Daily Market Update 10/19

Top Stories

NFT Market Recap

💰️ Notable Sales:

• 53 Ξ CryptoPunks #9511

• 22.5 Ξ The Captainz #3561

• 20 Ξ Rektguy #7680

🎉 Notable Mints:

⬆️ Top by Volume:

• BAYC, floor of 25.2 Ξ (2% ▽)

• CLONE X, floor of 1.1 Ξ (7% ▽)

• Pudgy Penguins, floor of 5.1 Ξ (4% ▽)

⬆️ Top by Sales:

• RaW Pass, floor of 0.04 Ξ (10% ▽)

• Owls Of Fortune, floor of 0.01 Ξ (54% ▲)

• RTFKT X Nike Dunk Genesis CRYPTOKICKS, floor of 0.06 Ξ (46% ▽)

🪅 Biggest Winners:

• SABOTAGE, Kim Asendorf, floor of 2.2 Ξ (103% ▲)

• ChronoForge, floor of 0.12 Ξ (78% ▲)

• Llamaverse Genesis, floor of 0.17 Ξ (71% ▲)

Other News

Web3

• Pixelmon is launching “Kevin the Adventure,” a hypercasual side-scrolling game, on Oct. 24 with a prize pool of over 10k $USDC

• ENS launched an app update enhancing how ownership is displayed and managed based on user feedback

• Deutsche Post will launch a series of “crypto stamps” featuring historical buildings in Germany on Nov. 2

• Yuga Labs CEO Daniel Alegre provided an overview of his time at Yuga and shared a vision of the future of Yuga Labs ecosystem components

• Norman Rockwell Museum announced the launch of an NFT-backed, multi-part series offering collectors several digital and physical works

• Sweat Economy, a physical activity-promoting Web3 ecosystem, expanded into the US and eight other countries

• SuperDAO will shut down and return remaining capital to investors

• Hope Lend was exploited for 526 $ETH

Blockchain

• Lightning Labs released its Taproot Assets protocol on the main network, enabling the issuance of assets on Bitcoin and Lightning

• Polygon proposed to create a “Polygon Protocol Council” in a bid to increase decentralization and named 13 inaugural members

• Payments-focused Stellar is getting smart contracts

• Ether.Fi’s liquid staking token eETH can be restaked—a controversial feature— on EigenLayer and will launch on mainnet on Nov. 6

• Floki developers plan to introduce staking for a new utility token

• Aptos suffered a five-hour outage on its first birthday

Finance

• Morgan Stanley reports the crypto winter “may be in the past” and “crypto spring is likely on the horizon”

• Chainalysis reports the UK leads the EU region in crypto activity with $252B in transaction volume over the past year, led by DEXs and NFTs

• Glassnode reports Bitcoin long-term investors own over 76% of all BTC

• Delphi Digital reports investors can time the market based on viewership and subscribers of popular crypto YouTube channels

Artificial Intelligence

• OpenAI partners with G42 to expand AI capabilities in the Middle East

• Anthropic democratically tuned its “Collective Constitutional AI” with responses from 1,000 users in a first-of-its-kind study

• Meta’s new non-invasive AI brain scanning method can decode images from brain activity

• Universal Music Group partners with BandLab Technologies to focus on ethical AI usage in order to protect artist and songwriter rights

• Non-profit policy RAND Corporation report warns of jailbroken generative AI chatbot use by terrorists

• DeepMedia’s DeepIdentify.AI detection service wins it a $25M three-year contract with the US DoD and undisclosed allied forces

Government

• European Central Bank moves into its CBDC “preparation phase” despite not yet being a certainty

• French National Assembly passed the Sorare law, introducing regulatory framework for NFT and crypto-powered video games

• German Regulator warns consumers the MEXC exchange is offering financial services without the authorization to do so

• Inspector General wants the FDIC to document its crypto risk assessment process better and provide more organized guidance to banks

• US Office of the Comptroller will host a discussion on RWA tokenization

Business

• Tesla’s Q3 earnings reveal its made no changes to its Bitcoin holdings

• Marathon Digital has added a second custody partner to diversify its holdings across more than one provider

• Elon trials $1 annual 𝕏 subscriptions for new users in New Zealand and the Philippines to test bot prevention

• Coinbase has selected Ireland as its EU crypto hub

• HPCL, one of India’s largest oil and gas companies, is launching a blockchain system to enable automated verification of orders

Legal

• Elon, Mark Cuban, and others have teamed up to submit an amicus brief to the Supreme Court to raise concerns about the SEC

• TerraForm Labs denies that market maker Jump Trading restored UST to its $1 peg in 2021, in a Wed. court filing

• NYAG sued Genesis, Gemini, and DCG for defrauding investors of $1B

• Physician pleads guilty to using Bitcoin to hire a hitman

• Universal Music Group is leading a lawsuit against Anthropic, seeking $75M in damages for allegedly feeding songs of artists they represent into its LLMs dataset without permission

• CNBC report reveals additional details surrounding Jimmy Zhong, who serves a one-year sentence for his theft of 50k $BTC from the Silk Road

• Expert witness called in SBF’s trial said at the bull run’s peak, FTX only held $5B of the $20B in customer assets it should have had

• Peter Easton, hired by the DOJ to track Alameda and FTX funds, says FTX used customer funds to buy back its stake held by Binance

• Judge Kaplan permitted the jury to see and hear most evidence SBF’s lawyers sought to preclude, including specific views of a marina in the Bahamas, an Alameda memo, and audio snippets of its final meeting