What's Driving Token Prices? July 17, 2024

TON (-1.1%) - Layer-1 protocol The Open Network (TON), announced today it would build a bridge between Bitcoin and TON. Called TON Teleport BTC, the aim of the bridge is to allow users to bring over Bitcoin for use in TON’s Defi ecosystem including in its lending markets and decentralized exchanges. TON, which was originally created and launched by the team behind the messaging app Telegram, currently boasts almost $750M in TVL and boasts about 550K daily active users.
STX (+23%) - Bitcoin infrastructure project Stacks announced last week that the SEC had dropped a 3-year investigation into the project and its company, Hiro, with no action. The end of this case is another win for crypto in a string of regulatory cases brought by the SEC against individual projects. In this case, Stacks tried to work within the existing regulatory framework. It first launched an SEC-compliant offering of tokens in 2019 and then tried to decentralize the protocol before its mainnet launch in 2021. Despite this, the SEC launched its investigation in 2021 after the Stacks launch.
MKR (+23%) - Last week, Defi protocol MakerDao announced a competition beginning next month for asset managers to apply to invest and manage $1B of its reserves into tokenized U.S. Treasury products. During the competition, Maker will select which product will receive these investment assets. So far, BlackRock’s BUIDL, Ondo Finance, and Superstate, have stated their intentions to apply. BlackRock’s involvement has led to increased interest as the asset manager deepens its ties within crypto.
WLD (+59%) - Decentralized identity solution Worldcoin announced earlier this week that it would extend the vesting period of approximately 80% of the WLD tokens set aside for team members and investors. Although the change only increases the vesting period from 3 to 5 years, this is a welcome change in a market that has hotly debated the benefits and disadvantages of large VC investors and big supply overhangs. This is true especially in Worldcoin’s case, given that only 2% of the supply is issued, inflating the project's total value ($27B FDV).

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