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China Stimulus Harming Crypto? |
China's battered stock market has experienced a resurgence since late September powered by the barrage of stimulus by Beijing. But this surge could be sucking capital out of the crypto market, capping the upside in bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency by market value, and other Asian markets, according to observers. "The current surge in Chinese stocks, driven by the stimulus package and investor activity during the national holiday week, represents a calculated risk-reward trade for savvy investors. Even with a 3-5% cost to convert [stablecoin] USDT into equities, the potential upside of 50-70% makes this a strategic move," Danny Chong, co-founder of multi-staking protocol Tranchess and co-founder of Digital Assets Association Singapore, told CoinDesk in an email. Since Sept. 24, the Shanghai Composite Index has jumped over 20%, reaching its highest since May 2023. The Hang Seng China Enterprises Index, which constitutes Chinese stocks listed in Hong Kong, has jumped over 25%, according to data source TradingView. The rally follows stimulus announcements that included interest rate cuts, liquidity support for stocks, banking system capital injections, and a promise to support property prices. The enormous stimulus, estimated to be over 7.5 trillion yuan (CNY), has been widely perceived as uber-bullish for bitcoin and other risk assets. Bitcoin, however, remains flat-lined at around $64,000 in the wake of the China stimulus, extending a six-month-long consolidation between $50,000 and $70,000. |
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OKX is a technology company with a mission to organize the world's blockchains and make them more accessible and useful. We want to create a future that makes our world more efficient, transparent and connected. OKX began as a crypto exchange giving millions of people access to trading and over time became among the largest platforms in the world. In recent years, we have developed one of the most connected onchain wallets used by millions to access decentralized applications (dApps). OKX is trusted by hundreds of large institutions seeking access to crypto markets on a reliable platform that seamlessly connects with global banking and payments. Our most well-known products include: OKX Exchange, OKX Wallet, OKX Explorer, OKX OS, OKX Ventures and OKX Institutional. To learn more about OKX, download our app or visit: okx.com |
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The suspense around who will be revealed as Bitcoin's (BTC) apparent creator on an upcoming HBO document is making rounds in crypto circles, but some have found a way to make money with tokens amid the drama. Memecoins themed after cryptographer Len Sassaman – whom Polymarket bettors believe to be revealed as Bitcoin's pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto – have started to populate the Solana, Ethereum and Bitcoin networks in the past week. LEN tokens on Solana and Ethereum were issued by opportunistic traders in the past week, running to a market capitalization of a few million before paring gains. Another LEN token issued over four months ago that claims to be the first be issued on Solana saw a price boost last week and sits at over $1.6 million as of Monday. Some even learned about Sassaman's cat Sasha and created memecoins around her. Others claim that another cat, ODIN, was Sassaman's first, as his wife Meredith L. Patterson tagged on her blog. |
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Trump Leads Polymarket Again |
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is leading Democratic rival Kamala Harris by 2.5 percentage points in Polymarket's election contract after Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, endorsed him at a rally over the weekend. Trump still trails in one of the states that have, historically, 'called' the election. “As you can see, I am not just MAGA, I am Dark MAGA,” Musk said on stage at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the site of the first assassination attempt on Trump in July. “The other side wants to take away your freedom of speech. They want to take away your right to bear arms. They want to take away your right to vote." Musk also endorsed prediction markets, calling them more accurate than polls. While Trump leads in the national presidential election poll, he trails in a number of swing states. A Polymarket contract asking if Trump will win every swing state gives only a 19% chance of that happening. That said, a contract asking if Harris will do the same puts her chances at the same level. Critically for the Republicans, Trump trails in Nevada based on a Polymarket contract. According to data compiled by not-for-profit, nonpartisan civic initiative USAFacts, the state has been predictive of the overall election result in eight of the last nine contests.Data from Nate Silver's Silver Bulletin election aggregator shows that Democrats have strengthened their hold on Nevada over the last month. Nevada was one of the states where Robert F. Kennedy Jr polled highest, and a recent Wall Street Journal report profiled some of his supporters who are now voting for Trump, albeit reluctantly. But not all are marking their ballots for a Republican. A number of former RFK supporters profiled by the Journal are so dissatisfied with the major party options, particularly after Kennedy’s exit, that they’re considering abstaining from voting altogether. On the other hand, the historical elections data aggregated by USAFacts says that Ohio is another state that typically 'calls' the election. Republicans lead there with 90%, according to Polymarket, which suggests this race for the White House might be one of the most contested ones in history. |
Miner Marathon Launches RWA Platform |
Multichain layer-2 network Anduro, incubated by mining firm Marathon Digital Holdings (MARA), has developed a platform for issuing and investing in real-world assets (RWAs) on Bitcoin. The platform Avant, developed alongside tokenization specialist Vertalo, is planning a pilot project to tokenize whiskey barrels, according to an announcement shared exclusively with CoinDesk. Tokenization refers to the issuance of digital representation of RWAs as tokens that can be traded on a blockchain. Tokenized Treasury notes traded on networks like Ethereum and Solana exceeded a market cap of $2 billion in August. "As traditional and decentralized finance continue to converge, we believe Vertalo’s work with Anduro will provide comfort to their partners that the durability of the Bitcoin blockchain extends beyond BTC and into real-world assets," said Dave Hendricks, co-founder of Vertalo. Like various other uses of blockchain technology, tokenization has been largely absent from Bitcoin. This has begun to change in recent years, however, through developments that have introduced smart contracts or facilitated the minting of tokens. Avant may pave the way for this to happen with RWAs as well, but with a certain Bitcoin spin on it, according to Anduro's product lead, Jullian Duran. Anduro wants to avoid taking a RWA play that exists on the Ethereum and Solana blockchains and simply cut and paste it to Bitcoin, but instead is looking to offer something that "a bitcoiner would understand," he said. "A bitcoiner who wants tokenized Treasury bills can easily access that via Ondo Finance. Why would we create an Ondo Finance competitor?" he said in an interview with CoinDesk. "We see the opportunity being in these traditional, hard industries that are immediately recognizable, such as American whiskey." |
The Takeaway: Legislating Decentralization |
By Cheng Wang As Congress conducts hearings with SEC Chairman Gary Gensler and pushes to better regulate and stimulate the evolving digital economy, it must recognize the unique needs of decentralized AI – a critical yet often overlooked sector at the intersection of blockchain and artificial intellig Despite this crossover, decentralized AI cannot be legislated through a financial lens, nor can it be forced into AI regulations. Given its overlap in distinct sectors, however, there’s a real chance lawmakers will try to fold it into AI and crypto bills – or overlook it altogether – which would be a missed opportunity for innovation in this country. Simply put, decentralized AI allows for the distribution of data, computation, and decision-making processes across multiple devices or nodes, enabling them to work together without relying on a centralized authority, often utilizing open source software and models. This gives developers the tools to share their data collaboratively to build AI models, and to access compute from a diverse range of sources. It’s a powerful framework that empowers these developers to contribute to the AI ecosystem without the need to manage the entire process themselves, enabling researchers and startups to participate in a field where rising costs and difficulty of access threaten to push them out. That’s why it’s imperative lawmakers not overlook decentralized AI as they begin to regulate AI. It’s probably human nature to ignore, considering the broader AI industry is exploding and dominated by some of the world’s biggest corporations. They’re acquiring startups, pushing advancements, and launching new products at a breakneck pace. While there’s nothing wrong with Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, and others investing heavily in the industry, lawmakers need to create space for researchers, entrepreneurs, and developers to thrive as well; that entails among other things remaining vigilant on antitrust, and ensuring that government-backed R&D funds don’t benefit the giants alone. And while Congress is making welcome progress to advance comprehensive legislation that would clarify the rules of the road for crypto, the bills are one-dimensional – financial in nature – and don’t address the obvious difference between an underlying digital asset of a protocol versus the decentralized AI applications running on the same protocol. Financial regulators shouldn’t end up overseeing decentralized AI just because projects issue tokens; that would be like the SEC regulating toothpaste because Johnson & Johnson issues common stock. Read the rest. |
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A message from EnigmaFund |
Is UNA Hope for LUNA and UST Victims' Financial Recovery? What do a venture capitalist, a tokenomics expert, a memecoin legend, an eCommerce pioneer and a top-tier CTO have in common? It may sound like the setup to a punchline, but the reality is far more serious. This diverse group of innovators has united with a shared mission: to build a groundbreaking protocol aimed at reviving and recapitalizing communities devastated by the collapse of projects like Luna and UST. For those who lost everything due to market upheavals or the manipulations of bad actors in the crypto world, hope is on the horizon. Continue reading here |
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