Recent episodes
BitMEX Is Shutting Down and Facing a Theft Lawsuit | CoinDesk Daily
- BitMEX shutting down September 23rd after 11 years of operation; faced a proposed class-action suit on the same day alleging $622 million in theft and insider trading through forced liquidations - Senate Majority Leader John Thune signals the Clarity Act will likely miss its August 7th deadline, though aims to begin floor debate before summer recess; White House crypto advisor Patrick Witt expressed cautious optimism about first-week-of-August passage - Ripple launching Ripple Mint, a platform enabling institutions to create, redeem, and track RLUSD (dollar-backed stablecoin) automatically - Ripple takes strategic stake in compliance network Notabene to expand RLUSD adoption through institutional payment rails - RLUSD shows mixed signals: holder count climbing but monthly transfer volume declined 25% (from $14.6B to $11B); current market cap approximately $1.5B
Charles Hoskinson on Cardano's Future, Ethereum's Mistakes, and Crypto's Missing Safety Net | Markets Outlook
- Wanchain bridge hack and industry maturation: A legacy bridge operated by WanChain was exploited, resulting in stolen funds. Hoskinson emphasized that this highlights the need for wallet insurance, zero-knowledge identity systems (Midnight Passport), and white-hat recovery frameworks to mature the crypto ecosystem beyond the current "you lost your money, too bad" mentality. - Midnight's privacy and ZK infrastructure: Midnight combines zero-knowledge proofs, trusted execution environments, and multi-party computation to enable safer bridges and recovery mechanisms. Unlike other ZK projects focused solely on scalability or privacy, Midnight integrates compliance tools, agents, and abstraction layers. - Cardano's hard fork to v11 and decentralized governance: The network completed its first fully decentralized on-chain vote to implement a hard fork. This milestone adds ZK infrastructure (Gross 16 proof verification), quality-of-life improvements, and enables future scalability upgrades like Laos (60x throughput gain). Input Output is progressively spinning out development to independent firms (Intersect, Pragma) to ensure Cardano can self-improve without centralized control. - Cardano's competitive advantages and narrative reset: Cardano possesses unique capabilities including non-custodial Bitcoin mirroring via UTXO model, private Bitcoin lending through Midnight, emergent finance products, and a partner-chain ecosystem (distinct from Ethereum's parasitic L2s). Hoskinson identified the need for executive function governance and aggressive marketing to counter the "failed to launch" narrative. - DTCC tokenized securities milestone: The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation moved tokenized securities into live production with over 20 institutions participating. The platform will expand in September and October, eventually enabling collateral management and corporate actions processing on-chain. - Ethereum's structural weaknesses and Cardano's governance model: Hoskinson criticized Ethereum's lack of an on-chain treasury and voting mechanism, arguing this creates oligarchic control by large companies. Cardano's on-chain treasury (worth $4.5 billion at peak) enables multi-year funding commitments and genuine decentralized decision-making. He also challenged Ethereum's adoption of UTXO and ZK concepts without attribution.
"Getting The Fortune 500 Onchain is The Primary Goal"
- Dan Romero's 12-year arc from Coinbase through Farcaster to Tempo, driven by the convergence of regulatory clarity, scaled infrastructure, and enterprise distribution channels. - Three regulatory and structural tailwinds: the Genius Act providing stablecoin law clarity, L2 and high-performance blockchains solving throughput, and Stripe's partnership enabling enterprise adoption. - Tempo's positioning as a payments-focused blockchain (not general-purpose), with stablecoin neutrality, prioritizing transaction throughput and enterprise features over DEX speculation. - Enterprise use cases focused on global payouts, yield opportunities for contractors and workers in high-inflation regions, and functional benefits (speed, 24/7 availability, cost reduction). - Privacy-transparency balance: Tempo enables enterprises to carve off private zones within a public blockchain, offering auditability and compliance without full anonymity. - Compliance built at chain level (allow/blocklists, dust attack prevention, AML policies) to meet regulated enterprises' requirements.
Clarity Act Odds Jump to 42% After Reported Trump Ethics Deal | CoinDesk Daily
- Clarity Act odds surged to 42% on Polymarket after unverified reports that President Trump agreed to the ethics provision that had stalled the crypto market structure bill for months. - Jack Mollers stepped down as CEO of 21 Capital, replaced by Rafael Zaguri. Tether's proposed three-way merger of 21, Strike, and Electron is now dissolved, with Strike remaining independent. - UK lawmakers opened an inquiry into whether major banks have systematically cut off crypto firms from banking services, including blocking payments and imposing transfer limits. - The inquiry will examine whether banking restrictions on crypto companies are proportionate and their impact on consumers, businesses, and competition.
AI Shock Spares Bitcoin, Wall Street Moves On-Chain, and Leveraged Crypto ETFs Explained
- Chinese AI model Moonshot's Kimi K3 sparked a chip-stock selloff Friday due to competitive pricing and margin concerns, but Bitcoin remained unaffected. The broader concern is lower profit margins for major tech firms if AI price competition intensifies. - The DTCC moved tokenized securities into live production with over 30 institutions including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and Vanguard. The firm deployed a digital-twin custody model across Hyperledger Besu and Canton Network blockchains, with Stellar planned for Q1–H1 2025. - Bitcoin ETF flows showed $76 million net inflows for the week, but masked a $425 million Monday outflow requiring four days of buying to recover. Ethereum ETF inflows ($105 million) exceeded Bitcoin last week, led by BlackRock's ETHA ($135 million). - Direxion launched BTCU and EVMU—the first 2x leveraged spot Bitcoin and Ether ETFs—offering retail traders amplified exposure in an ETF wrapper rather than margin on crypto exchanges, which is costly and adds counterparty risk. - Federal Reserve sentiment shifted from rate-cut debate to actively considering rate hikes ahead of an August 7th CLARITY Act deadline. Tightening financial conditions from the AI selloff could help dampen inflation but may not be sufficient alone. - The Fear and Greed Index sits at 29 despite Bitcoin holding near $64k, suggesting sentiment has lagged behind price recovery and retail capital is rotating into AI trades.
Ledn Goes Beyond Bitcoin: Tether Gold Trading Now Live, Loans Next
- Ledn has launched tokenized gold (Tether Gold) as a complement to its Bitcoin-backed loan product, allowing clients to buy, sell, and soon use gold as collateral for dollar loans. - Client behavior shows rotation between Bitcoin and gold depending on relative market setup; precious metals outperformed in mid-2025, but Bitcoin is now attracting capital back as the bear market appears to close. - Tokenized gold addresses liquidity and transferability constraints of physical gold held in vaults, similar to how stablecoins unlocked utility for fiat currency. - Tether Gold includes quarterly proof-of-reserves attestations by BDO, mitigating counterparty risk concerns compared to traditional physical gold storage. - Gold-backed loans will launch on Ledn later in 2025 with mechanics similar to Bitcoin loans but potentially different terms due to gold's lower volatility. - Ledn reports strong new user acquisition at current Bitcoin price levels, with minimal liquidations on recent tests of $60k, suggesting the bear market bottom is near or already reached.
AI Chip Selloff Drags Bitcoin to $63K | CoinDesk Daily
- Bitcoin fell to $63,000 on Friday following a semiconductor and AI stock selloff, with broader equity futures declining (Nasdaq 100 down ~2%, S&P 500 down ~0.96%), signaling macro-driven rather than crypto-specific pressure. - Market uncertainty centers on whether **hundreds of billions in AI spending will deliver returns** justifying current chip and tech valuations. - Citadel Securities invested $400 million in Crypto.com, valuing the exchange at $20 billion in its first institutional funding round in 10 years; this is Citadel's second major crypto exchange bet after backing Kraken in November. - Visa launched an enterprise platform supporting OpenUSD, a stablecoin backed by Visa, BlackRock, Alphabet, and Coinbase, intensifying competition in stablecoin markets. - Circle's USDC faces competitive pressure; Circle's shares fell 7% Thursday and are down over 40% from a May high of $113.
Inside the CASHCAT Bet That Paid $1.2 Million | Markets Outlook
- Brian Jung turned an $80,000 position in CASHCAT into $1.25 million at peak, executing a disciplined exit strategy despite potential multi-seven-figure gains had he held longer. - His research process emphasizes finding market inefficiencies by studying competitors (Robinhood vs. Coinbase), parsing long-form founder interviews, and building conviction around specific criteria rather than following trend-chasing "degens." - CASHCAT met his meme-coin framework: animal mascot (cat), cultural tie (Robinhood's original name), and Robinhood Chain's underappreciated Layer 2 launch while market attention fixated on creator tokens. - Jung believes the market remains in a bear cycle with isolated pockets of opportunity; broader risk-on altcoin runs require Bitcoin to break all-time highs and sustain macro liquidity improvements. - Tokenized money market funds crossed $15 billion in assets, with 66% of surveyed financial institutions planning launches by end of 2027—institutions value portable yield that moves through treasury pipes. - He sits out poor-condition markets rather than "chop trade," focusing on high-conviction setups when momentum supports the thesis.
"You Now Have Two Customers: The Human and Their Agent"
- Crypto's branding problem: Crypto lacks category education; consumers conflate it with illegal activity despite <1% illicit use. The industry must shift narrative to legitimate use cases like value preservation and remittances rather than speculation. - Use cases for adoption: Compelling examples include protecting purchasing power in high-inflation countries and enabling low-cost, instant international remittances—particularly to underbanked regions. - Historical parallels to credit cards: In 1990s Dubai, credit cards faced similar adoption friction as crypto does today. Success required educating both consumers (purchase protection, rewards) and merchants (access to new buyer segments, international customers). - Experiential marketing over traditional ads: With 3,000–10,000 ads daily bombarding consumers and attention spans below 8 seconds, immersive events and sensory brand engagement (taste, scent, touch) cut through clutter and lodge brands in consumer memory far more effectively than paid media. - Agentic commerce fundamentals: As AI agents make purchasing decisions on behalf of humans, marketers must optimize for two distinct audiences with different criteria—the human (trust, aspiration, emotion) and the machine (price, features, logic). Both segments are critical to conversion. - Empathy in AI agents: Marketers can programmatically encode empathy signals into agents—not genuine empathy, but credible emotional communication—to build long-term customer relationships rather than winning isolated transactions.
Prediction Markets Crushed Sportsbooks During the World Cup | CoinDesk Daily
- Prediction markets significantly outperformed traditional U.S. sportsbooks during the World Cup; Kalshi's World Cup contracts alone generated $7.4 billion in volume, exceeding the entire projected U.S. legal sportsbook handle of $2.8–$4.3 billion for the tournament. - U.S. inflation data came in softer than expected in June, with CPI declining 0.4% (vs. 0.1% forecast) and year-over-year inflation falling to 3.5% from 4.2%, reducing near-term Fed rate hike pressure. - The U.S. government transferred $288 million in seized cryptocurrency to Coinbase Prime, including Bitcoin from the Xanax case, BTC-E proceeds, and 30,000 Ether from a money-laundering case. - Kalshi posted $31 billion in total notional volume in June, a 70% increase from May. - Federal Reserve rate hike probabilities shifted sharply; July hike odds fell from 42% to 13% following the softer inflation print.
Strategy Raised $467M But Didn't Buy a Single Bitcoin | CoinDesk Daily
- Strategy raised $467 million through stock sales but made zero Bitcoin purchases, keeping holdings flat at 843,775 BTC despite BTC trading significantly below the company's $75,476 average buy price. - Robinhood's blockchain achieved top-five DEX trading volume status within two weeks of launch, generating $3.1 billion in weekly DEX volume with over 65,000 users holding $13 million in tokenized stocks and $300 million in stablecoins. - Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse disclosed that he and co-founder Chris Larson seriously considered shutting down the company and distributing XRP to shareholders after the SEC lawsuit in 2020, but chose to fight instead at a cost of $150 million in legal fees over four years.
Backpack Launches 24/7 US Equity Trading for International Investors
- Backpack launched 24/7 trading of U.S. equities for international investors, starting with symbols like SpaceX, Micron Technology, and SanDisk available on the Backpack brokerage. - The platform distinguishes between **real securities held in a traditional brokerage** and **tokenized versions on Solana**, avoiding synthetic derivatives or CFD-style instruments common in other tokenized stock offerings. - Portfolio margining and real-time risk management are key use cases; access to spot assets enables hedging and collateral for perpetual futures on decentralized venues. - Tokenized stocks are expected to follow the same **global adoption trajectory as stablecoins**, driven by international demand for U.S. dollar exposure and access to American publicly traded companies. - The broader narrative positions tokenized securities and stablecoins as infrastructure for extending U.S. dollar and capital market dominance globally, particularly in regions with limited traditional banking access.
Trader Turns $800 into $1 Million | CoinDesk Daily
- Robinhood launched its blockchain on July 1 to move stocks onchain; within eight days, a memecoin called CASHCAT became the breakout hit, contradicting CEO Vlad Tenev's earlier dismissal of memes as "dead end." - One early CASHCAT buyer turned $838 into over $1 million in combined sale proceeds and remaining token value; the five most profitable wallets collected approximately $3.7 million. - Six federal agencies (OCC, FDIC, Treasury, and others) are finalizing stablecoin rules by July 18, one year after Congress passed the Genius Act, establishing who can issue stablecoins and reserve requirements. - Stablecoin reserve rules mandate holding assets in cash, insured deposits, or short-dated U.S. treasuries. - U.S.-Iran ceasefire collapsed; both sides exchanged airstrikes for a second consecutive day, disrupting Strait of Hormuz shipping.
Alex Schultz on Meta’s Future: “It Might Be The Next Tier of Business For Our Entire Company”
- Data-driven creativity and non-average insights: Alex emphasizes using data to find emerging trends rather than relying on averages. Key examples include monitoring Asia for conversational commerce and shoppertainment trends before they reach the U.S., and watching platforms like WeChat and LINE to identify innovation patterns. - Agentic commerce as a major business opportunity: Meta is building business agents for merchants and consumer agents for users. Over one million weekly active businesses already use Meta business agents. Alex sees agentic commerce potentially becoming the majority of Meta's business, enabling seamless coordination between agents, businesses, and consumers over WhatsApp and other platforms. - Stablecoins as foregone conclusion for digital payments: Alex views stablecoins as essential infrastructure for internet-native payments and the agentic economy. He notes Europe and APAC already operate largely cashless and mobile-first; the U.S. lags behind. - Human taste and conviction remain irreplaceable in AI era: Drawing on Warren Buffett's "machine, man, and dog" quote, Alex argues the human role is taste and creative conviction. AI tools amplify human creativity; bad work remains bad work regardless of the tool used. - AR glasses as the metaverse endgame, not virtual worlds: The true metaverse is augmented reality overlaying the physical world with audio and visual data, not immersive digital environments. Meta Ray-Bans and Oakleys represent this vision, with AI assistance integrated into eyewear. - Creator economy blends human and AI augmentation: Most creators will use AI as a tool in their creative suite (like Photoshop), similar to how advertising ranges from fully artificial (cartoon characters) to fully authentic (Dove Real Beauty). Creators with genuine human voice will occupy a valuable but smaller market segment.
How An Attacker Stole $20M From BonkDAO Using Its Own Rules | CoinDesk Daily
- An attacker drained $20 million from the Bonk DAO treasury by purchasing 1% of token supply, passing a malicious governance proposal with just 7 wallets voting, and transferring holdings to a controlled wallet—no exploits or hacks involved, only valid transactions following existing rules. - Terrewolf, a Bitcoin miner, signed a 20-year lease with Anthropic for a Kentucky data center covering 401 megawatts of computing capacity and $19 billion in contracted revenue; stock surged 19% on the announcement. - Bitcoin's six-day winning streak ended; the Coinbase premium has been negative for 50 consecutive days, indicating BTC is cheaper on U.S. exchanges—a signal of weak domestic demand. - Spot Bitcoin ETFs posted eight straight weeks of net outflows, raising questions about rally sustainability.
Is the Saylor Playbook Cracking? Bitcoin's Biggest Buyer Just Became a Seller
- MicroStrategy shifts from marginal Bitcoin buyer to marginal seller, reducing a key demand pillar after its STRC and STRF products traded below par and debt obligations forced asset sales to fund obligations and dividends - Securitize went public on NYSE via SPAC (ticker SECZ), raising over $400 million and tokenizing nearly $300 million of its own common stock on Solana and Avalanche blockchains - OpenUSD stablecoin consortium announcement triggered a 15% drop in Circle's stock; skepticism centers on historical consortium failures and the difficulty of coordinating 100+ firms with split control and economics - Bitcoin ETFs posted $527 million in net outflows last week, though Thursday saw a sharp reversal with $222 million inflows—the largest single day in two months - Non-farm payrolls data is statistically unreliable and subject to revisions; better economic indicators are company earnings, which show a resilient consumer and strong earnings growth - HyperLiquid emerging as the strongest digital asset narrative, with product-market fit, buybacks, and recent partnerships with Coinbase and Circle
From Libra to Open Standard’s OUSD: What Facebook's Failed Stablecoin Teaches Us
- SEC opens 60-day public comment period on "novel" ETFs, including crypto asset ETFs, prediction market ETFs, single-stock ETFs, and high-leverage products; significant opportunity for industry input on staking receipt tokens and other crypto variations. - Open Standard (backed by Coinbase, major banks, Visa, and Mastercard) launches as a new stablecoin protocol; hosts discuss potential antitrust exposure and Stripe's growing influence through Bridge, Privy, and Tempo. - Christian Catalini (MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab, former Diem chief economist) argues the critical test for Open Standard is **governance and neutrality**—not the announcement itself—citing lessons from Libra's failed independence perception. - Stablecoin commodification will force pure-play issuers to compete on distribution and payment rails, not issuance or liquidity; banks are unlikely to sit idle. - FIT21 (Clarity Act) targets July 4th vote but faces timeline pressure and outstanding compromises on ethics provisions; Senate Democrats' support remains uncertain. - Person of the Week: Patrick Witt, for transparency and advocacy work on Clarity legislation despite mounting complexity and delays.
JPMorgan Says Strategy's Bitcoin Sales Are a Market Risk | CoinDesk Daily
- JPMorgan analysis of Grayscale Strategy: new policy allowing Bitcoin sales for preferred dividend payments introduces "two-way risk" to markets; analysts want 24–36 months cash coverage, but Strategy currently has only 17 months. - Grayscale's market dominance: holds ~847,000 BTC (4% of all Bitcoin) and has driven ~70% of net digital asset inflows this year; any shift toward selling would have outsized impact. - U.S. Treasury sanctions: OFAC froze 134 ISIS-K crypto wallets (131 on Tron, 3 on Monero); Tether immediately froze all 131 Tron addresses; wallets received over $1.4 million since 2023. - Weak U.S. jobs report: only 57,000 jobs added in June (half expected); May revised down from 172,000 to 129,000; probability of Fed rate hike by September dropped to 54%. - Bitcoin price context: discussion follows Bitcoin passing $61,000.
White House to Speak with Law Enforcement Groups to Push the Clarity Act | CoinDesk Daily
- New York Life Investment Management launching its first tokenized fund on blockchain—an $807 billion asset manager bringing a U.S. high-yield corporate bond strategy to Centrifuge; real-world asset (RWA) market now exceeds $30 billion with projections to reach $5.5 trillion by 2030. - White House convening law enforcement groups to resolve objections to the Clarity Act (market structure bill); central dispute over developer liability exemptions, with sheriffs arguing the provision would shield cryptocurrency mixers and tumblers from anti-money-laundering enforcement. - Senate Majority Leader John Thune planning to bring the Clarity Act to a floor vote in coming weeks; bill requires 60 votes to pass. - JPMorgan expanding Kinexus blockchain payments platform with five new currencies (Japanese yen, Chinese renminbi, Hong Kong dollar, and two others), enabling 24/7 institutional settlement and eliminating traditional cross-border banking delays. - Kinexus has processed over $4 trillion in transactions to date with daily volume exceeding $7 billion.
BTC ETFs Bled $4B in Worst Month Ever, Strategy's Plan Forward and an Institutional Super Cycle for ETH?
- Bitcoin ETF saw $1.8 billion in outflows last week; contextualized as normal capital movement in a $100+ billion asset class rather than a panic signal. Lower-fee institutional products continue to see net inflows year-to-date. - MicroStrategy announced a new capital plan; recent Bitcoin sales were clarified as part of long-term strategy rather than a signal of weakness or repositioning. - Ethereum Foundation faces funding concerns with departures; ETH Labs nonprofit R&D lab launched by former researchers, funded by SharpLink, GameStop, Bitmine, and Joe Lubin to support tokenization, go-to-market, and privacy initiatives. - Moody's Ratings developed the first-ever credit rating methodology for stablecoins, embedding ratings into tokenized assets on Solana and Canton to assess reserve quality and stress-test conditions beyond regulatory minimum requirements. - Midnight Foundation partnered with UK-regulated Monument Bank (£7 billion in assets) to tokenize up to $300 million in deposits and enable mass-affluent clients private access to traditionally gated private equity and hedge fund investments. - Brian Jung's short on MicroStrategy via MSTC (2X inverse ETF) up over 40 percent in five days; risks reversal if Bitcoin bounces.