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



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. 



BTC is about 8% off its all-time high price of more than $73,000 set in March. 



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. 



The factors leading them to that conclusion include increasing stablecoin liquidity; 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 bitcoin ETFs, they added. 



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 shows. 



Read more: Crypto ETF takes from the Permissionless stage



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. 



The latest inflows come amid what CoinShares research head James Butterfill called “growing expectations of a Republican victory 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 betting on Trump, with four accounts recently pouring more than $30 million into Trump bets.



New York Times polling, as of this morning, shows a much tighter picture, with leads by Trump and Harris 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

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

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Looking back, ahead after BTC breaches $69K



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



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). 



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. 



So we’re currently about 8% off the all-time high BTC price set in March. 



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: 




Increasing stablecoin liquidity 



Tight exchange supply 



Front-running of $10 billion of FTX creditor settlements 



The extension of the Mt. Gox repayments deadline 



Continued demand for bitcoin ETFs




On the latter point, the US-listed spot bitcoin ETFs are on a six-day net inflow streak, 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). 



The latest capital entering these ETFs come amid what CoinShares research head James Butterfill called “growing expectations of a Republican victory 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 betting on Trump, though Casey mentioned on Friday how four accounts recently pouring more than $30 million into Trump bets have impacted

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 challenging Elizabeth Warren 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 era of usable apps 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

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 reported 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. 



Read more: Stripe reintegrates crypto payments in the US



Stripe CEO Patrick Collison said in an X post that his company seeks to build “the world’s best stablecoin infrastructure.”




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… https://t.co/6yKi7OKXVT— Patrick Collison (@patrickc) October 21, 2024




Bridge launched its APIs in March 2023, Bridge co-founder Zach Abrams said in an X post. Though the company’s first year was “hard,” he added, it saw initial interest from cross-border payments companies and started to scale. 



“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 stablecoins, Bridge noted in its Monday blog post. 



Read more: Why Visa’s new stablecoin efforts could be a game-changer



“Policymakers across the globe are working to provide clarity 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 rapidly accelerating.”



The

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

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Where does Ethereum go next?



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 130 gwei (27 gwei today). That prompted public declarations to “abandon” Ethereum for the alt-L1 chains then — remember “FOAN”?



You could easily count every active rollup in those days. Today, there are at least 105 rollups scaling a cumulative total of about 296 transactions per second, according to L2Beat.



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 data availability solutions like Celestia, as well as the EIP-4844 Dencun upgrade 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. 



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 “Surge” 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

Ethereum wants to scale to 100K TPS

TRON DAO participated as a Ruby Sponsor at Princeton Blockchain Club’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 TRON Builder Tour, 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.



A platform for collaboration and innovation



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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The Lightspeed

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

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Times are a changin’



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. 







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. 



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. 



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



 —

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. 



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



Read more: A wave of new games could prove NFTs aren’t dead after all



“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 gaming 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. 



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



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



“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: DeFi’s slow infrastructure is holding back mass adoption



Other notable rounds: 




Blockstream raised $210 million in convertible note financing. The round was led by Fulgur Ventures.



Crypto derivatives exchange Bitnomial announced a $25 million Series C in a round led by Ripple —

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.  



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: Crypto Hiring: Coinbase, Bybit see changes; leaders step away



“[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 OKX, which appointed Yuri Mushkin as its chief risk officer.



Mushkin spent two years at BlockFi — a crypto lender that went bankrupt last year. He then spent about a year as head of SMA, liquidity and counterparty risk at McKinsey & 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: Token2049: A circus of crypto and commerce



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



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.



Abra, 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

Crypto Hiring: Copper, OKX name new executives

The TON layer-1 blockchain’s viral tap-to-earn game Hamster Kombat is launching 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.




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! pic.twitter.com/NrBiN8GrPa— Hamster Kombat (@hamster_kombat) October 17, 2024




Players in the second season will act as a game development studio CEO in charge of marketing, HR and merchandise launch, as per a video teaser.



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



Read more: Web3 Watch: Telegram tap-to-earn is the new crypto gaming trend



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



According to its white paper, 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 roadmap for Q4 2024, season two will incorporate NFT mechanics and other external payment systems.



Moonray announces 2025 PS5 launch



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” campaign in June, as well as NFT sales 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 wave of new games could prove NFTs aren’t dead after all



Previously on the Ethereum L1, Moonray announced it would move its blockchain features to the Base layer-2 in June.



The game has been available to play in

Web3 Watch: Tap-to-earn game Hamster Kombat gears up for Season 2 

The US Securities and Exchange Commission approved NYSE and CBOE’s bids to list options for bitcoin exchange-traded funds.



In two statements, the SEC granted approval to the proposed rule changes, clearing the way for options. The proposed options are tied to bitcoin ETFs provided by Fidelity, Grayscale, VanEck and others.



Both proposed rule changes were granted “on an accelerated basis,” per the notices. The move echoed the language used for Nasdaq’s approval of IBIT options in September.



Read more: SEC approval of BTC ETF options to ‘attract more big fish’



Speculation about the success of options proposals began shortly after the approval of spot ETFs. The matter seemed in doubt when reports surfaced this summer that the NYSE had withdrawn its proposed rule change. As expected, the SEC sought more time to consider the products as the process moved along. 



With the approvals, the SEC continues to widen market access to crypto-tied financial products on major exchanges. Thus far, 2024 has seen the approval of spot ETFs for both bitcoin and ether, as previously reported.



Whether today’s approvals signal a broader regulatory sea change in the US remains to be seen. The SEC is a frequent target of industry criticism, and its chair, Gary Gensler, has drawn continued scorn and promises from one US presidential candidate, Republican Donald Trump, to fire him should he prevail in November. 



Bitcoin is trading around $68,400 on Coinbase as of press time, up more than 1% on the day, per TradingView data.







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SEC greenlights CBOE, NYSE bids for spot bitcoin ETF options

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Banned gambling platform prone to manipulation? You don’t say. 



I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: US persons are banned from Polymarket. 



Per a 2022 settlement with the CFTC, Polymarket is required to block US users. 



Obviously, we know this hasn’t stopped people from circumventing the rules (and writing how-to’s to help others do the same). But still, I’ve found the widespread acceptance of Polymarket odds as a proxy for the 2024 presidential election outcome confounding. 



Odd Lots co-host Tracy Alloway said it best: 




I am shocked, shocked I tell you, to discover that the odds being produced by a bunch of gamblers accessing a gray betting market through a VPN might be prone to manipulation.— Tracy Alloway (@tracyalloway) October 18, 2024




Latest polls from Emerson College released Friday have Harris leading Trump 49% to 48%. FiveThirtyEight is reporting similar numbers, with Thursday’s numbers showing Harris at 48% and Trump at 46%. 



Polymarket is the outlier. On the prediction markets, Trump is in the lead with 60% and Harris trails with 39%. 



Of course, Polymarket is not a poll (Elon Musk argues that betting markets are even more accurate because “money is on the line,” plus, we all know what happened in 2016). But the odds having skewed so heavily toward Trump in just a matter of weeks on Polymarket — Harris and Trump were neck-in-neck at the beginning of the month — has raised eyebrows. 



Four accounts (Fredi9999, Theo4, PrincessCaro and Michie) have poured $30 million+ into Trump bets in recent weeks. They are mostly betting on Trump winning the presidency, but they are also wagering that he will earn the popular vote. They’ve “pushed Polymarket’s market much higher than anyone is willing to bet it down,” fellow prediction