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⌐◪-◪ → Tether, the company behind the leading stablecoin $USDT, just announced $5.2B in profits for H1 2024, placing them among the top companies in the world.

What’s even crazier is they did this with 125 employees, that’s ~$42M in profit per employee. Insane.

To emphasize Tether’s size, they’re now the 18th largest holder of US debt with $97.6B in US Treasuries, more than Germany, the United Arab Emirates, and Australia.

The timing of this headline is pretty funny, considering it was just yesterday that secondary market data leaked showing that Circle (Tether’s biggest rival) was worth roughly $5B.

I like Circle, but Tether just dunked on them pretty hard, $5.2B half-a-year profits vs. $5B enterprise value.

The real question is, will Circle ($33.1B) ever surpass Tether ($114.5B) in USD stablecoin market cap? Let me know in Specs.Chat!

⌐◪-◪ → Polymarket is on fire, and just hit a new monthly volume all-time-high of $387M for July. That’s nearly 3.5x June’s volume.

Here are some more stats (and monthly growth figures) from our friend @Tyler_Did_It:

• $387M in volume (+250%)

• 44,523 active traders (+50%)

• 65,000 new accounts (+240%)

• $84M in total open interest (+100%)

Polymarket has become the source of truth for public opinion, and much like ChatGPT took over my Google usage, Polymarket has displaced a large portion of my news consumption and fact-checking. This fundamental behavioral change should not be overlooked.

We may see Polymarket break $1B in monthly trading volume before the election. Let me know what you think in Specs.Chat!

⌐◪-◪ → Sen. Cynthia Lummis, a Republican from Wyoming, officially introduced a new bill to create a national Bitcoin reserve.

The bill was released on Wednesday, just 2 days after the U.S. Marshals Service moved $2B BTC (from the Silk Road seizure) to two new wallets in preparation to sell.

The bill calls for the U.S. to buy 1,000,000 BTC ($64.7B) over 5 years, with a 20-year holding period. Bullish.

For context: 1M Bitcoin is ~4.7% of the total possible BTC supply.

If Trump wins the election and can approve this bill (or a similar version), then every country on planet Earth will be in a race to accumulate as much Bitcoin as possible.

It’ll be interesting to see how the Biden-Harris administration reacts to this bill, a potential indication of how willing/able the Democratic party is to rebrand as a pro-crypto party.

The Great Bitcoin Race is near.