Am I seeing this correct? A green portfolio while writing another edition of Emiri from the Pub? It can’t be. 

Well, I’m not going to jinx it by saying any phrases that begin with “we are,” but what I am going to do is order a nice cold pint. So give me a second here… 

…Alright, where were we? Ah, crypto. 

With the markets showing small signs of life, it seems everyone’s attention has shifted there. Because, in terms of news events and general developments, it was honestly more of the same. 

We had some government crypto stance shifts, some institutions adopting crypto, and as usual, some hacks and exploits to keep things balanced. 

So, let me not waste any more of your time. Let’s get straight into this.

I think PayPal loves crypto.

It feels like we see PayPal doing some sort of integration with crypto every month now. It’s almost like they see it as a massive opportunity overlooked by many other institutions. Crazy right? 

So, what have they done this time? 

If you remember, back in 2020, PayPal enabled crypto trading for their customers. So anyone could trade certain whitelisted crypto assets directly from their PayPal or Venmo accounts. 

The Senior Vice President of Blockchain for PayPal then said that they have received a lot of interest and requests from business account owners for crypto services.

So this week, they announced that crypto trading will be enabled for US merchants. This means business owners can send and receive different crypto assets, and they can also transfer assets to eligible third-party wallets on-chain. 

This should be a pretty big step forward for crypto in the US. 

ICYMI: TOKEN2049 & Breakpoint Recap

Regulatory flip-flop 

The majority of the news this week actually came from the regulation/government front.

Let’s start with Turkey. 

Earlier in the year, the Turkish government was working on a tax bill which, along with stocks, involved taxes on crypto profits as well. However, after improvements in their national income budget, they have put this bill on pause. 

So all my Turkish brothers and sisters can breathe a sigh of relief. Haydi Gidelim (If this is wrong, blame the random bloke on Reddit). 

With the Turkish government holding their horses, let’s look at what their US counterparts are doing. 

Trump's crypto stance hasn’t really changed much, but Kamala Harris has had some interesting developments from her camp. 

For starters, it is said that Anthony Scaramucci, the former White House communications director, will be advising Kamala Harris on crypto and general crypto strategy. If I’m being honest, I don’t know much about the guy so I cannot comment to his merit in crypto. I just hope he isn’t a Gensler V2. 

Speaking of Gensler, in an interview on Fox News, Mark Cuban said that he would be interested in being the head of the SEC under the new Kamala Harris administration. Now, we know he is active in crypto, but his motives and general understanding is still questionable. 

Nonetheless, all we can do is wait and see. Hopefully, this will all turn out to be positive for crypto. Basically, just pump my bags, and I’ll be happy. 

Scams & Hacks 

I feel like we see scams and hacks almost every week in crypto, and this week is no different. 

Let’s start with the popular telegram trading bot Banana Gun. 

There was reportedly an issue in the Telegram oracle, which allowed exploiters to target specific users and make unauthorized transfers from their accounts. The exploiter manually transferred out ETH to themselves, resulting in a total loss of $3M. 

The issue has been rectified and the team will be refunding the victims from the treasury. 

Switching gears here, we have arguably the biggest news of this week. The $230M scam. 

A ZachXBT post revealed that for a long time, three scammers from Singapore were running a sophisticated social engineering scam, which ended up stealing close to $230M from unsuspecting victims. 

This included money laundering, peel chains, VPNs, privacy mixers, and much more. Eventually, they did the stupidest thing any criminal could do and started blowing money on luxury houses, parties, watches, cars, etc. 

Eventually, the feds got wind of this, and they were quickly arrested. Easy come, easy go. Prison will be waiting for them. 

Speaking of prison, we got another member joining the crypto prison squad. 

Our friendly neighborhood goblin, SBF, had a little girlfriend who worked with him. While he spends the rest of his life in jail with Diddy, his girlfriend, Caroline Ellison, will also be in jail, but for a much shorter two-year sentence.

What am I looking at going forward? 

As much as I would like to shill my microcap bags here, I’m unsure how ethical it is. 

But in terms of sectors. I’m currently focusing on DePIN because there are actual revenue-generating protocols there, and the opportunity seems exciting for partnerships with major real-world companies. 

AI is, of course, another point of focus. Since I'm not an AI expert, it is hard for me to evaluate the technical merit of these protocols, so my strategy is to go with the protocols that sound like they are doing something useful and then have the least red flags in terms of the team, insider scaminess, tokenomics, etc. 

Lastly, and I’ve been saying this for months now, Fantom’s Sonic upgrade. I think that’s the only new chain worth focusing on. 

That’s all from folks. First pint done, second one is on the way. I have a nice Friday ahead of me, and I hope you do too. 

I’ll catch yall two weeks from now. Have a good one. 

Emiri