The Block
Quick Take The CFTC, as part of its appeal in its case against prediction markets Kalshi offering election prediction contracts to U.S. citizens, argued that prediction markets are vulnerable to manipulation in a filing on Saturday. “A pharmacy does not get to dispense cocaine just because it is sold on the black market,” the CFTC stated in response to Kalshi’s argument that Polymarket and other unregulated exchanges offer the contracts already.
Quick Take An NFT trader has shared an early look at Opensea’s upcoming redesigned platform, which includes an ‘XP’ points system with retroactive rewards for early traders, a redesigned interface, and more. The points system hints at a possible token drop from OpenSea, which is set to launch the redesigned marketplace in December, though no such token has been confirmed.
Quick Take Four stablecoin issuers—Paxos, Tether, Techteryx, and Circle—have frozen nearly $5 million in stablecoins in two wallet addresses tied to the infamous North Korean state-sponsored Lazarus hacking group after an investigation by blockchain sleuth ZachXBT. ZachXBT also took aim at Circle for taking longer than the other issuers to freeze the tokens, a total of 4.5 months.
Quick Take US-based spot bitcoin ETFs on Friday saw their best single-day inflows since July 22, despite industry leader BlackRock’s IBIT logging no significant inflows or outflows. The price of bitcoin is challenging $60,000 as traders bet on a sizable interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve next Wednesday. US-based spot ether ETFs logged modest inflows in a rare rebound.
Well-known crypto trader Jordan Fish, also known as Cobie, has burned 60% of a Pump.fun-launched Solana memecoin called “UPONLY.”Cobie, who previously hosted a podcast of the same name, said the tokens were theoretically worth $17 million when he burned them.
Quick Take The iShares Bitcoin Trust (ticker IBIT) has net assets of around $33.17 billion, as of Thursday’s market close. The iShares Gold ETF (IAU), which debuted nearly 20 years ago, has net assets of around $32.9 billion.
Quick Take Standard Chartered’s Geoff Kendrick has forecast that the global cryptocurrency market cap could reach $10 trillion by the end of 2026, a 300% increase, if Republicans secure control of both chambers of the U.S. Congress.
Quick Take Stablecoin issuer Tether has entered the oil market, placing a $45 million trade. The company registered over $7 billion in profits in the first three quarters of 2024.
Quick Take Coinbase analysts are optimistic about the cryptocurrency market heading into 2025, citing a supportive macro environment driven by Trump’s economic policy and a potentially friendlier regulatory environment. They also highlighted that memecoin trading has become the third most profitable crypto sector, significantly contributing to Solana network fee generation.
Quick Take Pharos has raised $8 million in seed funding, led by Lightspeed Faction and Hack VC. The startup is building a new Layer 1 blockchain tailored to fintech use cases, such as real-time payments and real-world assets.
