The end of last week saw big developments at the Bitcoin 2024 conference, as crypto continues to cross over more and more into the mainstream.
There were politicians present from the right, left, and independently, but the biggest political draw was of course Donald Trump, so let’s start with a roundup of takeaways from the Republican presidential nominee’s speech.
Here’s what’s in today’s issue:
- Sam shares his thoughts on the political speakers at Bitcoin 2024, Democrats sending a pro-crypto letter to the DNC, Cantor Fitzgerald planning a BTC financing platform & Drift Protocol’s prediction market on Solana.
- Week 24 crypto portfolio update.
- This week on chain.
- This week’s trending coins by Rebecca.
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Trump Reinforces Crypto Commitments at Bitcoin 2024
So the Bitcoin 2024 conference is over, and headline speaker Donald Trump delivered his speech to a packed auditorium, but what exactly was his message and how was it received? Here’s what he pledged to do if he becomes president:
- Create a US strategic national bitcoin reserve (with the government to keep all BTC it currently holds).
- Fire Gary Gensler on day one and appoint a new SEC Chair (this got a wildly enthusiastic response so Trump said it twice).
- Shut down the anti-crypto Operation Choke Point 2.0.
- Appoint a bitcoin and crypto presidential advisory council to design regulatory guidance, to be done within 100 days.
- Extend dollar dominance through stablecoin adoption.
- Commute Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht’s sentence to time served.
- Never introduce a US CBDC.
- Defend the right to crypto self-custody.
- Ensure that America is the global bitcoin and crypto leader.
And as for the negatives? Some criticisms include:
- Questions as to whether Trump fully appreciates bitcoin or is simply making the statements required to win over a single-issue voting block.
- Too many unrelated political points and attacks on opponents, possibly alienating some potential supporters.
When it comes down to it though, if Trump came across like a politician then, basically, it’s because he is a politician, and as free market economist Thomas Sowell once said, “there are no solutions, only trade offs”. And from that perspective, Trump has made some valuable policy offers to the crypto industry.
RFK’s Crypto Plan
Trump wasn’t the only presidential contender to speak at the conference, as independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr also made an appearance. Like Trump, RFK is pro-bitcoin, and his crypto positions include plans to:
- Keep the government’s currently held BTC as a strategic asset.
- Direct the Treasury to purchase 550 BTC daily until there is a US reserve of at least 4 million BTC.
- Make transactions between BTC and the dollar unreportable and non-taxable.
- Make BTC an eligible asset for 1031 exchanges. This would mean BTC can be exchanged for real estate in a way that may allow capital gains taxes to be deferred.
Cynthia Lummis’ Bitcoin Bill
Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis is well known for her positive stance on crypto, and she also appeared on stage at the conference, where she held up her proposed Bitcoin Reserve Bill. She then read from the document, which details ambitions for a national Bitcoin Strategic Reserve, with the aim of setting up a purchase program to acquire one million BTC.
Democrats Send Pro-crypto Letter to the DNC
Going some way towards shaking off the perception that the Democratic Party is always anti-crypto, Democratic Representative Wiley Nickel also visited Bitcoin 2024, and revealed during an onstage interview that 28 Democrats have sent a letter to the Democratic National Committee containing four requests:
- Include Pro-Digital Asset Language in the Party’s Platform.
- Select a Vice Presidential Candidate Sophisticated in Digital Asset Policy.
- Select a Pro-Innovation SEC Chair.
- Engage with Industry Experts.
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This is a positive step for anyone who’s on the fence when it comes to politics, or simply believes crypto shouldn’t be divided along party lines, and it seems healthier in the long-term if both political wings of the political debate, along with independents like RFK, can shift towards a pro-crypto (or at least crypto-neutral) position.
That said, Nickel also received boos from the audience when he said of Donald Trump’s previous term as president, “he did nothing on this issue [crypto], and right now I can tell you he’s totally full of sh*t”.
But who knows? Maybe in the near-future it will seem as strange for any politician to be outright anti-crypto as it would now for them to be, for example, anti-internet.
Kamala Harris Crypto Reset?
Relatedly, there’s also a report in the Financial Times explaining that–according to unnamed sources cited as “four people with knowledge of the matter”–the Vice President’s team has initiated contact with people close to major crypto companies including Coinbase, Circle and Ripple Labs, with a view to improving relations through what’s described as a “reset”.
Cantor Fitzgerald Plans BTC Financing Platform
And in one more significant story from Bitcoin 2024, Howard Lutnick, who is the Chairman and CEO of traditional financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald, gave a speech in which he revealed plans to establish a bitcoin-based financing platform. This would provide users with a means to access leveraged finance using BTC as collateral, and the firm intends to launch with an initial $2 billion of lending.
Following on from that initial amount, the firm will then increase in further increments of $2 billion each, and Lutnick stated of Cantor Fitzgerald,
“We finance and arrange vast, vast amounts, and we are going to now build that ecosystem for bitcoin”.
Lutnick also stated, “we are going to welcome Bitcoin into the financing family of the global financial market”, and overall–as Cantor Fitzgerald is such a well-established name in the finance world–this looks like another strong indicator of BTC becoming accepted as a mainstream asset, a process that can help to unlock fiat liquidity for holders.
Additionally, and reinforcing the store-of-value narrative that positions BTC as digital gold, Lutnick proposed that “bitcoin should trade the same as gold everywhere in the world, without exception and without limitation.”
Drift Protocol to Launch Prediction Market on Solana
A breakout crypto product showing real utility this cycle is the decentralized prediction market Polymarket, which has now soared to over $300 million in monthly volume.
Polymarket is built on Polygon, but it looks like it will soon have competition on a rival blockchain, as Solana DEX Drift Protocol has announced that it’s set to launch a Solana-based prediction market of its own.
As Drift Protocol phrased it in its announcement video, “markets are aware of the truth before traditional news outlets”, and with trust in legacy media at a widespread low, there’s certainly space for alternative platforms to outperform, especially in an election year.
But what do you think, is Solana a good match for this kind of product, and can prediction markets continue to grow after this year’s election is done? Reply to this email and let us know your thoughts.
Week 24 Crypto Portfolio Update
2 small Bitcoin longs made $24. I am doing these trades via our decentralized exchange partner, Apex. Check them out here for KYC free on chain trading.
To the extent possible I will try to share those trades here, but they are often made later in the week and are no longer valid by Monday when I write this.
The Ethereum long is currently under water.
Miggles is down 50% this week. Memecoins are fun.
The altcoin positions are largely rekt.
Altcoins can’t remain in this much chaos for much longer. Once we get a decent breakout on Bitcoin the rest of the market will likely chase that move with alts grinding higher.
Have you been accumulating BTC in recent weeks? If so, then it appears you’ve been thinking along the same lines as some bitcoin whales, as over the past month around 358,000 coins have moved to accumulation addresses.
What’s more, analysis from CryptoQuant shows that these addresses are not primarily ETF accounts–which have acquired 53,000 BTC in the same time period–and have no outflows, which is why this looks like a very big increase in demand from permanent holder wallets.
Hopefully you also avoided getting affected by Mt Gox-related anxiety. As is well known, former users of the long-defunct exchange started receiving payouts, and there were fears that this might cause a price crash if coins were dumped on the market.
However, we can now see that the Mt Gox reserves have depleted–as coins were distributed–by 66% (which means almost 95,000 coins have moved), while in the same period the price of BTC has actually risen.
And on top of that–providing another hint about the mindset of Mt Gox creditors who, don’t forget, were very early bitcoin adopters–withdrawals of BTC from Kraken rose noticeably after Mt Gox coin distributions began.
Kraken is facilitating the return of funds to former Mt Gox users, and so this activity suggests that creditors may be moving coins to self-custody rather than selling.
When it comes to the new spot ETH ETFs, which launched last Tuesday, the first week (minus a day) of trading shows that inflows to the new funds have been outweighed by outflows from Grayscale’s converted ETHE trust.
This echoes the dynamic earlier this year when new spot BTC ETFs had to contend with outflows from Grayscale’s GBTC product, although strong BTC inflows were capable of immediately offsetting GBTC selling.
However, expectations are that the ETH ETF situation will resolve into positive net flows when ETHE selling becomes exhausted.
Also, it’s notable that if we compare ETHE and GBTC selling, then ETHE outflows have started more rapidly. This could mean they start to ease off, or on the other hand, if this rate of selling is maintained it might continue to have a strong immediate impact, but then be finished more quickly.
There was interest last week in stats showing Solana surpassing Ethereum for market share of thirty day DEX volume.
This is definitely significant, but it should also be kept in mind that increasing amounts of Ethereum-related activity are now moving across to Layer-2s, and if you take into account the combined market share of Ethereum and the leading Layer-2s by DEX volume–and we can see that Arbitrum and Base stand out–then it’s a different story, with the Ethereum-connected group coming out on top.
And on the subject of Base, we can find that USDC transfer volumes on the network have grown significantly to now surpass $63 billion a month, while also, an amazing 80% of monthly active users on UniSwap are now trading on Base, which shows a rapid change in the landscape.
Figures for Base
Returning to DEX activity on Solana for a moment, we can see that perps trading volumes on the Jupiter Perpetual Exchange surged last week to a new all-time high of over $1.1 billion.
And meanwhile over on Drift Protocol, daily trader numbers have–perhaps not surprisingly–dropped off markedly since its token generation event in April, indicating airdrop farmers moving on.
However, at the same time, TVL on the platform has continued to grow, which may be down to the popularity among liquidity providers of the Drift Earn product.
Here are my key takeaways from the trends this week and the market is getting ready for liftoff!
- Waffles is a memecoin created by crypto influencer Davincij15 who attended the Bitcoin conference in Nashville. The WAFFLES token has dropped 18% in the past 7 days.
- Solana is a Layer-1 blockchain that’s seen Real Vision CEO Raoul Pal share a trading chart on YouTube suggesting Solana will outperform Bitcoin. Solana has also completed its Hacker House in India.
- Data Ownership Protocol is a privacy token that’s announced it will launch on Polygon’s POS. DOP has also launched token support for UNI, LINK, CHZ, ENS, LDO and RNDR.
- Ondo is a Real-World Assets (RWA) platform that’s launched its USDY stablecoin on Cosmos and integrated USDY with Injective. OKX exchange is also set to list the ONDO token for spot trading.
- ZKsync is an Ethereum zkRollup that’s now supported on Lemon, the number one crypto app in Latin America with over 2.6 million users.
- Jupiter is a Solana DEX aggregator that’s due to unveil its supply reduction proposal on Wednesday which could reduce the supply by 30%. Jupiter has also launched a new ecosystem token API to improve data accessibility.
- NEURALAI is an AI platform that’s launched its updated roadmap and is celebrating reaching 10,000 followers on X.
- LandWolf is a memecoin on Solana that’s been featured in a post on X by CryptoRover predicting the WOLF token will hit $1 billion in market cap in the next phase of the bull market.
- Toncoin is a Web3 ecosystem within Telegram messenger that’s launched gasless transactions with its new smart wallet. TON has also launched integration for token swaps on Bitget Wallet.
- Avail is a data availability project from Polygon that’s launched its mainnet and AVAIL token.
- Bitcoin is trying to break above $70K after the Bitcoin conference in Nashville concluded with Donald Trump announcing the creation of a strategic reserve if elected as President—game theory is on!
- Kaspa is a proof-of-work blockchain that’s been announced as a Gold Sponsor for the upcoming Australian Crypto Convention in November.
- Neiro is a memecoin that’s been outed as a potential honeypot on Ethereum by WazzCrypto on X. It’s being reported that retail investors have already lost $4 million. Gate.io listed the NEIRO token on July 28.
- LayerZero is a cross-chain messaging protocol that’s currently in the process of retesting a key support level and looks set for a breakout.15. Dogwifhat is a Solana-based memecoin and NFT collection that’s dropped 7% in the past week as it takes a breather from its latest rally.
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