TLDR Crypto 2025-10-29

Truth Social, the Trump Media–owned social platform, is entering the prediction market space through an exclusive partnership with Crypto.com. The new product, Truth Predict, will let users trade contracts on events like elections, Fed decisions, sports, and commodities via a federally compliant CDNA integration.

Securitize, a leader in real-world asset tokenization, will go public through a $1.25 billion SPAC merger with a Cantor Fitzgerald–sponsored company, listing on Nasdaq under the ticker SECZ. The firm will also tokenize its own shares, advancing its mission to bring capital markets onchain. Founded in 2017, Securitize has become the go-to tokenization partner for traditional institutions like Apollo, VanEck, and BlackRock.

Mallory is an open-source AI chat app that natively consumes x402 payment APIs, starting with 19 Nansen APIs priced at $0.001 per call to access onchain data. The mobile-native, crypto-native, and AI-native app serves as a batteries-included foundation for developers to build consumer applications on internet capital market rails. The API catalog will expand to focus on Solana ecosystem capabilities.

Circle has launched the public testnet for Arc, an open Layer 1 blockchain designed to serve as the Economic Operating System (OS) for the internet. It enables stablecoin payments, tokenized assets, and real-world financial activity to move onchain. The network already includes early participation from global banks, asset managers, and fintechs such as BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Visa, and Mastercard, alongside developers and protocols like Aave, Uniswap, Curve, Chainlink, and LayerZero. Arc will use USDC as native gas, offer sub-second finality via its Malachite consensus engine, and integrate Circle's full platform for liquidity, payments, and cross-chain interoperability.

Circle and Tether's 85% market share of the $265 billion stablecoin market is eroding as distribution partners and ecosystems internalize yield, evidenced by Circle paying Coinbase $908 million of its $1.7 billion in 2024 reserve income while Hyperliquid's $5.5 billion USDC balance generated $220 million annually for Circle/Coinbase before switching to Native Markets' USDH. Major chains leak roughly $1.1 billion in annualized stablecoin yield to Circle and Tether – 40% more than the $800 million in transaction fees these ecosystems earn. White-label stablecoin models via Ethena's SaaS infrastructure are scaling across Sui, MegaETH, and Jupiter, while applications like Hyperliquid and Pump.fun trade at 19x and 2x market cap to revenue respectively versus Solana's 80x multiple, demonstrating how apps with strong distribution are capturing actual cash flows at far lower valuations than infrastructure layers.

DeFi has evolved through three phases – tokens, pools, and vaults – condensing centuries of traditional finance into more efficient onchain protocols where users capture yields traditionally reserved for banks and intermediaries. Stablecoins have progressed from fiat-backed to over-collateralized to delta-neutral models like Ethena's USDe at 101% collateralization with $12 billion market cap, demonstrating successful token flywheels where wrapper tokens stack yields across multiple protocols (USDe → sUSDe → PT-sUSDe → vault positions). Six pool types emerged sequentially – lending, trading, staking, incentivized gauges, strategy vaults, and structured finance – with modern vaults now managing strategies across these pools while curators take performance fees.

MetaMask registered "claim.metamask.io" and "gift.metamask.io" domains, briefly pushing Polymarket odds of a 2025 MASK token launch from 11% to over 40% before settling back to 17%. The potential airdrop to MetaMask's 30 million users could become one of crypto's largest by reach, with analysts suggesting timing aligns with Consensys's recent launches (LINEA and SBET) and strategic need to counter wallet competition from embedded UX models like Phantom and Rabby. Consensys founder Joseph Lubin first teased $MASK in 2021 and confirmed in August that it's in development. The token could potentially serve to align governance and rewards across Consensys's product suite.

Anonymous donors unveiled a 14-foot gold statue of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao in Washington DC on Tuesday, depicting his iconic four-finger anti-FUD gesture, weeks after President Trump pardoned him from money laundering charges tied to a $4.3 billion settlement. The $50,000 statue will be displayed outside the US Capitol before being offered to Zhao or auctioned to benefit his nonprofit Giggle Academy.

x402 handles payments across the internet, while EigenCloud manages verifying that an agent or program making a payment did so as expected.

Opinion Labs, a new prediction market platform backed by Binance founder CZ and YZI Labs, launched with $5 million in funding to rival Polymarket.

The next killer crypto social app will make financialization the heart of its experience.

As foreign central banks shift from US Treasuries to gold for the first time in 30 years, stablecoins are emerging as a new force sustaining dollar dominance.