Crypto weekly is co-authored by @serdave
PRICE CHANGE: WTD/YTD
- BTC ($26,125): 0% / +58%
- ETH ($1,656): -1% / +38%
- SOL ($20.73): -5% / +113%
- UNI ($4.69): -4% / -9%
- MATIC ($0.56): -4% / -26%
MARKET CAP CHANGE: WTD/YTD
- Crypto Market Cap ($1.05T): -1% / +33%
- BTC Dominance: 48%
- ETH Dominance: 19%
- Tether ($83B): 0% / +25%
- USDC ($26B): 0% / -42%
NFT 3M TRADING VOLUMES
THIS WEEK IN CRYPTO
- A new Treasury proposal will require US-based crypto centralized exchanges, decentralized exchanges, and some self-custodied wallets to report client transactions to the IRS beginning 2026. Comments on the proposal are due October 30. Link. Link. Link. Proposal (PDF).
- Tornado cash co-founder Roman Storm was arrested by the FBI on charges of money laundering and sanctions violations. OFAC accused Tornado Cash of helping launder funds since its creation in 2019, including hundreds of millions in digital assets stolen by Lazarus Group hackers. Roman Semenov, also a Tornado Cash co-founder, remains at large. Link. Link. Link. OFAC Press Release.
- NFT platform Recur announced it was shutting down less than two years after raising $50 million in Series A funding. Link. Tweet.
- JPMorgan research suggests the recent selloff in crypto markets is nearing an end as leveraged positions have mostly been unwound. Link.
- The market cap for USDC hit a 2 year low of $26 billion, down from an all time high of $56 billion last June. Link.
- Memecoin PEPE fell 18% after three developers behind the project stole $16 million PEPE from the project’s multi-sig, roughly 4% of the token supply, before selling the tokens on crypto exchanges and deleting their social accounts. Link. Link.
- Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried plans to blame lawyers from Fenwick & West and in-house counsel for “reviewing and approving” certain decisions. SBF plans to argue the exchange’s lawyers gave him advice on matters including auto-delete policies and loans to FTX and Alameda Research. Link.
- Web3 domain provider Unstoppable Domains launched decentralized, end-to-end encrypted messaging in partnership with XMTP. Users can now send direct messages using .crypto domain names. Link.
- Rarible will cease aggregating orders from NFT marketplaces OpenSea, LooksRare, and X2Y2, following OpenSea’s decision to make creator royalties optional for new collections. Link.
- Solana Pay’s new integration with Shopify allows users to checkout using USDC. Link.
- Cloud storage provider Dropbox announced the end of unlimited storage in response to growing misuse of the offering related to cryptocurrency Chia, which uses a consensus algorithm that relies on participants allocating computer storage space rather than computational power. Link. Blog Post.
- Coinbase’s Layer 2 Base currently has more daily transactions than Ethereum, primarily fueled by interest in decentralized social app Friend.tech. Link.
- The FBI warned crypto companies that North Korean hackers from the Lazarus Group are preparing to cash out 1,580 BTC, worth roughly $40 million, of stolen crypto assets. Link. Link.
- Defunct crypto exchange FTX has asked Galaxy Digital to help pay back creditors in cash rather than crypto. The exchange holds roughly $3.4 billion in crypto. Link.
- Nathaniel Chastain, former Head of Product at OpenSea, was sentenced to 3 months in prison and fined $50,000 for insider trading of NFTs that were on OpenSea’s home page. Link.
- Layer-2 blockchain Optimism is evaluating a proposal to give Coinbase’s Base protocol 118 million OP tokens over a span of 6 years in exchange for 2.5% of Base’s total revenue or 15% of its net profits, whichever is great. Base is built on top of Optimism. Link. Proposal.
- Coinbase announced it had taken a stake in stablecoin issuer Circle, citing “growing regulatory clarity for stablecoins in the US”. Link.
- Bank of America said that PayPal’s stablecoin PYUSD will see insignificant adoption in the near-term due to a lack of crypto wallet compatibility, exchange trading pairs, and lack of yield relative to USD. Less than ten self-custodied wallets that aren’t contracts or exchanges have balances of more than $1,000 PYUSD. Link. Link.
- Mastercard-linked Binance Cards, which allow customers to use crypto from Binance accounts to make purchases in fiat, will no longer be usable in Latin America and the Middle East. Visa also announced it was ending its card partnership with Binance. Link. Link.
- Bitcoin mining difficulty reached an all-time high of 55 trillion hashes. Link.
- The DEA mistakenly sent $55,000 USDC to a scammer who had created a wallet address that closely resembled the US Marshal’s wallet address. Link.
- Worldcoin’s WLD token fell over 43% over the last month, as it continues to face regulatory headwinds due to concerns over data privacy. Kenya announced a committee that would investigate the controversial project. Link. Link.
- Binance has blocked clients of 5 sanctioned Russian banks from accessing its peer-to-peer service. Link.
- NFT brand Doodles is partnering with Crocs on a branded footwear collection launching August 29. Link.
- USDC is launching on six new blockchains: Polygon PoS, Base, Polkadot, NEAR, Optimism, and Cosmos. Link.
- The SEC charged fintech platform Titan Global Management with securities violations and misleading advertisements related to its crypto investment strategy. Link.
- Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell indicated further interest rate increases to combat inflation, causing initial dips in bitcoin prices. Link.
- NVIDIA’s market cap surpassed the entire crypto industry this week after posting 101% year over year increase in net profit primarily due to a boom in demand for AI applications. Link.
- Risc-Zero is open sourcing its ZK-rollup software Zeth, which handles generating and verifying ZK proofs of Ethereum blocks between Layer 2s and Ethereum mainnet. Link.
- Former Chinese party official Yi Xiao was sentenced to life imprisonment for corruption, including facilitating crypto-mining activities. Link.
- Starkware announced it is open sourcing the software used for generating ZK proofs on its layer 2 Starkware. Link.