The Coming Crypto Bills 👀
Plus, 🤑 Lido’s birthday bounty, 🐧 Penguin plunge, 📜 Sign this, Mr. President, and more!
Welcome to Wednesday! And yes, it’s just one week until Christmas 🎄🧑🎄🎄
I’m Juan Aranovich, managing editor of Unchained.
In today’s edition:
📹 A Democrat change of heart toward crypto?
🎉 Lido hits four years with first profit
🐧 Pudgy Penguins’ PENGU dives on debut
💶 Tether bets on MiCA-ready stablecoins
🏦 Ethereum Foundation sells $420K more ETH
🏛️ Think tank pushes strategic bitcoin reserve
⚖️ Coinbase’s law enforcement info requests drop 18%
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How Democrats Are Seeing Crypto 'in a New Light'
Dave Grimaldi, EVP of lobby group the Blockchain Association, explains how Democrats’ attitudes toward crypto are shifting following the U.S. presidential election, looks at the rise of the “crypto voter,” and explores why stablecoin legislation might arrive sooner than structural market reform.
What’s Poppin’?
By Sage D. Young and Tikta
Lido Finance on Track for First Profitable Year as It Turns 4
Lido Finance, the decentralized protocol that introduced liquid staking, turned four years old on Tuesday and is currently on course to generate a yearly profit for the first time since it was founded.
Lido’s 2024 net revenue stands at more than $99 million, while its outgoings add up to around $94 million, making the protocol’s net income some $5 million, according to data from a Dune Analytics dashboard curated by crypto advisory and consulting firm Steakhouse Financial, which also helps to create financial statements for Lido.
Pudgy Penguins’ PENGU Drops 54% on Debut
The Pudgy Penguins native token, PENGU, nosedived almost immediately after it began trading following its launch yesterday.
The Solana-based token initially surged to $0.069 but quickly plummeted more than 54% to around $0.028 in less than five hours, representing a dive in market capitalization from $4.36 billion to less than $1.81 billion.
The decline was mirrored in the NFT market, where the floor price of Pudgy Penguins NFTs tanked from 29 ETH ($111,330) to around 15 ETH.
The airdrop distributed around half of PENGU’s total supply of 89 billion tokens to eligible users. Around 26% of the tokens were earmarked for the Pudgy community, while 24% were allocated to other communities that have yet to be identified.
Despite a number of airdrop recipients rushing to sell their tokens, some managed to make sizable profits in the initial frenzy of trading. One PENGU holder trousered $8.36 million in less than 20 minutes, according to a post by blockchain analytics platform Lookonchain.
Tether Invests in European Stablecoin Issuer Stable as MiCA Looms
Tether, the company behind the USDT stablecoin, has announced a strategic investment in European stablecoin issuer StablR.
StablR has introduced two stablecoins — the euro-pegged EURR and the U.S. dollar-pegged USDR — designed to streamline transactions and offer cost savings for users.
Tether’s investment comes as the European Union prepares to implement the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulatory framework on Dec. 30.
USDT is not currently MiCA-compliant, so instead of modifying its flagship stablecoin, Tether appears to be investing in MiCA-compliant entities instead.
The European stablecoin market has experienced significant growth in recent months, with a total capitalization approaching $400 million for euro-pegged coins.
Ethereum Foundation’s ETH Sales Reach $12.6M This Year
The Ethereum Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting Ethereum and its ecosystem, sold another $420,000 of ETH for Maker DAO’s DAI token — rebranded as USDS — on Tuesday.
The latest sale brings the sum of ETH offloaded by the foundation this year to $12.6 million, according to data from blockchain analytics platform Lookonchain.
ETH was down 4.5% in the 24 hours before press time, trading at $3,828. Some market participants have attributed its negative price performance to the foundation’s sale.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has commented on that assertion on a number of occasions, most recently in October, when he reminded one user that the funds were used to pay researchers and developers.
Bitcoin Policy Institute Drafts Executive Order for Strategic BTC Reserve
The Bitcoin Policy Institute think tank has drafted an executive order for the signature of U.S. president-elect Donald Trump proposing the establishment of a strategic bitcoin reserve within the U.S. Exchange Stabilization Fund.
The draft, shared by Bitcoin Magazine CEO David Bailey, calls for allocating $21 billion from the stabilization fund to acquiring bitcoin.
The proposed order would also require that all government bitcoin holdings be consolidated, and would prohibit sales, swaps or auctions of bitcoins by any federal agency.
The order aligns with Trump's pledge to make Bitcoin a strategic reserve asset.
Coinbase’s Law Enforcement Requests Drop 18%
Crypto exchange Coinbase says it received a total of 10,707 information requests from law enforcement agencies between October 2023 and September 2024, an 18% decrease year on year.
In its latest Transparency Report, the exchange said the U.S. still accounted for the highest volume of law enforcement information requests, although there had been a “slight decrease” in that number this year.
The most significant reductions in law enforcement info requests came from countries such as Germany, the UK, and Spain, while the most substantial increase came from Singapore, with a surge of 221% during the period.
“As in years past, the overwhelming majority of requests we received both globally and in the U.S. were from law enforcement agencies in connection with criminal enforcement matters,” said Coinbase’s chief legal officer, Paul Grewal.
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⛔ Coinbase justified its delisting of WBTC by citing concerns over its issuer's alleged ties to Tron founder Justin Sun, who the exchange described as a risk due to past fraud accusations.
📊 Bloomberg analysts predict a surge in cryptocurrency exchange-traded funds next year, including Solana and XRP funds, as optimism grows around U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission leadership changes following current Chair Gary Gensler's upcoming departure.
🏛️ The U.S. Senate Banking Committee canceled a confirmation vote for Democratic SEC Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw after failing to secure sufficient support, paving the way for president-elect Donald Trump to appoint three new commissioners, including an acting chair, early next year.
🚀 Binance’s liquid staking token, BNSOL, surpassed $1 billion in total value locked within three months of its launch, driven by integration with more than 20 DeFi protocols and Web3 projects.
🪂 Ethereum layer 2 network Fuel has announced an airdrop of 10% of its 10 billion FUEL token supply to more than 200,000 wallets, highlighting its high-speed transaction capabilities at up to 600 transactions per second.
🔒 The U.S. Treasury shut down a North Korean crypto money laundering network operating through a United Arab Emirates-based front company, adding the firm and two Chinese nationals to a sanctions list.
⚡ Ethereum Name Service has partnered with Linea to develop Namechain, a zkEVM-powered layer 2 network for decentralized cross-chain name resolution, ensuring compatibility with Ethereum’s smart contracts and tools.
Today in Crypto Adoption...
🪙 Republican Ohio Representative Derek Merrin introduced an Ohio Bitcoin Reserve Act, proposing a state-held Bitcoin fund to protect public assets from U.S. dollar devaluation and embrace technological innovation.
The $$$ Corner…
💰 Stablecoin infrastructure platform BVNK raised $50 million in a series-B funding round led by Haun Ventures to expand its U.S. operations following earlier registrations in Europe.
What Do You Meme?
📈 Your Market Update 📉
BTC is down 2%, trading at $104,905
ETH is down 3.5%, trading at $3,870
BTC dominance: 54.01%
Crypto market cap: $3.86T
*All data as of today, 07:30 am ET. Source: CoinGecko
Recommended Reads
Pantera Capital: Escape Velocity
Trump Truth by Arthur Hayes, chief investment officer at Maelstrom, and co-founder and former CEO of BitMEX
CoinDesk: How MicroStrategy and Others Are Taking on Billions in Debt to Buy More Bitcoin
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