Happy weekend Defiers!

Crypto markets struggled to regain momentum this week, as a rebound from last Friday’s rout turned out to be short-lived. BTC is trading around $107,000 after dropping for four straight days.

Payments-focused blockchain Tempo has raised $500 million in Series A funding, valuing the Stripe-backed project at $5 billion.

DeFi emerged relatively unscathed from last week’s mass liquidation event, with major protocols reporting zero outages or bad debt.

Meanwhile, Coinbase announced a surprise listing of BNB as Binance’s listing practices sparked a heated debate on social media.

Finally, ‘Real-time’ blockchain MegaETH opened registrations for its upcoming ICO.

Enjoy!

👀 Don’t miss our newest newsletter, The Defiant: Real World, where we track how trillions of assets are coming onchain. Each week, you’ll get a weekly summary of the high-signal RWA and stablecoin news you can’t miss and in-depth analysis to put it all in context. Read the latest issue here.

Subscribe to Real World

The Defiant

Private by Default: The Next Competitive Edge in Stablecoins. Filter signal from noise with the best source of information for everything happening in Web3 and DeFi. Monday to Friday.

thedefiant.io/newsletter/real-world/private-by-default-the-next-competitive-edge-in-stablecoins

In the genesis episode of our new ECOSYSTEMS podcast, Camila Russo and guest cohost Luigi D’Onorio DeMeo of Ava Labs unpack the Avalanche story—from Team Rocket’s probabilistic consensus and the stadium sampling intuition, to today’s “city of chains.”

Top stories this week

Bitcoin Slides Below $107,000 as Crypto Market Hits Four-Day Losing Streak

The cryptocurrency market fell again on Friday, extending a four-day losing streak as investors grappled with rising geopolitical tensions, trade uncertainties, and the ongoing U.S. government shutdown.

Bitcoin is trading at $107,000, while Ether is hovering around $3,850.

BTC Chart - Coingecko

Stripe-Backed Tempo Blockchain Raises $500 Million in Series A

Tempo, a payments-focused blockchain developed by Stripe and Paradigm, has raised $500 million in a Series A round led by Joshua Kushner’s Thrive Capital and Greenoaks.

The funding round values Tempo at $5 billion, making it one of the largest blockchain venture rounds in recent years.

DeFi Withstands Stress Test as Market Mayhem Wipes Out Nearly $20B

In the chaos of October 10, DeFi protocols experienced a major stress test, and largely came out unscathed — with most of the largest protocols seeing zero outages, and very few user-reported issues, especially when compared with their centralized counterparts.

Coinbase Says It Plans to List BNB amid Binance Listing Fee Saga

Less than 24 hours after a Base builder publicly slammed Binance’s alleged listing policy on X, sparking a heated debate in the crypto community, Coinbase unexpectedly announced plans to list BNB.

MegaETH Opens Registration for Potential ICO on Cobie’s Sonar Platform

MegaETH, an Ethereum-compatible ‘real-time’ blockchain, appears to be planning an initial coin offering (ICO) on Sonar, a self-hosted token launch platform.