Mantle Staked Ether

Casey Wagner

This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance">subscribe</a>.



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It’s a high-stakes day for tech stocks as the grand finale to earnings season looms: Nvidia’s third quarter report, set to drop today after the bell.&nbsp;



As the world’s largest public company by market cap, Nvidia has been the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/on-the-margin-newsletter-nvda-market-breadth">definitive winner</a> of the AI boom. Shares are up almost 200% year to date and 1,000% since September 2022.&nbsp;



Analysts are expecting big things from Nvidia tonight. Wall Street has consistently upped its predictions for the report, increasing earnings per share estimates to $2.84 (from $2.81 in September). Earnings per share from the second quarter came in at $2.70, a 148% increase year over year.&nbsp;



Revenue estimates for the third quarter come in at $33 billion, which would be an 83% increase from the prior year. Second quarter <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/nvidia-earnings-and-the-baked-in-premium">earnings</a> showed revenue was $30 billion.&nbsp;



Investors are going to be looking for signs that Nvidia’s Blackwell GPU, a high-performance chip expected to drive the next AI wave, is in high demand and functioning well. Tonight’s call comes as reports of Blackwell GPUs overheating continue to swirl. Nvidia has invested more than $2 billion in developing Blackwell, so shareholders (and the broader market) are going to want to see signs that these issues are being worked out.&nbsp;



Check back tomorrow for a full recap of Nvidia’s Q3 earnings and what will no doubt be some interesting market moves to follow.



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Nvidia heads into earnings as its star chip continues to glitch 

Ben Strack

This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance">subscribe</a>.



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It’s been two weeks since the US presidential election outcome that sent BTC to new highs and spurred some of the latest bullish happenings.



Let’s review what’s occurred in crypto land since Donald Trump’s political victory.



Starting with the crypto price rally, BTC rose 8.8% on Election Day (<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/btc-election-day-boost">Nov. 5</a>), Coinglass <a href="https://www.coinglass.com/today">data</a> shows. There were modest gains the next few days before BTC saw notable daily price increases of 4.8% and 10.2% on Nov. 9 and Nov. 10, respectively. Then a 4.2% rise on Nov. 14.



By Bitfinex analysts’ count, BTC rose roughly 40% (from the pre-election selloff point of about $66,880 to a then-peak $93,300) — marking the largest nine-day <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/btc-surge-above-86k-analysis">price increase</a> for BTC since January 2021.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Bitcoin surged to a new high over $94,900 early Wednesday. It was hovering around $93,800 at 2 pm ET — up 1.5% from 24 hours prior.&nbsp;



Outside of price, everyone was reminded of some of Trump’s crypto-related <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/revisiting-trumps-crypto-promises-after-his-election-win">pledges</a>. Given the Republicans’ majority in the House and Senate too, hope around the US creating a <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/daily/issue/post_a86f70e8-2026-4c78-821e-c99cc7fd3a4b">strategic bitcoin reserve</a> (via a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/senator-lummis-bitcoin-reserve-bill-crypto-policy">bill proposed</a> by Sen. Cynthia Lummis) is aplenty.&nbsp;&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">WE ARE GOING TO BUILD A STRATEGIC BITCOIN RESERVE 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 🇺🇸&mdash; Senator Cynthia Lummis (@SenLummis) <a href="https://twitter.com/SenLummis/status/1854208373740458432?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 6, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



In an X space yesterday, Lummis said she hopes “we can tee this up for adoption in 2025.” She noted that after Trump is sworn in, the US could get a headstart by converting gold certificates to bitcoin (even before the bill’s potential passage).



“The advantage of having legislation is it sets up the functional basis for the government holding bitcoin in a variety of locations, and then helping states hold their bitcoin as well,” she said.&nbsp;



On the latter point, a notable post-election crypto headline was <a href="https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/pennsylvania-house-introduces-bill-implement-strategic-bitcoin-reserve">Pennsylvania lawmakers </a>introducing a bill that would allow the state’s treasury to keep BTC on its balance sheet.



Then there are the companies following MicroStrategy’s lead in buying bitcoin <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/company-treasuries-btc-reserve-asset">for their treasuries</a> (or planning to). MicroStrategy founder Michael Saylor said on the same X space with Lummis that if the US creates a strategic bitcoin reserve, others will “stampede to keep up” — namely the EU, Asia and Brazil.



“This is all about laying in place a power infrastructure to build the 21st century economy that’s so incredibly compelling that it attracts the capital from the rest of the world into the United States and into US values and US politics,” Saylor added.



As for US spot bitcoin ETF demand during the trading days after the election (from Nov. 6 to Nov. 19), those products have seen net <a href="https://farside.co.uk/btc/">inflows</a> of about $5 billion.



Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/matt-hougan-crypto-reputational-risk">told me</a> the election outcome “removes the last vestige of reputational risk from crypto” — noting he expects institutional ownership to follow “an exponential curve from Q1 onwards.”&nbsp;



And Jersey City’s mayor and business administrator <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/jersey-city-pension-funds-btc-exposure">told me last week</a> the city’s pension fund was just about ready to allocate to bitcoin ETFs — undeterred even given the latest price increase.&nbsp;



Ether products saw an uptick in demand as well, reeling in $796 million in the six trading days after the election. Despite <a href="https://farside.co.uk/eth/">net outflows</a> over the past four trading days, the category’s flows <a href="https://x.com/JSeyff/status/1858568816865014242">remain slightly positive</a> since those launched in July.&nbsp;



Positive sentiment around the space has shown up in more ways than buying-fueled price increases and fund flows.



Robinhood appeared to ride the wave of regulatory optimism by adding solana, cardano, XRP and pepe <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/hood-cashes-in-on-crypto-rally">to its platform</a>. ETF issuers are also perhaps betting on a <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/crypto-etfs-filings-to-test-sec">more lenient SEC</a>, with Bitwise, for example, proposing after the election to convert its crypto index fund into an ETF.&nbsp;



A more recent amended ETF <a href="https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1976672/000168035924000410/gsbtcncvrclsetf485apos112024.htm">filing</a> for a Grayscale Bitcoin Covered Call ETF came as options on the US spot bitcoin ETFs got the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-etf-options-trading-begins">final regulatory OK</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



What am I forgetting?



Well, Trump’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/trump-nominates-commerce-dept-leader">nomination</a> of Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick to lead the Department of Commerce sets the stage for another <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/on-the-margin-newsletter-tradfi-btc-transacting">crypto-friendly person</a> in a powerful position (if confirmed).&nbsp;



And then there’s the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-sp500-nasdaq-live-11-18-2024/card/exclusive-trump-to-meet-privately-with-coinbase-ceo-brian-armstrong-DDkgF0xW1BW242rVeuqx">conversation</a> between Trump and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong — reportedly in part about personnel appointments.



The biggest thing to watch for now? Blockchain Association CEO Kristin Smith has a thought on that:&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">The next SEC chair is the most critical position for crypto <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@realdonaldtrump</a> will appoint. The chair must be a known quantity committed to undoing the damage of the last 4 years, have expertise on crypto–and share Trump’s vision of making the US the crypto capital of the world.&mdash; Kristin Smith (@KMSmithDC) <a href="https://twitter.com/KMSmithDC/status/1858933820457631930?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 19, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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Industry watchers have labeled SEC Commissioner <a href="https://fortune.com/crypto/2024/11/19/mark-uyeda-securities-exchange-commission-trump-gary-gensler-transition/">Mark Uyeda</a> and former Coinbase chief legal officer <a href="https://cryptoslate.com/krakens-founder-jesse-powell-backs-brian-brooks-for-sec-chair/">Brian Brooks</a> as potential candidates to replace Gary Gensler as SEC chair, but we don’t yet know Trump’s thoughts on the matter.



So we’ve been busy writing. And it doesn’t appear there will be a shortage of things to report on going forward. Galaxy CEO Mike Novogratz’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/mike-novogratz-on-trump-presidency">prediction</a> was perhaps an understatement.



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What the US election outcome spurred in crypto land  

Donovan Choy

This is a segment from the 0xResearch newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/research">subscribe</a>.



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Running an Ethereum L2 was historically very expensive. L2s had to pay millions in data availability costs to the L1.



All that changed with the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ethereum-dencun-upgrade-mainnet">Dencun hardfork</a> (EIP-4844) in March 2024. It introduced an expansion of blockspace called “blobs” for L2s to post batched data extremely cheaply to the L1. Blob space sits in a separate fee market from the L1. It’s about an order of a magnitude cheaper than L1 blockspace, making it a critical aspect of Ethereum’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/devcon-panelists-talk-fragmentation">rollup-centric</a> roadmap.



To illustrate that point, Base paid $9.34 million in expenses for Q1 2024, which saw a sharp drop to $699k in Q2 2024 and $42k in Q3 2024, based on <a href="https://tokenterminal.com/explorer/financial-statements/base">TokenTerminal</a> data.



The bad news (or good?) is that blobspace is getting somewhat pricey again as onchain activity picks up in the bull market.



Blobs today are limited to six per mainnet block. When blob usage hits a target limit of 50%, or three, a base fee is introduced to regulate demand usage by hundreds of L2s. When usage hits four blobs, base fees are further increased by up to 12.5% for the next block.



That is exactly what is starting to take place over the past several weeks (see chart below).



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXf9vvpx_wQ5S6nFIpTs9c8a2B2O4oJNfGFRrSzCBBfzANUpKlb-GmDJeFjOY_fRqeVQDJEFczgryZAZlgYw_QLT72DyrtGsOpFtXjhK7Xvj5lYiUDK5TEXlbm9Rdj71sXwJKFR7KA?key=q09Uf3Dp2Kx_a_xE7tOXk70k" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://dune.com/hildobby/blobs">Dune</a></figcaption></figure>



In short, blobs aren&#8217;t free anymore and L2s need to start paying “rent.” Based on <a href="https://ultrasound.money/">ultrasound.money</a>, blob fee burn is coming up to about <a href="https://ultrasound.money/">212 ETH</a> in the last 30 days, and has generated substantial blob fees to Ethereum mainnet.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeZcrKoAuAbdD6XRrkebT7g2zGhhLufUouEF6If4iHNnqLCZIP7Rw-bFwZaMyxq3Ryk6Torfv1BuJ-WUPM-ClcFyfU_ucgjM6GLwYBcMhAVLAPKugUR3vK8Z-8Q_o5qtyEoH_SYIg?key=q09Uf3Dp2Kx_a_xE7tOXk70k" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://app.blockworksresearch.com/analytics/eth?dashboard=ethereum-blobs">Blockworks Research</a></figcaption></figure>



So blobs are generally great. L2s are cheaper to operate, and that’s nice for L2 users.



But people (read: ETH holders) aren’t happy because it looks like L2s are getting away with paying barely any expenses to the L1, which thereby accrues less value to ETH the asset.



This complaint centers around pessimism that blob usage will be high enough to return value to the L1 for two key reasons:



<ol class="wp-block-list">
<li>L2s are fundamentally a business. They will opt for a cheaper data availability provider like Celestia or EigenDA, or worse still, a centralized data availability committee (DAC) with weaker security properties.</li>



<li>L2s will simply delay posting data back to the L1 when blob markets get expensive, as we have seen <a href="https://x.com/0xBreadguy/status/1823463041155129594">Scroll and Taiko</a> do in the past.</li>
</ol>



In a debate around blobs at <a href="https://youtu.be/JMZcRMy-Oow?t=19530">Devcon</a>, Ethereum researcher Ansgar Dietrichs acknowledged the misaligned incentives of L2s but counter-argued that Ethereum’s DA would matter more in the long term with more L2 networks coalescing around it as trust bottlenecks emerge around bridging.



There was also the “blobs is a loss leader” argument by Blueyard’s <a href="https://x.com/timjrobinson/status/1851222337787740425">Tim Robinson</a>. He notes that while blobs do not generate much revenue at present, they would do so very quickly due to the economics of blob design, and pay massive dividends for Ethereum in the future. According to Robinson’s blob simulator, a hypothetical Ethereum L1 processing 10,000 TPS with a 16 MB blob size (blob sizes are 125 KB today) would burn 6.5% of ETH a year.&nbsp;



This potential value accrual for ETH is why blobs would be fundamentally good for Ethereum in the long run. Throttling blob limits or raising blob fees to extract more value from L2s in the short run would basically be a bad “rent-seeking” idea.



And Ethereum researchers are putting their money where their mouth is. In an Ethereum Research post published two days ago, Toni Wahrstätter <a href="https://x.com/nero_eth/status/1858460235377336773">called for</a> either a conservative increase to 4/6 blobs or a higher 6/9 blob count.



In ACDE #197, Vitalik also <a href="https://youtu.be/Sq0ooAOaLpE">proposed</a> a 33% increment of blob space in the next Pectra <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/testing-bottleneck-next-ethereum-upgrade">hard fork</a>, which he cautioned was essential. Otherwise, users would leave to other chains.



In sum, the complex debate around blobs boils down to the question of whether Ethereum wants to prioritize the average L2 user and its “Ethereum-aligned” L2 ecosystems, or prioritize value accrual to ETH the asset.



Ethereum researchers believe that prioritizing the latter may cause an exodus of users and developers to cheaper chains, and are doubling down accordingly on scaling blob space for the long term. However, that damages the perception of ETH as an economic asset, which in turn angers ETH token holders in the short run.



It’s a tricky situation for Ethereum either way, one which requires the mammoth task of crystal-balling into the future and accounting for a myriad of “what-ifs.” Time will tell which path is correct.



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The blobs conundrum: Ethereum’s balancing act

Former top FTX executive Gary Wang was sentenced to time served with three years of supervised release Wednesday for his role in the $8 billion fraud that preceded the exchange&#8217;s collapse. Wang is the final cooperating member of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s inner circle to be sentenced.&nbsp;



Wang, co-founder and former chief technology officer of <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/ftx">FTX</a>, served as a government witness in Bankman-Fried’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/sbf-trial">criminal trial</a> last fall. He was the first co-conspirator to work with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud and conspiracy in December 2022.&nbsp;



“You immediately did the right thing,” Judge Lewis Kaplan said Wednesday, addressing Wang. “You are entitled to a world of credit.”&nbsp;



While Wang does bear some responsibility for his role in the crimes, Kaplan added, his culpability is minimal compared to other defendants. “Life is a balance,” and cooperation should be rewarded, Kaplan said.&nbsp;



Wang’s parents and wife, who is expecting their first child, were present in the courtroom Wednesday.



Prosecutors and Wang’s team previously asked the judge to sentence Wang to time served. 



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/ftx-impacts-on-cryptos-future">Remembering FTX: How the collapse shaped crypto’s future</a>



Wang’s assistance, prosecutors said, was not only instrumental in their case against <a href="http://v">Bankman-Fried</a> but will help bring down more criminals in the future.&nbsp;



“Wang has built an interface that the Government has begun using for detecting potential fraud by publicly traded companies,” prosecutors wrote in a Nov. 13 note to the court.&nbsp;



Should Wang avoid jail time, prosecutors said he agreed to continue working on an additional “tool for detection of potential illegal activity in cryptocurrency markets.”&nbsp;



Last fall, Wang testified that at Bankman-Fried’s direction, he wrote the code that allowed Alameda’s “<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sam-bankman-fried-gary-wang">unlimited withdrawals</a>” from FTX. The excessive line of credit ultimately culminated in an $8 billion hole in the exchange’s books.



“We gave <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/gary-wang-ftx-not-fine">special privileges to Alameda Research</a> on FTX,” Wang said during Bankman-Fried’s trial. “And we lied about this to the public.”&nbsp;



Wang’s attorneys said he was unaware Alameda was using the tool to take FTX customer money.



“As the Government has recognized, Gary first learned of the fraud after it was well underway having been lied to and deceived by Sam Bankman-Fried,” they wrote in a Nov. 6 filing. “Gary is profoundly remorseful and has taken extraordinary steps to assist the Government and others working on behalf of FTX victims.”



Wang is the third and final government witness to be sentenced. Caroline Ellison, former CEO of Alameda Research and Bankman-Fried’s on-again-off-again girlfriend, was <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/caroline-ellison-sentenced-to-24-months">sentenced to two years in prison in September</a>. Fellow top advisor Nishad Singh last month was <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/nishad-singh-sentenced-to-three-years-supervised-release">sentenced to time served</a> with three years of supervised release.



Updated Nov. 20, 2024 at 10:49 am ET: Added quotes from Judge Lewis Kaplan. 



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FTX co-founder won’t serve time in prison, judge rules

Jack Kubinec

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It&#8217;s often said that the real money in the gold rush was made by selling shovels.



You could argue that’s the case in crypto right now as well: As Solana eyes an all-time high, it’s the crypto exchanges — where users gain access to their magic internet money — raking in most of the revenue.



Despite the growth of decentralized exchanges relative to centralized ones, Coinbase is still lapping up a lot of the US crypto market, while Binance remains dominant in the east. These exchanges take in funds from trading fees and from their Solana validators, but onchain sleuths have also found the two exchanges to be wasting some of their funds with inefficient transaction processes.



Coinbase and Binance make money in roughly similar ways: When users trade, they take a cut. Their take rate varies but can be quite high (Coinbase charged me $0.99 in fees when I set up a $10 bitcoin order, for instance). Solana accounted for 9% of Coinbase’s transaction revenue for the first half of this year which would add up to roughly $167 million for the exchange, per its most recent financial disclosures. That figure has likely risen in the second half of the year, as Solana continues to showcase impressive price action.



Both exchanges also run Solana validators. Despite charging their stakers an 8% commission that is at the upper end of what most big validators charge, Coinbase and Binance still run the second- and sixth-largest validators, respectively. Operating a validator — which votes on transactions to keep the Solana blockchain running —&nbsp;is quite lucrative for Coinbase and Binance these days.



Assuming a Solana network reward of 8% annually, Coinbase would bring in around $19 million annually at current prices, and Binance would net $13 million. Those numbers would be especially elevated this week: Tips and fees validators brought in last week topped $110 million last week, an all-time high by more than double, according to Blockworks Research data.&nbsp;



It’s perhaps a market inefficiency that Coinbase and Binance, despite offering lower yields than competitors, still dominate staked SOL supply. This highlights the demand for platforms that simplify crypto’s technical complexities.



Interestingly, Coinbase and Binance are perhaps spending more SOL than they should as well.



Coinbase wasted $19,000 in the past week overpaying for computing resources on the Solana network, according to a Dune <a href="https://dune.com/queries/4269803/7201741">dashboard</a>. Essentially, Coinbase is overpaying on priority fees by not specifying the exact amount of compute units (which can be thought of like Ethereum gas) it intends to use.



Binance has hiccups on its own part. Blockworks Research’s Dan Smith <a href="https://x.com/smyyguy/status/1858263109858943004">identified</a> a Binance USDC transfer that paid $8 in priority fees — far higher than what the exchange should be paying for a stablecoin transaction that isn’t competing for blockspace like a memecoin would, for instance.



Do shovels still earn a lot of dough? Of course. But their sellers still have plenty of issues to work out.



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Binance and Coinbase are pocketing a lot of SOL

David Canellis

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">subscribe</a>.



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If the US government really intends to create a strategic bitcoin reserve, it will need to compete with MicroStrategy.



As it stands, the velocity of MicroStrategy’s bitcoin buying has exploded, to the point that it now holds 331,200 BTC ($30.9 billion), or 1.7% of the circulating supply.



For scale, Sen. Lummis has pitched a 1 million BTC target for the government reserve, worth $93.2 billion at current prices. In July, the latest figures showed <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/empire-newsletter-strategic-bitcoin-reserve">the US holding over $608 billion in gold</a> certificates in its strategic reserve.



To be clear, there’s no official indication that the US will actually make bitcoin its fifth reserve asset (Polymarket puts the current <a href="https://polymarket.com/event/will-trump-create-a-national-bitcoin-reserve-in-his-first-100-days?tid=1732097029269">chance</a> at 36%). And as Blockworks’ Byron Gilliam <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/daily/issue/post_a86f70e8-2026-4c78-821e-c99cc7fd3a4b">pointed</a> out in his newsletter yesterday, it could even be a really bad idea.&nbsp;



Let’s say it does happen. That would mean MicroStrategy is frontrunning the US government at size, potentially driving up prices before the reserve buys its first, very hypothetical, coins.



Mapping exactly when MSTR buys its bitcoin — to perhaps find positive correlation between the price of BTC and the firm’s trades — is unfortunately impossible with the publicly-available data.



MicroStrategy does disclose the number of bitcoins it buys alongside its total dollar spend. But it generally only offers a range of dates on which those trades were made.



Still, averaging those figures out shows that over most of the past three years, MicroStrategy would’ve spent up to several millions of dollars on BTC per day during its buying sprees. Those sprees often last for over a month, according to its filings.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeWnL8r3XDyTcVNQIkVyXZ_uJIWA0qefMzxpiw7n-AzG2OMtlMVE0usRVGSE4FGaBJV5f71pXJV0rsIv0Cx8oCrNwB54HnkMEXMUHoUflRMx2cnDk7I5jNcMox1PHOCEDikD4Iu_A?key=ZGErJNgi7_FnoM3H-fcfO03J" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A range of dates wasn’t disclosed for those massive purchases on the left side of the chart (the green, peach and pink plus symbols). They were huge in any case.</figcaption></figure>



By March of this year, when bitcoin was setting all-time highs around $74,000, that number had jumped to $80 million per buying day.&nbsp;



Come early November, it was $190 million, before ramping up to over $657 million last <a href="https://assets.contentstack.io/v3/assets/bltb564490bc5201f31/bltc841ab65fe7d972b/673b392ad908785dbba03616/form_8-k_11-18-2024.pdf">week</a> — $4.6 billion on 51,780 BTC between Nov. 11 and Nov. 17, at an average price of $88,627.&nbsp;



The price of bitcoin climbed up to 14% across that period, from $80,000 to more than $91,000.&nbsp;



Saylor has previously said that MSTR has bought bitcoin on spot markets, but that was early on.&nbsp;



It could be that the firm these days acquires bitcoin over the counter, which would dampen direct impact. The sheer size of the buys, however, would <a href="https://forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2024/09/26/over-the-counter-trades-hidden-trends-behind-bitcoin-price/">probably still influence prices</a> somewhere down the line.



Linking MicroStrategy’s bitcoin buys and its share price is far more straight-forward.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1550" height="997" src="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/unnamed.png?w=1024&amp;h=1024" alt="" class="wp-image-94618" srcset="https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/unnamed.png?w=1550 1550w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/unnamed.png?w=300 300w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/unnamed.png?w=1024 1024w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/unnamed.png?w=768 768w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/unnamed.png?w=1536 1536w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/unnamed.png?w=400 400w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/unnamed.png?w=406 406w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/unnamed.png?w=340 340w, https://blockworks-co.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/unnamed.png?w=80 80w" sizes="(max-width: 1550px) 100vw, 1550px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">MSTR has gone over 3,000% in the past five years or so, compared to 800% for bitcoin</figcaption></figure>



There was a time when MicroStrategy stock (in blue) was weighed down by its bitcoin (the orange area in the background) — leading the two assets to closely track each other in the bear market.



All that changed in late February, when Saylor announced his company had added 3,000 BTC ($155 million then, $280 million now). MSTR stock then jumped 27% in two days, and bitcoin went on to set an all-time high three weeks later.



MSTR has been tightly correlated with the dollar value of its bitcoin treasury ever since — not the price of bitcoin — swelling its market cap from $10 billion to nearly $100 billion.



If that persists, MSTR’s share price might be resistant to bitcoin downturns as long as it buys the dip, which it probably will, <a href="https://microstrategy.com/press/microstrategy-announces-proposed-private-offering-of-1-75b-of-convertible-senior-notes_11-18-2024">considering the debt raises keep coming</a>. In the meantime, shareholders are no doubt enjoying the show.&nbsp;



As would MicroStrategy execs and insiders, who’ve now offloaded almost $559 million in company shares so far this year, per OpenInsider data, which compiles SEC filings (almost three-quarters going to Saylor, who’s said that he intends to buy bitcoin himself).



And they say the key to building generational wealth is diversification.



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MicroStrategy’s bitcoin bet is paying off in more ways than one

Delphine Forma

MiCA compliance is the main catalyst that will separate winners from losers across Europe’s crypto industry. Companies that embrace the framework’s rigorous standards won’t just stay afloat; they’ll dominate, using compliance as a strategic weapon to outpace competitors, drive mergers and acquisitions, and secure their position in a rapidly consolidating market.



MiCA’s introduction is poised to ignite a surge in mergers and acquisitions across Europe’s crypto sector, as regulatory compliance becomes a key driver of deal-making. Firms that master MiCA’s standards won’t just protect their market positions — they’ll gain a competitive edge, leveraging compliance credentials to attract partners, investors and buyers. Consolidation will be a natural response to rising operational costs, with smaller players seeking alliances in order to survive and thrive. Meanwhile, I foresee larger firms capitalizing on similar opportunities to expand their footprints.



This wave of consolidation will most likely signal a major shift in the competitive dynamics of the European crypto sector. As smaller firms struggle to shoulder the costs of compliance, their strategic value to larger, more resourceful players will only grow. For acquirers, MiCA-compliant firms represent a safer bet, offering established infrastructure, robust internal controls and governance systems already aligned with regulatory demands. With MiCA emphasizing operational soundness and investor protection, these companies will become prime targets, reducing risks and accelerating post-acquisition integration. In this new era, compliance won’t just be a cost — it’ll be a mechanism for growth, reshaping the competitive landscape.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/micar-foreign-stablecoins-advantage-in-europe">MiCAR will give foreign stablecoins a clear advantage in Europe</a>



The framework itself sets a high bar for transparency and accountability. Under MiCA, any firm planning to invest in or acquire a crypto-asset service provider (CASP) or an asset-referenced token (ART) issuer must notify the national competent authority (NCA) in their EU member state in writing. CASPs, which include companies offering services like trading, custody or asset transfers, will now face detailed regulatory reviews to ensure the deal complies with MiCA’s strict standards. The acquiring party must also provide detailed information to the NCA to facilitate an evaluation of the proposed acquisition or any expansion of an existing qualifying stake. Regulatory due diligence will play a critical role in these transactions under MiCA.



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/european-union-guidelines-clarify-mica">European securities regulator seeks limits on non-EU crypto firms</a>



Key factors for approval include the reputation and leadership track record of the acquiring party, the ongoing compliance of the target ART issuer or CASP with MiCA regulations, and the financial stability of the acquirer. These elements will be closely scrutinized to ensure that both parties meet MiCA’s stringent standards.



While NCAs have other measures that will factor in, it’s clear that MiCA compliance is critical for M&amp;A success. Firms that have clearly established controls in place will be the winners, independent of which aisle of the deal they sit on.



Firms that fail to comply with MiCA, however, will face serious challenges in the M&amp;A market as their regulatory gaps make them riskier and less appealing to buyers. Non-compliance can lead to fines, expensive fixes or devaluation during due diligence. For non-EU firms, acquiring a MiCA-compliant company to attempt to benefit from the “grandfathering period,” might seem like an easy way to enter the European market, but this comes with strict ESMA oversight. Regulators will be focused on ensuring investor protection and proper integration of EU-regulated functions, meaning non-EU firms must avoid tactics like regulatory loopholes or improper solicitation that could raise red flags.



MiCA-compliant firms will remain attractive targets for non-EU companies seeking easier entry into the European market. Without a MiCA license, non-EU firms risk being excluded from the EU entirely, as the reverse solicitation principle “should be understood as very narrowly framed and as such must be regarded as the exception; and it cannot be assumed, nor exploited to circumvent MiCA.” To succeed, non-EU acquirers must fully integrate and comply with MiCA’s requirements to meet EU regulatory standards and operate smoothly within the region.



Read more from our opinion section: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/stablecoin-regulation-necessary-now-us">The time for US stablecoin regulation is now&nbsp;</a>



As regulatory scrutiny intensifies, MiCA’s strict approval process — focused on reputation, financial stability and compliance — will ensure that only the most prepared companies thrive in post-acquisition integrations. Firms that fully embrace MiCA’s framework will be best positioned to lead, setting new standards for trust, innovation and sustainable growth in Europe’s evolving crypto ecosystem.



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MiCA compliance will drive Europe into a crypto consolidation frenzy

This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance">subscribe</a>.



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Shares of Donald Trump’s social media company, Trump Media &amp; Technology, continued to fluctuate Tuesday following a rally spurred by reports that the president-elect is furthering his crypto business interests.&nbsp;



The Financial Times <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/d7f921d5-3668-4b6b-a98d-2681ad73610f">reported</a> Tuesday that Trump Media is in “advanced talks” to acquire crypto exchange Bakkt — a company founded and owned by New York Stock Exchange parent company Intercontinental Exchange (ICE).



The news pushed Bakkt shares 162% higher Monday and Trump Media (ticker DJT) posted a 17% gain. Bakkt sustained its rally into Tuesday (trading 7% higher midway through the session), while DJT lost more than 8%.&nbsp;



The social media company began trading on the Nasdaq last spring after a merger with Digital World Acquisition Corp. Currently hovering around $30, DTJ shares are up almost 150% from their September low, but are still trading about 40% off of their IPO price of $50.&nbsp;



Trump Media’s recent gains have not been linear, though. Shares rose 65% at the end of October, a rally attributed to increased optimism at the time that Trump <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/prediction-markets-election-odds">would win</a> the election. The share price since Trump’s victory however has been flat, posting a modest increase the day after the election before erasing gains.&nbsp;



The market is, presumably, confused about what a Trump win means for the social media company. Yesterday’s rise shows that investors are decently certain that acquiring Bakkt would be a good move. But the subsequent retreat shows shareholders aren’t exactly sure why.&nbsp;



We’ll be following the acquisition story and will be writing a lot more about what it means when the majority shareholder of a public company moves into the White House. Stay tuned.



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Trump Media shares ride post-election, potential crypto acquisition wave 

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President-elect Donald Trump has nominated a crypto supporter to lead the Department of Commerce.&nbsp;



The Wall Street Journal (along with Punchbowl News founder <a href="https://x.com/JakeSherman/status/1858896766759841802">Jake Sherman</a>) <a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/trump-commerce-secretary-howard-lutnick-cabinet-77c86b81">reported</a> Trump’s expected pick of Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick for that job on Tuesday morning. Trump later confirmed the selection on Truth Social.



There were previous reports that Lutnick — a leader of Trump’s transition team — was in the running for treasury secretary.&nbsp;



We highlighted Lutnick’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/on-the-margin-newsletter-tradfi-btc-transacting">remarks on bitcoin</a> in a September edition of this newsletter. At the time, the CEO noted that TradFi players — including banks and brokerages — would “go headfirst into bitcoin” when the regulatory environment improved.&nbsp;



Donald Trump’s election win has seemed to set the stage for that, given the <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/revisiting-trumps-crypto-promises-after-his-election-win">crypto promises</a> he has made (namely, “firing” SEC Chair Gary Gensler).



Bitcoin surged to above $93,900 for the first time just before 2 pm ET Tuesday — up 3.7% from 24 hours prior. &nbsp;&nbsp;



As BTC “gets invited into this party, up we go,” Lutnick added in <a href="https://x.com/howardlutnick/status/1831080474124681316?s=46">a September video</a> posted to X. That comes when banks can more freely clear, custody and transact in bitcoin, Lutnick said — a reality hindered by the SEC’s Staff Accounting Bulletin <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/senate-gensler-sec-overturn-sab-121">(SAB) 121</a>, for example.



Aside from being vocally enthusiastic about the crypto segment, Lutnick’s firm has stablecoin issuer Tether as a client — a company that has denied being <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/tether-denies-government-investigation">under federal investigation</a>.



We and others are curious about what roles Lutnick might drop if he indeed takes on this cabinet position, so as not to serve his own <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/09/us/politics/howard-lutnick-transition-ethics.html">business interests</a>.



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Trump nominates pro-crypto CEO to lead commerce department

This is a segment from the Forward Guidance newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/forwardguidance">subscribe</a>.



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A new crypto-related financial tool is finally here.&nbsp;



Spot bitcoin ETFs hit US exchanges in January, and more than 10 months later, investors are able to trade options on the biggest of those products (and others very soon).



As you probably know, an option is a contract representing the right to buy or sell a financial product at a certain price for a specific period of time.



Industry watchers have told Blockworks that options would lead to a more <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/on-the-margin-newsletter-btc-etf-options">robust ecosystem</a> around the spot ETFs, enhancing liquidity and price discovery.



CK Zheng, CIO of crypto hedge fund ZX Squared Capital, told me today that bitcoin ETF options are “extremely powerful” for institutional investors to better manage their bitcoin exposures under various market conditions.&nbsp;



Indeed, Anchorage Digital CEO Nathan McCauley said in a statement that the new product shows bitcoin is further “cementing its place alongside stocks, bonds and commodities as a mainstream institutional investment.”



The options can also be used by speculators, Zheng explained, to leverage their bets when they are extremely bullish or bearish on the asset.



Bitwise’s Jeff Park previously <a href="https://x.com/dgt10011/status/1837278352823972147">noted</a> these options would mark “the first time the financial world will see regulated leverage on a perpetual commodity that is truly supply-constrained.”



Put another way by Joe Consorti in a <a href="https://x.com/JoeConsorti/status/1858666860960727249">video</a> on X, listing options on bitcoin ETFs “opens the door to the largest and deepest liquidity pools on the planet.”&nbsp;



Let’s quickly run through some of the events leading up to these listings:&nbsp;



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li>Nasdaq, NYSE and Cboe submitted proposals to the SEC in January to list options on spot bitcoin ETPs.</li>



<li>Grayscale Investments pointed out the SEC’s quick approval of options on bitcoin futures ETFs in a March blog <a href="https://www.grayscale.com/blog/legal-topics/investors-deserve-options-on-gbtc">post</a>, calling on the regulator to do the same for the spot products. But that month, the SEC said it <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-delays-bitcoin-etf-options-proposals">needed more time</a> to consider the proposals.</li>



<li>The SEC, on Sept. 20, gave “accelerated” approval of options on BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT). About a month later, the SEC <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/sec-approves-cboe-nyse-options-btc-etfs">greenlit the bids</a> by NYSE and CBOE to list options on other bitcoin ETFs.</li>



<li>The CFTC last week essentially yielded to the SEC and the Options Clearing Corporation (OCC), <a href="https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/9008-24">saying</a> that the listing of these bitcoin ETF options “does not implicate the CFTC’s jurisdiction.”</li>



<li>The OCC said in a Monday <a href="https://infomemo.theocc.com/infomemo/search?utm_source=forward-guidance.beehiiv.com&amp;utm_medium=newsletter&amp;utm_campaign=last-week-today&amp;_bhlid=cc18d512040548fa9bc7f854de1b4deae9cd23de">memo</a> that it was “preparing for the clearance, settlement and risk management” of bitcoin ETF options. A Nasdaq spokesperson <a href="https://x.com/Blockworks_/status/1858598159720870083">confirmed to me</a> later in the day that they intended to list IBIT options on Tuesday.</li>
</ul>



So here we are. Options on IBIT are available today; that fund has grown to have roughly $43 billion in assets under management — making it by far the largest bitcoin ETF and even bigger than the iShares Gold Trust (IAU).



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">A few hundred million so far in options volume on <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24IBIT&amp;src=ctag&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">$IBIT</a> (a ton for Day One).. here&#39;s a rank of the contracts by volume, it&#39;s almost all calls. Seems very bullish, esp the Dec20th C100, which is basically betting price of btc will double in the next month. <a href="https://t.co/R6HB7OMUla">pic.twitter.com/R6HB7OMUla</a>&mdash; Eric Balchunas (@EricBalchunas) <a href="https://twitter.com/EricBalchunas/status/1858916477384225005?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 19, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Grayscale said bitcoin ETF options are set to begin trading on NYSE — the exchange on which its GBTC and BTC products are listed — tomorrow. Bitwise <a href="https://x.com/HHorsley/status/1858697188282691924">expects the same</a> for options on its bitcoin ETF.



“Many new investors will, no doubt, leverage their experiences in investing in the meme stock options market to bitcoin options,” Zheng said. “The bitcoin ETF options market will compete greatly with Deribit to bring more investors to the US and help build the US as the bitcoin derivative trading center.”



Bitwise’s Park <a href="https://x.com/dgt10011/status/1857603360486216032">pointed out</a> on X that BTC ETF options will have “cross-margining capabilities in multi-asset portfolios” than an exchange like Deribit “can never provide.”&nbsp;



He added: “Only spot ETF options can leverage your GLD, SPY, HYG ETFs, bonds, loans, and cross-margin to achieve unmatched capital efficiency — closest thing that looks like free leverage.”



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Bitcoin ETF options marks new chapter for the asset class

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Trump’s win could have you cooking up all sorts of profitable trading strategies.&nbsp;



It’s only natural, considering it feels like we’re on the cusp of a new paradigm: for arguably the first time ever, US regulators might take it easy on crypto and let innovation flourish.



And so the topic of risk appetite came up on today’s <a href="https://blockworks.co/podcast/empire/1c26e634-a606-11ef-896f-cf46c9751e10">Empire podcast episode</a>.&nbsp;



Yano asked Eric Peters, CEO and CIO of both Coinbase Asset Management and One River, what he’d prescribe for a 30-40-year-old first-time crypto investor who has a million dollars to allocate and a strong appetite for risk.



“I would advocate for them to be overweighted to bitcoin and ether but have some exposure to solana. Maybe 50/35/15 [percent], something like that,” Peters said. “[But] I think if you’re right on that trade, you’re gonna, at least for a period of time, wish you’d had a million bucks in solana.”



The question was really posed within the immediate context. Still, we can backtest Peters’ suggestion.&nbsp;



And even better, plot it alongside Coinbase’s new benchmark crypto index <a href="https://www.marketvector.com/indexes/digital-assets/coinbase-50">COIN50</a>, which is currently weighted 51.5% BTC, 23.4% ETH, 7% SOL with the remaining 18% or so spread across 47 other altcoins including DOGE, XRP, BCH and BONK.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXegmmGnRDQiqk9TJjDWKlvEQz_RUF3P9SXxyKmGrmcf6KXsFgs-TCEcpEMh80fQFw5AIu-85VNS40byP8klSJ5ZdIMi6dUes0TDQZvt3wXiwXalps30Ub9t9m-pNvbEJ7WfcXiz?key=QNtgq33Y3LRZMbcEKF6F1kmT" alt=""/></figure>



The above, in log view, plots the value of that $1 million allocation from the end of 2020, which is when COIN50’s performance data starts.&nbsp;



There’s indeed an element of time bias. The period starts in the leadup to the epic 2021 bull run when SOL’s market cap was under $100 million (now $117 billion).



So, back then, it would be questionable just how likely it would be to split a million-dollar allocation between BTC, ETH, and a token so small in relative terms.



In any case, the purple shows the split highlighted by Peters, which turned $1 million into $27 million and would now be at all-time highs for dollar value.



ETH maxis were second best with $4.2 million. And while there are currently no ETPs tracking COIN50, if there were, that vehicle would’ve converted to a $3.8 million portfolio.&nbsp;



Someone who aped a million dollars in BTC meanwhile would be holding $3.15 million right now.



For scale: Anyone who bought an index fund tracking any major benchmark from legacy finance would, at best, be sitting on $1.64 million, via the Nasdaq 100.&nbsp;



That’s a minimum $1.5 million difference between stocks and crypto. It’s hard to put an exact value on risk appetite, but that’s as solid a number as any.



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Coinbase Asset Management CEO’s allocation recommendation

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When I talk to Solana ecosystem people, I’ll sometimes ask what new projects they’ve been hearing about. One such project that’s been catching apparent buzz is Perena, a stablecoin infrastructure protocol.



Perena is built on the premise that as stablecoins proliferate, liquidity could fragment, and stablecoins aren’t useful if they aren’t liquid. The platform offers a Solana-based stablecoin liquidity pool, and it plans to offer an <a href="https://x.com/SamBroner/status/1857072872205730283">asset-backed</a> stablecoin in the future.



The project was founded by Anna Yuan, who started the Solana Foundation’s stablecoin arm during her more than two years at the non-profit. While working at the foundation, Yuan began to see that new stablecoin issuers would mint a lot of tokens but would have limited integrations, and users consequently weren’t able to benefit from stablecoins in the real world.&nbsp;



She cited Ondo as an example — the tokenized US Treasury stablecoin has over $100 million in supply but only 3,500 holders, <a href="https://solscan.io/token/A1KLoBrKBde8Ty9qtNQUtq3C2ortoC3u7twggz7sEto6">according</a> to SolScan.



I asked Yuan about the commonly cited claim in crypto that stablecoins have pulled off the difficult task of finding product-market fit, or satisfying the needs of an existing market.



“I don’t agree,” Yuan said, adding that liquidity begets PMF, and most stablecoins simply aren’t liquid enough to be useful. She added that the real-world need for things like money transfers in emerging markets will help stablecoins “get there.”



Perena is currently in closed beta, but the platform’s main feature will initially be a multi-stablecoin liquidity pool which uses a liquidity provider token called USD* that represents a piece of a seed pool containing Tether, Circle, and PayPal USD. In simpler terms, the liquidity pool model should make it easier to issue stablecoins, since smaller coins can access the liquidity from the well-capitalized seed pool.



The concept has raised to-be-announced seed funds, and Yuan’s deep links in Solana helped her tap into the ecosystem’s very-active angel investor community. Yuan said she decided to start raising funds on a Thursday, and by late Friday, she already had a couple dozen angel investors on board. Solana co-founders Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal are both noteworthy backers.&nbsp;



At the end of our call, Yuan and I got chatting about how Solana’s stablecoin market capitalization can meaningfully grow. The network currently accounts for just 2% of all stables, according to DeFiLlama.



Yuan gave an interesting answer: Solana PayFi could grow the economy for people taking their paycheck in stablecoins. She estimated 2,000 people currently take their full-time salary in Solana stablecoins. That number could certainly get a lot bigger.



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Solana is excited about new stablecoin infrastructure provider Perena

This is a segment from the 0xResearch newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/research">subscribe</a>.



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Crypto is in love with AI agents now. Firstly, AI agent sentiment is at an <a href="https://x.com/_kaitoai/status/1858812982240682129">all-time high</a>, as captured by Kaito.



Secondly, we’ve witnessed AI agents in the last few months integrated into <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/0xresearch-newsletter-goatse-memecoin">memecoins</a> (GOAT), social media influencers (<a href="https://x.com/luna_virtuals">Luna</a>), venture funds (<a href="https://x.com/internetphysics/status/1857419356910813582">ai16z</a>), launchpads (<a href="https://x.com/virtuals_io">Virtual</a>) and trading (<a href="https://x.com/Spectral_Labs">Spectral</a>).



Third, ETHGlobal hosted its largest hackathon post-Devcon (about 713 projects submitted), and the use of AI agents absolutely dominated the competition. I don’t know exactly how many teams used AI agents, but <a href="https://x.com/stonecoldpat0/status/1858051936446197903">at</a> <a href="https://x.com/wbnns/status/1858018625677840524">least</a> <a href="https://x.com/Jnix2007/status/1858148480465936740">four</a> <a href="https://x.com/benlakoff/status/1858062211522134525">judges</a> pointed out its prevalence at the hackathon.



I should know, since I was part of a team that created Dongle Party, an app that leverages AI agents for token trading competitions.



With a suite of 1inch APIs under the hood, the application essentially abstracted away the need to navigate between wallets and dapps. Just query your AI agent to look at your wallet balance, send tokens or execute trades, all within the app.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXc57KH9AfcimXYqP4BjWesXQG3ULwbzH5KFsHF4424WtD5nTLeq3UOAgvStundbGf_pdkZyMeY4J60psax-DWiXJtELxSnX_Cf5vhvJPaVMNxVWyRufWPIo2OvEBUhh36Ee3vT7UQ?key=ABNeh2MGSHsSTQy-jt2chRtH" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://dongle-party.vercel.app">Dongle Party app</a></figcaption></figure>



A far more impressive team making use of AI agents was <a href="https://x.com/sohey_eth/status/1858046972868936143">Industry AI</a>, a top 10 finalist that created a gamified interface for multiple agents to work together to complete tasks. Industry AI was bloody impressive for a project completed in a few days, and its capabilities spanned the entire onchain experience, from wallet creation and launching an NFT collection to trading tokens.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXc4h5geAKszxomQJr-hpFdWqkpvoyw0yhnq8N8HJliqSzbs9y66cAsS1GDlT7FQHt8ctBo1k2SRqM9cXTSQOUujrwBv1wO52VcxiM6gVS6ET3naMQFtXpta_KcJqp5H9LbbIXX8dA?key=ABNeh2MGSHsSTQy-jt2chRtH" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: <a href="https://ethglobal.com/showcase/industry-ai-4w3vy">EthGlobal</a></figcaption></figure>



Then there was also <a href="https://ethglobal.com/showcase/daogenie-nha62">DAOGenie</a>, another top 10 finalist that sought to streamline the thick bureaucracy of DAO governance with AI agents. AI applied to DAO governance isn’t a new idea, and it’s something that major DAOs like Maker have been <a href="https://forum.sky.money/t/the-5-phases-of-endgame/20830">experimenting</a> with.



The absolute ease in which AI agents can be integrated to serve crypto use cases is largely thanks to Coinbase Developer Platform’s (CDP) <a href="https://docs.cdp.coinbase.com/agentkit/docs/welcome">AgentKit SDK</a> running LLMs under the hood.



Such tools are making the intersection of AI and crypto simpler. If developers can do it in a multiday hackathon, brace yourself for what organized and well-funded teams are going to achieve.



Jesse Pollak, founder of Base, told me confidently at Devcon: “Base is right now at the center of the onchain AI economy. One big focus for us in the next couple months is the use of AI agents for messaging on the XMTP protocol within Coinbase Wallet. We see messaging as a key channel for AI agents to become useful points of reference.”



One thing that stuck out to me at the ETHGlobal hackathon was the natural blend of AI agents with the permissionless ethic of crypto building blocks.



In crypto sits an openly accessible stack of world-class tools that are processing billions of dollars in value daily. These battle-tested financial building blocks — DEXs, L1/L2s, bridges — are going out of their way to incentivize crypto devs to integrate AI agents to capture value for themselves, in ways that centralized exchanges and banks cannot or will not.



That’s not to say that Robinhood or Wells Fargo aren’t looking at AI agents, but that innovation will inevitably be slow and introduced in piecemeal ways within the permissioned confines of TradFi.



In both cases, it’s the simple profit motive at work. But only in the case of crypto are the rules of the game far more competitive and the pace of innovation moving at breakneck speeds.



That might explain part of the hype that has captured the imaginations of crypto researchers looking into how AI agents can reshape the blockchain economy and the onchain experience as we know it.



The use of AI agents is also but only one sliver of use cases <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/decentralize-ai-to-curb-big-tech">applied to crypto</a>, in addition to a whole host of other use cases such as data training (<a href="https://blockworks.co/news/solana-wallets-grass-airdrop">Grass</a>), zero-knowledge machine learning (<a href="https://gizatech.xyz/">Giza</a>), and of course decentralized compute (<a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/daily/issue/post_9690fc34-cf42-4cb2-94fe-a7589dc910bc">Akash</a>).



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The AI agent invasion: How crypto is leading the charge

Katherine Ross

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, <a href="https://blockworks.co/newsletter/empire">subscribe</a>.



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We’re just barely halfway through the month and CME’s crypto unit is already logging its best month since it launched bitcoin futures contracts way back in 2017.&nbsp;



As many loyal Empire readers know, <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-100k-very-possible">I like to look at CME data</a> to understand where traders and institutions are putting their money.



So, yesterday I caught up with Gio Vicioso, CME’s head of crypto. Turns out, the firm is averaging “a little bit over $10 billion a day across our futures suite.”



“Just comparing November this year to last, our volume and contract terms are up more than 5x … and then we&#8217;re also seeing increases or records in terms of open interest, where November is also the record month, averaging more than 166,000 contracts. And that&#8217;s up 60% compared to October, and up over 3x compared to November 2023,” Vicioso said.



The large bitcoin contracts offered by CME are becoming so big that investors — primarily retail — are turning to CME’s micro bitcoin contracts.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcRv7msYK1At1aAnjROZlZGEiPE29QRCTDPLp2ZAh-YW8Axeg_UVAs6upccd0sCRUB8KlDOSsafq_3m5bI78j0bOgvCMsWN_fw4wSHXg3uBKYsB5SjcJhz5RaBpZLItAzApU4bsqg?key=QNtgq33Y3LRZMbcEKF6F1kmT" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">A look at the volume CME’s seen since the election</figcaption></figure>



“Now we&#8217;re seeing an increase in volume in terms of our micro contracts, where those contracts, over the last couple weeks, have been averaging more than a billion dollars a day. When we look at the year, our micro bitcoin contract was averaging between $200 to $300 million per day, and we&#8217;re also seeing an uptick in terms of the representation of that smaller contract to the larger contract, whereas for the year, micro bitcoin futures volume represented roughly 6% of bitcoin volumes,” he said.



“Over the past few trading sessions, we&#8217;ve seen a micro contract represent now north of 15% or so of the large bitcoin contracts. We’ve really seen increases across the board.”



The makeup of participants is mixed, Vicioso noted. Micro contracts are seeing a fairly even spread of retail and institutional buyers given that the margin is a more “manageable” number. The readthrough for institutions, in that case, is that they could be testing out fresh strategies and finetuning their exposure.&nbsp;



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeyKqSkTfYEiDoHwWW98_nThb-ObQmiaLFiLHB43HCfK6R3yAyugsM8bYI6uk_UDs1T0swKRWA9P4e1xP5GQxRee9lCInAC5e9NvM6tl-lYR942jYPHi_-129VX-Rz0ULDqViQs3A?key=QNtgq33Y3LRZMbcEKF6F1kmT" alt=""/><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Source: CME</figcaption></figure>



With all of this interest, there is a pickup in volatility across both ether and bitcoin. Vicioso said it’s “par for the course” and isn’t terribly worried. But he noted that the momentum we’ve seen from bitcoin has carried through a lot of this year and it looks to be a continuing trend.



Large Open Interest Holders — which means any entity holding over 25 contracts — is soaring. As of last Friday, CME recorded a record of around 600 large open interest holders in their futures contracts.



“So both our standard BTC and ETH contracts, as well as our micro BTC and ETH contracts, all achieved records in terms of the number of large open interest holders holding those contracts,” Vicioso said.



Updated Nov. 19, 2024 at 2:36 pm ET: Corrected Open Interest to Large Open Interest Holders.



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CME data suggests institutions are field-testing new crypto moves

The longtime Ethereum DeFi giant Sky has deployed its USDS stablecoin on Solana, the protocol told Blockworks exclusively.



USDS, which was formerly known as DAI, is the third largest stablecoin by market capitalization, trailing just USDT and USDC. The token had been exclusive to Ethereum since launching in 2017 leading up to today’s deployment. 



Sky was formerly known as Maker prior to its <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/maker-rebrands-as-sky-dai-will-be-changed-to-usds">late-August rebrand</a>. It’s all part of the years-long “endgame” process being carried out by Sky co-founder Rune Christensen. The endgame comes with a slew of changes to one of the oldest DeFi protocols.&nbsp;



Christensen has made clear his admiration of Solana, floating the idea of using a <a href="http://freestreams-live1.im/new-york-mets-live-stream/">fork</a> of Solana’s code to build a new chain in 2023. USDS will be made multichain with the help of Wormhole’s native token transfer framework.&nbsp;



Read more: <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/multichain-native-token-transfers">Wormhole goes multichain with native token transfers</a>



USDS’ growth will be incentivized on Solana through liquidity incentive agreements with the DeFi platforms Jupiter, Orca, Kamino and Drift. Sky said the projects will distribute “over 300,000” USDS weekly in liquidity incentives.&nbsp;



Notably, PayPal’s stablecoin took a similar approach when <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/paypal-pyusd-stablecoin-live-on-solana">recently deploying on Solana</a>, shelling out lucrative liquidity incentives to drive market capitalization, particularly on the DeFi platform Kamino. A lot of this liquidity didn’t stick around once the incentives dried up, as Solana’s PYUSD market share has fallen precipitously since August.&nbsp;



But perhaps <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/solana">Solana</a> and Sky meet each other in a position of mutual need. Sky’s rebrand has been bumpy, and community backlash caused the protocol to <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/maker-considers-rebranding-further">hold a vote</a> about whether to rebrand a second time (Sky won convincingly in a vote <a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/325096/just-four-entities-account-for-nearly-all-the-votes-to-keep-makerdaos-rebranding-to-sky">dominated</a> by four whales). And despite the run-up in nearly every Solana metric, Solana’s stablecoin market share has yet to meaningfully increase. The chain <a href="https://defillama.com/stablecoins/chains">holds</a> just 2% of all stablecoins compared to 51% for Ethereum, per DeFiLlama.&nbsp;



For Sky, deploying on the moment’s buzziest blockchain could give its community something to rally behind. And for Solana, gaining access to the third-largest stablecoin could help grow its slice of the pie.



Updated Nov. 19, 2024 at 12:12 pm ET: A prior version of this article stated DAI was launched in 2014. It was launched in 2017.



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Sky, formerly Maker, deploys stablecoin on Solana

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We saw bitcoin treasury strategies <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/bitcoin-treasury-strategies">start to proliferate</a> earlier this year, with Japanese investment firm Metaplanet, for example, looking to become <a href="https://x.com/JasonSoraVC/status/1777300574939058202">“Asia’s first MicroStrategy”</a> in April. More buys are coming, its CEO said over the weekend:



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">More <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/bitcoin?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#bitcoin</a> purchases incoming <a href="https://t.co/3N4Z364Pkt">https://t.co/3N4Z364Pkt</a>&mdash; Simon Gerovich (@gerovich) <a href="https://twitter.com/gerovich/status/1858353145900122196?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 18, 2024</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



Medical tech company Semler Scientific, which <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/medtech-company-buys-bitcoin-microstrategy">bought</a> $40 million of BTC in May, said this morning it acquired 215 BTC between Nov. 6 and Nov. 15. It now holds 1,273 bitcoins. DeFi Technologies purchased 110 BTC in June and had about 204 BTC in its treasury, as of Sept. 30.



Now, after the election, even more companies are apparently ready to buy and hold BTC.



Battery materials provider Solidion Technology said last week it would commit 60% of its excess cash from operations (plus a portion of raised capital) to BTC buys. It will also convert interest earnings on cash held in money market accounts to BTC.&nbsp;



Solidion notes “the potential for favorable regulatory frameworks and increased institutional adoption, highlighted by the recent wave of bitcoin ETFs” as reasons.&nbsp;



This morning, two others — China-based integrated circuit design company Nano Labs and Chicago-headquartered Cosmos Health — shared similar intentions, and rationale.



Nano Labs’ news release notes confidence in bitcoin being “a reliable store of value amidst its rising global adoption.”&nbsp;



Cosmos Health CEO Greg Siokas said in a statement he views both BTC and ETH “not only as potential hedges against inflation and currency devaluation but also as diversification tools offering substantial upside potential.”



Companies buying bitcoin for their treasuries is a piece of the “widespread adoption” narrative on the crypto bull case bingo card.



We continue to watch for if and when <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/senator-lummis-bitcoin-reserve-bill-crypto-policy">the US government</a>, and <a href="https://www.foxbusiness.com/money/pennsylvania-house-introduces-bill-implement-strategic-bitcoin-reserve">individual states</a>, could put similar bitcoin reserve plans in motion. It would clearly be big news and likely spur another chapter to the existing price rally. 



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