Elon Musk: Unofficial Bitcoin NFT Ambassador?

🐋 MATIC’s Big Fish Swim Away, But the Game Continues!

MATIC (Polygon) has witnessed a significant 86.5% decrease in whale activity since 25 October 2023, along with a 63% decline in its social volume over the past week.

Despite this, Polygon remains trendy on CoinMarketCap and has seen a consistent rise in its total open interest (OI), pointing to increased derivatives contracts interest. This might be due to uncertainties in its position in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space, and the recent unveiling of its new POL token might seek to address such concerns. Ethereum's co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, has offered insights into Ethereum's scaling ecosystem, highlighting the progress made in rollups and discussing potential blockchain applications beyond finance.

🔍 Multichain Resumes Transactions After 117-Day Pause

The cross-chain protocol, Multichain, which had been hacked, recently confirmed some transactions after a 117-day hiatus.

Data from Multichain's explorer tool shows a decline in the backlog of queued transactions, with only one transaction now pending. However, due to the hack, browsers with the Metamask wallet extension display a warning when attempting to view the Multichain Explorer. The source of these recent transactions appears to be from a limited number of addresses, suggesting either an attacker's effort to move funds or a recovery initiative by the Multichain team. Notably, some transactions have been confirmed on destination chains, while others have not.

⚖️ Ripple Prevails Over SEC; All Charges Dismissed

Ripple has won its legal case against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) with all charges against its CEO Brad Garlinghouse and Executive Chairman Chris Larsen dismissed "with prejudice".

This development removes the need for a previously scheduled 2024 trial. Earlier, Ripple was fined $700 million for institutional sales that the SEC classified as securities. The victory followed prior wins for Ripple, such as a ruling that XRP is not a security. Outside the U.S., Ripple has secured a significant payment institution license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore.

⛓️ Musk's NFT Critique Highlights Bitcoin Ordinals' Strengths

Elon Musk recently made comments on The Joe Rogan Experience, criticizing NFTs for not being truly on the blockchain, suggesting that JPEGs should be encoded on-chain for security reasons.

These comments inadvertently supported the case for Bitcoin Ordinals (Bitcoin's version of NFTs) launched earlier this year by developer Casey Rodarmor. The Ordinals were made possible by the Taproot soft fork in 2021. Cryptocurrency analysts and NFT creators acknowledged Musk's point, stating that the Ordinals offer a solution to common criticisms of NFTs. Notably, an Ordinals developer embedded Musk's comments into Bitcoin's blockchain, and while some NFT projects on Ethereum have shifted on-chain, Ethereum still hosts 84% of NFT trading volumes.

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