🤔Weekly Recap: Satoshi's Identity Revealed?

Happy weekend Defiers!

Leading crypto markets oscillated sideways this week, with performance marred by renewed inflation concerns, a lackluster Chinese stimulus announcement, and fears that the U.S. government may soon move to offload $4.4 billion worth of BTC seized from Silk Road.

But not all digital assets trended down, with memecoins enjoying bullish momentum amid support from former fund managers, while Chiliz fan tokens also posted significant gains.

It was a big week for Bitcoin. HBO broadcast its documentary claiming to uncover the real-life identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s pseudonymous founder. However, the film attracted backlash after proclaiming Peter Todd, a long-time Bitcoin contributor, is Satoshi without providing substantial evidence to support its claims.

Babylon, the hyped Bitcoin staking protocol, amassed $1.42 billion worth of BTC after briefly opening deposits for 10 blocks. Data shows that only 20% of Bitcoin transactions leverage Taproot, while a former Russian investigator was sentenced to prison for receiving a 1,032 BTC bribe.

World Liberty Financial, the upcoming DeFi project from the family of Donald Trump, proposed launching an instance of the Aave v3 protocol. The platform would support ETH, WBTC, USDT, and USDC at launch, and distribute 20% of fee revenue to the Aave DAO.

Uniswap announced Unichain, an upcoming Layer 2 claiming near-instant transaction execution. The news comes amid a decline in L2 adoption excluding Base, with Coinbase’s Layer 2 defiantly soaring to new heights.

The SEC remains hawkish on crypto, with the agency sending a Wells Notice to Crypto.com and filing legal action against Cumberland. Crypto.com hit back with its own lawsuit accusing the SEC of pursuing an unlawful regulatory campaign.

In other regulatory news, the FBI created a crypto token in a bid to lure market-makers engaged in illegal market manipulation.

Plus, Wrapped Bitcoin completes its corporate restructuring, Scroll schedules SCR airdrop for October, XCOPY NFT fetches $2M sale, UAE announces VAT exemptions for crypto, and Aave floats GHO on Avalanche and Base.

Also, don’t forget to check out our podcast with John Avlon, a congressional candidate advocating for bipartisan support of emerging technologies, including cryptocurrency.

Enjoy!

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PODCAST & INTERVIEWS

Democratic Candidate John Avlon on Depolarizing Crypto Regulation and Building Bipartisan Support

In this week’s podcast, Cami Russo was joined by John Avlon, a congressional candidate for New York, advocating for bipartisan support of emerging technologies, including cryptocurrency.

John emphasizes the need for clear and reasonable regulation to foster innovation without stifling it, while warning against making technology a partisan issue. Avlon critiques the current regulatory landscape — including the approach of figures like Gary Gensler — and highlights the potential risks of pushing innovation overseas. Avlon advocates for Democrats to embrace technology as a key driver of U.S. competitiveness, underscoring that this election will shape the trajectory of the nation's future.

Decentralized Identity with Humanity Protocol Founder, Terence Kwok

The Defiant sat down with Terence Kwok, the founder of Humanity Protocol, a zero-knowledge-powered Layer 2 blockchain solution focused on decentralized identity.

The project emphasizes proof of humanity and utilizes biometric verification (palm scans) to establish users as unique individuals in a bid to combat fraud and AI-driven impersonation. Humanity Protocol’s long-term vision includes enhancing identity verification for web3 applications such as airdrops, governance, and advertising while promoting a more secure, user-controlled data ecosystem.

Rune Christensen on Sky's Vision: The Future of DeFi, Stablecoins, & Real-World Assets

The Defiant spoke to Rune Christensen, the founder of MakerDAO (formerly Sky) to discuss the project’s recent rebrand.

Christensen emphasized the project's goal of simplifying decentralized finance (DeFi) for broader adoption. He highlights the introduction of USDS, a new decentralized stablecoin designed to offer users easy access to savings and rewards, as well as Sky’s new native token incentives. Rune also addresses Sky’s adoption of real-world assets (RWAs) and touches on the potential for tokenization to drive future DeFi growth of DeFi. Ultimately, Christensen envisions DeFi becoming the dominant narrative in the crypto space, with a focus on delivering real-world solutions.

Friday

• Michael Saylor Wants to Turn Microstrategy Into a Bitcoin Bank Saylor told analysts at Bernstein he intends his company to be the top Bitcoin bank.
• Runes Rally as Traders Move Up the Risk Curve Runes are up multiples over the last week as traders move to acquire memecoins and other Bitcoin ecosystem assets.
• Sentient AI Agent Funded by Marc Andreessen Adopts its Own Memecoin Through communications via X, the AI Agent decided to officially endorse and bull-post the $GOAT token.
• Trump Family’s DeFi Platform World Liberty Financial is No Political Stunt, Says Advisor Trump has been aggressively courting the crypto vote in recent months.
• Former FTX Exec Ryan Salame Kicks Off Prison Stint with Bizarre LinkedIn Post "I’m happy to share that I’m starting a new position as [an] inmate at FCI Cumberland,” he wrote.
• Justin Sun Gets Elected Prime Minister of the “Freest Country” in the World Liberland, an unrecognized micronation tucked away between Croatia and Serbia, voted in Sun over the weekend.
• Crypto Markets Rebound on Renewed China Stimulus Expectations China reportedly plans to inject up to $274 billion in fiscal stimulus.
• Gear Foundation Unveils Computational Layer To Scale Ethereum Gear.exe uses a non-blockchain architecture to bolster Ethereum’s scalability and facilitate parallelized execution.
• SEC Doubles Down On Crypto Tokens Comprising Securities In Cumberland Complaint The SEC claims Cumberland facilitated the sale of $2 billion worth of crypto asset securities since March 2018.
• Chiliz Fan Tokens Surge In Spite Of Weak Crypto Market Action The volume of Chiliz tokens surged past $1 billion for the first time this week.
• OKX Launches First Crypto Derivatives In UAE Alongside Local Exchange The new platform hosts AED-denominated trading pairs and supports local fiat transfers.
• Argentina’s Football Association To Start Tokenizing Players' Training Rights Fans will be able to invest in their favorite players and receive benefits when they are traded.

Thursday

• XCOPY NFT Sells for $2 Million “Chatbot and Chill?” an XCOPY one-of-one from 2018, sold for 800 ETH.
• Swell Network Releases Airdrop Checker The liquid staking protocol is gearing up to launch its long-awaited SWELL token.
• Crypto Among Top Choices For ETF Investors Across All Age Groups: Schwab Equities are most favored across all investors, with crypto coming in second.
• Memecoins are Moving from Ethereum to Solana to Access Moonshot App The APU token is now multi-chain, allowing it to be listed on the Moonshot memecoin trading app.
• Crypto Markets Slide as Inflation Concerns Resurface Concerns are also mounting over the U.S. government's potential sale of 69,370 BTC seized from the Silk Road marketplace.
• Wrapped Bitcoin Completes Corporate Restructuring The Bitcoin backing WBTC is now custodied in the United States, Hong Kong, and Singapore.
• Uniswap Launches Testnet For Unichain Layer 2 Unichain claims to offer one-second block times and will join Optimism’s Superchain ecosystem.
• FBI Creates Ethereum-Based Token To Lure Market Manipulators The FBI busted several market-making firms offering illegal wash trading services.
• Trumps’ World Liberty Financial Proposes Aave V3 Deployment On Ethereum Aave would receive 20% of World Liberty Financial’s protocol fees per the proposal.

Wednesday

• Bitcoin’s Taproot Upgrade Suffers Slow Adoption Despite More Companies Supporting It Dune data shows that Taproot transactions comprise a meager 20% of all Bitcoin transactions.
• Circle Launches Native USDC On SUI The move comes as USDC has lost 5% of its market capitalization in the last month.
• Onchain Sleuth ZachXBT Doxes Memecoin Cult Leader’s Wallets Crypto Twitter is debating ZachXBT’s decision to expose Murad’s wallets.
• Crypto Markets Tread Water Ahead of Fed Minutes Bitcoin and Ethereum swung between gains and losses as traders awaited the minutes from the U.S. central bank’s September meeting.
• Colombian Neobank Connects OpenTrade With Avalanche for Interest-bearing USD Accounts Littio offers exposure to U.S. treasury bills through “yield pots.”
• Wrapped Bitcoin Transfers Reserves Ahead Of Controversial Restructure WBTC’s total value locked abruptly fell 99% on DeFi Llama.
• Bitcoin Roundup: Ethiopian Mining Booms, Russian Investigator Jailed Over BTC Bribe, Fold Files For IPO The price of BTC is down 0.8% over the past 24 hours.
• Babylon Attracts $1.42B In BTC Over 10 Bitcoin Blocks Users raced to deposit BTC on Babylon to begin earning points.
• Crypto Community Slams HBO Documentary Claiming Peter Todd Is Satoshi Prominent crypto commentators accuse the documentary of needlessly putting Todd in danger without providing substantial evidence supporting the claim he is Satoshi.

Tuesday

• Ethereum Developers Float Two Proposals To Improve Layer 1 Efficiency EIP-7781 would lower the network’s slot time, increase blobs per block, and help scale the main chain.
• Ethereum Layer 2 Scroll to Airdrop 15% of SCR Token to its Community The first airdrop will distribute 7% of the Layer 2’s token supply.
• Aave Could Soon Launch GHO Stablecoin on Avalanche and Base GHO is currently available on Ethereum mainnet and Arbitrum.
• Crypto.com Sues the SEC in Response to “Unlawful” Wells Notice The centralized exchange hit back against a Wells Notice by suing the SEC.
• Crypto Markets Slide as China Stimulus Disappoints Spot Bitcoin ETFs logged their highest daily inflows for October on Monday.
• Penpie Proposes Compensation Plan and Insurance Protocol After $27M Exploit The Safupie insurance protocol aims to service third-party projects in the future.
• Binance To Debut Pre-Market Trading For Scroll’s SCR Token On Oct. 11 Scroll’s SCR token will begin pre-market trading on Binance in three days.
• FTX’s Bankruptcy Plan Approved Despite User Dissent The plan greenlights the failed exchange to repay customers based on November 2022 crypto prices.

Monday

• UAE Rolls Out VAT Exemptions For Crypto Transactions Crypto transfers and conversions are now VAT-free in the United Arab Emirates.
• L2 Adoption Wanes Despite Base Activity Continuing To Surge Active addresses on Arbitrum and Linea have crashed by 62% and 87% in recent months.
• Memecoins Rally on VC Attention Large and mid-cap memes are commanding mass attention as degesn hope VCs will join the trend.
• Crypto Markets Rally Ahead of U.S. Inflation Report Bitcoin and Ethereum jumped 2% ahead of a crucial week that includes U.S. CPI and Federal Reserve minutes.
• EigenLayer Blames Presumed $5.6M Insider EIGEN Dump On Email Compromise The sales had ignited fears that EigenLayer insiders could violate their token vesting schedule.
• Memecoin ‘Vampire Attacks’ Increase Popular tokens are being recreated on different blockchains under the label “Community Takeovers.”
• Polymarket Speculators Now Think Nick Szabo Is Satoshi Nick Szabo is most favored by Polymarket bettors ahead of tomorrow’s HBO documentary release.
• Fractal Bitcoin Token Drops as Team Unveils Q4 Roadmap Upcoming features include Runes activation, CAT20 assets in UniSat wallet, and trustless CAT20 trading markets.

TRENDING

• Aerodrome Faces Criticism Over Code License Amid Rapid Growth
• Memecoin-Linked NFTs Rally on “Cult” Thesis
• Binance's Market Share Falls to Four-Year Low
• Liquid Restaking Protocol Puffer Finance Preps for Airdrop
• Bitcoin and Ethereum Rally on Positive U.S. Jobs Report
• Swift to Begin Digital Payments Trial in 2025