The biggest crypto news and ideas of the day |
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Welcome to The Node! This is Marc Hochstein to take you through the latest crypto news. In today's news: A data breach exposes personal information for 93,000 crypto users; Stripe makes a $1.1 billion acquisition in the stablecoin business; a U.K. pension giant looks to enter tokenization field; and U.S. crypto ETFs might stay confined to bitcoin and ether under a Kamala Harris administration. The Takeaway: There may be a lone bettor who has gone very long on Trump on Polymarket. But that's not necessarily evidence of something sinister, writes Aubrey Strobel, host of The Aubservation podcast.👇 |
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Breach Exposes 93K Crypto Users' Data |
A crypto-industry employee's use of a laptop for non-work purposes is reportedly at the heart of a data breach involving some 93,000 unique users – and now a ransomware group is attempting to negotiate with the company that was targeted. Transak, an "onramp" used by a number of popular blockchain companies to allow customers to buy cryptocurrencies, disclosed in a blog post on Monday that it had fallen victim to a data breach. According to Transak, the leaked data was limited to "names" and "basic identity information." In an interview with CoinDesk, Transak CEO Sami Start said that 93,000 people were impacted by the breach, which included passports, ID cards and selfies used by customers to verify their identities with crypto financial products. The team is categorizing the incident as "mild or moderate," Start said, since it did not involve more sensitive information that might bring greater risk. Additionally, according to the company, only 1.14% of the user base was affected. "There's no bank statements, there's no social security numbers, there's no credit card information, there's not even any emails or passwords that were accessed, which limits the severity of this incident significantly," he said. |
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Announcing the ftNFT YoCerebrum Awards Volume 3: Eden of Innovation and Creativity!
On Nov. 14, Malta will host this prestigious event, honoring top NFT talents across 15 categories, including NFT Project of the Year and Best Phygital NFT. Submissions are open until Oct. 31, with blockchain voting from Nov. 1-5. Winners will be announced at Fort Manoel and will receive 2024 Fasttokens (FTN) as a prize.
Don’t miss this opportunity to celebrate creativity and innovation in the NFT space!
For more information and nominations, visit: ftNFT Awards Website. |
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Stripe in $1.1B M&A Deal for Stablecoin Firm |
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The First 40+ Speakers Announced for Consensus Hong Kong The industry's most influential event in Web3 and digital assets is coming to Asia with a stellar lineup of 40+ global thought leaders already confirmed. Be part of the game-changing discussions, key announcements, and high-impact deals that will shape the future of innovation.
Register todaybefore prices increase and use code NODE15 for an additional 15% off.
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U.K. Pension Giant Looks to Enter RWA Field |
Legal & General (L&G), the London-headquartered pension and investment management firm with $1.5 trillion in assets under management, is plotting an entrance into the blockchain-based tokenization space that's growing popular among finance giants. Tokenization – or the representation of conventional assets like U.S. Treasuries-backed money-market funds via tokens on a blockchain – has become popular among traditional finance firms. That accelerated after the arrival of BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world, on the scene with its BUIDL fund on the Ethereum blockchain. Others are available from Franklin Templeton, State Street and Abrdn. “We are evaluating ways to make the Legal & General Investment Management Liquidity funds available in tokenized format,” said Ed Wicks, global head of trading at Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM), when asked about the firm’s plans via email. |
Can Pulse Transition Social Media from Web2 to Web3? The growing SocialFi project cultivates an expanding community and bridge to mass adoption. Hard to believe that Web2 was once considered a radical advancement. All it really did was take a technology designed to push information and use it to spread information. The real radical advancement is yet to come, but a new project, the SocialFi startup Pulse, might just be the first pebble of the coming avalanche to drop. Continue reading here. |
If Harris Wins, Forget Any XRP or SOL ETFs |
Several firms recently began seeking approval to create U.S. exchange-traded funds that track cryptocurrencies beyond the already-approved bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) products. Those applications will probably go nowhere if Democratic Presidential nominee Kamala Harris wins the election in November, according to two ETF experts. The approval of spot bitcoin and ether ETFs earlier this year was seen as a huge win for the industry after issuers fought for years to introduce such funds. One issuer, Grayscale, even sued the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to overcome the regulator's rejection – and won. Billions of dollars have poured into the new ETFs. Since then, issuers have been taking stabs at the next big crypto ETF launch, with applications currently in process for a fund tracking Ripple's XRP (XRP) token and the native cryptocurrency of the Solana blockchain, SOL (SOL). "It won't happen if Harris wins, regardless of the issuer," said Eric Balchunas, senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. |
The Takeaway: Don't Fear Polymarket Whales |
By Aubrey Strobel It seems likely that a small group of traders (or possibly a lone individual) have pushed up former President Donald Trump’s odds on Polymarket, the crypto-based prediction market, by heavily betting on the Republican nominee. There has been a good deal of handwringing about this, both from supporters of vice president and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris on X (formerly Twitter) who have an obvious incentive to call the markets manipulated, and from the mainstream press. “[T]he surge might be a mirage manufactured by a group of four Polymarket accounts that have collectively pumped about $30 million of crypto into bets that Trump will win,” The Wall Street Journal speculated. Indeed, there may be a lone bettor who has gone very long on Trump. But that's not necessarily evidence of something sinister. First, the obvious point: it’s not just Polymarket where Trump is rallying. Trump "yes" shares are trading at around 59.9 cents on Polymarket right now, indicating the market sees a 59.9% probability he will win. (Each share pays out $1 if the prediction comes true, and zero if not.) Predictit – a U.S. platform with strict betting limits (which would in theory be immune to the Polymarket whale) – has Trump at 56%. Kalshi, a U.S.-based, regulated platform, has Trump at 58%. If you think this price action constitutes “manipulation,” you would have to wonder why Kalshi – a platform where manipulation would be reportable – is trading in line with Polymarket. Secondly, the fact that a single anonymous entity has made large bets is not by itself evidence of “manipulation,” as many Harris supporters are claiming. Bloomberg columnist Matt Levine flatly says: “this does not look like market manipulation: [Polymarket trader] Fredi9999 is not buying sloppily with the effect of pushing up the price, but rather buying carefully, in a manner that seems designed to get him a lot of Trump contracts for his money.” The simplest possible explanation is that a trader simply thinks Trump is underpriced and is willing to bet heavily on it. The mere existence of a large buyer does not imply manipulation. The entire premise of markets is that prices compress available information by rewarding those who take risk to express their views. The identity of the traders or the distribution of trades is irrelevant; in theory, everyone has a motive to extract information from markets by betting when their belief about the fair value of an asset diverges from the market’s value. Markets don’t need to be democratic in order to be reliable. They just need the most informed participants to financially express a view. Individual traders having concentrated ownership of an asset doesn’t in any way delegitimize the price. No one questions the price of Apple stock because Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway owns a lot of it. If you correctly disagree with the market, you can be rewarded for that belief, by betting yourself. U.S. users have alternatives to Polymarket, which is barred from serving them under a regulatory settlement. If you believe the Polymarket whale a) has meaningfully pushed up the price of the Trump contract, and b) is wrong, you can simply bet against him or her or them by going long on Harris. Even though it’s not risk-free – Harris still needs to win for your bet to pay off – if you thought her “real” odds were 55%, you would be buying something worth 55 cents for 40 cents today. Even if you might not be willing to do that, other market participants will. So if the Polymarket whale is indeed misinformed, now that we know there’s a (potentially misinformed) whale, you would expect the odds to decline as traders incorporate this new information. Unless of course, the prediction markets are generally reliable and the whale hasn’t influenced them much. But let’s assume the trader really was spending heavily to “paint the tape” and make a Trump victory appear more likely. First, it’s not even clear this would benefit Trump. It might cause complacency among his voters, reducing their turnout on Election Day (or even galvanize Harris supporters to show up at the polls). Second, you could simply spend that $30 million on ads in battleground states and meaningfully influence the race. Polymarket remains as of yet a fairly obscure platform so any PR dividend from moving the odds slightly would be extremely hard to quantify. It's also worth remembering that a 60% to 40% lead on a prediction market is not remotely comparable to a 60% to 40% polling lead. Prediction markets should be thought of as high-beta derivatives of the polls. If Trump were polling at 51% to Harris' 49% in the national polls, his actual odds of victory would be 90% or more. In prediction markets, 40% to 60%, 45% to 55%, or 60% to 40% odds are all coin-flip territory. So Trump’s rally on Polymarket does not reflect a massive revaluation in his odds of victory. Polymarket whale or not, it’s still an extremely close race. Read the rest. |
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The Possibilities Are Endless |
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