The biggest crypto news and ideas of the day |
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Donald Trump holds between $1 million -$5 million in Ether (ETH), and has significant income from non-fungible tokens (NFT) licensing fees, according to election disclosures. While the filings list a non-specific amount of Ether, Arkham Intelligence lists the holdings of Trump's wallet at $3.6 million. Aside from the Ether holdings filings show that Trump made $7.15 million through a licensing agreement with a firm called NFT INT, and the former first lady, Melania Trump, had $330,609 in income from the sales of NFTs. OpenSea data shows that the Trump Digital Trading Cards have had over 15,808 ETH in trading volume since their debut. In July, Trump said he plans to release another NFT collection.
Despite Trump's earlier endorsement of crypto, the former President didn't mention it during a X space interview with Elon Musk nor did he mention it during a recent press conference where he addressed a variety of other topics related to his campaign. Recently, the Trump Organization, the holding company for former U.S. President Donald Trump’s business ventures, announced it will unveil a cryptocurrency initiative, CoinDesk reported. |
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Record Drop in Ethereum Fees |
A steep drop in fees paid to transact on the Ethereum could spell a bullish sign for the network’s underlying ether (ETH) tokens, one analyst said, citing historical data. “Every time ETH gas fees drop to rock bottom has often signaled a price bottom in the mid-term,” Ryan Lee, chief analyst at Bitget Research, in Friday note to CoinDesk. "ETH prices tend to strongly rebound after this cycle, and when this moment coincides with an interest rate cut cycle, the market's wealth effect is full of possibilities.” Gas refers to the necessary cost a user must pay to perform a transaction on the network. Fees dipped as low as 0.6 gwei (a unit of gas) earlier this week with low-priority transactions costing only 1 gwei or lower – a rare occurrence in recent years. The fees represent a more than 95% drop from the 83.1 gwei levels in March, when the network saw a spike in activity. |
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NYSE Drops Bitcoin ETF Options |
The operator of the New York Stock Exchange has withdrawn its application to list and trade options based on the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF and the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing. The SEC extended its review period multiple times after publishing the NYSE proposal for public comment in February 2024, eventually initiating formal proceedings in April, but the proposal was withdrawn by the exchange before a final decision was made. CBOE, where a number of the Bitcoin (BTC) ETFs are traded, also withdrew its application, but has since re-filed with a much more extensive proposal, according to documents spotted by Bloomberg's James Seyffart. The SEC hasn't provided public comment or feedback on the issue. In May, the NYSE announced a plan to list index options tracking Bitcoin prices, using the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index as a benchmark. |
Justin Sun's Meme Machine |
Sun.io, the decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol associated with Tron founder Justin Sun, has released SunPump, a platform that allows users to create memecoins on the Tron blockchain. The platform will rival the popular Solana equivalent, pump.fun, where transaction fees surged to an all-time high this week with a total of $5.3 million in 24 hours. Memecoins, despite often being issued as a joke, have become a key part of the recent crypto bull market. Several, including SHIBA, PEPE, WIF and FLOKI, have surpassed a $1 billion market cap. One of the key criticisms of platforms like pump.fun is that it creates a cheap way for bad actors to create a memecoin only to perform a rug pull once investors have added value. "To address this, the Sun team is committed to enhancing our review processes, introducing community oversight, and promoting transparency to ensure the safety and trust of our users," Sun said in an interview. "SunPump conducts a thorough vetting of creators and projects before they are allowed to launch on the platform, helping to ensure that they meet specific standards of integrity." When asked what sets the two projects apart, Sun said that due to a partnership with crypto exchange Poloniex, projects that maintain $1 million in daily trading volume for three days will be eligible to be listed on the platform. Tron and SunPump are also putting $10 million together to create the Meme Ecosystem Boost Incentive Program, designed to provide resources for newly launched tokens. |
Takeaway: Why Stablecoins Matter |
The following is a guest post from CoinFund President Christopher Perkins:
In 1974, German regulators liquidated Herstatt Bank because it was unable to settle its foreign exchange obligations. Time zone differences and a lack of global settlement technology led to its demise. In the aftermath of this and other bank failures, central bankers formed the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision that same year to set standards for bank capital, liquidity and funding. Fifty years later, “Herstatt” risk is synonymous with foreign exchange settlement risk, and the Basel Committee has become a powerful forum for global bank supervision because of the regulatory capital standards it sets. Its Basel Rules are designed to ensure that banks are sufficiently capitalized based on the underlying risks of their activities. However, across the $7.5 trillion a day global foreign exchange markets, Herstatt risk remains. While the financial services industry has sought to modernize its infrastructure, many currencies still take as long as two days to settle. And across the $700 trillion derivatives market, lumbering daily batch settlement processes fail to keep pace with the real time volatility of the markets that they seek to collateralize. But breakthroughs in technology have the potential to banish settlement risk to a thing of the past. There’s a crucial role for blockchain technology to play. Stablecoins, tokens designed to be pegged to an underlying currency and settled on blockchains, can now reduce currency settlement latency from days to a matter of seconds.
Read the rest of the op-ed here. |
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