Trump Doubles Down on Bitcoin
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1️⃣ Donald Trump Steers Republican Crypto Policies
This week, presidential candidate Donald Trump announced that he would speak at the upcoming Bitcoin 2024 Conference in Nashville in a 30-minute speaking slot on the last day of the conference.
Adding to the momentum, earlier this week, the Republican National Committee officially adopted the former president’s platform of views, meaning his pro-crypto stances are now those endorsed by the entire party. The specific views mentioned in the announcement included being against CBDCs, supporting Bitcoin mining, and protecting rights to self-custody.
2️⃣ German Govt. Sells BTC Stash
The war ended Friday afternoon as the German Government ran out of Bitcoin to sell. Over the past week, they sold 42K BTC through exchanges like Coinbase, Kraken, and Bitstamp, as well as to institutional traders such as Flow Traders and B2C2 Group.
The end of Germany's Bitcoin sales removes significant sell pressure, potentially stabilizing the market. With the Federal Reserve considering interest rate cuts and FTX repayments poised to inject liquidity, there are glimpses of optimism. However, the broader impact of these and other potential sales, like those from Mt. Gox's creditors, remains a critical factor to watch over the coming months.
3️⃣ Protocols Using Squarespace Hacked
This week's big DeFi drama unfolded with a DNS hijacking saga involving Squarespace-hosted domains from protocols like Compound and Celer. Attackers redirected these domains to phishing sites that quickly drained users' wallets. The severity of the breach has put an additional 228 DeFi front-ends at risk (at least), exposing a critical vulnerability within the hosting services used by these protocols.
4️⃣ Tokenization is Trending
It was a major week for RWAs and tokenization. First, Goldman Sachs said it will launch three new tokenization projects in 2024, Fortune reported. The initiatives will include launching a tokenized asset marketplace and efforts targeting the U.S. fund and European debt sectors.
Second, MakerDAO announced the Spark Tokenization Grand Prix, allocating $1B of its reserves to buying tokenized U.S. Treasuries. This move aims to diversify and stabilize its DAI stablecoin reserves, with proposal submissions opening on August 12. Blackrock, Ondo, and Securitize have already tossed their hats in the ring to “collaborate” on this initiative with Maker.
5️⃣ More Losses for SEC
In a pivotal legal update, the SEC concluded its investigations into Paxos and Hiro Systems, the company behind the creation of Stacks (STX), marking a rare regulatory backtrack that could influence future token classifications. In the Paxos case, the SEC decided not to pursue charges against Paxos for issuing Binance’s BUSD stablecoin, while, in the Stacks case, they appear to have been unable to prove that the STX token was still a security despite the founding team's decentralization efforts.
Mantle kickstarts Season 1 of Methamorphosis. Building on the success of their Liquid Staking Token, mETH, Mantle LSP announces plans for a new Liquid Restaking Token, cmETH, along with a governance token, COOK. With Methamorphosis, participants can now farm Powder for future COOK tokens and position themselves early for the upcoming cmETH release.
It's brutal out there.
With Bitcoin facing its first major drawdown this cycle, the market is in full bear mode. In this week's rollup, David and Ryan talk doom and gloom, as well as some of the bullish signals from the week, including crypto's larger role in the political conversation and the bullish Goldman Sachs news.
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