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  • 11/1/24: Uniswap's Big Unlock 🦄🎯🤑

11/1/24: Uniswap's Big Unlock 🦄🎯🤑

Author

Valko
November 01, 2024

Top News

  1. Uniswap users can now buy crypto directly from their Venmo balance

  2. World Liberty Financial reduces fundraising target by 90% to $30M

  3. Solana DEX volume overtakes Ethereum with over $52B in October

Specs’ Insights

1. Uniswap users can now buy crypto directly from their Venmo balance

⌐◪-◪ → The Pink Unicorn has infiltrated Venmo, I repeat, the Pink Unicorn has infiltrated Venmo.

Venmo is now available as a funding method directly from the Uniswap Web and Mobile wallet. Uniswap wallet users can seamlessly buy crypto using their Venmo balance, making the crypto onramping process easier than ever.

Gone are the days of waiting 3-4 business days for bank wires to clear; we now have another instantaneous way to convert fiat into crypto.

I don’t know about you, but this seems like a pretty deft response to Coinbase and Visa’s recent announcement, which lets Visa debit card users instantly load funds into Coinbase using Visa Direct, which we covered in the October 30th issue.

This is exactly the competition we need. It not only helps onboard new users and makes life easier for existing crypto-natives, it also helps drive onboarding fees down — which can definitely add up over time.

Which onramp are you more excited about, Coinbase/Visa or Uniswap/Venmo?

Titans are fighting in plain sight, and the world is hardly noticing.

2. World Liberty Financial reduces fundraising target by 90% to $30M

⌐◪-◪ → Trump wants a mulligan!

World Liberty Financial, the Trump family DeFi project, just reduced its fundraising target from $300M to $30M (a 90% reduction) following lackluster demand for their non-transferable governance token.

While the company hasn’t made an official announcement on the matter, it did file a Form D Exemption with the SEC, which states, “The company currently only plans to sell tokens up to $30M in the offering before terminating sale.”

For context, they’ve raised $14.58M so far — less than 5% of their original target, but roughly 50% of their new target.

Meanwhile, the company is still pursuing an Aave v3 deployment, which would allocate 20% of protocol fees and 7% of WLFI tokens to AaveDAO. The Aave community’s initial response was positive, with 97.5% in favor during the initial temperature check. Now it’s time for the Aave request for comment (ARFC) stage. If you want to follow this story more closely, check out their:

The real question is, will they hit their new $30M sales target, or will demand stay flat? Let me know what you think in Specs.Chat!

3. Solana DEX volume overtakes Ethereum with over $52B in October

⌐◪-◪ → Solana’s memecoin mania continues!

Solana just surpassed all other blockchains, including Ethereum, in monthly DEX volume for October. For context, here are the top 5:

  1. Solana → $52.2B

  2. Ethereum → $41.5B

  3. Base → $27.7B

  4. BSC → $24.2B

  5. Arbitrum → $16B

Solana didn’t just surpass Ethereum; it blew past ETH with 1.25x more monthly DEX volume — now commanding ~26% of total DEX market share across all chains. This is the second time Solana has led monthly DEX volume, underscoring its growing adoption and the continued popularity of memecoins.

Meanwhile, Ethereum FUD is peaking. If you want some bullish ETH energy, check out these posts:

Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.

Everything Else

⛓️ Crypto & DeFi

  • Trump wishes Bitcoin a happy birthday, takes a dig at Kamala

  • Tether reports $2.5B profit in Q3, holds over $100B US Treasuries

  • Justin Sun wants more TradFi on Tron, prefers dog memecoins to cats

  • ZetaChain resumes block production after 6-hour outage

  • DeFi to have ‘Walled Garden’ moment as it matures says dYdX founder

  • NEBRA launches universal proof aggregator tool on World Chain

  • CZ makes 1st public appearance after prison at Binance Blockchain week

  • Stephen Mollah, a British-Asian macroeconomist, claims to be Satoshi

  • Nexo pivots away from lending, rebrands as digital asset wealth platform

🏦 Wall Street

  • MicroStrategy’s $42B capital plan is a 'win for all', says analysts

  • JPMorgan says Bitcoin and gold both win if Trump secures the election

  • Coinbase shares drop 15% after weaker-than-expected earnings report

  • Bridge, Stripe’s recent acquisition, buys web3 wallet platform Triangle

  • Franklin Templeton launches tokenized money market fund on Base

  • Ellipsis Labs raises $21M to launch 'verifiable finance blockchain'

  • Securitize crosses $1B in tokenized onchain assets, launches new service

  • Superstate introduces real-time continuous pricing for USTB Treasury fund

  • Crypto.com acquires SEC-registered broker to expand equities offering

🚀 Venture Capital

  • Glow raises $30M for Ethereum-based solar project

  • Spire Labs raises $7M for Ethereum scaling infrastructure

  • Axal raises $2.5M pre-seed for autonomous agent network developer

  • Citrea raises $14M to make Bitcoin programmable with ZK proofs

  • VanEck invests in Gunzilla Games, creators of Off The Grid game

🏛️ Legal & Regulatory

  • Trump’s lead on Polymarket narrows as election gets closer

  • Immutable receives Wells Notice from the SEC over IMX token sales

  • Florida’s CFO says state holds about $800M in crypto investments

  • SEC cost crypto industry $400M under Gensler, says Blockchain Association

  • Crypto losses to hacks surpass $1.4B in 2024, despite monthly drop

  • Crypto will see friendlier regulation regardless of election, says Reuters

  • US Department of Justice indicts founder of Gotbit for alleged wire fraud

🌎 Rest Of The World

  • Russia to ban crypto mining in some regions due to electricity shortages

🖼️ NFTs & Metaverse

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