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 inches closer to Harris on Polymarket as betting passes $1 billion; Binance's CZ is a free man; Swan Bitcoin claims ex-employees "stole" its mining business at Tether’s direction; and Mango Markets agrees to destroy MNGO tokens in SEC settlement. The Takeaway: When Bitcoin is dominated by major institutions (and Bitcoiners are asking for approval from presidential candidates) we are in danger of creating centralized decentralized finance, something Satoshi never intended, writes Jason Dehni, CEO of DeFi platform Credbull.👇 |
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Polymarket Swing State Odds Favor Harris |
Polymarket bettors have now put over $1 billion on the question of whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris will take the White House in November. While Trump appears to be closing the gap – Harris now only leads by one point – swing state markets are telling a different story. Data from the prediction market site gives Harris a greater chance of winning four of the six key swing states, which is unsurprising as those four have historically leaned Democrat. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll shows that the race in Wisconsin is extremely close, with Harris at 49% and Trump at 47%. Polymarket, however, gives Harris a clean lead in the Badger State, pricing her at 56 cents a share compared to 44 cents for Trump. Each share pays out $1 (in USDC, a cryptocurrency that trades 1:1 for dollars) if the candidate wins, and nothing if it doesn't, so the market is signaling Harris has a 56% chance of carrying Wisconsin. |
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Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao has been released from prison, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons (BOP) confirmed late Friday. Zhao’s release came two days ahead of his scheduled release date of Sunday, Sept. 29. The BOP is legally allowed to release prisoners early if their release date falls on a weekend or holiday. In April, Zhao was sentenced to four months in prison for violating the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) by failing to set up an adequate know-your-customer (KYC) program at Binance. As part of his guilty plea, Zhao also agreed to pay a $50 million fine and step down as CEO of the world's largest crypto exchange. The exchange agreed to pay a $4.3 billion fine to various U.S. regulators to settle related charges. Though custodial sentences for violations of the BSA are unusual (former BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes, who pleaded guilty to similar charges in 2022, was sentenced only to probation), Zhao’s four-month sentence was lenient compared to the three years sought by federal prosecutors – and the 25 years CZ's former rival Sam Bankman-Fried got. |
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Sour Settlement for Mango Markets |
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) settled charges with Mango DAO, Mango Labs LLC and Blockworks Foundation alleging that the MNGO token was an unregistered security and that the latter entities offered unregistered broker services. The entities will destroy their MNGO tokens and ask crypto exchanges to stop trading the tokens, as well as pay $700,000 total as part of the settlement, which is still subject to a court's approval, the SEC announced Friday in a press release. The settlement comes just over a month after Mango DAO held an open vote on whether it should adopt the settlement offer proposal. The DAO voted on a settlement proposal with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) earlier this week as well, which passed unanimously. Mango DAO members vote on proposals through the MNGO governance token. It's unclear what the project's future will look like without the token. |
Swan Says Tether Plucked Its Finest Feather |
Swan Bitcoin has filed suit against a group of former employees and consultants, alleging they “hatched and executed a ‘rain and hellfire’ plan” to "steal" its lucrative bitcoin mining business with the help of Tether, Swan Bitcoin’s one-time ally and fundraising partner. The lawsuit accuses six employees of looting Swan’s trade secrets – including “highly proprietary code,” hash-rate optimization techniques, and financial models – and using them to create an “illegal facsimile” of Swan’s bitcoin mining operation called Proton Management. After two months of pilfering and planning, the lawsuit claims, the coup-de-grace came on Aug. 8, when they and several other employees resigned “near-simultaneously” to join Proton. The defendants did all of this, according to Swan, with the go-ahead from Tether, issuer of the leading stablecoin, USDT. Though Tether is not a named defendant in the suit, a spokesperson for the company has denied any and all implications of wrongdoing. |
The Takeaway: Paradox of the Bitcoin Maxi |
By Jason Dehni, CEO of Credbull. Bitcoin was created in response to the Global Financial Crisis as the people’s currency to bypass the manipulation and mismanagement of financial systems by governments, financial institutions and special interest groups. And while there’s an ongoing debate on whether bitcoin ownership is highly concentrated, it is undeniable that it is becoming increasingly so with governments, ETFs dominated by financial institutions, corporations and whales adding to their share on every price correction. Today, the top 15 holders of BTC possess about 7.5% of the total supply. Somewhere along the way, an inherent paradox emerged within the Bitcoin maximalist community: believing in the ideals and purpose of Bitcoin, yet celebrating and depending upon the very institutions Bitcoin was built to circumvent. So, as governments and Wall Street descend upon crypto and influence its volatility, as the decisions of central banks on interest rates zig-zag the price of bitcoin in high single digits within hours, can we still walk the original path? Or are we heading toward a dead-end through excess enthusiasm? The fact that Trump’s proposal in Nashville to make bitcoin a strategic reserve excited the crypto community might be telling of where we’re at. Institutional activity signals “major gains” to the everyday holder of bitcoin. Promises of financial gains are overriding any allegiance to decentralized principles. There is a “look the other way" attitude that neglects the very real scenario in which bitcoin becomes indistinguishable from a traditional financial asset. We saw lines blur with Venezuela’s attempt to support the Bolivar with its self-created Petro cryptocurrency back in 2018. While that effort was thwarted, plenty of other power-grabbing initiatives are clearly unfolding at an alarming rate. The government of El Salvador is buying one bitcoin a day; the FBI recently uncovered North Korea’s fraudulent social engineering schemes to steal bitcoin from their people; U.S-based MicroStrategy holds nearly 250,000 bitcoin. Soon, Bitcoin may be inseparable from the influence of traditional capital markets. When the price moves in sync with stocks and interest rates, we’re in a dangerous place. Failure to curtail growing institutional influence on Bitcoin could result in centralized decentralized finance. Yes, in case you’ve not considered it: Ce-DeFi is a reality that we’re facing. At ground level, this could extend to institutional influence over mining operations and node providers, undermining principles of distributed control. If corporate interests meld into blockchains themselves, not just into cryptocurrencies, ecosystems could become susceptible to data manipulation and censorship measures. Big top-down decisions could start to compromise privacy and pseudonymity customs. However, dystopia is not an inevitable outcome. The onus to act, with purpose, still lies with crypto natives, and more specifically those who claim to be Bitcoin maximalists. While institutional dominion is a problem, the more immediate problem is the lack of acceptance that bitcoin is a people’s currency. The sooner it is accepted that bitcoin may be treated like any other asset, the sooner that full focus can be given to maximizing its value for everyone. If global crypto adoption is to truly manifest, minds must change and grassroots action must be taken. Read the rest. |
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