Author: Coindesk

While there may be some short-term volatility in crypto markets depending on whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris becomes the leader of the world’s largest economy, what’s more important is the broader integration of crypto, especially bitcoin (BTC), into American finance. For example, the widespread adoption of bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), with BlackRock (BLK), the world’s largest asset-management firm, running the biggest. Read the full article here

The Sapien team, led by Rowan Stone, the former co-creator of Coinbase’s layer 2 network Base, and Trevor Koverko, founder of Polymath and author of RWA standard ERC1400, are incentivizing a growing army of data labelling workers with with either USDC stablecoin or a system of reward points. The data work can be anything from labelling everyday items like traffic signs using a mobile device, to pinpointing particular types of cancer cells. Read the full article here

BOB’s aim is to create bridges between itself and layer-1 blockchains like Ethereum, with the ultimate goal of making Bitcoin the center of DeFi. Its decision adds to the critical mass of blockchain developers choosing to build on Optimism’s OP Stack. Read the full article here

Emerging regulatory frameworks, such as the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) and Singapore’s Payment Services Act (PSA), are providing much-needed clarity. Historically, private blockchains have been the go-to choice for institutions, serving as secure and compliance-friendly sandboxes. However, their restricted and siloed nature limits participation, leading to low liquidity, inefficient price discovery, and volatility for otherwise stable assets. With increased regulatory clarity, decentralized blockchains, like Ethereum or Solana, will likely become the favored path for institutions. Read the full article here

Ether itself has remained in the same trading range since early August, with the current level of $2,700 providing two firm rejections on Sep. 27 and Oct. 21. During that period bitcoin surged from below $60,000, yesterday testing its record high from March of just shy of $73,800. Ether remains about $2,000 below its record high set all the way back in November 2021. Read the full article here

What does it mean for a token to be useful? The best heuristic is whether people want to hold it for some reason other than as an investment. For example, some tokens grant access to blockchain-based products or services, similar to how baseball tickets grant access to a game. Other tokens coordinate human decision-making, as with governance tokens, or incentivize human work, as with base layer infrastructure tokens. And even other tokens memorialize contributions to a system, whether it be data or something else valuable (but that isn’t an investment). Read the full article here

The Fortune article, which debuted about a week after suspicions of a different kind of manipulation on Polymarket, cited research done by two blockchain analytics firms. One, Chaos Labs, “concluded that around one-third of trading volume — and overall users — on the presidential market alone was likely wash trading, along with across all markets.” The other, Inca Digital, “found that a ‘significant portion of the volume’ on the market could be attributed to potential wash trading,” the magazine said. Read the full article here

As national security experts, we invariably view emerging technologies through a lens that focuses on risk, mitigation and safety. We have decades of combined experience in numerous national security roles across the U.S. government, including careers at the FBI, CIA, U.S. Secret Service, and Departments of Justice and Treasury. Our experiences range from establishing the first dedicated digital asset illicit finance investigation unit, to high level roles at the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence, to dismantling transnational organized criminal groups. Read the full article here

MicroStrategy’s most recent previous disclosure was in mid-September when it announced the purchase of 7,420 bitcoins (BTC) for $458.2 million. That brought its holdings to that point to 252,220 bitcoins acquired for a total of $9.9 billion, or an average price of $39,266 each. At the current price of about $72,000 the company’s bitcoin is worth more than $18 billion. Read the full article here

Singh, 29, who pleaded guilty to six criminal counts including wire fraud and conspiracy in February, is the fourth FTX executive to be sentenced for his role in the fraud. Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison in March for his role as ringleader. Former FTX Digital Markets CEO Ryan Salame, who did not testify against Bankman-Fried, recently began serving his 7.5 year prison sentence. And Caroline Ellison, former Alameda Research CEO and one-time girlfriend of Bankman-Fried, was sentenced to two years by the same judge, District Judge Lewis Kaplan of the Southern District of New York (SDNY), last…