Scenius Sync (Issue #126)

A New Crypto Era Dawns As Crypto Wins Election Day. Trump Wins, Sherrod Brown Out In Ohio, Lummis Doubles Down on BTC Reserve, BTC Smashes $85k, Total MCAP Eclipses $3T, & BlackRock's IBIT Flips IAU

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.

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Essential News 🗞

1. Donald Trump defeats Kamala Harris in a US presidential election that put crypto in the public eye

   • Former president Donald Trump has won the U.S. presidential election, beating his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump won the race, which was declared on the Associated Press and various media outlets, with 277 electoral votes — and more still to be confirmed.  The crypto industry became a hotly contested election issue as cash flooded into super political action committees and crypto executives for Harris and Trump. The latter reportedly raised $21 million, for example, during the Bitcoin 2024 event at a roundtable. Attendees included Gemini co-founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss as well as celebrities Kid Rock, Jake Paul and Billy Ray Cyrus, according to Fox journalist Eleanor Terrett. Trump was previously hostile toward crypto, but has since been very vocal on his feelings about the industry. Trump made a pledge to end an "unlawful and un-American crackdown" on the U.S. crypto industry and has backed a crypto project called World Liberty Financial, which has drawn skepticism.

   • Market Impact: Bitcoin price hits $85,000 amid massive rally following Trump victory

   • More Impacts: The Daily: Bernstein says 'don't fight this' amid post-election crypto surge, MicroStrategy buys another $2 billion in bitcoin and more

   • More Impacts: Bitcoin, Ethereum ETFs Add Nearly $2 Billion as Crypto Market Surges

2. How Did Pro Crypto Candidates Do in Last Week’s U.S. Elections?

   • According to Standwithcrypto.org, 268 pro-crypto candidates were elected to the House of Representatives and 19 to the Senate versus 122 and 12 anti-crypto candidates elected respectively.

3. Bernie Moreno wins Ohio Senate seat from Sherrod Brown

   • Pro-crypto Republican challenger Bernie Moreno has won the Ohio Senate seat from incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown. Moreno’s win not only adds another pro-crypto voice to the Senate but also removes a powerful crypto-opposing politician who was chair of the Senate Banking Committee — which is key to passing crypto legislation. The Brown-Moreno contest was the most expensive Senate race in history, with over $500,000 spent on advertising, according to NBC News. Most of that spending came from political action committees (PACs), including the pro-crypto super PAC Defend American Jobs, which spent $41 million supporting Moreno. Moreno shows all signs of being a dependably pro-crypto future legislator.

   • In a disappointing but not surprising result: Elizabeth Warren beats pro-XRP lawyer John Deaton for Massachusetts Senate seat

4. US lawmaker doubles down on crypto promises after Trump win

   • In one of her first post-election messages, Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis reiterated plans for United States lawmakers to “build a strategic Bitcoin reserve,” presumably when Republicans take a majority control of the Senate in 2025. In a Nov. 6 X post, Senator Lummis said she intended to move forward with her plans to establish a Bitcoin reserve. The Wyoming Republican introduced the Bitcoin Act in July for the US government to buy 1 million BTC— roughly 5% of the total supply — and hold it for at least 20 years.  With Republicans expected to have a majority in the US Senate after flipping three seats on Election Day, Lummis and her colleagues may have the votes needed to carry out the plan. Her proposed bill built upon an idea pitched by then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, who suggested the US government not sell any of its seized Bitcoin.

   • More coverage from The Defiant: here.

5. FTX Sues Binance for $1.76 Billion, Accuses CZ of 'Reckless Disregard' for Its Customers

   • Two years after its bankruptcy filing, defunct crypto exchange FTX has filed a lawsuit in the Delaware Bankruptcy Court against Binance Holdings Ltd. and its former CEO Changpeng Zhao, seeking to recover at least $1.76 billion in “fraudulently transferred” funds. In the lawsuit filed on Sunday, the FTX bankruptcy estate alleges that “at least $1.76 billion worth of cryptocurrency was transferred to Binance in July 2021,” were fraudulently transferred to Binance by FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, as part of a deal where FTX repurchased Binance’s equity stake. In bringing the suit, the FTX estate seeks to void the transfer and recover the funds to repay creditors who suffered significant losses after the crypto exchange’s collapse.

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Innovation & Adoption 💡📈

1. Polymarket said to tease token launch, stating 'we predict future drops'

   • The decentralized prediction market Polymarket is said to be teasing a token airdrop that could potentially benefit users looking to redeem their winning bets with further rewards.  This would mark a new chapter for the platform, which previously offered no guarantees on launching its own token but has since seen billions of dollars in trading volume derived from United States presidential election bets.  "We predict future drops," said an image obtained by The Block that was purportedly shown to some traders who claimed their winnings on Polymarket. "Users who reinvest their winnings into other markets may be eligible for boosted future rewards and drops."

2. Near plans to build world’s largest 1.4T parameter open-source AI model

   • Near Protocol has unveiled an ambitious plan to build the world’s largest open-source artificial intelligence model on the opening day of its Redacted conference in Bangkok, Thailand. The 1.4 trillion parameter model would be 3.5 times bigger than Meta’s current open-source Llama model. It will be created through competitive crowdsourced research and development from thousands of contributors on the new Near AI Research hub, with participants able to join the training of a small 500 million parameter model from today, Nov. 10.

3. BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF flips gold fund

   • BlackRock’s Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) now holds more assets than the asset manager’s gold ETF despite only launching in January, data from BlackRock shows. iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) exceeds $33 billion in net assets as of Nov. 8, surpassing iShares Gold Trust (IAU), which holds just shy of that amount, according to iShares. It’s an “absolutely wild” feat because IBIT launched only 10 months ago, whereas IAU has been trading since 2005, Nate Geraci, president of The ETF Store, said in a Nov. 8 post on the X platform.

4. Dune acquires a16z-backed smlXL to expand real-time blockchain data offering

   • Dune, the crypto analytics platform, made three major announcements at DuneCon in Bangkok on Monday morning: the launch of its Echo platform with real-time multi-chain analytics, the acquisition of blockchain simulation company smlXL, and the launch of a new metric designed to track meaningful blockchain adoption.  The amount Dune paid for smlXL, backed by a16z, was not disclosed. 

5. ENS Labs introduces own ‘L2-agnostic’ rollup Namechain, aiming for launch by end of 2025

   • ENS Labs, the organization behind the Ethereum Name Service, is building its own Layer 2 network titled Namechain. ENS is a decentralized naming system built on the Ethereum blockchain that gives readable names to crypto addresses.  “The industry’s success metric for rollups these days is TVL,” Jeff Lau, co-founder of ENS, said at the “frENSday” event in Bangkok on Monday. “We don’t need to prioritize TVL. ENS already has users, and we can really prioritize things that other L2s don’t.” The launch of Namechain is expected to take place around the end of 2025, ENS Labs told The Block. Namechain, built on zero-knowledge proof technology, is expected to process and execute transactions off the main Ethereum network while preserving the “full security” of Ethereum at a lower cost.