The Bankless Rollup – RWAs and Tokenization Trend, SEC Takes Ls, and Trump Steers Republican Crypto Policies

It's brutal out there. With Bitcoin facing its first major drawdown this cycle, the market is in full bear mode. In this week's rollup, David and Ryan talk doom and gloom, as well as some of the bullish signals from the week, including crypto's larger role in the political conversation and the bullish Goldman Sachs news.

Sponsor: Mantle — Mass adoption of decentralized & token-governed technologies.

This week's top crypto stories:

1️⃣ Trump Backs Bitcoin at BTC 2024

2️⃣ Germany Wraps Up BTC Sales

3️⃣ DeFi Protocols Hit by Squarespace Hack

4️⃣ Goldman Sachs to Launch Token Projects

5️⃣ SEC Backtracks on Paxos, Stacks Probes

Hit the link below for the full Rollup!

This week's Block Magazine Rollup covers Trump's appearance at Bitcoin 2024, the conclusion of Germany's Bitcoin sales, a DNS hijacking targeting DeFi protocols, Goldman Sachs' plans for tokenization projects, and the SEC's decision not to pursue charges against Paxos over BUSD.

The full stories can be found in the Block's original reporting, and a summary of each story is provided below.

1️⃣ Trump to Speak at Bitcoin 2024

Former President Donald Trump will make an appearance at Bitcoin 2024 in Nashville, according to a lineup announcement from the conference. Presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy will also join the lineup.

2️⃣ Germany Completes Bitcoin Sales

The German government has sold its entire remaining stash of Bitcoin, concluding a seven-round auction that began in March 2023. Over the past week, the government sold 42,000 BTC through exchanges like Coinbase, Kraken, and Bitstamp, as well as to institutional traders such as Flow Traders and B2C2 Group.

3️⃣ DeFi Protocols Hit by DNS Hijacking

Several DeFi protocols, including Compound and Celer, were targeted by a DNS hijacking attack this week. The attackers redirected the protocols' Squarespace-hosted domains to phishing sites, which quickly drained users' wallets. The severity of the breach has put an additional 228 DeFi front-ends at risk (at least), exposing a critical vulnerability within the hosting services used by these protocols.

4️⃣ Goldman Sachs to Launch Token Projects

Goldman Sachs is set to launch three new tokenization projects in 2024, according to a report by Fortune. The initiatives will include launching a tokenized asset marketplace and efforts targeting the U.S. fund and European debt sectors.

5️⃣ SEC Backtracks on Paxos, Stacks Probes

The SEC has concluded its investigations into Paxos and Hiro Systems, the company behind the creation of Stacks (STX), according to two separate letters of inquiry obtained by Block. In the Paxos case, the SEC decided not to pursue charges against Paxos for issuing Binance’s BUSD stablecoin, while, in the Stacks case, they appear to have been unable to prove that the STX token was still a security despite the founding team's decentralization efforts.

Mantle kickstarts Season 1 of Methamorphosis. Building on the success of their Liquid Staking Token, mETH, Mantle LSP announces plans for a new Liquid Restaking Token, cmETH, along with a governance token, COOK. With Methamorphosis, participants can now farm Powder for future COOK tokens and position themselves early for the upcoming cmETH release.