🛀 Rallies, rizz, repeat

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Roman Storm’s trial is underway in Manhattan, and my colleague, Casey Wagner, attended court to see the opening statements firsthand.

Unsurprisingly, the government is looking to paint the picture that Storm was aware criminals were using the decentralized mixer. Storm’s lawyers argued that the government is trying to fault him for making a useful tool. 

“It’s not a crime to make a useful thing that is misused,” attorney Keri Axel told the court.

There’ll be plenty of back-and-forth during this trial, which is expected to take place over a period of three weeks.

🚗 Are we there yet?

We’re over halfway through the year, so let’s do a little recap, shall we?

I mentioned K33’s H1 report in an intro the other day, but there’s a lot of interesting data to digest.

Such as the fact that the bitcoin treasury companies acquired a whopping 244,991 bitcoin by the end of June, which marked the official transition from H1 to H2. 

Not to mention that the number of treasury companies, perhaps unsurprisingly, almost doubled by the end of the first half. At the beginning of the year, there were 70 firms with bitcoin on their balance sheet, but that quickly ballooned to 134. 

Companies from the US, Canada, Japan and UK are at the top of the list when it comes to companies pivoting to a bitcoin treasury strategy, but the total sum is made up of companies from 27 countries, according to K33. That gives you a rough idea of how global this is, though the US tops the chart with 41 public companies. 

But it’s not all about bitcoin treasury firms or even just bitcoin. A lot has happened this year, as both Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo and Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley were eager to point out to us just this week. 

In the first half of the year, USDT and USDC’s circulating supply grew by $38 billion as folks flocked to the stablecoin narrative. 

Unfortunately, if you take stablecoins out of the mix, then only nine of the top 50 cryptos saw positive returns in H1, showing that altcoins are still struggling to find their footing in a market dominated by bitcoin and stablecoins. 

Of that nine, K33 noted that three specifically outperformed bitcoin:. XMR, HYPE and SKY. 

So it looks like the momentum still isn’t there for an altcoin season. Looking ahead though, there may be some hope on the horizon if some of these altcoin ETFs are approved, which could happen by the end of this year, as we previously reported. 

K33 noted that H2 tends to be the stronger half for bitcoin seasonally, and we have other tailwinds such as more crypto IPOs to follow in Circle’s footsteps and we could get some more information on the proposed US strategic bitcoin reserve.

Not to mention the role that regulation could play, especially as lawmakers on the Hill discuss the crypto bills this week. 

So there’s still a lot of gas left in the tank — let’s see where it takes us.

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Blockdaemon is now an official validator in the Fireblocks staking marketplace, bringing a one‑click Solana staking experience to the industry’s leading digital‑asset platform trusted by more than 2,000 institutions worldwide.

• A FOIA request revealed that the US Marshals Service holds 28,988 bitcoin. 

• Raydium’s allocated $190 million to token buybacks. 

• At an event on Wednesday, Coinbase revealed that it’s rebranding its wallet app to the Base App.

Check out the Digital Asset Summit early speaker lineup. Join attendees from BlackRock, Citi, Credit Suisse, Bank of England, Jane Street and more.

Secure your early bird ticket today with promo code: EMPIRENL

📅 October 13-15 | London