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: Trump's odds on Polymarket hit yet another all-time high after Vance VP pick; Wonder Twin powers activate for Trump; detained Binance exec Tigran Gambaryan wheeled into Nigerian court as health deteriorates; Craig Wright referred to U.K. prosecutors for consideration of perjury charges. The Takeaway: First Bitcoin, then Ethereum, now Solana. ETF issuers will stop at nothing so long as they believe they can make money, writes CoinDesk senior analyst George Kaloudis, debunking BTC exceptionalism. Read below👇 |
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Donald Trump's odds of retaking the White House in November hit another all-time high after he picked Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) as his running mate, traders on the crypto-based prediction market platform Polymarket are signaling. "Yes" shares for Trump in Polymarket's presidential election contract were trading at 72 cents mid-morning Tuesday New York time, indicating that the market believes the Republican nominee has a 72% chance of victory. Each share pays out $1 if the associated prediction comes true and bupkis if not. Bets are programmed into a smart contract on the Polygon blockchain and denominated in the USDC stablecoin. Vance, 39, is the first millennial nominated to a major-party ticket, The New York Times noted, calling the pick a wager that he "will bring fresh energy to the Republican ticket." He is also a staunch cryptocurrency supporter. Read more. |
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Wonder Twin Powers, Activate |
An elite group of venture capitalists, business moguls and tech executives including Gemini co-founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss have contributed a combined $8.75 million to a new super political action committee (PAC) backing Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. According to America PAC’s latest filings with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), other donors to the PAC include former managing director of Sequoia Capital Douglas Leone, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, and Troy Link, CEO of Jack Link’s Beef Jerky. In addition to their contributions to America PAC and other super PACs, including pro-crypto PAC Fairshake (to which the brothers have donated roughly $5 million), the Winklevoss twins said in June they each gave $1 million to Trump’s campaign. Read more. |
Binance Exec Wheeled Into Court |
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Detained American Binance executive Tigran Gambaryan had to be pushed into a Abuja, Nigeria courtroom today in a wheelchair after a herniated disc in his back left him in severe pain and “hardly able to walk,” according to a Monday report from his family. Gambaryan’s health has steadily deteriorated since he was detained in Nigeria in February. At first, Gambaryan was placed under home detention but was later transferred to the notoriously dangerous Kuje prison – which holds violent criminals including members of the Boko Haram terrorist group – after his colleague and fellow detainee, British-Kenyan citizen Nadeem Anjarwalla, escaped. Gambaryan, a former Internal Revenue Service agent and Binance’s current head of financial crime compliance, voluntarily traveled to Nigeria in February to meet with government officials. He was subsequently detained without explanation and later charged with money laundering and tax evasion – essentially as a scapegoat for his employer, which Nigerian officials have accused of tanking the value of the naira. The tax evasion charges against Gambaryan were later dropped. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges. Read more. |
This Judge Isn't Done With Craig Wright |
Craig Wright, who claimed to be Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto, was referred to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to be considered for perjury charges for evidence he presented in a case brought by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance. COPA, a non-profit organization representing bitcoin developers, filed suit against Wright in 2021 for a once-and-for-all ruling that he is not Nakamoto, to prevent him from claiming copyright of the Bitcoin white paper and to stop him suing Bitcoin developers while purporting to be Nakamoto. COPA is funded by leading industry figures and companies including Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and crypto exchange Coinbase. In March, presiding judge James Mellor ruled that Wright was not Nakamoto, and in a May judgment said Wright had lied extensively throughout the case. In a filing Tuesday, he said U.K. prosecutors should consider whether Wright should be tried for perjury. Read more. |
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The Takeaway: ETF = 'Everything That Fits' |
By George Kaloudis, senior analyst, CoinDesk While I still personally maintain that bitcoin is different from other cryptocurrencies and is the only one which concretely does what it sets out to do, I think it is (and was) a significant mistake to assume bitcoin was in any way special in the eyes of high finance and Wall Street and, by extension, ETF issuers. The U.S. ETF market is immense. Check the statistics from the Investment Company Institute for 2023: $8 trillion of assets; 218 firms providing ETFs; 3,108 total ETFs! And with good reason. ETFs make it trivial to compose your portfolio according to whatever investment thesis you may hFor example, if you wanted to invest in healthcare or consumer discretionary goods there are sector ETFs for that. Say you’re young and want to chuck most of your portfolio into the tech-heavy Nasdaq-100. Just buy up a bunch of Invesco’s ETF QQQ, which tracks that. Whatever the idea, there’s an ETF for that. They even have ETFs for more amusing, potentially farcical, ideas. Say you’re young and want to chuck most of your portfolio into the Nasdaq-100, but also you want to get rich three times as fast. You can buy TQQQ, which is the same as QQQ but it goes up (and down) three times as fast (this is achieved through debt, or leverage, hence the term “triple levered ETFs”). What if you want to buy an ETF even Jesus would like? Try WWJD. Do you see the virtue in vice and want to invest in worldly sins? Try VICE. What if you totally hate the investment advice of CNBC’s Jim Cramer? Try SJIM, the Inverse Cramer ETF, which follows the exact opposite of Cramer’s advice (not for nothing, this ETF no longer exists, but it used to!). With this in mind, it’s plain that it wasn’t ever going to be “the Bitcoin ETF is the only ETF that will exist because bitcoin is better than the others and the SEC knows this.” Read the rest here. |
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Not Your Drive, Not Your Files |
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