2024-09-17 11:11
Decentralized finance needs to develop a unique offering relative to centralized venues, dYdX Foundation CEO Charles d'Haussy said. Decentralized cryptocurrency exchange dYdX plans to list perpetual futures on prediction markets, d'Haussy told CoinDesk in an interview. The prediction market could offer DeFi a unique opportunity to regain attention, d'Haussy added. SINGAPORE — Perpetuals-focused decentralized cryptocurrency exchange dYdX will soon enter the prediction markets sector, allowing users to place leveraged bets on the outcome of binary events, as it looks to divert attention from centralized trading venues. "DYdX will launch perpetual futures on prediction markets," dYdX Foundation CEO Charles d'Haussy said in an interview, explaining that decentralized finance (DeFi) needs to offer something special to differentiate itself from centralized venues. "The prediction market could offer DeFi a unique opportunity to regain attention," d'Haussy said, adding that the DEX is also looking at foreign currency and indexes markets. Prediction markets allow investors to place bets on the outcome of specific events, ranging from sports, financial asset prices, political events and even the weather, using financial incentives. Perpetuals are futures-like derivatives contracts without an expiry date, allowing market participants to hold positions as long as they see fit. Augur, launched in 2018 on Ethereum, was perhaps the first to enter the crypto-based prediction market. However, it failed to gain traction due to a lack of liquidity and high fees on the Ethereum blockchain. Today, PolyMarket is the leader in on-chain prediction markets. August trading volume on the platform exceeded $450 million. DYdX's trading volume was $21.2 billion, according to DefiLlama DYdX's impending foray into prediction markets is a part of the dYdX Unlimited upgrade, which is expected later this year. The program, touted as the dYdX blockhain's most significant to date, will introduce features like a permissionless listing of markets and a master liquidity pool called MegaVault. The platform's users can propose to list any market on the dYdX chain. The protocol actively maintains price and market parameters," Haussy said, explaining permissionless listing. The community is currently experimenting with an FX trading pair tied to the Turkish lira (TRY). Users who debut new markets will need to deposit a governance-determined amount of stablecoin USDC into the MegaVault, which will then quote orders on that market, facilitating instant liquidity. The vault will source liquidity from users, who will get a share of the vault's profits plus a share of the protocol's revenue determined by governance. More importantly, users only need to deposit USDC into the vault, and the vault will decide where to provide liquidity. In esssence, it's a passive income strategy, d'Haussy explained. https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/09/17/dydx-to-debut-perpetual-futures-on-prediction-markets-as-dex-seeks-to-raise-profile/
2024-09-17 08:32
Bhutan’s state-owned Druk Holdings touts digital assets as one of its focus investment groups. Bhutan, a Himalayan nation with fewer than 1 million people, has accumulated over $780 million in bitcoin, representing nearly a third of its GDP, through mining operations run by state-owned Druk Holdings. The mining operations are linked to Bitdeer, which has been expanding mining facilities in the country and aiming for a 600 megawatt capacity by 2025. Bhutan's investment in digital assets is part of a broader strategy by Druk Holdings to diversify revenue streams, with recent wallet activity showing both deposits and withdrawals, including significant transactions with exchanges like Kraken. A picturesque landlocked nation between India and China has amassed bitcoin (BTC) holdings worth over $780 million in the past few years, nearly one-third of its gross domestic product (GDP) and the fourth-largest state-owned stash, according to on-chain analytics tool Arkham. Bhutan, nestled in the Himalayas, considers its fewer than 900,000 citizens’ happiness a better measure of the country's well-being than money. It is the second nation after El Salvador to officially hold BTC, in this case as part of the state-owned Druk Holdings fund. "Bhutan has constructed Bitcoin mining facilities in multiple locations, with the largest being on the site of the now-defunct Education City project," Arkham said in an X post. "Unlike most governments, Bhutan’s BTC does not come from law enforcement asset seizures, but from Bitcoin mining operations, which have ramped up dramatically since early 2023." These mines are likely related to mining giant Bitdeer (BTDR). In 2023, the Singapore-based company said it would work with the Bhutan government to establish cryptocurrency mining operations in Southeast Asia and raised over $500 million for the venture. Shortly afterward, Bitdeer said it had built a 100 megawatt (MW) facility in the first phase of the company's project. In April 2024, Bitdeer said it was working on expanding Bhutan's mining capacity to 600MW in 2025. Bhutan, which is smaller than Switzerland, has little economic diversification and nascent private sector development. It relies on hydropower, tourism and agriculture for revenue. Gross domestic product, the value of all finished goods and services made in the country, was just under $3 billion in 2022, about half that of the Maldives. But Druk is pushing into various sectors to expand the country’s coffers. Its site shows “digital assets” as one of the primary focus areas in a technology-driven investment strategy, including hydropower projects and metaverses. The Druk wallets tracked by Arkham show brisk deposit and withdrawal activity in the past few weeks. It has received up to 2 BTC from Foundry, another miner, and other unidentified Bitcoin addresses several times over the past week. It has periodically sent bitcoin to other addresses and sometimes to crypto exchanges: A transaction from early July shows a tranche of over $25 million worth of BTC was sent to crypto exchange Kraken, where it was likely sold. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/09/17/bhutan-tiny-country-with-3b-gdp-holds-over-780m-in-bitcoin/
2024-09-17 06:49
Markets are seeing a nearly 70% probability of a bigger 50 bps rate cut to the 4.7%-5% range, up from 25% a month ago. Bitcoin remains stable around $58,480 with slight movements in other cryptocurrencies like XRP, SUI, and FTM. The market anticipates the Federal Reserve's potential interest rate cut on September 18, which is expected to influence risk assets positively, with a 67% probability of a 50 bps rate cut. Former President Donald Trump's associated project, World Liberty Financial, announced the launch of a governance token exclusively for U.S. accredited investors. Bitcoin (BTC) and broader crypto markets have changed little in the past 24 hours as traders await a Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting on Wednesday, where officials are expected to announce their first rate cuts in four years. Bitcoin is trading below $58,500 at $58,480 and is relatively flat. The CoinDesk 20 (CD20), a measure of the largest digital assets, is up slightly, trading above 1,800. Daily inflows into the bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) came in at $12.9 million, with most going to BlackRock’s IBIT. The Fed is widely expected to announce an interest rate cut on Sept. 18, kicking off the so-called easing cycle, which has historically supported risk assets, including bitcoin. As of Asian morning hours Tuesday, the 30-Day Fed Funds futures prices show traders see a 67% probability of big 50 bps rate cut to the 4.7%-5% range. This is a bump from Monday’s 50% implied probability and a large jump from the 25% probability from a month ago. On Polymarket, traders are giving a 57% chance of a 50+ bps decrease and a 41% chance of a 25 bps decrease. Elsewhere, the market remains fairly flat. Notable movers include XRP up 3.5%, SUI up 2.5%, and Fantom’s FTM, up 10.5% on continued positive market sentiment from its upcoming re-brand to Sonic. Trump’s World Liberty Financial to launch WLFI token On a livestream spanning over two hours, the team behind World Liberty Financial, a project endorsed by former President Donald Trump and his family, confirmed that it was launching a governance token – but only for accredited U.S. investors. The team emphasized that the token is for governance participation, not economic gain, and did not share a specific launch date during their X Spaces stream. During the livestream Trump did not mention the token itself or give an endorsement, but rather shared his general views on crypto policy, most of which was a repeat of what he shared during prior public appearances such as at the recent Bitcoin Conference in Nashville. Figure Markets launches exchange with real estate-backed yield Crypto exchange Figure Markets is launching on the sidelines of Token2049 in Singapore. Figure, which was founded by SoFi co-founder Mike Cagney, has a unique way of generating yield for those that keep their crypto on the exchange. Figure says it will be able to offer returns of up to 8% for non-USD and stablecoin balances by leveraging a fund backed by real-world assets, such as home equity loans, according to a release. Traders on the exchange deposit funds into Figure Markets, which are pooled and lent to Figure Technologies to issue secured home equity loans, a release explains. Borrowers pay interest on these loans, creating a spread that covers costs and provides returns to investors, who benefit from dual recourse protections, daily liquidity, and interest payments that accrue based on the length of their investment. While Real World Assets (RWAs) are a growing part of crypto, there are very few applications in the industry that attempt to derive yield from them to finance their operations. In 2023, before the launch of Figure, Cagney withdrew the company’s bid for a U.S. federal bank charter after regulatory scrutiny, opting to focus on partnerships with established banks instead. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/09/17/bitcoin-holds-above-58k-as-odds-of-big-fed-rate-cuts-jump-to-67/
2024-09-17 02:55
Officials and advisors to the project confirmed, during a much-anticipated two-hour-plus Spaces on X, that the non-transferable governance token will be available under an SEC Regulation D exemption. World Liberty Financial, a crypto project the Trump family has endorsed, will launch a governance token WLFI. The token will be non-transferable offered only to accredited investors under an SEC Regulation D exemption as the team cited regulatory uncertainty in the U.S. Team members behind the World Liberty Financial crypto project, which has been promoted by former President Donald Trump and his sons, confirmed during an X Spaces live audio stream that they will launch a governance token WLFI. WLFI will be non-transferable and won't provide any economic rights, the team said on the stream. They said they only want token buyers who are seeking to be participants in governance, not those after an economic return. Some 63% of the token will be sold to the public, with 17% reserved for user rewards and 20% going to the team. CoinDesk reported some details of the project last week, citing a draft white paper. As of now, the token will be sold only to accredited investors under what is known as a Regulation D exemption from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Regulation D exemptions allow companies to raise capital without registering securities with the SEC, primarily by offering securities to accredited investors or in small, private offerings. “Our goal is to build projects that are easy and simple to use and where you don’t need to phone a friend to get a walkthrough,” Zak Folkman, one of the project’s founders, said during the stream. The team didn’t share a launch date for the token during the nearly two-and-a-half-hour stream, which brought in over 100,000 listeners. Polymarket betting A Polymarket contract asking if Trump will launch a coin before the election peaked at over 80% for the Yes side during the live stream, but sank to as low as 22% as the stream ended. Earlier in the discussion, various members of the Trump family joined the discussion to share their views on crypto. Donald Trump Jr. talked about how he sees DeFi as, “what our founding fathers intended for the country,” as it brings back fairness to the financial system. “Venture Capitalists are flipping sides over crypto,” he said, noting endorsements from the likes of David Sacks and Elon Musk. Eric Trump said on the session that DeFi needed to be easier to use for regular people, noting the extreme difficulties he encountered when "looping Ethereum on Aave," a decentralized lending platform. While former President Donald Trump joined the X Spaces session for the first 40 minutes, he didn’t discuss the project and instead shared his views on crypto public policy developments. "Crypto's one of those things we have to do, whether we like it or not," Trump said. Another Polymarket contract asking users to bet on what Trump would say during the stream had markets for “Solana”, “Memecoin”, “Milady” and “Doge” but the former president failed to mention any of these. He did, however, say “Crypto” over five times and “NFT” once. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/09/17/crypto-project-world-liberty-financial-promoted-by-trump-family-confirms-plan-for-token/
2024-09-16 20:59
Cathedra Bitcoin will move away from mining business and will develop data centers instead. Cathedra Bitcoin will pivot away from Bitcoin mining to providing general data center services and buying Bitcoin on the open market instead, the company said. Cathedra cited unpredictable profit margins as a cause for the shift. It was Michael Saylor whose MicroStrategy championed large corporations buying bitcoin (BTC) on the open market. Then, surprisingly, one of the biggest bitcoin mining firms, Marathon Digital (MARA), adopted the same strategy. And now another miner is following the same path. Cathedra Bitcoin (CBIT), a firm that started as a miner, said it's changing its business model to develop data centers and will use profits from that business to buy bitcoin instead of mining it. "The last three years have demonstrated to us that bitcoin mining is not a reliable way to grow shareholders’ bitcoin per share," the company said in a statement, noting that the firm's primary goal is to accumulate bitcoin for the shareholders. During the 2021 bull run, mining was seen as a better way to accumulate bitcoin at a discounted price than the open market due to high-profit margins and relatively low hurdle to start the business. That all changed after the recent crypto winter, approval of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to be traded in the U.S. and the halving – which cut the rewards in half, making mining even more competitive. The miners are now struggling to stay afloat and accumulate bitcoin at a discounted price, while other public companies, such as MicroStrategy's (MSTR), are getting rewarded by investors for buying bitcoin in the open market. "Indeed, nine of the 10 largest (by market capitalization) publicly listed bitcoin mining companies hold less bitcoin per share today than they did three years ago. And as a bitcoin miner ourselves, Cathedra has not fared better by this metric. Meanwhile, other listed companies have adopted an explicit policy of increasing bitcoin per share, most notably MicroStrategy (NASDAQ: MSTR), and have been rewarded by equity markets," Cathedra wrote. The company said it will now pivot to developing and operating data centers, which have more predictable cash flows. The firm will then use the profits generated from that business to buy bitcoin in the open market. In fact, it recently merged with Kungsleden, a developer and operator of alternative high-density compute infrastructure, to achieve this goal. Additionally, the company will use other options such as debt, equity and bitcoin-linked derivatives to generate funds to buy more bitcoin. Currently, Cathedra holds 43 bitcoin on its balance sheet. While the company said it's not entirely ditching the mining business and will continue to retain bitcoin mined from its existing operations, it's not hard to see why it pivoted to such a business model. Most recently, bitcoin miner Core Scientific (CORZ) and data center firm Applied Digital (APLD) shares surged after they announced diversifying into high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) hosting business. Meanwhile, stock prices of other miners that haven't committed fully to HCP or AI computing business keep getting pressured as the network hashrate, or a measure of competitiveness, continues to rise to all-time highs, while profitability falls. JPMorgan recently said the hashprice, a measure of miner's daily profitability, has fallen 2% this month, and is more than 50% below pre-halving levels. Meanwhile, Jefferies said bitcoin mining was notably less profitable in August than in July, and September is shaping up to be another difficult month due to rising hashrate. "By repositioning the company away from the bitcoin mining business, toward one with more predictable cash flows and which generates attractive returns on capital – developing and operating data centers – we believe our recent merger with Kungsleden will enable Cathedra to generate meaningful growth in bitcoin per share over time," Cathedra said in the statement. https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/09/16/another-bitcoin-miner-adopts-microstrategys-playbook-of-buying-btc-in-open-market/
2024-09-16 19:08
Former president Donald Trump, campaigning as the Republican nominee for the U.S. election in November, has teased plans for an official announcement on Monday of a new crypto company. Certain details of the project have already leaked out in draft proposals. With little over a month and a half to go till the U.S. presidential election, Donald Trump's schedule is packed – rallies, debates, stump speeches, crisscrossing the country to campaign in battleground states. Over the weekend, at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, he became the target of what the FBI described as an attempted assassination. Despite all that, the former president and Republican nominee has carved out some time later on Monday to unveil a new crypto company: World Liberty Financial. At 8 p.m. on X (formerly Twitter), Trump is scheduled to livestream specifics of the blockchain app that he and his sons have been teasing for months in the leadup to November's presidential election. The project has already sparked controversy. Hackers recently compromised X accounts belonging to members of the Trump family, promoting fake links to the crypto company. While the real app has yet to be officially launched, leaked details of the project's leadership team – and its ties to another recently hacked crypto app – have sparked concern among some of the former president's supporters in the crypto world. Earlier this month, CoinDesk obtained a confidential draft for the project outlining plans for an app meant to make decentralized finance (DeFi) accessible to the masses. Decentralized finance refers to blockchain-based tools that allow users to directly trade, borrow, lend and invest assets without traditional middlemen. After deriding bitcoin as "based on thin air" in 2019, Trump has explicitly embraced the technology and amped up his pro-crypto rhetoric in recent months, especially with the blockchain industry emerging as one of the election cycle's biggest corporate fundraisers. His speech at the Bitcoin Nashville conference in July outlining favorable crypto policies was met with repeated standing ovations and cheers from the thousands of attendees. The white paper obtained by CoinDesk advertises World Liberty Financial as a way of "putting the power of finance back in the hands of the people," as an answer to the "rigged" financial system. Who is involved World Liberty Financial's team includes a mix of Trump family members (18-year-old Barron is listed as chief "DeFi Visionary"), traditional financial figures and blockchain industry leaders. The elder Trump's title with the project would be "chief crypto advocate," according to the white paper. The pair spearheading the project – Zak Folkman and Chase Herro – are not well-known in the crypto world. CoinDesk previously reported that the duo was responsible for Dough Finance, a DeFi product that failed to gain traction and was hacked for $2 million over the summer. The pitch outlined in World Liberty Financial's white paper closely resembles that of Dough. Both platforms are modeled as user-friendly interfaces for accessing Aave, a popular Ethereum-based lending market, and some of the early code for the Trump-backed crypto app appears to have been lifted directly from Herro and Folkman's older project. Outside of crypto, Folkman and Herro are the founders of Subify, a censorship-free subscription platform similar to OnlyFans that is best known for its association with the influencer Logan Paul. Folkman, who registered the LLC for World Liberty Financial, used to deliver seminars advising men on how to pick up women. According to a Bloomberg report published last week, Herro has promoted himself as the "dirtbag of the internet" and has promoted failed cryptocurrencies, colon cleanses and get-rich-quick classes. A Trump crypto token Crypto projects frequently release governance tokens to "decentralize" their products and sidestep arduous securities regulations. World Liberty has not officially unveiled its plans for a cryptocurrency, but the white paper reviewed by CoinDesk suggested that the project will eventually sell a governance token called WLFI. According to the document, the Ethereum-based WLFI token will be non-transferable, meaning it won't be possible to trade on the blockchain, but holders will be able to use it to vote on changes to World Liberty's development roadmap. An unusually large 70% of WLFI tokens have apparently been reserved for World Liberty's team and developers. The rest will be sold to the public, with the proceeds from that sale also reserved for World Liberty insiders. While crypto projects generally reserve a portion of tokens to compensate founders, investors and developers, these groups rarely receive more than 20% or 30% of the total supply. WLFI's allocation to insiders is much larger than peer projects, and token presales are relatively uncommon altogether in today's crypto industry because they tend to face legal and practical hurdles. The transfer restrictions may be designed to make WLFI look less like a stock in the eyes of regulators since they will make the asset difficult to buy and sell like other speculative cryptocurrencies. However, traders frequently sell IOUs for blockchain assets via legal agreements and handshake deals, and WLFI holders could ostensibly vote to make the asset directly transferable on blockchains in the future. Community response Trump has fashioned himself as cryptocurrency's sole champion in this year'spresidential race, and his crypto venture uses anti-establishment rhetoric that could resonate with single-issue crypto voters and MAGA populists alike. (Neither Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, nor his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, mentioned crypto at last week's televised debate.) While it is unclear how closely World Liberty Financial will ultimately resemble its white paper, some of Trump's backers within the crypto industry are worried that the whole plan could backfire. "Is there something that we, as crypto twitter, can collectively do to stop the launch of world liberty coin," Nic Carter, a prominent crypto industry figure and Trump supporter, asked on X (formerly Twitter) after CoinDesk published its initial report on World Liberty Financial's white paper. Though the Trump family appears deeply involved in World Liberty Financial and Donald Trump will be officially unveiling it on Monday evening, the project's white paper claims that the platform has no political affiliation, stating: "World Liberty Financial is not owned, managed, operated, or sold by Donald J. Trump, the Trump Organization, or any of their respective family members, affiliates, or principals." It adds: "However, they may own $WLFI and receive compensation from World Liberty Financial and its developers. World Liberty Financial and $WLFI are not political and have no affiliation with any political campaign." https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/09/16/trumps-crypto-gambit-what-we-know-about-todays-launch-of-world-liberty-financial/
