Bitcoin Battles to Hold Above $60K, BitGo To Launch USDS Stablecoin, FTX Auditor Fined $2M by SEC, & More!

GM anon ☕🐺

In today’s Alpha Bytes👇

Bitcoin reclaims $59k amid Fed rate cut speculation. BitGo to enter stablecoin market with reward-bearing USDS coin. Meanwhile, Coinbase’s Base Layer 2 shatters transaction records with over 4.5M in a single day. FTX auditor fined $2M by SEC to settle negligence allegations. Crypto influencer hit with bot claims after nabbing ‘best content creator’ award. 

BTC $60, 363 (+3.16%), ETH $2, 328 (+1.20%), SOL $131.05 (-0.82%)

Crypto News 📰 

• SEC charges NanoBit and CoinW6 in alleged ‘relationship investment scams’ using social media

• Tether-Issued Stablecoin USDT's market share grows to 75% as market cap tops $118B

• Bitget exchange surpasses 45M users globally

• Trump and Harris Ethereum tokens will power Wintermute election prediction market

• Bitcoin price can see $64K 'very quickly' on Fed rate cut — Research

• Fed rate cut could crash crypto markets, but era of central banks is over: Arthur Hayes

• US lawmakers spark optimism on crypto bills gaining traction after election season is over

• Google Cloud releases Ethereum-compatible RPC service

• Circle integrates USDC in Brazil and Mexico via national payment systems

• U.S. CFTC Chair Behnam says regulator will keep pursuing Kalshi case

• Pudgy Penguins CEO unfazed by SEC actions against the NFT sector

• Vitalik tells Ethereum L2s ‘Stage 1 or GTFO’ — Who makes the cut?

• Coinbase reports ‘degraded performance’ for Polygon transactions shortly after network upgrade

• Donald Trump says crypto is "a very powerful market”

• Republicans urge SEC to clarify how it treats crypto airdrops in letter to Gensler

• CleanSpark buys two more bitcoin mining sites in Mississippi for $5.775M

• Winklevoss twins' father donates $4M Bitcoin to school teaching theory that inspired Satoshi

• Bitcoin ETFs add $250M in surge ahead of expected rate cut

• BlackRock’s IBIT clocks first daily net inflows in three weeks

• Fed’s rate decision looms with 63% odds favoring a cut

• DeFi technologies prepares for Nasdaq listing following Bitcoin treasury play

• Bitwise CIO likens Ethereum to Microsoft, bets on underappreciated dominance despite bearish sentiment

• Binance reiterates assertion it never owned or controlled WazirX amid ongoing $230M hack fallout

• SEC charges 3 individuals, 5 companies with operating pig butchering scams

• Decentralized AI Society launched to fight tech giants who 'Own the Regulators'

• Dragonfly wants to raise $500M for its fourth fund: report

• Animoca's timeline to go public would depend on the market's status: Yat Siu

• TON Foundation and Curve Finance will incubate a new TON-based stable swap project

• MoviePass taps Layer 1 network Sui to launch USDC stablecoin payments

• Jamie Dimon says JPMorgan Chase is ‘probably one of the bigger users of blockchain’

• Bloomberg analyst refutes controversial allegations against Coinbase, says BlackRock is ‘not messing around’

• DYdX to debut perpetual futures on prediction markets as DEX seeks to raise profile

• 50 days until US election, crypto Super PAC pours $7.8M into Senate races

• Brian Armstrong, ETF experts shoot down 'Paper Bitcoin' rumors

• Singapore's biggest bank, DBS, to launch Bitcoin and crypto options trading, and also structured notes

• Ripple Co-Founder Chris Larsen leads $10M round for DeFi protocol Yellow Network

• Bhutan has even more Bitcoin than El Salvador thanks to its mining operation

Airdrops🪂 

• ‘Hamster Kombat’ Telegram Game Sets Rewards Cutoff Ahead of Airdrop

• Eigenlayer Season 2 Claim Live

• WalletConnect set to airdrop 185M WCT with native token launch

• deBridge Airdrop live to claim off-chain to CEX

• 'Gold Rush' Telegram Tap-to-Earn Game Launching With 'Skill-Based' Airdrop

Project Updates 🔥 

• IoTeX collaborates with Polygon Labs to integrate with AggLayer for cross-chain DePIN liquidity

• Marginal x Protocols on Bera

• Bitcoin Stacks L2 Integrates With Aptos Network

• Lens Network to use Avail’s data availability solution for scalability

• Circle x Soneium 

• Napier Finance temporarily suspends the "Llama Race" points program 

• Fireblocks x Chainlink Labs

• It took generalized AI to make Solana understandable

• Ethereum validators is at ATHs

• Memecoin supercycle update

• Huge ENS sale for trump.eth

Threads 🧵 

• This guy really astroturfed himself into a crypto KOL career - @WazzCrypto

• a16z Crypto Startup Accelerator Fall 2024 Cohort - @jasonrosenthal

• Introducing Boundless: The Verifiable Compute Layer - @RiscZero

• All in on Hyperliquid - @ThorHartvigsen

• Key takeaways from Singapore - @ayyyeandy

• zkTLS: Blockchain APIs for any data - @Decentralisedco

Launches 🚀 

• Fanko - memecoin generator now live on Arbitrum

• LayerZero Foundation is launching lzCatalyst

• Introducing Semantic Layer

• Rome’s Private Devnet is Now Live

Fundraise 💰

• Coinbase Ventures leads $5M round in Vana, a network for user-owned data

• a16z CSX fund and Lemniscap lead $5.2M seed round for Fermah

• A New Prediction Market Limitless Labs Raises $3M in Pre-Seed Round Led by 1confirmation

• Pipe Network (Blockchain Service) - $10M led by multicoincap

• LogX trade (DeFi) - $4M (Total $10.1M) Strategic

That's a wrap for today!

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