9/11/24: One Name To Rule Them All ⛓️🍑🏦

Author

Valko
September 11, 2024

Top News

  1. PayPal and Venmo add support for ENS usernames

  2. OnlyFans creators made $5.3B in 2023, more than NBA players

  3. Tether reports $6.2B profit for 2023, more than BlackRock

Specs’ Insights

1. PayPal and Venmo add support for ENS usernames

⌐◪-◪ → ENS is officially supported on both PayPal and Venmo, a massive milestone for crypto adoption.

Now over 270M users can simply enter an ENS name to send crypto on PayPal or Venmo, and the platform will automatically resolve to the correct address — huge.

Shoutout to the PayPal team for their strong crypto push. Their stablecoin PYUSD has already hit a $1B market cap, making it the 5th largest stablecoin after Tether, USDC, DAI, and First Digital.

By the way, they also own their ENS handles: venmo.eth and paypal.eth.

Zooming out, ENS is now supported on Google, GoDaddy, and now PayPal + Venmo. Imagine how dumb all the DeFi companies who haven’t integrated ENS yet must feel watching Web2 companies lap them — shame.

Ethereum vibes may be low, but adoption continues.

2. OnlyFans creators made $5.3B in 2023, more than NBA players

⌐◪-◪ → The creator economy is booming, with OnlyFans creators earning $5.3B in 2023, 10% more than the combined NBA player salaries ($4.9B).

Obviously, there are far more OnlyFans creators (4M) than NBA players (560), but the statistic is still pretty shocking. A better comparison might be the top 500 OnlyFans creators vs. the top 500 NBA players by income. If you find this, let me know.

Zooming out, if OnlyFans’ growth continues, it’s only a matter of time before they flip the Premier League payroll ($5.3B) and the NFL payroll cap ($7.2B).

Now, I’m not saying go start an OnlyFans, but…if you haven’t figured out how to make money on the internet — you might want to.

Digital leverage is king.

3. Tether reports $6.2B profit for 2023, more than BlackRock

⌐◪-◪ → Tether, the leading stablecoin provider, just reported $6.2B in profits last year, surpassing BlackRock’s $5.5B — insane.

Just so you can understand how wild this is: Tether is literally less than 10 years old and is already more profitable than the largest fund on earth — not to mention Tether has under 100 employees, and BlackRock has over 20,000.

If this is not a sign of the times, then I don’t know what is.

It’s headlines like this that will make all major financial institutions rethink their stance on crypto. Just imagine how dumb all the anti-crypto executives on Wall Street must feel right now.

Tether didn’t just beat BlackRock; it doubled the fees generated by Bitcoin and Ethereum over the last 12 months combined and processed as much money as the Visa card network.

I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but it couldn’t be more obvious that the future of finance is blockchain. TradFi can either get with the program or be left behind.

Adapt or die.

Everything Else

⛓️ Crypto & DeFi

  • Ethereum stablecoin volume hits record $1.46T, a doubling this year

  • Solana fees plunge to six-month low amid declining PumpFun activity

  • Solana activity hits an all-time high of 5.4M daily active addresses

  • Marinade hires Fidelity Digital Assets exec as Chief Commercial Officer

  • ZKsync developer Matter Labs poaches Soalana’s VP of marketing

  • Bitcoin mining difficulty hits a record of 92.67T

  • Solo Bitcoin miner secures entire $181,000 block reward

  • Monero expert fact checks claims that transactions can be traced

  • Polygon Labs and Fabric Cryptography unveil custom ZK chips

  • Paxos to expand Arbitrum network with new line of products

  • Aave outperforms Bitcoin and Ethereum over the last 1.5 months

🏦 Wallstreet & VC

  • State Street and Galaxy Digital crypto ETFs begin trading

  • Bitwise CIO predicts crypto rally as macro uncertainty fades in Q4

  • tZero becomes the 2nd special U.S. purpose crypto broker-dealer

  • Multicoin accumulates DRIFT tokens, a derivatives DEX on Solana

🏛️ Legal & Regulatory

  • Harris-Trump debate ends without a single mention of crypto

  • Harris wins Presidential Debate according to Polymarket bettors

  • Maxine Waters calls out Trump’s crypto project in House DeFi hearing

  • Caroline Ellison, SBF’s ex-girlfriend, to face sentencing on Sept. 24th

  • FBI says crypto was involved in 87% of all investment fraud in 2023

  • Atomic Wallet wins dismissal over $100M class action lawsuit

🌎 Rest Of The World

  • EU regulator thinks we’ll see official stablecoin standards by year-end

  • UK regulator charges individual for running illegal crypto ATM network

  • India and Nigeria lead the world in crypto adoption

  • Standard Chartered launches crypto custody services in the UAE

  • Indonesian exchange Indodax exploited for $20.5M

🖼️ NFTs & Metaverse

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