Editor's choice: CZ’s Prison Transfer, Kamala’s Crypto Stance, 12K BTC Moved to New Wallets and More

Hello and welcome to the News of the Week Editor's Choice. My name is Maxwell. I'm the creative director at Cointelegraph.

And I'm Gareth Jenkinson. I'm the managing editor. And today we're going to give you the TLDR of the biggest stories this week because we know that Gen Z hates to read. So we're going to give it to you in bite sized fashion here in video, so it's easy to digest.

Let's jump right in, Gareth. So our first story involves the former CEO and founder of Binance cz. He was arrested, sentenced to four months in prison earlier this year. Now he is coming to the end of his sentence, but there's some news coming out of California. What's that news?

Yeah, this one caught my attention on social media yesterday and one of our journalists in the US went and followed it up being moved to an administrative facility in Los Angeles. He's still got about 37 days left before his release from custody. And the US Federal Bureau of Prisons records show that he has been moved to an inmate facility. He was previously in prison in California. Unfortunately, we don't know much more than that. We don't know why he was moved to this facility. Our team is looking into the story more fully, but it's going to be really interesting to see what he plans to do with his life once he's out of jail. Of course, we already know that he cannot be involved in the administration and management of Binance anymore. But I think most of us in the industry know how influential he's been and it would be nice to see him be involved in some way, shape or form in the crypto industry going forward. But we'll have to wait and see.

Our next story involves the Tron blockchain getting into the Meme Coin game. Tell us what's going on over on Tron.

Yep. So Tron launched a new meme coin deployer called Sun Pump. And obviously that's a rival to Solana's Pump Fun platform. And it's been a pretty crazy week. Since their launch, they've generated $1.9 million in value. They, in a 24 hour period, managed to flip Pump Fun in terms of daily activity and revenue. Between the 21st and 22nd of August, they launched about 7,300 tokens, believe it or not, and they managed to generate about $600,000 in revenue in that day alone. So a really successful week for SunPump. And clear to see that even though some people are saying Meme Coins are Starting to fizzle out a little bit. There's room in this industry and major blockchain protocols like Tron see the gap in the market. They've launched SunPump and it's been a pretty good week since. For me, it's just going to be interesting to see what the longevity is like for this platform and if it can continue to rival Pump Fun in terms of revenue and daily activity.

Speaking of Meme Coins, there's some news from McDonald's of all people, of all of all entities, what's going on with meme coins and McDonald's?

Cool, let me give you the TLDR on this one. McDonald's official Instagram account was hacked this week and it was used to promote a sham meme coin which is based on the brand's mascot, Grimace. The scammers used the Instagram profile to promote this token and they ended up earning around $700,000 worth of Solana tokens, which they cashed out. And they went onto the Instagram profile, they changed the description there and basically told their millions of followers that, hey, we hacked you guys. We made it with $700,000. Thank you very much for all the money. What was interesting to me was that McDonald's were really short in their sort of reply. They were like, we're aware of this incident and we're really sorry for the language that was posted because the hackers posted some stuff in the description there that I'm not going to say on camera. It was really unsavory. But they didn't make any mention of the money that was lost. And for me, it's just a really important reminder to everyone out there. Brands, companies, individuals. Make sure your security is on point. Hackers are always sending out phishing links and that sort of thing. So make sure you got your two FA enabled and just be really careful about what you're interacting with online.

Definitely McDonald's owes anyone who lost money at least one Happy Meal. All right, let's move on to American politics. This week was the Democratic National Convention in Chicago where they formally nominated Kamala Harris to be the presidential nominee for the Democratic Party. Now, Harris has not made her platform on crypto very well known. There's been obviously a lot of speculation in the crypto community the previous. The current administration, I should say Joe Biden's administration, of which Kamala is a part of, has been pretty strict and heavy handed when it comes to crypto regulations and Gary Gensler at the sec. But there's some new news coming out of Chicago this week. Gareth, what do we know?

Yeah, so according to a Bloomberg report, the senior campaign advisor, Brian Nelson said that the Democratic Party will support policies that favor the digital asset industry if Kamala Harris wins in November. It's pretty good news in particular just because her campaign hasn't had any official comments or stance on crypto up until this point. So to finally have someone within a in a party say, listen, we're going to be more supportive of the industry is, is good news purely because they haven't said anything up until this point and the current administration has been really heavy handed towards crypto in recent months and years. And yeah, this is the first real indication of her stance towards crypto. And given that the likes of Donald Trump, RFK Jr. And others have very publicly put out their support for Bitcoin and crypto in general, it's not surprising that Harris has taken the stance and it just makes sense. If everyone else is doing it and you have more than 50 million crypto users in the United States, it's probably good to have a more positive policy towards the sector going forward.

Definitely. Our colleague Giovanni, speaking of which, had an interview with Anthony Scaramucci, Trump's former communications director, while he was in the White House. Granted, he was only there in the job for 11 days, but Scaramucci has now flipped on Trump and is supporting Kamala Harris. Though he is worried about Kamala's stance on crypto and suggested that actually her lack of support for the crypto community could cost her the election. Gareth, what did you find interesting from the interview that Giovanni had with Anthony Scaramucci?

Yeah, the TLDR here is that he basically said that Harris could lose the election if she fails to attract pro crypto voters, especially in some of those swing states in America. And he has said that the Democrats stance on the crypto industry has been a disaster. But I'm going to let him do the talking. We can take a quick look at the snippet from Giovanni's interview earlier this week.

This is like a Berlusconi married Benito Mussolini and they had a baby. It would be Donald Trump. He's the most transactional son of a bitch that you'll ever meet. Today he's for crypto, tomorrow he may or may not be for crypto. You said to me, first quarter of next year, year, if Trump wins, could we have a Solana etf?

I would say yes.

Okay, our next story comes out of the UAE and tether. Gareth, what's going on with Tether in the uae?

Yeah. So Tether, the issuer of usdt, the world's largest stablecoin, has announced that it's going to be launching a stablecoin pegged to the United Arab Emirates Durham. That's a local currency. And that Stablecoin is going to be backed by liquid UAE based reserves. And Tether CEO believes that it's going to make the Dirham more accessible globally. It's big news because the UAE has really worked hard in recent years to establish itself as a global crypto hub. You have the likes of Binance with a very big office there and they're really working hard to have open arms to the industry in general. Having a Durham backed Stablecoin seems like a really good idea. It could open up the market, make it more accessible globally. Digitally. We know how easy it is to use stable coins like USDT to move money around the world. It really is a virtual dollar that has established itself clearly as the biggest player in the space. And it just makes sense to me from my point of view to have a Dirham backed Stablecoin that could open up that market to other nations and individuals. And I think it's going to really make a big impact on the adoption of crypto in that part of the world and hopefully attract more people to the uae. It really is becoming a global crypto hub.

Okay, our final story involves the Mount Gox repayments. There was the first major move in the past three weeks of more crypto worth around $700 million. So not a small amount at all. But what do we know about these transfers and where they're going and whether we can expect that to hit the market? Do we know any information on this, Gareth?

Yeah. So Mount Gox have been moving Bitcoin around to repay creditors of the defunct exchange in recent months. The first time in a month that they've moved some coins. They moved 12,000 bitcoin worth around $700 million to a new address. And then another 1200 bitcoin, give or take, was sent to a cold wallet that is being labeled by Arkham Intelligence. So we know that this is one of Mount Gox's cold wallets. The opinions are divided on where these tokens are going. According to Galaxy's head of research Alex Thorne, the smaller amount that 1200 BTC is going to be sold and it's likely that that larger amount, those 12,000 bitcoin, are just going to sit in cold storage at this state. This is a big story, obviously, because the amount of coins that have been hitting the market from Mount Gox has had a significant impact on the value of Bitcoin in recent months. We've been seeing it hover between 50 and 60 thousand dollars. And that's purely as a result of the amount of coins that came onto the market after being dormant between eight and 10 years. And it's going to be interesting to see what they do with the remaining amount of coins that they have. We know that around 68% of funds have been distributed back to creditors of Mt. Gox already. So there's only about 30% left of the tokens left to sell on the market. And once that happens, you're going to have a lot less Bitcoin available to the market to buy. And we've seen the influence of Bitcoin ETFs in the United States and the sheer volume of bitcoin that they're buying drive up price. And this has played a role in stimming that appreciation in price, given the demand from the bitcoin etf. So once there's less and less Bitcoin to sell, only so much can be mined. This could have a really big impact in the next six to 12 months. So it'll be interesting to see what they do with the remaining amount of bitcoin that they still hold.

Definitely light at the end of the tunnel. Only 30% more to go. All right, thanks, Gareth. I think that's been it for this week. We will see you here next week.

Yep. Thanks very much. We'll be back next week with your next tldr. Editor's choice from Cointelegraph.

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