BTC nears ATH ahead of US elections

Despite the recent shakedown, BTC led markets this week, missing its all-time high by just a few dollars — topping at $73,619 on October, 29th.

Meanwhile, DOGE shows strength across the board as Musk keeps mentioning that he’ll lead the Department Of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E.) should Trump win the elections — just one week away. If anything, they’ll remove uncertainty and give a clearer understanding of whether the U.S. will continue trying to suppress the industry or do a 180° on their approach.

While ETH shows no signs of reversing its downtrend against BTC, the latter continues its streak of huge ETF inflows. Since last week, $2.8B has been injected into the markets — bringing the value of the total assets held under ETFs to an all-time high of $72.5B (5.1% of BTC’s market cap).

Happens on-chain

• Trump’s World Liberty Financial slashes fundraise goal by 90% — CoinDesk
• Trump’s project World Liberty Financial has plans to launch its $-backed stablecoin — Fortune
• Allegedly, someone stole $20M of a US government wallet, but $19M has been returned — DLnews
• Infinex Patron NFTs have been distributed, now trading at 1.09 ETH (45% discount to Patron Sale) on main marketplaces — blur.io
• Ironically, ZachXBT made a memecoin without wanting to, thanks to Zora’s ‘Artcoins’ — 𝕏/Cooopahtroopa
• BitGet-linked Morph L2 mainnet is live — 𝕏/MorphL2
• Solana is now live on Arkham — 𝕏/ArkhamIntel
• Farcaster’s monthly revenue is down 96% compared to its February peak — The Block

Traditional rails

• Michael Saylor plans to raise $42B through Microstrategy to buy more Bitcoin over the next three years — 𝕏/saylor
• Former Binance CEO CZ made his first public appearance during Binance Blockchain Week in Dubai — CoinDesk
• Microsoft is going to vote on whether it should start investing in BTC on December 10th (likely to be rejected) — 𝕏/MacroScope17
• Atlanta-based Emory University reports $15M BTC holdings in Grayscale ETF — The Block
• Plan B Forum in Lugano unveils Satoshi Nakamoto statue — tether.to
• FTX secures $228M settlement with ByBit, sued for withdrawing $327M off the platform right before the collapse — DLnews
• Robinhood launches contracts to bet on US elections following the popularity of Polymarket and Kalshi — The Block
• Someone exploited GOAT’s creator 𝕏 account, netting $600K promoting a scam token — The Block
• Consensys, the company behind MetaMask, lays off 20% of its workforce — Fortune
• dYdX lays off 35% of the ‘core team’ — 𝕏/AntonioMJuliano
• Kraken announces new co-CEO, and lays off 15% of the company, roughly 400 people — The Block
• According to a document submitted by Reddit to the SEC, the company sold most of its crypto holdings in Q3, about $7M — Decrypt
• Canary Capital submitted an application to list a SOL Spot ETF. To date, they’ve submitted for SOL, LTC, and XRP — 𝕏/ELeanorTerret

Tech go up

• Cardano is looking to pivot from a L1 to a Bitcoin L2 — 𝕏/Ordinal_News
• Bitcoin ‘L2’ Stacks activates Nakamoto upgrade — CoinDesk
• Circle introduces ‘Confidential ERC-20’ whitepaper, featuring masked balances and transaction amounts — circle.com
• Arbitrum to shorten withdrawal period from 7 days to 15 minutes for Orbit chains — 𝕏/arbitrum
• LRT Protocol Swell changes course for its rollup, replacing Polygon CDK with the Optimism stack — The Block
• Chainlink unveils ‘Chainlink Runtime Environment’ to improve blockchain workflows — CoinDesk
• Kraken launches fully customizable desktop trading app, inspired by Cryptowatch — The Block

Where’s the money flowing?

• The kingdom of Bhutan moves $66M in Bitcoin to Binance, still holding $890M — The Block
• Optimism Foundation to give $42.5M in OP tokens to Kraken, which is building its own L2 on the Superchain stack — CoinDesk
• Solar energy-focused company Glow Labs raised $30M Round led by Framework and Union Square Ventures
• Decentralized storage company Nillion raised $25M Round led by HackVC
• Blockchain infrastructure company Chainway Labs raised $14M Series A led by Founders Fund
• Decentralized Backend company Gelato raised $11M Series A led by HackVC
• Game-Fi platform Sapien Ai raised $10.5 Seed Round led by Variant

Airdrops

• COOK, the governance token of Mantle’s liquid restaking token cmETH, is live and claimable — mantle.xyz
• Solana wallets Phantom and Backpack struggled today as 2.8M users claimed the GRASS airdrop — Blockworks
• Friend.tech competitor Arena has launched a token. You might have got an airdrop if you used it in the past! — 𝕏/TheArenaApp
• $TestME is live for claiming, in anticipation of MagicEden’s $ME airdrop. The token is trading at a $14M mcap — 𝕏/MagicEden

Upcoming events

• November, 2: Doge Day in Sakura, Japan — ownthedoge.com
• November, 5: U.S. elections
• December, 5-6: Emergence conference in Prague

• Just use Aave! You can earn a 13.32% APY supplying USDC on the BNB Chain, or a 11.58% APY supplying USDT on Optimism.
• Like Delta-neutral strategies? Drift has introduced a JLP vault that neutralizes market movements, earning you around 30% APY — 𝕏/gauntlet_xyz
• Got spare EUR? Moonwell’s vault on Morpho pays you a 20.85% to deposit EURC — morpho.org

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Disclosure: Authors may own crypto assets named in this newsletter. Stay on-chain is meant for informational and educational purposes only. It is not meant to serve as investment advice. Please consult your investment, tax, or legal advisor before making investment decisions.