🎢 Weekly Recap: Markets Rollercoaster

This week, Cami Russo was joined by Paolo Ardoino, the CTO of the leading stablecoin, Tether. Despite dominating the stablecoin sector for more than half a decade, Tether’s reserves have consistently been the subject of FUD, scrutiny, and suspicion.

We discuss Tether's banking partners, its reserve composition, its latest attestation, and why the stablecoin issuer still hasn't presented an audit (with Ardoino putting some of the blame on auditing firms).

Today, we’re doing a deep dive into Arch Finance, including how to create diversified crypto portfolios without spending an arm and a leg on transaction fees! So, what is Arch finance, and what makes them special?

SEC Delays Bitcoin ETFs + Grayscale Ruling + Uniswap Class Action

In Weekly Recap livestream The Defiant print team discusses the SEC's delays of the ruling of Bitcoin ETFs, the ruling that says the rejection of Grayscale's ETF was arbitrary, the dismissal of Uniswap's class action suits, among other stories.

• Swift Could Support Interconnected CBDCs Via Chainlink Swift, the global interbank messaging service, released a report showcasing how global financial institutions leveraged Chainlink to transfer tokenized assets between blockchains. The participating firms included BNY Mellon, BNP Paribas, and Lloyds Banking Group.
• Markets Erase Weekly Gains After SEC Delays Bitcoin ETF Decisions The combined cryptocurrency capitalization slumped 3.7% on Thursday after the SEC pushed back the deadline for it to deliver a verdict on Bitcoin ETFs proposed by BlackRock, Valkyrie, WisdomTree, and Invesco. BTC shed nearly 5% while ETH dropped 3.6% in 24 hours.
• Starknet Foundation and Argent Form Startup Studio The Starknet Foundation has teamed up with the wallet provider, Starknet, to launch an incubator for Starknet-based web startups. The venture, Hito Studios, aims to assist teams with shipping products and securing funding.

• US Judge Tosses Class Action Lawsuit Against Uniswap Labs A U.S. judge dismissed a lawsuit claiming damages from Uniswap Labs over losses resulting from trading scam tokens on the Uniswap protocol. Judge Failla ruled that Uniswap Labs and its lead investor should not be held accountable for harm resulting from the actions of third-party token issuers.
• PayPal’s Stablecoin Sees Minimal Activity Three Weeks After Launch Three weeks after launching, PayPal’s PYUSD stablecoin is driving less than $10,000 in daily volume. The three largest non-exchange wallets hold $500,006 PYUSD, $9,861 PYUSD, and $8,500 PYUSD respectively.
• USDC To Expand Native Support To Base and Optimism USDC, the second-largest stablecoin, will natively expand onto top Ethereum Layer 2s Optimism and Base in the coming weeks. The new deployments offer an institutional on and off-ramp for the Layer 2 networks.

• LINQ Sees Impressive Growth With ‘Decentralized Liquidity’ Model The LINQ token surged to a market capitalization of $38M on Aug. 28, just 17 days after going live. LINQ collects a 6% tax on all transfers of the token, with half of the funds used to add liquidity to a Uniswap pool for LINQ-ETH.'
• OpenSea Unveils Standards For Redeemable NFTs OpenSea has released four improvement proposals enabling “redeemable NFTs,” and is actively seeking community feedback and collaborators for future projects. The design allows tokenholders to unlock either on-chain or off-chain perks after burning their tokens.

• Markets Soar On US Court Ruling In Grayscale’s Favor Crypto investors are cheering after a U.S. court ruled that the SEC failed to justify its denial of Grayscale’s application for an exchange-traded fund tracking Bitcoin. Grayscale cited the SEC’s approval of two Bitcoin futures ETPs from other issuers last year, arguing that its proposed product is “materially similar” to those greenlit by the agency.
• Elon Musk’s X Obtains License To Enable U.S. Crypto Payments The popular social media platform formerly known as Twitter, X, acquired a Rhode Island Currency Transmitter License on August 28. The certification allows X to store, transfer, or exchange digital assets within its platform.
• dYdX Community Votes On Appchain Migration and V4 Deployment The dYdX community on formalizing plans to convert its DYDX token into a network token ahead of the project’s appchain migration and v4 launch. The proposal includes launching a one-way bridge allowing users to migrate DYDX from Ethereum to dYdX Chain.
• Aave Launches sDAI Pool As MakerDAO Weighs Reducing Yields Aave v3, the leading decentralized lending protocol, enabled support for yield-bearing DAI as collateral on Aug. 28. Users deposited around $40M worth of sDAI onto the protocol within 24 hours of the announcement.

• DeFi LPs Turn To Liquidity Managers To Tackle Uniswap V3 Complexity Protocols providing liquidity management on Uniswap V3 are emerging as a major segment within DeFi. Notable players include Arrakis with $186M in TVL, Gamma with $77M, and the freshly-launched Maverick Protocol.
• Base Inks Profit Sharing Deal With Optimism Coinbase and Optimism have reached a strategic profit-sharing agreement for Base, Coinbase’s OP Stack-based Layer 2 network. Base will share either 15% of gross profits generated or 2.5% of its total revenue from transaction sequencing — whichever is greater — with the Optimism Collective.
• DeFi Sector Increasingly Sees Real-World Assets As Growth Area In a rising rate environment, DeFi’s appetite for real-world assets (RWAs) is growing, as platforms vie to tap the lucrative yields currently available in traditional markets. Umee, Maple Finance, Pendle, and Frax are all eying opportunities for RWA integrations.