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Good Morning,

Here's a quick preview of today’s content: SEC Chair Gary Gensler had a busy day hinting at resignation (while also getting sued by 18 states), rumors swirl that Trump could eliminate crypto capital gains tax, Caitlyn Jenner is in hot water, memecoin trader turns $17 into millions, privacy project develops ‘NSA proof’ VPN, and more

It’s finally FRIDAY! Let’s dive in.

Market Snapshot

• After news of SEC Gary Gensler’s hint at resignation, XRP had a huge day reaching just shy of $0.85 a coin

• Bitcoin and Ethereum continue to trade sideways

• U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs have surpassed $500B in cumulative trading volume, less than a year after their January debut

  • Bitcoin became the seventh-largest asset in the world after $4.7B of inflows into US ETFs in the last six days (CD)

• Top gainers (in past 24 hours): XRP, HBAR, XLM

• Top losers (in past 24 hours): PEPE, POPCAT, PNUT

Headline Roundup
^{_{The major headlines driving crypto markets}}

• SEC Chair Gary Gensler signaled a potential departure from his role with closing remarks of his speech today (CB)

• Sygnum's latest annual survey revealed that 57% of institutions are ready to put bigger bets on digital assets (CD)

• UK prioritize spelling out crypto plans as startups eye US Trump benefits (BBG)

• 18 US states filed a lawsuit against the SEC Chair Gary Gensler for gross government overreach (CT)

• A trader who bought $17 worth of PNUT just sold it for just under $3M (X)

• Coinbase recently surged into the top 10 apps on the Apple App Store and now holds the number-one spot in the finance category (BKL)

• Rumors swirl that Trump’s admin reportedly plans to eliminate capital gains taxes on cryptocurrencies issued by US registered companies (CS)

• Crypto wallet Phantom issued an emergency update for iOS users after reports that some had their app reset, locking them out of their wallets (CT)

• Caitlyn Jenner faces lawsuit from JENNER memecoin buyers (CT)

• Pennsylvania lawmakers introduced legislation to permit its treasury to hold up to 10% in Bitcoin on its balance sheet (CT)

• Investment manager and fund issuer VanEck issued a Bitcoin price target of $180,000 by sometime next year (CT)

• Jersey City’s pension fund plans to buy bitcoin ETFs in the coming weeks after starting the process to allocate to such products earlier this year (BW)

• Defunct crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital seeks to increase claim against FTX to $1.5B (CT)

• JPMorgan will introduce instant foreign exchange settlement between the USD and euro in early 2025 by leveraging its newly rebranded blockchain platform Kinexys (TB)

• Crypto exchange EDX Markets has seen $36B in trading volume from institutional clients since January (CT)

• A former Chinese government employee was sentenced to life imprisonment for selling state secrets to foreign intelligence agencies for $138K in crypto payments (CT)

• Franklin Templeton expanded the trading of its $410M OnChain U.S. Government Money Market Fund to Ethereum (CD)

• The UK government will launch a pilot to deliver a digital gilt instrument, which is similar to a bond, using distributed ledger technology (CD)

• Crypto investment firm Sol Strategies, bought four validators for ~$18M in cash and stock (CD)

• The Xai Foundation, a core contributor to the gaming-centric blockchain network, Xai, announced a strategic partnership with indie game studio Foretold Studios (DC)

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Launches

• PancakeSwap launches Telegram ‘swap bot’ for crypto trading access (CT)

• Blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence launched a points program to attract traders to its new cryptocurrency derivatives exchange (CT)

• USDT stablecoin issuer Tether launched its asset tokenization service for bonds, commodities, and stocks (CD)

• Franklin Templeton will launch its Benji tokenization platform on the Ethereum network (BW)

• USDT stablecoin issuer Tether launched Hadron, its asset tokenization service for bonds, commodities, and stocks (CD)

Venture Capital

• Venture firm Portal Ventures is set to close a $75M fund that will invest in pre-seed crypto startups (TB)

Cybersecurity

• Bitfinex hacker Ilya Lichtenstein sentenced to five years in prison for attempting to launder 120,000 bitcoin back in 2016 (TB)

• Privacy project Nym is building an 'NSA-Proof' VPN (DC)

• Bengal man arrested in connection with $235M WazirX hack (DC)

Meme Dump

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