We’ve found some stability this week with BTC back above 110k and ETH at 4k +6% WoW. Largest winners still is ZEC as more and more crypto OGs come out in support, on the flipside you have Gold tokens -7%. We had an AWS outrage that caused Coinbase and Base downtime. SOL shutting down Saga phone while Hong Kong to list SOL spot ETFs next week. In M&A news we had FalconX to acquire swiss ETF manager 21shares, Coinbase acquired Echo and Kalshi is mulling a 10bn valuation. Still sounds like a bull market to me. Enjoy reading,
Bat Tai Chi — btc21@mail.com
The big story of this week (we talked about the rumors last week see ABC 17 Oct 2025) , how the richest person in crypto that served in jail only last year managed to get pardoned by Donald Trump. CZ was leading Binance and had pledged guilty to money laundering charges that even brought the DOJ permanently looking over Binance internal shoulders. Until this year they also got rid of them and now with CZ cleared he’s free to return to the helmet. Now for anyone who’s been in crypto long enough knows the large institutions all have dirt on them and corps in the closet. Binance being the undisputed #1 even more then others you can assume so the charges where real and CZ admitting to them proven just a different part of his long term game. Despite the past two weeks events with liquidations and listing uproar CZ remains a tremendously popular leader in the space and many argue he has received a too harsh treatment under the previous administration. He was also the richest person to ever serve prison time in the US and well suprise suprise he’s now fully pardoned. But of course there’s the Trump side of things, it’s hard to overlook that Binance accepted USD1 the stablecoin from World LIberty Finance as payment for their 2bn stake sale to the ABud Dhabi firm MGX. Continuing with another story from last week if you remember our hero CJ (see ABC 17 Oct 2025) who disclosed the Binance listing requirements, well he did his listing on a DEX and fell from grace quickly as people blamed him for dumping right at the open.
The stables focused blockchain Tempo backed by Stripe this week came out with a 500mm raise at an eye watering 5bn valuation. This proves two things: appetite for stablecoins from allocators is still there and large fintech players are doubling down on the topic. Tether trouted some new record numbers this week and stablecoin market cap continues to go up linearly. What makes Tempo different however is not just the size and the backing but they also poached some senior talent from the Etherum Foundation sparking a whole debate about war for talent, public goods funding ect. Dankrad Feist who was the name giver to Danksharding (think cheaper roll ups) has announced to join Tempo as a senior engineer and leaving the Ethereum Foundation. Some had called it a matter of time for him to leave since the EF is known for not paying that well and outside engagements are seen as very unfavorable. Dankrad and Justin Drake got quite some heat around engagements with advisory roles for EigenLayer last year.
The NEAR blockchain is struggling with adoption and mostly price action and so developers have proposed a cut in security budget i.e. emissions by 50% to 2.5% down from 5%. This proposal was brought in in June already and heavily discussed. The vote however didn’t manage to reach the critical 80% quorum so should have been proceeding to no. So far all good typical onchain governance and obviously different incentives for different stake holders where it gets interesting now though is that Chorus One a large validator shared that despite the ‘failed’ vote the upgrade will still proceed if 80% of the validators will run the new software. So in essence it’s a way to at least extend the voting period infinitely and move voting to validators. Emissions is obviously a key parameter to play with and so this story as it’s unfolding is worth watching because of the onchain governance aspect that even for such an important topic as inflation didn’t manage to reach the required quorum and now looking for different ways to still get it implemented.
Dankrad has been an excellent researcher and has made immensely valuable contributions to the Ethereum that we know and love today, including Danksharding, consensus research, and much more. Wishing him luck in his new efforts
Vitalik Buterin
Deeply grateful for today’s pardon and to President Trump for upholding America’s commitment to fairness, innovation, and justice [..] Will do everything we can to help make America the Capital of Crypto
CZ
Honestly people in the base ecosystem white knighting the limitless founder dumping on TGE is the worst. You are going to get grifted to oblivion if you don’t develop an immune system. Doing something on base does not magically make everything good vibes.
Kain Warwick — Founder of Synthetix
All Been Crypto — Week 24 Oct 2025 was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
