Welcome to another episode of DailyCryptoNews.
First off, apologies to Nat Brusiloff and anyone else taken back by some expletives in my Thursday show. I know I can do a better job of maintaining the integrity of the discourse in this industry and this world. My bad.
Listener Questions
Q from Chiich Upngo: Are we bullish on Chainlink?
Back when I was editor at BSC News in 2021, we ran a weekly column on Chainlink integrations. Chainlink has a huge suite of services. The challenge? How decentralized they can remain.
Marcin from Redstone joined the show recently to give commentary. Redstone is a competitor of Chainlink aiming to deliver similar oracle-style services, but with a more decentralized model. Worth watching how this plays out.
Comment from Will: What’s Matt’s background and how did he get into the industry?
Quick rundown on me:
Background in language & international relations.
Documentary work (work on FC Barcelona+Real Madrid, and Catalan politics). Met Messi and Cristiano in the same week — everything downhill from there, haha.
Got into crypto in 2015 while abroad, dealing with crossborder payments. Transferwise fees opened my eyes to how remittances steal from people.
By 2017, I was on Apple’s Siri natural language team. Read Digital Gold, got hooked on Bitcoin → Ethereum → the future of money.
Wrote economic papers on blockchain during grad school.
Pandemic hit, I pivoted into crypto writing and eventually PR/comms for some of the biggest projects around.
I’ve been scammed plenty of times in this industry. I’m not a whale. I’m here to spread the blockchain gospel — because I’ve seen firsthand how it can improve lives.
Headlines for August 19
SALT Conference & Wyoming’s Frontier Stablecoin
Wyoming unveiled its “Frontier” stablecoin (FRNT) across 7 blockchains, issued in partnership with LayerZero. That’s Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, plus Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base.
LayerZero CEO Bryan Pellengrino calls it a “bellwether moment.” Remember, just two years ago, stablecoins were on the chopping block post-Terra collapse. Now a U.S. state is issuing one.
1inch Goes Crosschain (No Bridges Required)
1inch launched “industry-first native decentralized crosschain swaps.”
Lets liquidity flow between Solana and EVM without bridges.
Co-founder Sergej Kunz thinks we’ll see a full multichain DeFi stack in 2–3 years
Chamath’s Grift City SPAC
Chamath Palihapitiya (early Bitcoin investor, billionaire) is back with a $250M SPAC — “American Exceptionalism Acquisition Corp A.” Target sectors: DeFi, AI, energy, defense.
Crypto Twitter? Mostly calling it a grift.
Story Protocol Implodes
CEO exits with only $25 in daily revenue. Raised $140M, but almost no users. Token tanking.
200 DAUs.
Token = dead.
Investors = burned.
Hot take: this is basically a soft rugpull. IRYS and CAMP Network are the ones actually building IP onchain futures (Disclosure I do some work for both, but they rock!).
0x7d54 summed it up best: “Story is asinine. What they claim to do could be built cheaper, better, on existing chains. VC circle jerk grift.”
Do We Really Need More L1s/L2s?
New corporate entrants (Robinhood, Circle, etc.) are spinning up chains. But let’s look at revenue of “emerging” L1s in the past 24h (per DeFi Llama):
Story Protocol – $23
Metis – $221
Blast – $288
Starknet – $496
Scroll – $527
Sei – $540
Immutable zkEVM – $45
Celestia – $150
zkSync Era – $1,938
Mantle – $5,577
Plenty of noise, not much traction.
Fear & Greed Index: 53 (Neutral)
CoinGecko: Lots of red today folks. Down around 3-5% across the board.
Little Bitz
Solana hits 100K TPS in test run (Alpen Glow)
Tether hires Bo Hines, ex-White House Crypto Council head, as U.S. advisor
Bullish IPO: Raised $1.1B at $37/share, $5.4B valuation (Peter Thiel-backed exchange)
That’s it for today. Thanks for tuning in. Don’t miss the DailyCryptoNews podcast on Spotify & Substack — daily 15-minute episodes Mon–Fri.
Follow us on Twitter: @DCNDailyCrypto
Check the Substack for all top stories.
Happy Hodling.
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***NOT FINANCIAL, LEGAL, OR TAX ADVICE! JUST OPINION! I AM NOT AN EXPERT! I DO NOT GUARANTEE A PARTICULAR OUTCOME I HAVE NO INSIDE KNOWLEDGE! YOU NEED TO DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH AND MAKE YOUR OWN DECISIONS! THIS IS JUST EDUCATION & ENTERTAINMENT!
