🇺🇸 Weekly Recap: Presidential Candidates Compete For Crypto Votes

Happy weekend Defiers!

Candidates for the upcoming U.S. presidential election are courting the crypto community.

Former president, Donald Trump, vowed to promote innovation within the U.S. cryptocurrency industry a protect the right to self-custody, marking a seismic pivot from calling Bitcoin a “scam” just three years ago. However, many in the web3 community are skeptical of his newfound support for crypto.

Robert F Kennedy Jr. is also seeking support from crypto users. RFK told an audience at Consensus 2024 that embracing Bitcoin would form a key part of his deficit management strategy, building on the plan to partially back the U.S. dollar with BTC he articulated last year.

Despite garnering support from front-running candidates, digital assets posted a weak performance after surging in response to the sudden approval of spot Ether ETFs last week. The move was largely driven by U.S. inflation data showing a rise in April, which paused global market momentum.

The Department of Justice is paying close attention to web3, with the DoJ publishing its first-ever risk assessment looking at NFTs. Brian Nelson, the Treasury’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, also warned that unregulated stablecoins pose a threat to U.S. national security.

In other regulatory news, SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce threw her support behind a proposal from U.K. financial authorities advocating for establishing a joint sandbox for fintech and digital asset firms with their U.S. counterparts.

Drama persists in the memecoin markets. A spate of celebrity-endorsed memecoins has some analysts sounding the alarm on a top signal. Caitlyn Jenner notably joined the party, but some sleuths believe a shady middle-man orchestrated the launch of JENNER alongside at least four other influencer tokens in the past fortnight.

On Ethereum, PEPE continued surging to new heights, with the frog-themed meme token overtaking MATIC by market cap and eclipsing the 30 largest NFT collections combined.

Uniswap postponed the governance vote on activating its long-awaited fee-switch, with the project’s foundation citing concerns from a prominent stakeholder.

The total value locked in Ethereum Layer 2s posted a new all-time high this week. However, the proliferation of new L2s has some analysts warning of liquidity fragmentation.

The Solana community voted to ditch its token-burning mechanism and divert all priority fees to validators. The network also welcomed the deployment of PYUSD, the stablecoin from PayPal.

Plus, Matter Labs attracts condemnation for “ZK” trademark, SocialFi adoption is plummeting, Ordinals fall as Runes rise, and Argentina’s crypto community plots a pop-up blockchain city in the country’s capital.

And don’t miss our latest podcast with Jose Fernandez da Ponte, the head of crypto at PayPal!

Enjoy!

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PODCAST & INTERVIEWS

Inside PayPal's Blockchain Strategy: Insights from the Head of Crypto

In this week’s podcast, Cami Russo was joined by Jose Fernandez da Ponte, the Head of Crypto at PayPal.

PayPal's entry into the crypto market dates back to 2020 when they announced the integration of various crypto assets, enabling users to buy, sell, and hold digital currencies. Since then, they have progressively expanded their crypto offerings and adopted more ambitious strategies to incorporate blockchain technology.

The discussion dives into PayPal's motivation for entering the crypto space and the current crypto applications available on its platform. Plus, Ponte shares the motivations behind PayPal creating its PYUSD stablecoin, and explores their goal of facilitating mass adoption of blockchain technology.

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Friday

• Uniswap Foundation Delays Fee Switch Vote The Uniswap Foundation attributed the delay to a prominent stakeholder “raising an issue” with the proposal.
• Social-Fi Activity Nears All-time Lows Daily active users on Friendtech and Fantasy Top continue to plummet.
• Daily Transactions on NEAR Protocol Surge to 6 Million Transaction volume on Near has tripled since the beginning of the year, while the total number of wallets created on the network doubled to 75 million.
• Bitcoin Ordinals Crash as Runes Rally The Runes ecosystem rallied 40% on May 30, while top Ordinals collections have dipped by up to 60% from their 2024 highs.
• Crypto Markets Drop After Inflation Data Meets Expectations Digital assets posted a slight pull-back after inflation grew moderately in April.
• Hacker Ransacks Japanese Exchange DMM For $305 Million DMM Bitcoin, a Japanese cryptocurrency exchange, suffered a hack worth more than $300 million. The company said it would refund users.
• U.S. Treasury Warns That NFTs Are Vulnerable To Fraud and Money Laundering The Treasury Department said NFTs could serve as a vehicle for a variety of illicit activities, including fraud and money laundering.
• Presidential Candidate RFK Says Bitcoin Can Help Solve The U.S. Debt Crisis Robert F. Kennedy Jr. believes Bitcoin and blockchain technology could offer solutions for addressing the U.S. debt crisis.
• Matter Labs In Hot Water Over ‘ZK’ Trademark Bid Rival projects using zero-knowledge technology publicly slammed Matter Labs over the trademark drama.

Thursday

• Telegram Wallet Introduces Stricter KYC Rules From June 3, users will have to provide their name, phone number, and date of birth to access most features on the Telegram-based custodial wallet.
• Crypto Markets Trade Sideways Ahead of U.S. Inflation Report Crypto markets posted modest gains on Thursday as traders braced for the release of key U.S. inflation data.
• Ethena Brings Synthetic Dollar to Blast Layer 2 Six Blast-based DeFi protocols have already announced plans to support Ethena’s stablecoin.
• SEC Commissioner Proposes Cross-border Sandbox for U.S. and U.K. Crypto Industries Hester Peirce threw her support behind a proposal from U.K. financial authorities to launch a joint regulatory sandbox with the United States.
• Unregulated Stablecoins Pose Risk To National Security: U.S. Treasury Department The U.S. Treasury Department wants to crack down on jurisdictional regulatory arbitrage, warning that unregulated stablecoins are attracting adoption from criminal groups.
• Veda Announces Partnership With EtherFi Providing Tokenized Vault Infrastructure Veda boasts a more than $700 million TVL less than three months after launching.
• BlackRock Amends S-1 Filing For Spot Ethereum ETF ETF analysts anticipate spot Ether ETFs will begin trading by the end of July.
• Celebrity Memecoins Spark ‘Top Signal’ Debate Notable public figures, including Caitlyn Jenner and Iggy Azalea, launched memecoins on Solana over the last week.
• PEPE Is Now Worth More Than Most Major NFT Projects Combined PEPE’s market cap sits at $6.2 billion, while the top 30 NFT projects are worth just $4 billion.

Wednesday

• Crypto Markets Falter as Rising Treasury Yields Pressure Risk Assets BlackRock’s IBIT also overtook GBTC to become the largest Bitcoin ETF with nearly $20 billion in assets.
• PayPal Brings PYUSD Stablecoin to Solana PYUSD is the 12th largest stablecoin with a market cap of $400 million after doubling over the past six weeks.
• ZKasino Gives Users 72 Hours To Claim Their ETH After Rug-Pulling Them Weeks after rug-pulling its users out of $33 million, ZKasino opened a brief window for investors to reclaim their assets.
• Fetch AI, SingularityNET, and Ocean Protocol Schedule ‘ASI Alliance’ Merger For June 13 The three web3 AI projects will soon merge their tokens and networks.
• Uniswap and Across Team Up On Standard For Cross-Chain Trades ERC-7683 seeks to combat liquidity fragmentation by providing a standardized framework for cross-chain trading.
• ENS Rallies on Layer 2 Migration Plan The Ethereum Name Service protocol unveiled its V2 iteration.
• Rising Ethereum Layer 2 Usage Raises Fragmentation Concerns L2 transaction volume and TVL has rapidly grown in 2024, but some analysts warn of liquidity fragmentation as Layer 2s proliferate.
• Institutional Crypto Inflows Hit 2024 High Investors have piled $14.9 billion into institutional crypto products this year.

Tuesday

• Trump’s Suddenly All About Crypto. What Changed? The blockchain industry is wondering if they can trust their supposedly newfound ally.
• Gnosis Pay Partners With Visa to Expand Web3 Payments The Visa cards are tied to Gnosis-based on-chain spending accounts.
• Crypto Markets Decline Amid Mt. Gox Jitters Wallets linked to the defunct crypto exchange moved $9 billion worth of Bitcoin on May 28.
• Aave to Launch Own Blockchain After V4 Upgrade Avara CEO, Stani Kulechov, said the project is aiming to launch the Aave Network in 2024.
• Ethereum Loyalists Say ETF News Isn’t Priced in but Bitcoin Maxis Push Back Ethereum and Bitcoin maxis are battling over the implications of spot Ether ETFs entering the market.
• Fantom Taps Google Cloud For Infrastructure and AI Capabilities Google Cloud will also onboard as a Fantom validator.
• Healthcare Company Semler Scientific is the Latest to Add Bitcoin to its Treasury The MedTech company purchased 581 BTC worth $40 million.
• Solana To Ditch Token Burning and Divert 100% Of Priority Fees To Validators The proposal’s proponents argue that Solana's old priority fee system was inefficient, but opponents warn of rising SOL inflation.
• Maple Launches New Protocol Enabling Permissionless Lending To Institutions Alongside the launch of Syrup Finance, Maple will also replace MPL with the new SYRUP token.
• EU Threatens To Regulate MEV As ‘Market Abuse’ The draft regulation from the EU securities regulator may require regulated crypto firms to identify and report MEV.

Monday

• Argentina’s Crypto Founders Band Together To Build Blockchain Valley In Buenos Aires The movement has the support of many leading names from Argentina’s crypto community.
• Aptos Surges Past Solana In Daily Transactions The Layer 1 blockchain achieved record throughput with 115 million transactions on May 24 following the launch of Tapos, a “click-to-earn” cat-tickling game.
• PEPE Flips MATIC As Ethereum Memecoins Soar PEPE has soared 80% in the past week to boast a market cap of nearly $7.2 billion, putting it ahead of Polygon (MATIC) and just 20% behind Uniswap (UNI).
• Caitlyn Jenner Promotes Crypto Token, Denies Account Hack Some analysts believe the JENNER token was concocted by a shady "middleman” working alongside Jenner’s team.
• Manta CeDeFi Crossed $100M In TVL After One Week Depositors are racing to qualify for the Manta CeDeFi points program before the project tags $500 million in TVL.
• Arbitrum Community Backs 200M ARB Plan To Attract Web3 Game Builders The proposal seeks 200 million ARB as incentives to foster the development of web3 gaming titles and infrastructure.

TRENDING

• White House Said It Will Not Veto Crypto Bill in Major Industry Win
• Spot Ether ETF Hopefuls Update Filings, Extending Timeline For SEC Approval
• zkSync Could Launch Token This Week
• Ethereum Ecosystem Tokens Surge on Spot ETF Approval Hopes
• Whales Market Token Surges 30% After Releasing Memecoin Launchpad
• Here Are All the Signs an ETH ETF Approval May Be Around the Corner
• Bitcoin Halving Strains Miners as Revenues Drop
• Web3 Gaming Token GALA Crashes After $240M Exploit
• Ethereum Soars As ETF Analysts Increase Odds for ETH ETF Approval To 75%
• Institutions Ramp Up Crypto Exposure As Weekly Volume Plummets: CoinShares
• LayerZero Labs Identifies 800,000 Potential Sybil Addresses in Public List
• Solana Surges While Rest of Crypto Majors Start Week Flat
• Purported Pump.Fun Hacker Claims To Be In Hospital After Arrest and Release
• Web3 Teams Compete To Bring Restaking To $1.2T Bitcoin Ecosystem