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- 10/18/24: Your Portal Onchain 📱🌎🚀
10/18/24: Your Portal Onchain 📱🌎🚀
Top News
Venmo now supports crypto purchases via MoonPay integration
Worldcoin rebrands as 'World’, reveals new orb, launches mainnet
Polymarket betting on US election crosses $2B in volume
Specs’ Insights
1. Venmo now supports crypto purchases via MoonPay integration
🚨 Breaking News: Venmo's 60 million users in the U.S. can now buy crypto using MoonPay!
💰 This new integration lets you buy all your favorite cryptocurrencies using your Venmo balance.
🚀 Live now and rolling out soon to the MoonPay partner network.
— MoonPay 🟣 (@moonpay)
6:32 PM • Oct 17, 2024
⌐◪-◪ → PayPal is doubling down on crypto. Venmo’s 60M users can now buy crypto thanks to a new integration with MoonPay.
As a reminder, PayPal purchased Venmo back in 2013 for $800M, making them one of the world’s biggest financial giants. PayPal alone processes 6.6B transactions a year, which is 11% of Visa’s 59.3B transactions.
While this is certainly exciting, I can’t say I’ve ever used MoonPay myself — and not by accident either. MoonPay left a bad taste in my mouth after they secretly gifted celebrities like Justin Bieber and Madonna Bored Apes for their own financial gain. Felt grifty.
But enough of the FUD — from a mass adoption point, this is super bullish. Venmo is the #4 Finance app in the App Store right now after CashApp, PayPal, and Capital One.
It will be interesting to see how PayPal continues to evolve within the crypto industry and if they can increase usage of their stablecoin PYUSD, which is currently #6 by market cap.
2. Worldcoin rebrands as 'World’, reveals new orb, launches mainnet
Hello World
— World (@worldcoin)
6:52 PM • Oct 17, 2024
⌐◪-◪ → Worldcoin is cooking! The company, founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, just rebranded as “World” after realizing the name “Worldcoin” doesn’t work anymore.
It’s reminiscent of Facebook’s rebrand to Meta, in a desperate attempt to escape Orwellian brand affinity. Shoutout to the “Hello World” reference in their announcement, even if it’s technically “Hello, World!” — details matter.
More importantly than their rebrand are some real announcements:
The launch of their mainnet, World Chain
A new eyeball-scanning orb. YAY!
A mobile app called World App 3.0
While it's fun to FUD Worldcoin — excuse me, I mean WORLD — they are admittedly solving a real problem: proof of human. There are infinite use cases for a platform like this such as digital driver’s licenses, combating sybil attacks, voter fraud, deep-fakes, and more.
I’m excited to see what sort of super-app rivalry this brews between Elon and Sam — as last I checked, they don’t like each other. Nothing better than a good tech billionaire rivalry, but Sam really needs to work on his branding. He’s giving some serious early Zuckerberg energy right now.
Also, maybe download the app to snag your username. Not privacy advice.
3. Polymarket betting on US election crosses $2B in volume
this is insane. @Polymarket has done $2B of volume on its US presidential election bets 🇺🇸
im baffled at how many people IRL are talking politics but still don't know about this. we can literally see the frontrunner & momentum shifting in realtime.
fascinating times
— Gali (@Gfilche)
5:59 PM • Oct 17, 2024
⌐◪-◪ → Polymarket is on fire (in a good way). The platform just surpassed $2B bet on the presidential election, and it's still growing.
Just to put the momentum in perspective, it took 263 days to hit $1B volume on the Presidential Election, but only 23 days to hit $2B in total volume. With 17 days left until the election, we very well may see this market surpass $3B in total volume.
The real question is, what happens to Polymarket volumes after the election? My guess is they plummet. For context, here’s what happened to Augur in 2021, the leading prediction market at the time, after the election.
Some Polymarket-maxis may argue but this time it’s different, or sports betting will save the day — but I think that is unlikely. Think about it. Most of the sports betting demographic still doesn’t know how to use a self-custody wallet, let alone bridge funds to Polygon.
With that said, if the UX improves and Polymarket can compete on fees — maybe there is a chance. At the end of the day, everybody cares about price.
Meanwhile, tons of people are having a fit over Polymarket odds right now, coming up with all sorts of theories as to why Trump’s lead is so high. Read about my take on this in yesterday’s issue.
Everything Else
⛓️ Crypto & DeFi
Apechain upgrades smart contracts with LayerZero’s omnichain standard
EthOS introduces dGEN1 hardware device for Ethereum
Bitcoin exchange reserves drop to multi-year low amid institutional demand
Ostium Labs launches onchain perpetual markets mainnet
Meme coins blast past Bitcoin gains as market heats up
DEXs struggle to compete as futures volumes shift to CEXs
EigenLayer X account hacked promotes fake airdrop
Liquidation cascade risk rises as crypto high-risk loans surge to $55M
AI agent Terminal of Truths’ holdings hit $850k, closing in on $1M
🏦 Wallstreet & VC
BlackRock’s spot ETF draws in over $1B this week
Staked Ether sets benchmark for the crypto economy, says ARK
Republican sweep could be bullish for Coinbase and crypto, says Citi
JPMorgan warns BTC miners face shrinking opportunity to win AI deals
Blockchain Capital leads $33M Series C in Yellow Card
zkPass raises $12.5M in Series A at $100M valuation
🏛️ Legal & Regulatory
SEC files last-minute appeal in Ripple case, XRP Army outraged
US sentences man to 5 years for $20M fake Coinbase fraud
CFTC says court ruling on Kalshi election bets was wrong
FBI arrests man for hacking SEC account and announcing BTC ETF
World Liberty called 'meme project' amid weak token sales
🌎 Rest of the World
Euroclear buys stake in Singapore’s blockchain Marketnode
FLOKI’s Valhalla welcomes Hafthor Björnsson as ambassador
Singapore’s DBS Bank launches blockchain tokenization services
🖼️ NFTs & Metaverse
Moonray game comes to PS5 without crypto features
Hamster Kombat founders tout high trading volumes, expansion plans
Galaxis teams up with ‘Killer Whales’ to empower creators
MIKA memecoin founder denies allegations of rugpull
Artist accidentally buys 1110 SOL of memecoin THINK
Coinbase adds support for TURBO memecoin