The Breakdown First Five - Friday, October 18, 2024

Welcome back to The Breakdown First Five — the 5 most interesting and/or important stories in bitcoin, crypto, and markets to start your day.

5. SEC Hacker Caught

Back in January the SEC account posted a fake tweet claiming the ETFs had been approved. The “hacker” has been arrested by the FBI. Rather than a genius infiltration of government systems, this was just a case of some guy in Alabama carrying out a sim-swap on the SEC’s social media manager. The hacker went by the online handles “AGiantSchnauzer" and "Easymunny". He was clearly surprised it worked, googling the incident immediately afterwards. 

4. Ripple Appeal Shuffle

The SEC have filed their appeal against the Ripple decision after some confusion about the deadline. The appeal challenges decisions that transactions in the open market breached securities law and that executives aided and abetted the behavior. However it doesn’t mention the underlying premise that XRP tokens are not themselves securities. The appeals process is expected to drag out until July of next year.

3. Kraken Wrapped

Kraken have launched their own version of wrapped Bitcoin to compete for the void left by wBTC. The ERC-20 token will operate on Ethereum mainnet and layer 2s. Kraken said the new token “reinforces Bitcoin’s position as the epicenter of crypto.” The Bitcoin will be custodied by Kraken but, unlike Coinbase’s offering, onchain reserves will be fully auditable.

2. Stripe’s Stablecoin Acquisition

Fintech payments provider Stripe is in talks to acquire stablecoin infrastructure firm Bridge. According to Forbes, the target price is $1B, which would make this Stripe’s largest acquisition to date. The talks are still provisional, with reports stating that either party could still walk away. However even the idea that Stripe are paying up big for stablecoins suggest they are going all in on crypto rails. 

1. Monster Week for ETFs

The Bitcoin ETFs are on an absolute tear, logging their biggest week since July. Five consecutive days of inflows have yielded $2.1B in fresh capital. The Blackrock fund alone was responsible for over a billion. Many are questioning why Bitcoin isn’t reacting even more strongly. A corresponding surge in futures open interest suggests a big part of this is a market-neutral basis trade being put on in massive size.