Unchained - Under Trump, the First Crypto President, Where Will Markets Go? - Ep. 732

Episode Date: November 8, 2024

With a friendlier regulatory environment in sight, will crypto finally get its moment? Jeff Park, head of alpha strategies at Bitwise, joins Unchained to break down what a pro-crypto approach in Washington could mean for the industry, why DeFi tokens such as UNI are thriving, and whether Bitcoin has a place as a strategic national asset.  Plus, Park shares insights into how China will respond to Trump’s economic measures and explains what he means by the “radical portfolio” thesis.  Tune in to find out how this new political era could set the stage for crypto’s long-awaited breakout. Show highlights: Jeff’s main takeaways from the intersection of crypto and politics this cycle Whether crypto has become a partisan issue Why Jeff highlights the usefulness of Polymarket to track the chances of each candidate Why Uniswap’s token UNI outperformed the broader market What sectors of the industry could boom with more regulatory clarity Whether the idea of using bitcoin as a strategic reserve is feasible  How China will respond to Trump’s economic measures What is the “radical portfolio” thesis and what’s bitcoin’s role in it Visit our website for breaking news, analysis, op-eds, articles to learn about crypto, and much more: unchainedcrypto.com Thank you to our sponsors! Polkadot Mantle’s FBTC Guest Jeff Park, Head of Alpha Strategies at Bitwise The Radical Portfolio Theory Links Unchained:  Ether Breaks Past $2,800 to 3-Month High Following Trump’s Victory DeFi Tokens Jump on Hopes That Trump Will Provide Crypto Regulatory Clarity Bitcoin Just Gained $100 Billion in Market Cap Overnight. Is it Time to Take Profits? Bitcoin Hits New All-Time High of $75,000 What Gary Gensler Could Still Do Against Crypto in His Remaining Days as SEC Chair Haralabos Voulgaris’s tweets on gambling: Expressing concern about gambling addiction Contrasting gambling now vs. when he started His opposition to how much gambling is promoted Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:13 Key takeaways on crypto’s role in politics 02:38 Has crypto become a partisan issue? 06:47 Why Polymarket is crucial for tracking election odds 09:29 Why UNI is outperforming the market 11:56 Which sectors could thrive with regulatory clarity? 15:07 Could Bitcoin become a national strategic reserve? 18:32 How might China respond to Trump’s economic policies? 20:17 What is the “radical portfolio” thesis? 29:57 Crypto News Recap Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bitcoin dominance for the first time, I think actually trended down this week while Bitcoin, of course, was going up. So this shows you there is fervor and excitement for the possibility of these all coins to have true meaningful value capture for the next few years. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unchained. You're no hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shen, author of The Cryptopians. I started coming crypto nine years ago, and as the senior editor, Forbes was the first Mainstream Meteor Porter to cover cryptocurrency full-time. This is the November 8th, 2024 episode of Unchained. Pocodod is the original and leading Layer Zero blockchain with over 2,000-plus developers,

and the Pocodot 2.0 upgrade will be a massive accelerator for the ecosystem. Join the community at Pocodot.network slash ecosystem slash community. FBT is the fastest-growing Omni-chain BTC asset this summer. Join FBTC Points-inspired campaign where you can hold FBTC to earn sparks, lucrative yields, and token drops, all on your Bitcoin. Today's guest is Jeff Park, head of Alpha Strategies and Bitwise. Welcome, Jeff. Hi, Laura. Thanks for having me.

Crypto played a very big role in this election, from being one of the biggest industry donors to polymarket, to Trump's promises to the crypto industry. What are your takeaways from seeing how crypto... and politics finally intersected in a big way. Yeah, it's been an amazing week to live in this moment of history, as I'm still digesting the news. I think there are two key takeaways I've taken away. One is, it is very clear to me at this point that there's zero electoral upside to being anti-crypto. I think this is a profound thing, and we should dig into that a little bit deeper. And the other thing that I'm taking away pretty meaningfully is that the way society will

digest information in the future will continue to rely on decentralized sources. That could mean Twitter and X, for example, but as you've alluded to it, it could also mean something like a polymarket predictions market type where information and the intersection of financialization could actually be a very powerful truth machine in itself. Those are the key high-level things that I'm taking away, and I think they will have meaningful impacts for many, many years to go for not just this, but the future election cycles as well. And when you talk about how there's zero upside for politicians to be anti-crypto, I did want to ask, because there might be this perception now that crypto is aligned with the right, do you see that as a risk,

or do you think that that's going away? This is such an important question, Laura. I'm so glad you asked at a very fundamental level, part of why I think we've seen such a win for the crypto industry is because if you think about the core ethos of crypto, right, what is its true value system? There's a high correlation to this being associated with individuals who believe in self-determination, individual rights, and censorship resistance, right? And these are actually very core democratic principles. This is actually while, even though the numbers are still coming in, we have now over 325 crypto-supporting members in Congress. That's a huge bipartisan coalition. It's actually an absolute metric of success, the most crypto-friendly legislative

body and history of this country. So what does this mean, right? We have a tendency to say crypto should be bipartisan, but actually, I'll take it one step further. It should be nonpartisan, right? The distinction here that I'm trying to make is that it should really not even be aligned or influenced by political party at all. It is so universally important, so morally compelling enough that it should transcend party politics altogether. It's the higher calling of shared values and goals without rivalries and agendas and self-interest and all these things. And so I'm really excited for this new era to begin. Now, of course, with public attention comes public scrutiny. So now it's our time to step it up and tell our stories. I'm here for it. And I know Bitwise is here for it and you're

here for it and it's going to be great. And so, but you don't think that the left now views this as something that will flourish under right, right leaning governments and that when they're or that they'll do things against it, you don't feel like that's a risk? I hope it's not a risk. And I think to date, one of the amazing things we've seen is that the political lobbying efforts from the industry was actually fairly bipartisan as I've witnessed it. So if you look at how Fairshake has contributed their contributions to these races, at the House level, it's actually pretty evenly split, not just by money allocated, but also by the count of seats that they were supporting Republicans and Democrats. That's actually kind of

important. In the Senate race, it looks a little bit different. There was historic amount of capital there, 40 million plus spent against Brown. But there were a lot of Ohio. That's right. And we're so excited to have Moreno representing Ohio. And at the same time, the other contentious races that were widely tracked, two of them were actually pro-democrats, right? I'm alluding to Slotkin in Michigan and Gallego in Arizona. So actually, Farishek also contributed $10 million each to these races. And as you can see, the numbers coming in, the margin of how I think they're going to win is incredibly slim.

So this mattered. And these are actually Democrats now taking seats by the effort of the crypto-lobbing industry. So I know at times it feels it's politicized. it's a black and white thing, but hopefully one thing that people who are looking at this closely will take away is that it's not one-sided and that as an industry, this advocacy effort is really important, really impactful. The ROI is actually quite good, in my opinion. One more thing, I would add, earlier this week, you may have seen that Farishake received additional funding from Coinbase, $25 million, and A16C quickly followed up matching that. Those contributions were to, before the election announcement of who would win, right? I mean, that's a pretty amazing thing. These are people pre-committing to the idea of what they can do as an industry without knowing what we already now know as the results post- Tuesday.

And that's an important thing to take away because what this means is it's not going away after this election. There's $70 million in this war chest that will continue to support pro-crypto, pro-economic freedom agendas for the years to come throughout the legislation. process. And so it's the beginning of a journey and one that I think everyone should pay attention to and follow closely at the local level and, of course, at the federal level. All right. So now let's talk about your bread and butter around the time of the election. There was obviously a lot of market activity. What was most notable to you? Yeah, the thing that I was really glued by,

and you may know, Laura, I'm a trader by background. I serve my current Morgan Stanley as an exotic derivatives trader. And so I love financial arbitragees. I love looking at market. And as a way to play different pairwise correlation trades. And people know, Polymarket has been one of the most interesting things to track about not just odds for the election outcomes, but the associated financial assets with it. What I thought was so amazing about this experience was that

there were a few moments in Polymarket throughout the evening on Tuesday that you could have watched meaningful changes. So the first time it actually broke out above 60% for Trump to win was around 730, and it hit about 70% pretty quickly. And what you saw there was growing certainty that maybe Georgia and North Carolina would tilt Trump. And so you saw this like immediate jerk from where it was steadying around 60 to 70. And then the next big jump came also quite quickly to about 90 at 10 o'clock. And that was when Pennsylvania finally looked like it may actually tilt.

And so these are all done in ways that pre-year-old. preceded mainstream media reporting on outcomes that gives you an indication of what the future is going to look like. Predictions market at the core is a truth machine. And this truth machine is powered by the wisdom of the people and the market that is financialized by that. It's an incredibly powerful thing. And I think this is one of the primary utilities of decentralization that crypto advocates will continue to see being useful, not just for economic reasons, but because this may be the truth machine we need and how people can verify sources of news quickly. One other thing is, it's financializing event risks at a whole new level that is creating all kinds of opportunities. There was one market in particular that I was really

interested in watching, which was the odd that Trump would win the election, but would lose Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, right? This is now a path-dependent bet. And that actually spiked at a peak to about 70% at one point, meaning people really thought Trump would win, but maybe not win some of the swing states. And then it quickly, of course, went down to 0%. And you could play into this kinds of betting as well. And it shows you all kinds of financialization that's possible for hedging different kinds of risks. And it couldn't happen without the apparatus that is coming from decentralized markets. And what about other areas of the crypto market? did you, like obviously you work at BitWise, so I know you're probably tracking ETFs,

but I know there are other areas of the market that you also write about frequently. So what other areas did you find had notable activity? A lot of folks were excited about the possibility of a Trump win meaning to have broader implications for crypto beyond price and that it would trickle into effects through tokens that have more utilities around the technology rather than Bitcoin itself being a store event. value. So a lot of people were interested in potentially looking at Ethereum as a way to play, a levered upside exposure to a Trump victory rather than Bitcoin. And there were other tokens around this as well. Doge was one of them on the back of Elon's memetic support, as you would know,

and Salana and other things. The one thing that I think was really amazing to see was Uniswap. Uniswap in a way represents as a player of crypto, the decentralized marketplace that needs regulatory clarity, perhaps the most. It's found product market fit, and now it just needs to exist in a commercially viable way within a regulatory framework that can be supported here. And so Uniswap was by far, as I've seen, the biggest winner from the day of the election to outperform massively. The other thing that I noted was Solana actually performed very strongly as well, maybe even out-inching Ethereum, which I thought was interesting to see. I don't know if I would have bet on that particular outcome, but all to say, Bitcoin dominance for the first time, I think actually trended down this

week while Bitcoin, of course, was going up. So this shows you there is fervor and excitement for the possibility of these all coins to have true meaningful value capture for the next few years. So interesting. All right. So in a moment, we're going to talk about some other areas of the market, but first, a quick word from the sponsors who make the show possible. FBTC is an Omni-Chane BTC asset contributed by Mantle Network and Antalpha Global. Launched in early July, FBT's TVL has already passed $125 million, making the fastest-growing BTC asset this summer. FBTC's points-inspired campaign, Sparkle, has officially started with lucrative and sustainable

yields, plus points and token airdrop from Babylon, Mantle's new token cook, and more. FBTC is the BTC solution you've been waiting for. Visit FBTC.com slash ongoing hyphen campaign. today. Back to my conversation with Jeff. So now that we are facing not only a Trump presidency, but what looks like a fully read Congress, what areas of the market do you expect to take off? It's a great question. With the regulatory clarity that people are hoping to see through this newfound mandate for crypto legislation, there are a few things that are on the minds. The first is market structure bills around Fit21 that I think will find some legs to move ahead. This one's

quite important in the ways that it is moving towards giving CFTC, perhaps a little bit more of an authority over the SEC in regulating commodities as the definitional scope of what crypto can be in the United States. The particular question around this ancillary asset definition, I think will get scoped out meaningfully. The decentralization criteria actually asked to how to classify digital commodities versus restricted digital assets is a thorny subject that I think will get digested through this new legislative mandate. So those things will have impact. The other things that people are very focused on is the stable quo legislation. I think this was one that people thought even might happen within a Biden administration this year with Chuck Schumer

also supporting it. So this definitely has legs. There are things there too. I think people are going to start getting their hands dirty to find the details and the things that matter. One issue that I remember noticeably from the first time it was proposed by Senator Loomis and Senator Jillard Brand was that of part of the eligible instruments that could be within the stable coin construct excluded reverse repos. And for those who are in finance would know, this is a critical flaw, right? I mean, reverse repo arrangements actually are at the core underpinning of financial liquidity in the marketplace. You could not compete with money market funds without that. And BlackRock, in fact, uses this in their circles reserve fund. So here is a gap that needs to be filled. I think these are now all on the table where we're going to find solutions for. I think for crypto, ETP issuers like Bitwise, there are so many things that we can be forward looking about. One is possibly the chance to now have in-kind creation and redemptions as part of the process for ETF creations and redemptions. I know many people wanted that in the first iteration of it and we didn't get there. But I think there's a chance.

Now we could bring this forth. And this would, of course, be to the benefit of investors ultimately by reducing slippage. There's also a chance to dream about having more diverse products. Bitwise has filed for an XRP ETP. And I think there are rooms now to think about more access points for different crypto assets that investors have demand for that we could bring to market. One of the reasons we were very excited to actually partner and acquire ETC group out of Europe, which we announced earlier this summer, was to have a chance to do those things off. shore where the regulatory apparatus in Europe has been a little bit more friendly. Now we can dream about repatriating that energy here to the U.S., which is amazing to think about. With that comes,

of course, the opportunity to have staking options on these Bitcoin ETFs and beyond. And so all of these things, I think, will contribute towards a pretty robust capital markets experience for crypto investors in the regulated marketplace. And Trump promised to take the bitcoins currently in the U.S. government's possession and also any new ones were acquired to create a strategic Bitcoin Reserve. What do you think of that idea? And also, do you think that's possible? Because sometimes those coins might belong to, for instance, the victims of crimes. This is such a good question. I actually asked this question in person to Senator Loomis back when I was in Wyoming at the blockchain symposium conference that Cracken had organized. The question I asked Senator

Loomis was actually around the way in which the Treasury functions today for the reason it has reserves, right? So I think one of the things that sometimes the crypto people miss is, you know, the Treasury has a job, right? They have reserves for a particular reason. And the reason is, actually, it's not to help America's balance you grow. The reason it exists is to facilitate the ease of trade with foreign partners by stabilizing the FX market and having the chance to intervene when there's undue volatility that disrupts global commerce, right? That's kind of the mandate of why this reserve fund in itself exists. So it would be a little weird to then repurpose that into something else all of a sudden and say, hey, it's actually going to be for the

growth of our balance sheet and solve our debt problem. They're kind of separate things. The reason I think this is important technology is because we have trade partners who actually rely on the dollar and the treasury in ways to conduct global trade. And so the question I had asked Senator Summis was, how would you hypothetically imagine Japan would react if we thought we were going to buy Bitcoin and trade treasuries as a way to store value? Japan being on the other side for those in the global macro space who know that is funding most of this U.S. consumption as well as China. And how could that create different kinds of tensions in this game theory of acquiring Bitcoin as a sovereign? So I think there's actually a multifaceted probe here to think through and how the U.S. might become a player in it.

But it's not a solo problem. I think it's a coordinated question we need to address with our allies in the global stage of economics. Oh, wow. Okay. You just said so much stuff that I had not really heard. but I am interested in your opinion. Do you think it would be a good idea? I am excited for that possibility, and I do think it is a good idea in the long run. If we could bridge that gap towards imagining what the store of value could look like,

I think at the core, and this may not be everyone's belief, and this is my belief, I don't represent bitwise in this particular perspective, to be clear. I think I have a very classic approach to thinking about what the right economic model should be, one that is based off of some ability to have accounting at a proper level of assets that is not the monetary expansion regime that we've been living with post-Bretton Woods. And so I have a belief that we do need to find some restoration to a methodology that has accounting, both at the asset liability level, at a meaningful level. And Bitcoin could and likely is best suited to serve that accounting metric at a global level.

So interesting. I did want to ask you because before the election, many economists were warning that Trump's economic plans would worsen inflation. So I wondered how you, first of all, if you think that that's accurate. And if so, then how you thought that would impact both the traditional markets and crypto markets. You know, it's so hard to know what the Trump administration says and what they'll ultimately do and how it will play out and how much of it is is positioning, of course, for leverage and negotiations. So maybe it's a little too early for me to imagine what that could look like.

One thing, though, that I could point towards today, at least, is the very high likelihood that China will go on a fiscal stimulus effort due to the Trump win, right? The reason I think about this as a little bit more knowable is, is Trump seems fairly serious about tariffs as a way to bring economic might back to the United States. And without having perfect clarity on what that would mean for U.S. consumers, it will for sure require China to think about plugging that hole differently, where they need to then think about their internal levers, right, meaning domestic consumption. The big thing that's been challenging with China is that they haven't been spending their resources to increase domestic

consumption, which the U.S. has been gently nudging as part of the ways to solve this trade balance, trade imbalance. This is one of the ways that China, I think, now has to do it. And there will be trickle effects to this that will, I think, affect many things differently that we just can't know for sure. But you could imagine that to have ramifications where the inflation story is not just one path-dependent story as U.S. consumers experience it. Okay. And finally, I'd like to end on something that you wrote about, which you call the radical portfolio. Can you explain your thesis there? Sure. Sure. So, you know, I've been thinking a lot about what drew me to crypto, what drew me to portfolio

theory in general from all my experiences as a derivatives trader at Morgan Stanley, also having spent some time at the Harvard Endowment where I got to see some amazing investing principles with a permanent capital vehicle that many would be lucky to have. And what I'm coming to realize is, the things that we've learned, the things that we're taught in school, the things that have been bestowed upon by words of society, many of these things, I think, are changing. So the 60-40 that we're all taught about how to think about the traditional allocation between equities and bonds, I truly fundamentally believe, is over and ending. And the reason this is the case, and I don't actually even have to make a strong case for it because it's already been the way for the past few years.

You can see the correlation actually breaking down pretty meaningfully, repeatedly. But there's a reason for it. And the reason is we are living in a world where everything is becoming so hyper-financialized and the sovereign actors that are embedding in the system promoting global liquidity to solve a lot of these monetary problems is creating a glut of refinancing activities. And so Bitcoin is one of the ways I think represents an election to opt out of that system. So that got me really thinking, other things can we do to opt out of that system? And is it possible that the way to think about 6040 isn't actually about equities and bonds, but compliance and resistance? So maybe in a world we live in today, we should really think about 60% of our assets being in a compliant framework

of the way we live day to day in the public lives. But maybe there's room for 40% for the fantastic chance that the world might implode. And we will need the ability to have resistance assets. So that's the underpinning on my radical portfolio theory. The 40% could include things like crypto, but I've also alluded to things that could be just as important, which is gold, but also economic activities that are totally uncorrelated and untethered from the global financial system. One of them, for example, could be things like professional gambling. I think professional gambling is an energy-intensive activity that could generate income for those who are capable. This could be in sports gambling. This could be an election betting, but there are ways we

can imagine this energy intensive income-generating activity is useful in a resistant framework. So that's the core thesis, and I'm really excited to explore more about that 40% bucket and ways to categorize the things we could own to hedge ourselves from the global monetary system and regime that we know today. And in the end, as a result, be a little bit more future-proof about protecting our financial wealth. So interesting. And just to make sure I understand, so how are you defining professional gambling? Is that something like a polymarket or a calci? Just you mean like not between your friends. Is that what that means? Yeah, yeah, exactly. I might even say it's possible to do it with friends. Like, you know, poker is a kind of professional gambling that could sit in different ways

of regulatory compliance. But but I see these as as things that could, in the law, long run, just offer like an uncorrelated return stream. The thing is like you may have friends and I certainly have friends who are very good at sports betting. They're very good. But the problem with sports betting generally is that they cap you because that's how the market operates. They know that the people that are good are setting prices and they'll cap the amount you can bet. And so the alpha is there, but you can't scale it. Crypto, I think could maybe change that in a way where you can scale it a little bit more than historically what Draft Kings would have allowed.

And so there are ways in the future I can imagine these kinds of things will become useful. And then I think about that in the construct of like tokenization too. Like we talk about tokenization today in very simple ways of money market funds and block rock spittle.

And those are great. I think those are going to be huge. But the real benefit of crypto is the long tail assets and the long tail investment vehicles. It's not just KKR's funds. health care fund that's listed on securitize, right? You have to imagine one day the chance of a professional investor raising capital to do something in a tokenized SPV that is not investing in

private equity. That will open the up, open the channel up for 40% resistance allocation in a format that we just don't know today. And there is this great blurring, as I see it from the SEC, that is happening between public and private markets. Over time, Those lines have slowly gotten more blurred, and I think that trend will continue. Okay. Yeah, I have to say this thing about gambling is just fast. I'm sure we could spend a lot of time on this, but you probably know casinos have levers for getting people addicted to it. And so when you said that I probably know people who are very good at sports fitting,

I only know one, who is Bob, Haralabov, is his Twitter name, I think. And I saw a really fascinating tweet from him where he was, you know, he said that he is shoot i you know i didn't know we were going to go here but but he basically said like he he was against just having easy access to gambling um i'll have to if i can find the tweet i'll put it in the show notes but i i just found it fascinating because it's it reminded me of how you see people in silicon valley saying i won't give my kids any you know electronic devices but anyway so yeah well i find the theory interesting i do you know i do you know i find the theory interesting i do agree that there is like some changing of the world order, which probably would be reflected in how people approach their finances, you know, whether or not it is the model that you're proposing.

Obviously, I'm fine. Yeah, maybe maybe one way I can try to summarize this at an abstract level is that the most important resource that we know in the world is time, right? We know this. It's scarce. It's finite. And it expires. And so one of the ways that the current financial system operates is manipulating time. time, right? It's essentially this liquidity transformation of time, which is causing so much anxiety

and problems between the generational gap that exists between the young and the old. If you think about that, the only other lever you can pull to transform time that isn't liquidity is energy. And energy by definition are things that requires some kind of expenditure. So poker, sports betting, biotech IP, AI agents in ways that will exist, I think, with energy-intensive resources. These are ways to imagine the transformation of time without manipulating liquidity. And that is the thing that I feel very strongly about what the 40% is going to represent in the ways that we're going to resist the world of financial manipulation that has been around us for all this time creating this global systemic problem.

And this is going to be the outlet. and the young people are going to channel ways to find energy that they can transform into productive labor. Okay. Okay. I mean, yeah, again, I'm a little bit like, how is that exactly different from work? Because you put in time by working. Yeah.

Yeah. It's a kind of labor. One that, though, I think, will be things you don't need anyone's institutionalized intermediation for. Someone is really good at it. betting is going to be a valuable person that can then telegraph information asymmetry for the world. Polymarket will become a professionalized marketplace for many people where those who are very good at what they do and have edge will be able to, I think, generate income that looks different

than the world that we inherit. And that energy being used is the transformation for income that just looks a little bit different than the kinds of human labor that we might know today. Okay, yeah. Another idea that I had was in a way, like working for a Dow with streaming payments could be another version of that or like staking or, yeah. Okay. Yeah. This is like very fascinating. He wrote a very long substack about it, which we'll put in the show notes. So for those of you who are interested in doing a deep dive, you can check that out. But anyway, Jeff, this was so fascinating. Thank you so much for coming on Unchained. Thanks so much for having me. Hope to do it again soon.

Don't forget, next up is the weekly news recap today presented by Wondercraft AI. Stick around for this week in crypto after this short break. Pocodot is the original and largest layer zero blockchain with over 2,000 plus developers. The anticipated Pocodot 2.0 upgrade will be a massive accelerator for the ecosystem. Upgrading the infrastructure with 8 times higher transaction throughput and twice as fast block times, tailored court time for the needs of every protocol, trustless bridges to multiple chains, and revise tokenomics with a token burn to reduce inflation. Perfect for GameFi and Defy to build, grow, and scale.

Get your Web3 ideas to market fast. Think big, build bigger with Pocod. Join the community at Pocodot.network slash ecosystem slash community. Welcome to this week's crypto roundup. In today's recap, we'll cover Pollymarket's smooth handling of U.S. election night trading, along with a hefty profit made on the platform that's caught the eye of French regulators. Ethereum researchers have stepped down from eigenlayer amidst conflict of interest concerns, while Coinbase faces controversy over alleged listing fees. We'll dive into Binance's report

revealing that most meme coins don't survive, and the viral rise of PNute, inspired by Peanut the Squirrel. We'll also look at Michigan's bold investment in Ethereum, Robin Hood, and Cracken's stablecoin network launch, and Wintermutes push for revenue sharing in Athena. Plus, open-s is preparing a major revamp to revive its trading volume. Thanks for tuning in to the weekly news recap. Let's begin. Polymarket triumphs on election night. On Election Day in the U.S., blockchain-based predictions platform Polymarket handled an impressive 2.9 million transactions,

comprising $240 million in trading volume without major technical disruptions, according to Blockworks research. One French trader, known as Freddie 9999, made headlines with a 48 million dollar profit on his election bets, which leaned heavily toward a Trump victory. Despite skepticism about possible market manipulation, Polly Market verified the legitimacy of his trades. Polymarket founder Shane Copeland noted that the platform's users, including major financial entities, anticipated Trump's success well before the mainstream media, highlighting how prediction markets

can offer insights earlier than traditional news outlets. In a post on X, Dragonfly managing partner Haseeb Qureshi emphasized that polymarket's accuracy surpassed that of traditional pollsters, who had predicted an extremely tight race. Markets don't care about ideology. They care about being right, wrote Qureshi, who also disclosed that dragonfly is an investor in polymarket. French regulator scrutinizes polymarket. The French trader mentioned earlier might have brought doom for all other French people

who wanted to do some decentralized betting. French gambling regulator Autoté Nacional de Joub, started an investigation of the platform. Crypto news outlet The Big Whale reported on Wednesday. ANJ expressed concerns over Polymarkets' legality in France, noting that while it operates with cryptocurrency, activity on the platform still qualifies as a betting activity, which is restricted under French law.

A source close to ANJ indicated that access to Polymarket may soon be restricted in France, adding to the global regulatory scrutiny facing prediction markets. Polymarket already limits access to users in the U.S. following a settlement with the CFTC. Ethereum researchers exit. EigenLayer rolls amid conflict concerns. Ethereum researchers Justin Drake and Dancrad Feist have stepped down as advisors to EigenLayer, citing concerns about perceived conflicts of interest.

The resignations follow a backlash earlier this year when the two accepted substantial token allocations from EigenLayer, a project that enables crypto applications to leverage Ethereum's security via a process known as restaking. The controversy has spotlighted the challenges of maintaining neutrality within Ethereum's ecosystem. Feist expressed regret, saying he understood why the community viewed his advisory role as a conflict with his position at the Ethereum Foundation. Drake echoed this sentiment, announcing that he would now avoid all advisory roles and investments, a decision that goes beyond the Ethereum Foundation's new conflict of interest policy. Their departure also comes as eigenlayer's eigen token continues to struggle, with its price,

falling nearly 40% since launch. Coinbase listing fees. Spark controversy among crypto leaders. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong reiterated this week that token listings on the exchange are free, but prominent crypto figures have claimed otherwise. Armstrong's comments on X came in response to Moonrock Capital's Simon Dedek, alleging that Binance had demanded 15% of a project's tokens to list on its platform. Armstrong countered by inviting projects to list on Coinbase, without any fees through its asset hub. However, Tron founder Justin Sun and Yern finance founder Andre Cronjay disputed Armstrong's assertion.

Cronjee alleged Coinbase had requested hundreds of millions in fees over the years for earn campaigns tied to listings. And Sun added that Coinbase once asked for 500 million TRX worth $80 million plus a $2.05 million BTC deposit for a TRX listing. Coinbase maintained that these fees only relate to optional services like Earn and custody, But critics argue they effectively serve as high listing costs. Finance report finds 97% of meme coins have died in the market. A new report from Binance research revealed that 97% of meme coins launched in the past two years

have effectively died, with trading volumes plummeting to near zero. Despite these dismal survival rates, the appeal of meme coins remain strong, with 75% of current tokens created in just the last year, according to Binance's research team, led by Joshua Wong. The rapid growth of meme coins stems from their simplicity and ease of creation on platforms such as Salana's pump.fun and Cardano's sneck dot fun, which facilitate low-cost token launches. Yet only a few tokens, notably Dogecoin and Shiba Inu, have maintained a lasting presence in the market. The report also highlighted concerns over what it calls cabals, or groups promoting pump and dump

schemes that take advantage of retail investors using them as exit liquidity. Still, Binance researchers believe meme coins can evolve suggesting that future tokens with unique, long-lasting narratives and real-world use cases could sustain broader appeal. Peanut surges fueled by viral Peanut the Squirrel phenomenon. Speaking of meme coins, the new coin Peanut, based on the internet famous Peanut the Squirrel, has become a viral hit. Launched a week ago on the Salana-based platform pump. Fun, Peanut reached a market cap of $135 million. Before declining to around 110 million, Peanut was a domesticated squirrel that was seized and euthanized by New York authorities, becoming a social media sensation. After Peanut was created, its popularity even entered

the U.S. political scene, with figures such as Donald Trump Jr. and Elon Musk referencing the coin. Musk, a known meme coin enthusiast tweeted, vote for peanut for liberty for freedom. Michigan Pension Fund takes bold step with $10 million dollar Ethereum investment. The state of Michigan retirement system has invested $10 million in grayscale's Ethereum ETF, surpassing its $7 million stake in spot Bitcoin ETFs. This decision positions Michigan as a rare public fund betting on ether over Bitcoin, despite recent market uncertainties surrounding ETH. Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balcunas commented, Pretty big win for Ether, which could use one, noting the significance of this contrarian choice.

While many investors favor Bitcoin as a safer crypto asset, Michigan's substantial Ether investment signals confidence in its long-term value. In related news, a UK pension fund allocated three put-of-its assets to Bitcoin, marking the first such investment in Britain. Cartwright, the pension specialist that guided the fund's investment, also announced plans to create a Bitcoin Employee Benefits Program that would allow companies to pay Bitcoin directly to their employees' wallets. Meanwhile, major Tradfai institutions keep choosing Ethereum for their crypto projects, with UBS launching a tokenized money market fund on Ethereum. The move follows forays by BlackRock and Franklin Templeton into blockchain-based funds

backed by traditional assets. Robin Hood and Cracken to launch new global stablecoin network. In a move to expand stablecoin use and challenge industry giants, Robin Hood and Cracken have joined forces with Anchorage Digital, Galaxy Digital, and Paxos to launch the global dollar network. The new initiative is centered around a stablecoin called USDG that's issued by Paxos on the Ethereum blockchain and aims to offer a regulated alternative in a market largely dominated by unregulated players such as Tether. Craig and co-CEO, Arjun Sethi, pointed to the limited competition in the stablecoin sector, suggesting that USDG could help accelerate new stablecoin use cases with a more equitable approach. Anchorage Digital's Nathan McCauley said that

USDG offers fast transactions and cross-border settlement options, catering to the demand by institutional finance for stable coins. Wintermute pushes for revenue share for Athena's staked token holders. Marketmaker Wintermute has introduced a proposal to Athena's governance that would enable staked ENA token holders to benefit from the protocol's revenue. Despite Athena generating substantial income through its U.S. DE stable coin, S-ENA holders currently do not share in those earnings. Wintermute's proposal urges the Athena Foundation to clarify both historical and future revenue distribution, suggesting that S-ENA holders deserve a cut.

The proposal stopped short of recommending specific figures, instead asking Athena's Risk Committee to outline guidelines for implementing the revenue-sharing model. Following this proposal, Ena saw a surge in price, jumping approximately 2,000, 25% on the news. OpenC plans, major revamp as NFT market stalls. NFT Marketplace OpenC is set to unveil a new platform in December, marking a significant overhaul amid challenging times for the NFT market. Co-founder and CEO Devin Finzer announced on X that OpenC has been rebuilt from the ground up

to fuel innovation. Sometimes you have to take a step back and reimagine everything. He stated, hinting at ambitious updates without providing any specific detail. OpenC, whose trading volume peaked at $5 billion in January 2002, has seen a dramatic decline, with October's volume down by nearly 99% at $46 million. Yet, excitement around the new platform has driven a 62% increase in daily trading volume to $5.15 million, according to DAPR radar, whose head of content, Robert Hugendorne, noted that a surge in user interest may stem from speculation about

potential airdrops. And that's all. Thanks so much for joining us today. If you enjoyed this recap, go to unchained crypto.substack.com that is unchained crypto.com and sign up for our free newsletter so that you can stay up to date with the latest in crypto. Unchained is produced by Laura Shin with help from Matt Pilchard, Juan Oranavich, Megan Gavis, Pam Majimdar, and Margaret Korea. The weekly recap was written by Juan Aranovich and edited by Nelson Wang. Thanks for listening. Unchained is now a part of the Coin Desk Podcast Network. For the latest in digital assets, check out markets daily five days a week with host Noel Atchison.

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