The Block
Quick Take The total stablecoin market cap, excluding algorithmic stablecoins, grew 0.8% over the past seven days to around $168.1 billion, according to DefiLlama data. USDT takes up about 70% of the entire stablecoin market cap.
Quick Take Thai authorities raided a bitcoin mine that did not fully pay its electricity bills. Southeast Asian countries, including Malaysia, have cracked down on power theft associated with bitcoin mining in the past few weeks.
Quick Take The presidential election forecast on Polymarket has amassed over $732 million in bets. Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently dropped out of the race and announced his support for Trump.
Quick Take Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan said the firm is “strictly non-partisan” and it never envisioned itself as a political platform. Instead, political bets could buoy Polymarket’s focus on market-based forecasting, he noted Friday in a post on X.
Tech giant Microsoft, with a market cap of over $3 trillion, is apparently considering investing in bitcoin, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Thursday.Analysts at BitMEX Research argued it’s “highly unlikely” that MicroStrategy will be forced to sell its bitcoin holdings due to its current debt structure, though “anything is possible.”Deribit CEO Luuk Strijers noted that bitcoin call options are double the number of put options set for the Nov. 8 expiry, signaling bullish sentime
Quick Take Reducing the need for every node to permanently store all history in addition to unneeded protocol features could mitigate Ethereum’s bloat, Buterin said. Titled “The Purge,” the possible roadmap is Buterin’s fifth installment in a series contemplating Ethereum’s future.
Quick Take The government-linked wallet has seemingly recovered 88% of the lost funds within a day of the security incident. The wallet linked to the U.S. government lost over $20 million worth of stablecoins and ETH on Oct. 24.
Quick Take Emory University reporting holding nearly 2.7 million shares of the Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust valued at around $15.1 million as of Sept. 30. The University also reported holding 4,312 shares in the crypto exchange Coinbase, with the dollar amount rising to $768,269.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry has demanded consular access to Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov following his arrest on Saturday in France, with Russian officials reacting angrily to news of the arrest, according to the Wall Street Journal.French authorities plan to address Durov’s address in a statement on Monday, according to NPR.
Quick Take This is an excerpt from the ninth edition of The Funding sent to our verified subscribers on August 24. The Funding is a fortnightly newsletter written by Yogita Khatri, The Block’s longest-serving editorial member. To subscribe to the free newsletter, click here.
