Scenius Sync (Issue #125)

ELECTION DAY! Bitcoin Volatility Spikes, Presidential Winner Prediction Market Crosses $3B on Polymarket, Pres Hopeful MemeCoins Move, Tether Reports $2.B In Profit & The New Global Dollar Network

Scenius: The intelligence and the intuition of a whole cultural scene. The communal form of the concept of genius.

Welcome to The Scenius Sync.

Our mission with this concise publication is twofold:

1. Share the essential stories driving the crypto industry and markets.

2. Highlight innovative applications and mainstream adoption of crypto and blockchain technology.

If you find this newsletter valuable, please subscribe and share The Scenius Sync with your network 💪

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Essential News 🗞

1. US presidential winner prediction market crosses $3 billion on Polymarket a day before the election

   • One day before the United States presidential election on Nov. 5, the prediction market for its winner surpassed $3 billion on the decentralized prediction platform Polymarket. The market's total betting volume reached $3.13 billion, with Republican candidate Donald Trump amassing $1.2 billion in betting volume, Polymarket shows as of 12:15 p.m. ET (17:15 UTC) on Nov. 4. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate, has $782.5 million in betting volume. The platform's winning odds for Trump and Harris are 56.3% and 43.8% respectively, with Trump's odds falling more than 10% over the weekend.

   • More here: Crypto's Defining Moments in the Lead Up to the US Election

   • More on prediction markets here: If U.S. Election Is Disputed, Prediction Markets Could Face 'Hornet's Nest'

   • Election impacts: Donald Trump, Kamala Harris Meme Coins Make Double-Digit Moves As Election Looms

   • Election impacts: Bitcoin Hits $90K With Trump Win—But Falls to $50K If Harris Prevails: Bernstein

   • Election impacts: Tomorrow will decide major Senate race in US crypto’s election efforts

2. Bitcoin Volatility Spikes as U.S. Election Raises Stakes for Crypto Markets

   • With the U.S. presidential election just a day away, Bitcoin’s expected price volatility is experiencing a sharp increase as the political climate tightens. Data from Deribit, the largest crypto options exchange, show the implied volatility index for Bitcoin soaring to 63.24% on an annualized basis—its highest level since July.  Implied volatility measures expected price swings over a given period—in this case, over the next 30 days—providing insight into how much market participants anticipate prices could fluctuate. This jump in expected volatility reflects market sentiment as investors prepare for potential uncertainty ahead of the fiercely contested U.S. presidential election between former President Donald Trump and current Vice President Kamala Harris.

   • Analysis: Bitcoin Hits $90K With Trump Win—But Falls to $50K If Harris Prevails: Bernstein

   • Analysis: How Donald Trump shook the crypto market heading into the 2024 US presidential election

   • Analysis: Weighing the Harris/Trump crypto impact on Election Eve 

3. Tether Reports $2.5B Profit in Q3, Holds Over $100B of U.S. Treasuries

   • Stablecoin issuer Tether Thursday reported $2.5 billion of group-wide net profits in the third quarter of the year, bringing year-to-date profit to $7.7 billion as the market capitalization of its flagship cryptocurrency (USDT) neared $120 billion. Some $1.3 billion of the profits derived from yield on U.S. Treasury holdings, while another $1.1 billion was thanks to the unrealized appreciation of the company's gold holdings in the reserve, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said in an X post. The price of gold was higher by about 15% during the third quarter.

4. Immutable says it received a Wells notice from the US SEC over securities law violations potentially involving IMX

   • Blockchain gaming platform Immutable says the U.S. SEC has signaled that it may bring an enforcement action against it over allegedly breaking securities laws. The company said that the SEC sent a Wells notice shortly after first meeting with the agency. A Wells notice is a form of communication from SEC staff that lets a firm know that the agency's staff may recommend an enforcement action against them. "Prior to the issuance of a Wells notice, there are often multiple months of interviews and conversations between company counsel and the SEC, so the SEC can fully understand the situation," Immutable said in a post on Thursday. "Instead, in our very first interaction with the SEC, we were told a Wells notice would be issued to the company within the week. We then received it within hours." 

5. Russia to Ban Crypto Mining 'In Some Regions' Due to Electricity Shortages

   • Months after legalizing crypto mining, Russia has announced a ban on the practice "in some regions" due to electricity shortages. According to a report in Russian state news agency TASS, Deputy Head of the Ministry of Energy of the Russian Federation Yevgeny Grabchak announced that, "mining in the near future will be prohibited at the state level in some regions." Grabchak stated that electricity shortages in certain regions were behind the ban. "We, for example, already have scarce zones—this is the Far East, this is the southwest of Siberia, this is the South," he said, adding that capacity will be limited in those regions "until 2030."

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Innovation & Adoption 💡📈

1. Anchorage Digital, Bullish, Galaxy Digital, Kraken, Nuvei, Paxos and Robinhood partner to introduce Global Dollar Network

   • Anchorage Digital, Bullish, Galaxy Digital, Kraken, Nuvei, Paxos and Robinhood have partnered to introduce the Global Dollar Network.

     The network aims to accelerate stablecoin adoption worldwide and to incentivize new use cases for the stablecoin USDG launched on Nov. 1. 

     The blockchain infrastructure platform Paxos will issue USDG out of Singapore in compliance with the nation's Monetary Authority, according to a release shared with The Block. Qualified entities such as custodians, exchanges, payment technology firms and others in the financial sector can join the Global Dollar Network via invite. "The lack of competition in the regulated stablecoin market has prevented the industry from reaching its full potential," said Kraken Co-CEO Arjun Sethi in a statement. "USDG upends this dynamic with a more equitable model that will bring mainstream participants into the ecosystem and accelerate new stablecoin use cases."

2. OpenSea CEO teases new platform built 'from the ground up' a year after talk of version 2.0

   • Prominent NFT marketplace OpenSea is aiming to reinvent itself as non-fungible token trading volumes have shrank to their lowest levels in more than three years. On Monday, OpenSea CEO Devin Finzer took to X to tease the reimagined platform. "We've been quietly cooking at OpenSea," he said. "To really innovate, sometimes you have to take a step back and reimagine everything. So we built a new OpenSea from the ground up." OpenSea also promoted the new platform via its X account, saying it is set to launch in December. The marketplace also provided a link for joining the waitlist. The announcement of a new platform comes after almost exactly a year ago, OpenSea laid off half of its staff before Finzer said the company had begun work on "OpenSea 2.0."

3. First UK Pension Fund Invests in Bitcoin

   • British pension specialist Cartwright has guided the country's first pension fund to allocate money into bitcoin. The unnamed fund invested 3% of its total assets directly into the token, as opposed to using a proxy such as a spot ETF. Cartwright is also launching a Bitcoin Employee Benefits scheme, which would allow employers to pay bitcoin directly into staff wallets.

4. UBS launches tokenized fund, puts ETH 'into the heart' of TradFi

   • The Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) has rolled out a tokenized fund on the Ethereum blockchain network after highlighting the increasing interest among investors for tokenized financial assets.  In a Nov. 1 statement, the bank launched the money market fund built on the Ethereum network as the “UBS USD Money Market Investment Fund Token,” also known as the “uMINT.” UBS APAC co-head Thomas Kaegi explained that the firm has “seen a growing investor appetite for tokenized financial assets across asset classes.” 

5. Stripe's $1.1B Acquisition Target, Bridge, Buys Web3 Wallet Platform Triangle

   • Triangle, a web3 wallet infrastructure platform founded by Stripe alumni Tasti Zakarie, has been acquired by stablecoin payments platform Bridge, the company said in a press release on Friday. As part of the deal, the Triangle team will join Bridge to help build scalable stablecoin systems, the company said. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. Bridge itself is a recent acquisition target. The stablecoin company is being bought by Stripe for $1.1 billion, in the largest crypto acquisition by a major payments company to date.