🟪 Allow me to reintroduce myself

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Hello, reader! Michael McSweeney of Blockworks here, doing something a bit new: that is, reintroducing you to our weekend newsletter. Welcome! It’s a bit of a revamp, so kick up your feet, start scrolling, and check out what’s happening across Blockworks.

Who knows — maybe you could even subscribe to one of our other newsletters!

Anyway: Let’s talk about the week we just left behind. We saw notable developments across the digital asset space, with the Blockworks news team out in the wilderness reading the tea leaves (and Donald Trump’s crypto wallet) for what’s to come. Magic Eden joined the let’s-launch-a-token-for-reasons club and the legal war of words between former FTX exec Ryan Salame and the government grew ever-more spicy.

It wouldn’t be a week in crypto without some late-Friday shenanigans, this time in the form of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s effective bow-out from the US presidential race (yes, I know he “suspended” it).

Whatever you might think of Kennedy, his positions or the futility (or not) of his campaign, it’s an inescapable fact that he advanced the narrative at the intersection of crypto and politics. Kennedy put considerable time and effort into courting the US crypto industry, and he won fans — though, ultimately, the momentum of Trump’s campaign probably ate up a lot of the oxygen in Nashville during Bitcoin 2024.

Hard to say where things go — the Harris campaign sounds like they’re echoing the Biden take (read: comply with strenuous regulations or else), but what might be a greater coziness with Big Tech could prove decisive. But the truth remains: Kennedy shifted the landscape, presidential winner or not.

Now, on to the roundup:

— Michael McSweeney

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Blockworks’ own crypto chart guru David Canellis has the goods on Trump’s crypto wallet. Plus, Katherine Ross stirred the pot on the election’s crypto market impact. Talk about fresh alpha.

Bitcoin and staking? Now I’ve heard everything. No, seriously, it’s a thing. We break down what could become one of crypto’s hottest sectors.

Magic Eden is going to launch a new token. Big news, right? Well, if you read between the lines, it all seems to be a lot more about their wallet than anything else. Also: Is Neuralink’s first patient a memecoin degen? The answer is… maybe?

The name “Prometheum” never fails to turn a head in crypto. As Casey Wagner detailed this week, they threw the proverbial gauntlet down, this time when it comes to what they consider a crypto security. Plus: Ben Strack cracked the code on the Bitfarms-Stronghold and what matters most in this mining deal.

Are prediction markets going the way of the dodo? As Bilbo Baggins might say, “Well, no…and yes.” LOTR jokes aside, the US presidential election has pushed Polymarket into the spotlight, raising old — and important — questions along the way.

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