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The White House’s New Crypto Supremo 🏦
Plus, 🧐 Incentive programs draw unwelcome attention, 🔄 Market volatility, 📊 Long-term Bitcoiners lock in gains, and more!
Good Friday! I’m Juan Aranovich, managing editor of Unchained.
In today’s edition:
🤝 “PayPal mafia” member gets a government gig
🪙 Arbitrum’s $21 billion breakout
📉 BTC backdown triggers $1.1 billion of liquidations.
🚛 OG bitcoin holders move their money
🌱 Binance launches Babylon BTC staking
🛠️ Layer 2 pivots to app-centric layer 1
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What’s Poppin’?
By Juan Aranovich, Sage D. Young and Tikta
David Sacks Named as AI and Crypto Czar
President-elect Donald Trump has appointed venture capitalist and former PayPal COO David Sacks to the newly created position of White House AI and crypto czar.
Announced as the appointee via Trump’s Truth Social platform yesterday, Sacks will oversee U.S. policies for artificial intelligence and crypto, including the development of a legal framework for the crypto industry.
Sacks, a tech investor and co-founder of early-stage VC firm Craft Ventures, will also chair the Presidential Council of Advisors for Science and Technology.
Trump described the role as pivotal for advancing U.S. leadership in emerging technologies and safeguarding free speech online while countering what he described as “Big Tech bias and censorship.”
Sacks is closely tied to Silicon Valley and known for his affiliation with the “PayPal mafia” of figures such as Elon Musk and Peter Thiel. Craft Ventures was also the biggest investor in Multicoin Capital’s first fund, according to Kyle Samani; through that, he invested in Solana early and famously said on the All-In podcast that he did not sell SOL after the collapse of FTX.
Although he was critical of Trump after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021, Sacks became a significant Trump supporter during his 2024 presidential campaign.
While Arbitrum community members are celebrating a new record for total value locked (TVL), the network’s incentive programs aimed at fostering ecosystem activity have come under scrutiny.
Arbitrum’s TVL has increased by about 67% from $12.6 billion a month ago to roughly $21 billion at press time, an all-time high for the layer-2 scaling solution that rolled out in 2021.
$1B Liquidated in Crypto Markets
Bitcoin’s rally past the milestone $100,000 mark resulted in an immediate uptick in leverage as options traders rushed to hedge bullish bets.
As a consequence, cascading liquidations were triggered when bitcoin retreated below the $100K level. Traders using leverage face liquidation when their account equity falls below a certain threshold required to maintain their open positions.
Data from CoinGlass show that $1.1 billion of crypto was liquidated in a 24-hour period after BTC hit the $100K mark, with the OG cryptocurrency alone accounting for $562 million of the total.
Around $300 million of long positions were liquidated in under an hour when bitcoin dropped to an intraday low of $92,957. BTC’s price has since recovered slightly, and was around $97,000 at press time.
Bitcoin OGs Are Moving Their Coins: CryptoQuant
Cumulative spending by bitcoin holders of more than 10 years neared $1 billion, or 10,600 BTC, over the past 30 days, according to data shared by onchain data and analytics firm CryptoQuant’s head of research, Julio Moreno.
Moreno interpreted that spend as a sign that “Bitcoin OGs” were moving their coins as the price of the No. 1 cryptocurrency crossed the $100,000 mark.
CryptoQuant founder Ki Young Ju said on X that “fresh capital is feeling bitcoin” as the asset’s ceiling price had increased from $129,000 to $146,000 during the previous 30 days.
“At $102K, it's far from a bubble — it would need a 43% surge to hit the threshold often considered a bubble,” he said.
Binance Launches Onchain Yields With Babylon BTC Staking
Crypto exchange Binance has launched an initiative named On-chain Yields through Babylon BTC Staking, a project that aims to “scale bitcoin to secure the proof-of-stake economy.”
The new feature allows users to stake bitcoin and earn rewards directly through their Binance accounts, eliminating the complexity that sometimes comes with participating in onchain protocols.
Babylon BTC Staking will be available for subscription starting Dec. 9 at 6 a.m. UTC. Users will be able to access the staking option through the Binance website and mobile app.
A cap of 1,000 BTC will be available on a first-come, first-served basis, with a minimum subscription amount of 0.05 BTC and a maximum of 5 BTC per account.
Layer N Pivots From Ethereum L2 to N1
Layer N, a blockchain backed by PayPal co-founder and influential venture capitalist Peter Thiel, has announced a significant pivot from its original concept as a layer-2 for Ethereum to becoming “N1,” a full-stack, app-centric layer-1 blockchain.
In an announcement on Thursday, the team behind the project said N1 would be the first layer-1 with virtually unlimited scale and ultra-low latency. For users, transaction confirmations would be handled entirely on the back end, and the network itself would be accessible through wallets such as Metamask and Phantom, the team said.
The transition aims to address scalability limitations that the network encountered on Ethereum, which has been seen as an obstacle to achieving higher transaction speeds and broader application capabilities.
Before the pivot, Layer N had achieved more than 100,000 transactions per second with sub-millisecond latency, positioning itself as a competitor to traditional financial networks such as Nasdaq and Visa.
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Daily Bits… ✍️✍️✍
👎The HAWK memecoin launch, led by Haliey Welch, A.K.A. “The Hawk Tuah Girl,” crashed spectacularly on Thursday, plummeting from a $490 million market cap to just $64 million within 30 minutes, then to $27 million a few hours after that as its tokenomics and insider selling sparked a backlash and inspired a parody token, TUAH, which quickly reached a $12.3 million valuation.
🐧 The Pudgy Penguins NFT project yesterday announced Pengu, a Solana-based token with 25.9% of its supply allocated to its community, aiming to expand its ecosystem and attract fans beyond the crypto space.
🥞 PancakeSwap launched SpringBoard, an innovative no-code token launch platform on BNB Chain, allowing creators to launch tokens easily with integrated liquidity on its decentralized exchange, attracting speculators and driving trading volume.
🌐 Cosmos-based Noble introduced USDN, a stablecoin using decentralized infrastructure from the M^0 protocol, bridging permissioned stablecoin issuance with decentralized networks to facilitate cross-chain transfers through the Inter-Blockchain Communication protocol.
💊 Medtech firm Semler Scientific added 303 bitcoin worth $30 million to its treasury, bringing its total holdings to 1,873 BTC, as part of its high-yield Bitcoin strategy.
The $$$ Corner…
📚 Generative AI platform Sekai secured $3.1 million in seed funding led by Hashed to develop collaborative storytelling tools leveraging Story Protocol, aiming to empower creators with blockchain-protected intellectual property rights.
🌟 Lattice, a crypto-focused VC firm, is raising a third fund as the market surges, following its previous $60 million fund.
What Do You Meme?
📈 Your Market Update 📉
BTC is down 4.8%, trading at $98,058
ETH is down 1.5%, trading at $3,874
BTC dominance: 51.95%
Crypto market cap: $3.76T
*All data as of today, 07:45 am ET. Source: CoinGecko
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