Top Stories of The Week

Director who identified QAnon authors says HBO doc will expose Satoshi

Top Stories of The Week

Director who identified QAnon authors says HBO doc will expose Satoshi

Documentary filmmaker Cullen Hoback and HBO recently announced the debut of their upcoming film Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery, along with hinting that the true identity of Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto may finally be revealed.

Cullen Hoback is perhaps best known for his HBO miniseries Q: Into the Storm, wherein he claims to have identified several of the authors of the QAnon conspiracy theory.

In his latest endeavor, Hoback investigated the origins of Bitcoin in what appears to be an attempt to track down the true identity of the engineer known as Satoshi Nakamoto, who is credited with inventing Bitcoin and the underlying technology that makes it possible.

“A few of you might have wondered why I disappeared. Well, I was tracking down someone else who disappeared. Curious who’s behind Bitcoin? MoneyElectric: The Bitcoin Mystery drops next Tuesday. It’s going to be a rollercoaster,” Hoback said in a post on X announcing the documentary.

Banks to join SWIFT digital asset trials in 2025

Banks in North America, Europe and Asia are preparing to participate in trials involving digital assets by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT).

SWIFT announced on Oct. 3 that it will begin digital asset trials on its network in 2025. The trials will involve experiments with transactions that include multiple digital currencies and assets.

The trials aim to explore how the banking network can provide financial institutions with unified access to “multiple digital asset classes and currencies.”

“Initial use cases will focus on payments, foreign exchange, securities and trade to enable multi-ledger delivery-versus-payment and payment-versus-payment transactions,” the announcement said.

US jobs report signals fewer rate cuts, still bullish for BTC: Grayscale

The strong United States September jobs report signals a possible slowdown in interest rate cuts but is still bullish for Bitcoin (BTC) as investors warm to riskier assets, Zach Pandl, Grayscale’s head of research, told Cointelegraph.

“Conversation about Fed rate cuts and debate about larger government deficits continue alongside solid economic growth, which should be net-positive for investors’ risk appetite and may reintroduce inflation risk in the medium-term,” Pandl said.

“Grayscale Research expects Bitcoin to benefit in this risk-positive environment,” he explained.

The US economy gained approximately 254,000 jobs in September, far ahead of economists’ expectation of some 140,000 new jobs, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Spot BTC prices moved to an intraday high of more than $62,300 on Oct. 4, following the stronger-than-expected jobs data.

Ripple and Mercado Bitcoin to launch crypto-enabled payments in Brazil

Blockchain payments network Ripple is collaborating with a major crypto exchange in Brazil to launch cross-border payments enabled by crypto.

Ripple has partnered with Brazil’s Mercado Bitcoin exchange to enable local businesses to settle payments using Ripple’s “managed end-to-end payments solution,” the firm officially announced on Oct. 3.

With the new payment tool, businesses in Brazil would be able to get “faster, cheaper, more efficient cross-border payments” across the globe 24/7 and settle payments in a matter of minutes, Ripple stated.

According to the announcement, the new product is not yet available to customers. Ripple expects that the first operation will involve institutional customers, exclusively from Mercado Bitcoin to Mercado Bitcoin Portugal.

The integration builds on Ripple’s new functionality that enables the firm to manage payments end-to-end on behalf of customers, which was introduced in 2023.

FTX bankruptcy estate auctioning Worldcoin tokens this week

The FTX estate is preparing to auction off approximately 22 million Worldcoin (WLD) tokens — valued at roughly $38 million — on Oct. 3, a source familiar with the matter told Cointelegraph.

Investor bids had to be submitted by Oct. 3, with a minimum bid of $2.5 million to qualify for the auction and the tokens could sell at a steep discount of up to 75%.

Cointelegraph also learned that the tokens are subject to a four-year unlocking period ending in 2028.

Approximately 20,000 WLD tokens will unlock daily beginning on Dec. 1, 2024. The unlocking schedule will then slow to roughly 14,000 WLD tokens per day from July 2026 until it concludes in 2028.

Winners and Losers

At the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is at $62,378, Ether (ETH) at $2,427 and XRP at $0.53. The total market cap is at $2.17 trillion