Here's your Monday industry catch-up 📰

Crypto & Blockchain Update: October 14-20

📈Market Highlights

- Bitcoin breaks $69,000, with 7% rise over the last week
- Ethereum is at $2,700, up by 8% in 7 days
- Last week’s top 3 gainers were APE (+98%), MEW (+32%), and DOGE (+31%); while top 3 losers over past 7 days were TAO (-10%), MKR (-9%), and SEI (-8.5%)
- Crypto Fear & Greed Index is at 63 Greed
- Bitcoin hashrate hits all-time high while exchange reserves hit a 2-year low
- $ETH held in accumulation wallets rises by 65% since January 2024

🎮Blockchain Tech & Gaming

- Worldcoin, now rebranded to World, launched its own Ethereum L2 network - World Chain, to bring millions of humans on the blockchain
- Fuel Labs launches Ethereum L2 Fuel Ignition
- Blockchain developers propose “panoramic governance” to incentivize growth in L2 blockchains
- Opentensor Foundation (OTF) makes Ethereum compatibility layer available on Bittensor
- ApeCoin (APE) massive spike after the launch of ApeChain with staking
- Avalanche-based Off the Grid has had a successful early access launch so far
- Animoca Brands CEO predicts every web3 project will have a Telegram strategy as result of the boom of Telegram gaming
- Memecoin launchpad GraFun starts a lLbs division to support the memecoin ecosystem on BNB Chain

📃Regulatory Updates

- Italy’s government proposes capital gains tax on Bitcoin and other crypto assets to rise from 26% to 42% - Craig Wright has launched a legal action against Bitcoin Core developers - Paper published by ECB claims older Bitcoin holders are exploiting new holders and $BTC lacks any real world value

💰Investments & Partnerships

- Euroclear invests in Marketnode, a Singapore-based blockchain tech firm
- UK pension and investment management firm L&G plans to enter crypto tokenization space saying “digitization of the funds industry is key to improving efficiency, reducing cost, and making a broad range of investment solutions available to a wider range of investors”
- Drop Protocol, a liquid staking protocol for interchain assets receives $4M in seed round
- Stripe has acquired stablecoin platform Bridge for $1.1B

🛡️Crypto security

- EigenLayer X account was hijacked to spread airdrop scam link
- Radiant Capital hit with a $50M exploit on Binance Chain and Arbitrum
- Hong Kong police arrest 27 people involved in deepfake romance scam that deceived victims to invest in fake crypto ventures, totaling $46M
- The Indian citizen behind fake Coinbase website that led to $20M stolen, pleaded guilty and has been sentenced to 5 years

🗞️Miscellaneous

- Crypto trader turns $5k into $1.5M with GOAT Meme Coin
- MicroStrategy market capitalization has increased from $1.5B to $40B in 4 years, Saylor attributes this to integrating Bitcoin
- VanEck analyst states that “L2 networks are taking more value from Ethereum” than previously thought, which could impact $ETH’s future price
- Tesla moved $765M in $BTC to unknown wallets after 2 years of inactivity
- The amount of high-risk crypto loans increases to 2 year high of $55M
- BlackRock is looking at integrating BUIDL as collateral for derivatives trading

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Have a successful new week ahead!🤝