the bull run might look different this time around

Leading this week’s funding wrap is Azra Games, a gaming studio.



The company announced a Series A round of $42.7 million, led by Pantera Capital with participation from a16z Crypto, a16z Games and NFX.



The firm is focused on creating role-playing games specifically on mobile. Mark Otero, who previously worked at Electronic Arts, founded the studio.



“The funding will be instrumental in accelerating the growth of Azra Games and advancing its various projects that are currently in development, including its flagship ground-breaking game, currently code-named ‘Project Legends,’” a press release announced.&nbsp;



The studio plans to roll out games with the ability to add in technologies such as blockchain.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/empire-newsletter-nfts-comeback-gaming">A wave of new games could prove NFTs aren’t dead after all</a>



“The team at Azra Games has the incredible opportunity and vision to trailblaze the fourth generation of mobile RPG games that combines the creativity of new <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/gaming">gaming</a> formats and experiences with the digital ownership of blockchain,” said a16z Crypto’s Arianna Simpson.



Then, we have a pre-seed round coming out of stealth.&nbsp;



Hyve, a secured network on Symbiotic’s ecosystem, announced a $1.85 million pre-seed round as it exited stealth.&nbsp;



Lemniscap led the round, with participation from Paper Ventures and Frachtis.&nbsp;



“Across the Web3 landscape, current infrastructure has struggled to keep up with the growing complexity and data demands of modern applications. As we move towards an increasingly decentralized future, the need for robust, scalable and secure infrastructure has never been more pronounced,” Douwe Fassen, Hyve’s CEO, said in a press release.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/slow-defi-infrastructure-curbs-mass-adoption">DeFi’s slow infrastructure is holding back mass adoption</a>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Other notable rounds:&nbsp;</h2>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Blockstream <a href="https://x.com/Blockstream/status/1846193752999608427">raised</a> $210 million in convertible note financing. The round was led by Fulgur Ventures.</li>



<li>Crypto derivatives exchange Bitnomial <a href="https://x.com/Bitnomial/status/1846188841381593591">announced</a> a $25 million Series C in a round led by Ripple — with an aim to launch a US perpetual futures trading platform. </li>



<li>Gaming startup PiP <a href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/web3-gaming-startup-pip-world-secures-10-million-seed-funding-from-leading-global-fintech-organization-exinity-1033842615">raised</a> $10 million in seed funding in a round led by Exinity. </li>



<li>Layer <a href="https://x.com/LayerOnEth/status/1843409739939471623">said</a> it raised $6 million in a seed round led by 1kx, with participation from Fabric Ventures, Arrington Capital and others.</li>
</ul>



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Funding Roundup: Gaming startup Azra Games raises $42M

Crypto firm Copper.co named a new CEO earlier this week as it says it seeks to build on regulatory wins in Hong Kong and Abu Dhabi, and expand further.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Amar Kuchinad replaces Copper.co founder Dmitry Tokarev, who spent the last seven years as the company’s chief executive. Tokarev will remain as a director on the board.



The new CEO began his career at Credit Suisse before becoming head of US portfolio credit trading at Goldman Sachs. Kuchinad moved on to be a senior policy adviser at the Securities and Exchange Commission and then founded Electronifie in a bid to enhance bond trading via digital innovation.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/coinbase-binance-leadership-changes">Crypto Hiring: Coinbase, Bybit see changes; leaders step away</a>



“[Amar’s] skill sets and experience provide the perfect complement to Dmitry’s technical strengths as we deploy our industry-leading technology to support global financial institutions to trade and safeguard digital assets of all kinds,” Copper.co Chair Lord Hammond said in a statement.



Then there’s crypto exchange <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/okx">OKX</a>, which appointed Yuri Mushkin as its chief risk officer.



Mushkin spent two years at BlockFi — <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/blockfi-liquidate-crypto-lending-platform">a crypto lender that went bankrupt</a> last year. He then spent about a year as head of SMA, liquidity and counterparty risk at McKinsey &amp; Company subsidiary MIO Partners.



The executive will be based in Singapore, where OKX’s local entity received a Major Payment Institution (MPI) license last month.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/token2049-singapore-solana-breakpoint-conference-recap">Token2049: A circus of crypto and commerce</a>



Komainu appointed Edward Marlow to help lead the company’s efforts in Africa under its ambassador program.&nbsp;



A former British Army officer, Marlow was also previously an investment banking managing director at Deutsche Bank and a head of Sub-Saharan Africa at Credit Suisse.



<a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/abra">Abra</a>, a crypto prime services and wealth management platform, nabbed David Streltsoff to lead institutional sales.



Streltsoff previously held a similar role at Anchorage Digital, and prior to that was head of systematic trading sales at FalconX.



In case you missed it, Andrew Hinkes joined law firm Winston &amp; Strawn in their Miami office as a partner in its division focused on digital assets and blockchain technology.&nbsp;



Hinkes is an associate adjunct professor at NYU’s business and law schools. He co-wrote a textbook — Digital Assets and Blockchain Technology: US Law and Regulation — with Winston &amp; Strawn attorneys Kim Prior and Dan Stabile.



<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 Hiring: Copper, OKX name new executives

The TON layer-1 blockchain’s viral tap-to-earn game Hamster Kombat is <a href="https://x.com/hamster_kombat/status/1846883884681601530">launching</a> its second season at the end of October.



When the game launched in March 2024, its first season saw players running a fictional tier-one crypto exchange.



<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">HAMSTERS ARE THE NEW WHALES 🤩 The new chapter of Hamster Kombat is just around the corner, and all the CEOs will be managing new businesses very soon. 🧡 Together we will be building a gaming platform, hiring employees, and producing new gaming hits! <a href="https://t.co/NrBiN8GrPa">pic.twitter.com/NrBiN8GrPa</a>&mdash; Hamster Kombat (@hamster_kombat) <a href="https://twitter.com/hamster_kombat/status/1846883884681601530?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 17, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Players in the second season will act as a game development studio CEO in charge of marketing, HR and merchandise launch, as per a <a href="https://x.com/hamster_kombat/status/1846883884681601530">video teaser</a>.



Hamster Kombat launched its HMSTR token in late September, and was listed across major exchanges like Binance, OKX and Crypto.com.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/telegram-tap-to-earn-gaming-trend">Web3 Watch: Telegram tap-to-earn is the new crypto gaming trend</a>



HMSTR sits at a $247 million market cap as of Friday, down from about $560 million on its token generation event.&nbsp;



According to its <a href="https://hamsterkombatgame.io/docs/HK_WP_03.pdf">white paper</a>, Hamster Kombat has no venture-backed investors and 60% of its total 100 billion HMSTR token supply is allocated to players.



On the game’s <a href="https://hamsterkombatgame.io/">roadmap</a> for Q4 2024, season two will incorporate NFT mechanics and other external payment systems.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Moonray announces 2025 PS5 launch</h2>



The AAA game Moonray announced Thursday its planned 2025 launch of the PlayStation 5 console.



Moonray is a player-versus-player battle arena blockchain-based game that previously launched a “play-to-airdrop” <a href="https://x.com/moonraygame/status/1802815540647346318">campaign</a> in June, as well as <a href="https://x.com/moonraygame/status/1575484593007865857">NFT sales</a> of in-game skins in 2022.



To stay compliant with platform policies however, Web3 features have been stripped from its PS5 release.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/empire-newsletter-nfts-comeback-gaming">A wave of new games could prove NFTs aren’t dead after all</a>



Previously on the Ethereum L1, Moonray <a href="https://x.com/moonraygame/status/1575484593007865857">announced</a> it would move its blockchain features to the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/base">Base</a> layer-2 in June.



The game has been available to play in “Early Access” mode for PC on the Epic Games store since July 2024, but will also be available on Steam eventually.



According to a press release, Moonray is backed by investors including Animoca Brands, Republic Crypto, C2 Ventures, Polygon Ventures, Huobi Ventures, Cardano Ventures and Master Ventures.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">One interesting stat:</h2>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Web3 <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/gaming">gaming</a> company Azra Games <a href="https://x.com/AzraGames/status/1846207939776073744">announced</a> a $42.7 million Series A funding raise led by Pantera Capital, with participation from a16z and NFX ventures.</li>
</ul>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Also of note:</h2>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>BlockBar, a blockchain-based wines and spirits marketplace, is <a href="https://x.com/BlockBar/status/1846205738017816653">launching</a> an “artisanal producer” program to include smaller batch alcohol from independent producers.</li>



<li>Big things are coming for Nouns Esports as the team <a href="https://mirror.xyz/0x6fB5d14b61e595e6f34BAF952c5d3e60e45883b0/7CPdMIU2T9tGY9w6lIXcbS-gtXkxHPOdb6ZiDhstyBg">plans</a> to scale into a professional league with onchain mechanics.</li>



<li>The Gods Unchained Web3 trading card game just <a href="https://x.com/GodsUnchained/status/1844420179096121463">launched</a> its latest Tower of Dread expansion.</li>
</ul>



<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>.



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>.



Get alpha directly in your inbox with the <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/research">0xResearch newsletter</a> — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.



The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed">Subscribe to daily Solana news</a> from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.

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