Polymarket Gets CFTC Greenlight for U.S. Relaunch

Hi! In today’s edition:

• ✅ Polymarket gets U.S. greenlight after FBI raid saga

• 💰 American Bitcoin pops 100% on Wall Street

• 📈 Anchorage brings Starknet staking with 7.28% APR

• 🎙️ Insiders, LP traps, and dump schemes revealed in pod

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Polymarket Gets Greenlight for U.S. Return

Polymarket CEO Shayne Coplan said the firm “has been given the green light to go live in the USA” by the U.S. Commodity and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

“Credit to the Commission and Staff for their impressive work. This process has been accomplished in record timing,” Coplan said in an X post on Wednesday.

The CFTC issued a no-action letter on Wednesday concerning Polymarket’s event contracts, providing the regulatory clarity needed for Polymarket to legally operate in the U.S.

The clearance enables Polymarket to launch its U.S. platform, which is backed by its acquisition of QCX, a CFTC-licensed derivatives exchange and clearinghouse, allowing regulated prediction contract trading.

Last November, Coplan’s New York City home was raided by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as regulators looked into whether Polymarket operated as an unauthorized commodity exchange and if it allowed U.S. users to place bets in violation of a prior settlement with federal authorities.

Onchain Pokémon cards are all the rage! 

Tune in today at 12 pm ET to learn all about them.

Trump-Backed Crypto Firm American Bitcoin Soars 100% in Nasdaq Debut

Trump family-backed Bitcoin firm American Bitcoin Corp soared 102% in its Nasdaq debut to an intraday high of $14 before settling at $8.04 at market close on Wednesday.

The firm, co-founded by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., began trading under the ticker "ABTC" after merging with Gryphon Digital Mining. Eric Trump’s 7.5% stake in the firm was valued at roughly $548 million after the firm’s listing. 

American Bitcoin operates a hybrid model, combining its own bitcoin mining with a strategy of holding bitcoin as a treasury asset, having already accumulated over 2,400 BTC worth $269 million at current prices.

Earlier this week, the Trump family’s wealth extended by $5 billion after the trading debut of WLFI, the token linked to the family’s DeFi project World Liberty Financial.

Anchorage Adds Starknet Staking for Institutions

Anchorage Digital, a U.S.-federally chartered crypto bank, has launched custody and staking services for Starknet’s native token STRK, specifically targeting institutional investors.

The new service enables institutions to securely stake STRK tokens and earn rewards, currently offering an attractive annual percentage rate (APR) of 7.28%.

Notably, the APR on offer is higher than prevailing U.S. Treasury yields, which sit between 4% and 4.5%. Those rates could drop further in just two weeks, with a September rate cut now firmly being priced in with 98% odds.

Starknet is the seventh-largest Ethereum layer 2 scaling solution, with $545 million in bridged value. 

“We are confident that this collaboration will not only drive greater institutional adoption of Layer 2 scaling solutions like Starknet… but also unlock new opportunities for institutions to participate in the evolving world of decentralized finance,” said Starknet Foundation Executive Director James Strudwick.

How Crypto Insiders Are Sidestepping the Law to Dump on Retail

One-sided LPs, leaked tips, unclear laws—are insiders gaming the system in plain sight?

Behind some of the biggest token launches of the past year — from Trump’s $TRUMP coin to the recent Kanye West’s $YZY, to the collapse of $LIBRA and this week’s launch of $WLFI — the same insider names keep popping up.

In this episode, Bubblemaps CEO Nicolas Vaiman explains how figures like Hayden Davis of Kelsier Ventures, celebrity promoter Sahil Arora, Naseem, and even Justin Sun have profited from chaotic launches.

We dig into the mechanics of insider “snipes,” one-sided LPs that hide selling, and why celebrity and political tokens so often collapse right after launch.

Finally, Nick asks: if “no one is coming to save us,” what real protections can the industry build?

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.

• 🎥 Pump.fun’s new “Project Ascend” fee model paid out $2 million to token creators in a single day—ten times higher than before—putting some streamers ahead of Twitch earnings as memecoin-driven incentives reshaped small creator income.

• 🥇 The World Gold Council confirmed plans to trial “digital gold” units in London’s $900 billion bullion market by early 2026, offering fractional ownership via pooled gold interests just as prices hit a record $3,550 per ounce.

• 🏦 The U.S. Federal Reserve scheduled an October 21 conference on payment innovation, spotlighting stablecoins, tokenized assets, and AI in finance, marking another policy shift under Trump toward embracing crypto in the banking system.

• 🦄 Uniswap’s community began voting on the creation of a Wyoming-based legal entity called DUNI to handle contracts, taxes, and compliance while shielding governance participants from liability without altering the decentralized protocol itself.

• 🎁 Linea, Consensys’ Ethereum layer 2 network, rolled out its airdrop checker ahead of a September 10 token launch, confirming that 9.36 billion LINEA will be distributed to nearly 750,000 verified addresses with no insider allocation and a decade-long ecosystem fund.

• 📈 Galaxy Digital became the first Nasdaq-listed company to tokenize its own SEC-registered stock directly on a public blockchain, letting shareholders hold GLXY shares as Solana tokens updated in real time by transfer agent Superstate.

• 🪙 Ondo Finance launched over 100 tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs on Ethereum—backed by broker-held assets and transferable onchain 24/7—aiming to scale to 1,000 securities this year while adding BNB Chain and Solana support for global investors outside the U.S. and U.K.

• 🏦 Etherealize, a startup backed by Paradigm, Electric Capital, Vitalik Buterin and the Ethereum Foundation, raised $40 million to help Wall Street institutions adopt Ethereum-based products as banks and asset managers accelerate blockchain integration.

• 🌍 Stablecoin operations platform Utila secured $22 million in fresh funding at triple its prior valuation after doubling clients and processing $15 billion monthly, with plans to expand into Latin America, Africa, and Asia as global demand for dollar-pegged tokens surges.

1. Wintermute provides feedback to the SEC Crypto Task Force on tokenized securities

2. My Day with Don Jr by Andrew Gordon, founder of Gordon Law and Gordon Tax