A Killer DeFi Feature—on Bitcoin 🔥
A Killer DeFi Feature—on Bitcoin 🔥
In today’s edition: 🚨 Reddit dumps its stash, 🐱 POPCAT becomes top dog, 📉 Coinbase comes up short, and more!
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What’s Poppin’?
by Tikta, Nelson Wang and Sage D. Young
New Bitcoin Liquid Staking Protocols Aim to Replicate Lido’s Success
Several protocols in the Bitcoin ecosystem are looking to create a liquid staking token comparable to Lido’s extremely successful staked ETH (stETH).
Reddit Liquidates All of Its Treasury Bitcoin and Ether Holdings
Social media platform extends U-turn on digital assets as crypto sell-off marks latest move in pullback from the space.
POPCAT Hits All-Time High as Cat-Themed Memecoins Start to Have Their Day
In a sign of the growing popularity of cat-centric memecoins, POPCAT recently surpassed the Shiba Inu-based BONK in market cap.
Coinbase Shares Fall as Q3 Revenue Misses Analyst Estimates
The US’s largest crypto exchange reported that transaction revenue fell 27% from the previous quarter.
ICYMI:
It’s Not Just the Presidency. Congressional Races Matter a Lot for Crypto
The Congressional races hold significant implications for crypto regulation, with key committees, influential members, and the potential for bipartisan support all impacting the industry’s future.
With the presidential race in the spotlight, it’s easy to overlook the powerful role that Congress could play in shaping crypto policy in the coming years. From committee chairs to legislative allies, crypto advocates are keenly focused on the outcome of key Congressional races. Kristin Smith of the Blockchain Association and Alex Grieve of Paradigm join Unchained to break down which races and committees are critical for crypto, why the industry is more visible in Washington than ever, and what the chances are for lame duck legislation this year.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.
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Mark Your Calendars! 📆
On Wednesday, November 6, Bits + Bips will do a live-streamed show at 4:30pm ET! Join hosts James Seyffart, Alex Kruger and Joe McCann, with a special guest, to discuss all things election! Link and more details to come.
Daily Bits… ✍️✍️✍
⚖️ FTX's former engineering director, Nishad Singh, avoided prison time with a sentence of time served and an $11 billion restitution order after his cooperation in the FTX fraud case.
🏛️ Coinbase committed an additional $25 million to Fairshake, a crypto-focused super PAC, and set ambitious goals for its advocacy group, Stand with Crypto, targeting 4 million members by 2026.
🇺🇸 The U.S. government sold more than 82,000 ANT tokens seized from Alameda Research, converting them to ETH ahead of a token burn deadline set by Aragon DAO for early November.
₿ MicroStrategy announced a "21/21 Plan" to raise $42 billion in capital for continued Bitcoin acquisitions, despite a 10.3% revenue drop this quarter as its BTC holdings rose to 252,220.
💵 BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust saw record inflows of $872 million in one day, possibly driven by market sentiment around pro-crypto political developments in the U.S.
✂️ Kraken laid off 15% of its workforce and announced a new co-CEO, aiming for a leaner structure after reporting organizational challenges tied to its $1 billion revenue growth as a remote company.
⚡ Starknet, a zero-knowledge rollup on Ethereum, claimed a record-breaking 127.5 transactions per second in a recent stress test, outperforming Coinbase’s Base network, and facilitated more than 11 million daily transactions during a high-speed gaming trial.
⛓️ Bitcoin layer 2 project BOB joined Optimism's Superchain ecosystem through a $870,000 grant, aiming to enhance DeFi capabilities by bridging Bitcoin with Ethereum-based infrastructure.
🛠️ Chainlink introduced a modular upgrade with the Chainlink Runtime Environment, expanding interoperability across thousands of blockchains and increasing flexibility for developers to integrate real-world data with Web3.
Today in Crypto Adoption...
💳 Coinbase partnered with Visa Direct to enable instant USD and EUR funding for users’ accounts, aiming to regain market share as Crypto.com leads in USD spot trading volume, despite Coinbase's edge in total trade and user engagement.
The $$$ Corner…
🔒💻 Privacy-focused blockchain project Nillion secured $25 million to advance its "blind computing" technology, enabling secure data processing without revealing contents, supported by backers such as Hack VC and Arbitrum.
🧱 Nitro Labs secured $4 million in seed funding to advance Termina, its open-source Solana scaling platform designed for deploying customized layer 2 networks and boosting innovation.
📚 KRNL Labs raised $1.7 million in pre-seed funding to build a vast, open-source Web3 software registry supporting decentralized applications with cross-chain libraries.
What Do You Meme?
📈 Your Market Update 📉
BTC is up 0.1%, trading at $72,297
ETH is up 0.1%, trading at $2,637
BTC dominance: 56.43%
Crypto market cap: $2.53T
*All data as of today, 07:20 am ET. Source: CoinGecko
Recommended Reads
CoinDesk: Making Crypto Tokens Useful and Fair
Crypto researcher Max Resnick on Vitalik Buterin’s latest proposal for the Ethereum roadmap
Maria Shen, general partner at Electric Capital, on the latest crypto developer geographical data
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