☄️Weekly Recap: Digital Asset Downtrend Continues

Happy weekend Defiers!

Crypto markets continued to bleed this past week, with violent drawdowns in the stock market spilling into other asset classes. Digital asset bulls also took pause as Mt. Gox and Genesis Trading distributed billions in assets to creditors.

Outflows from spot Ether ETFs are beginning to slow as withdrawals from the Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETHE) dry up during the funds’ second week of trading. Excluding ETHE, more than $1.5 billion has flowed into spot Ethereum ETFs since their July 23 debut. BlackRock anticipates inflows to the asset class will pick up heading into 2025.

Donald Trump’s appearance at the Bitcoin2024 conference made headlines, with the Republican presidential nominee promising to fire Gary Gensler and hodl the Bitcoin seized by U.S. authorities. Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis also unveiled her BITCOIN bill, which calls on the Federal Reserve to build up a strategic reserve of one million BTC over five years.

We sat down with Jordi Montes, the man who accidentally delayed Trump’s on-stage appearance by more than one hour, for an exclusive interview. Montes was detained by the U.S. Secret Service after accidentally entering the conference through the venue’s exit.

The merits and shortcomings of decentralized governance were thrust into the limelight when Compound suffered an alleged governance attack from Humpy, a notorious DeFi whale. In the end, Compound agreed to introduce a staking program distributing 30% of treasury reserves to stakers in exchange for Humpy canceling a contentious governance proposal.

Memecoins continue to weigh heavily on crypto’s cultural zeitgeist, helping to propel decentralized exchanges to all-time high spot trading market share. Solana also overtook Ethereum by monthly DEX trade for the first time as Pump.fun briefly outpaced Ethereum by daily revenue.

Meme tokens are rapidly proliferating as issuers scour the Olympics for inspiration and convert tweets into digital assets. However, research shows that more than 99% of tokens issued via Pump.fun have quickly failed, suggesting most memecoin traders are engaging in a high-stakes game of hot potato.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission amended its lawsuit against Binance, dropping charges that the exchange hosted trades for unregistered third-party securities. Two artists are also suing the SEC to determine whether NFT-based artworks comprise securities.

Government institutions continue to explore tokenization, with Slovenia issuing Europe’s first digital sovereign bond. The California Department of Motor Vehicles is tapping Avalanche to digitize 42 million car titles.

Bitcoin’s DeFi sector continues to expand, with Bitlayer emerging as the top Bitcoin Layer 2 on the back of restaking and liquid staking growth. Fungible tokens also account for 46% of transactions on the Bitcoin network this year so far.

Plus, Trump’s Bitcoin sneakers sell out in minutes, Tether reports record profits, South Korea wins its Do Kwon extradition bid, Aave launches a Lido-focused lending market, and tokenized U.S. treasuries arrive on Ripple.

Also, check out our podcast with Evgeny Yurtaev, the co-founder and CEO of Zerion, to learn about the project’s upcoming Layer 2, Zero Network.

Enjoy!

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DeFi Alpha: Farming FBTC - A New Omnichain Tokenized Bitcoin

Our resident DeFi degens walk you through how to farm the DeFi ecosystem of FBTC, a new bridged Bitcoin token from Mantle.

Plus, our analysts share their technical analysis covering the latest price action and market moves.

PODCAST & INTERVIEWS

Zerion Introduces New Layer 2 With Zero Fees | Evgeny Yurtaev

In this week’s podcast, Cami Russo was joined by Evgeny Yurtaev, the co-founder and CEO of Zerion.

The discussion took place as Zerion prepares to launch its Layer 2 solution, Zero Network. Yurtaev said Zero will offer an improved user experience over rival Ethereum scaling solutions without charging fees. Yurtaev also dives into his vision for Zerion moving forward.

How Is Haqq Network The First Ethical Blockchain?

The Defiant sat down with Yana Levkovich, the chief operating officer of Haqq Network, a blockchain network striving to comply with Shariah principles. Haqq Network’s native cryptocurrency, $ISLM, supports transactions and governance within the network while adhering to Islamic guidelines.

Levkovich dives into the vision of Haqq Network and weighs in on Dubai’s bid to establish itself as a global hub for crypto.

VIDEO & TUTORIALS

Leading Parachains on Polkadot: The Top Projects to Watch

Jack Dunham walks you through Polkadot’s parachain ecosystem.

Friday

Bitcoin Memecoins Runes Make Up 35% of All the Chain's Transactions Runes have roared to contention since launching in April.
Almost 99% of Pump.fun Tokens Fail Of 1.58 million tokens issued via the launchpad, barely 1.4% made it to Raydium for open trading.
Genesis Moves $1.5 Billion in BTC and ETH, Fueling Market Fears Investors are speculating the now-bankrupt crypto lender moved over 16,000 BTC and 166,000 ETH to begin repayments.
Bitcoin, Ethereum Tread Water as Mt. Gox Distributions Continue Mt. Gox’s rehabilitation trustee transferred billions in Bitcoin to creditors this past week.
Spot Ether ETF Outflows Drop As Grayscale Flows Dry Up Excluding the Grayscale Ethereum Trust, spot Ether ETFs hosted inflows exceeding $1.5 billion during their first two weeks of trade.
Polkadot Processes 3.8 Million Transactions on July 30 after Mythos Migration Polkadot is making inroads into the Web3 gaming ecosystem following the migration of Mythos.
Vitalik Says Ethereum Is Ready To Support ‘Tens Of Millions’ Of On-Chain Users Ethereum’s chief scientist called on Layer 2 developers to prioritize cross-L2 interoperability and improving decentralization.
South Korea Wins Extradition Battle for Do Kwon No specific date has been set for the Terraform Labs co-founder’s extradition.
Polymarket Shatters Monthly Usage Stats in July Crypto’s leading prediction market hosted a 250% increase in monthly volume to post record activity.
Olympics Aren’t Spared By Degen Memecoin Makers DIKEC, named after the Turkish silver medal-winning shooter, is one of many freshly launched memecoins taking inspiration from the Olympic games.

Thursday

Solana Flips Ethereum in Monthly DEX Volume For First Time Ever Solana’s DEXs processed $54 billion of trading volume in July, compared to Ethereum’s $52 billion.
Bitcoin Layer 2 Bitlayer Overtakes Merlin as Scaling Battle Heats Up Bitlayer accounts for 31% of all Bitcoin L2 TVL after growing more than 900% in two months, overtaking Merlin after its TVL dropped 50% over the same period.
Kujira Token Drops 40% After the Foundation Gets Liquidated Kujira will transfer control over its remaining treasury to an Operational DAO.
Ripple Partners with OpenEden to Tap Tokenized Treasury Market Ripple will invest $10 million into OpenEden’s TBILL tokens.
Jupiter Community To Vote On Reducing JUP Supply By 30% The measure is intended to reduce the impact of heavy JUP inflation looming for the coming years.
Bitcoin Price Dips After Fed Leaves Interest Rates Unchanged Fed chair Powell said that the central bank could consider lowering rates at its next meeting in September.
Trump’s Bitcoin-branded Sneakers Sell Out in Minutes Trump’s sneaker collections quickly sold out, with many buyers listing their shoes on eBay at an exorbitant premium.
Elixir Unveils Yield-Bearing Stablecoin To Compete With Ethena Elixir’s deUSD is backed by a delta-neutral ETH position, accumulating Ether staking rewards and short funding rates to pay out yield to holders.
Terra Can’t Catch a Break as Blockchain Gets Exploited for $6 Million The attack exploited a vulnerability that was disclosed back in April.
Senator Lummis Introduces BITCOIN Bill to Create ‘Strategic Bitcoin Reserve’ The bill calls for the U.S. Federal Reserve to accumulate one million BTC as a strategic reserve over five years.
ETH Bounces Back Amid ETF Inflows The price of ETH rallied against BTC amid an inflow to spot Ether ETFs.

Wednesday

Tether Reports $5.2 Billion Profit in First Half of 2024 The stablecoin issuer reported record-breaking profits, treasury bill ownership, and reserves.
Polyhedra Launches ‘ZK-As-A-Service’ Platform In Partnership With Google Cloud Polyhedra’s Proof Cloud comprises a ZK prover marketplace and benchmarking platform for L2 developers.
California DMV Brings Car Titles onto the Avalanche Blockchain California’s Department of Motor Vehicles will digitize 42 million vehicle titles.
Degens Can Now Make Memecoins From Tweets Makenow.meme allows users to turn tweets into memecoins in just four steps.
Telegram Game Hamster Kombat Plans to Airdrop 60% of Tokens to Users The announcement follows Hamster Kombat postponing its airdrop, which was originally scheduled for July.
Arbitrum To Expand Orbit Chains Beyond Ethereum Ecosystem Arbitrum’s community is hours away from passing a governance proposal enabling developers to launch Orbit chains outside of the Ethereum ecosystem.
XRP Rallies 8% as Bitcoin and Ether Trade Flat Ahead of Fed Traders are anxiously awaiting the FOMC meeting and Big Tech earnings from Apple, Amazon, and Meta later this week.
Compound Governance Attack Reveals Inherent Vulnerabilities Of DAOs Analysts argue that DAOs are vulnerable to misaligned incentives and the whim of large tokenholders.
Movement Labs Integrates with Polygon’s AggLayer to Improve Liquidity on Move-based L2 Chains Movement Labs’ public testnet has attracted $160 million in committed TVL.
Ethereum Layer 2 Eclipse Launches Mainnet Powered by Solana Tech Eclipse touts itself as the first Layer 2 network on Ethereum supporting the Solana Virtual Machine.
Exclusive With Jordi Montes, the Man Who Delayed Trump at Bitcoin2024 He entered through the exit, and the Secret Service thought he was a threat. While detained, he tried to orange-pill agents.

Tuesday

Pump.Fun Flips Ethereum Blockchain in Daily Revenue The memecoin launchpad recorded the largest daily revenue in all of DeFi over the last 24 hours.
Artists Sue The SEC to Get it to Say NFTs Are Not Securities Brian Frye and Jonathan Mann are taking the Commission to court to determine whether tokenized artworks comprise security assets.
SEC Charges BitClout Founder with Fraud and Unregistered Offering of Securities The securities regulator claims Nader Al-Naji defrauded investors after raising over $200 million for a socialfi blockchain.
BlackRock Not Interested In Solana ETF, Expects To See Strong Inflows To Ether ETFs Around 2025 BlackRock’s CIO of index investments said it "will be a while” before the world’s largest asset manager expands its digital asset ETF roster.
Telegram Game Catizen Postpones Airdrop After Community Backlash Catizen faced criticism after making a $100,000 donation to PETA.
Laser Digital Teams Up With Dinero On Institutional LST The ipxETH product is exclusively backed by Dinero’s pxETH liquid staking token.
Markets Turn Lower Amid Fears of U.S. Government Sales The federal government transferred $2 billion worth of Bitcoin on Monday, according to Arkham Intelligence.
Compound Agrees To Distribute 30% Of Reserves To COMP Stakers To End Alleged Governance Attack Compound will introduce the staking program in exchange for Humpy, a notorious whale, canceling a controversial governance proposal.
Decentralized Exchanges’ Market Share Hits All-time High Decentralized exchanges now account for more than 14% of spot crypto volume.
SEC Amends Binance Lawsuit, Drops Security Claims for Solana and Other Cryptocurrencies The amendment may alleviate regulatory scrutiny facing roughly one dozen cryptocurrencies.

Monday

Very Liberal Americans Are Most Likely To Own Bitcoin Says New Study A survey of 3,538 people in the U.S. shows 22% of very liberal respondents own Bitcoin.
Ordinals Bleed as BTC Touches $70,000 Many of the top Ordinals projects are down over 20% on the month despite Bitcoin’s rally.
Slovenia Issues First Digital Sovereign Bond In Europe The 30 million EUR bond was issued in partnership with the Bank of France’s tokenized cash system and BNP Paribas.
Ethereum ETFs Lag Behind Bitcoin ETFs in First Week Bitcoin ETFs boasted inflows while the newly launched cohort of Ether ETFs suffered outflows.
Developers Compete To Bring Smart Contracts To Dogecoin Ecosystem Laika and Qed Protocol are among a growing cohort of projects working to bring advanced web3 functionality to Dogecoin.
Aave Launches Lido-Only V3 Deployment The new market exclusively supports liquidity pools for Lido’s stETH and wrapped stETH liquid staking token.
BTC Inches Closer to $70,000 after Trump Says ‘Never Sell Your Bitcoin’ Trump asserted that he would fire SEC chair Gensler and ensure the federal government retains its Bitcoin holdings if re-elected.
21Shares Implements Chainlink Proof of Reserve to Enhance ETF Transparency The ETF issuer aims to assure investors that CETH is backed by actual ETH holdings.
Compound Community Accuses Notorious Whale Of Engineering Governance Attack Compound governance passed a proposal to mobilize $24 million worth of COMP to Humpy’s goldCOMP vault, but critics say foul play is afoot.