Polymarket’s pseudonymous French trader in gambling regulator probe.
Ex-FanDuel founder Nigel Eccles’ crypto iCasino venture receives $6m of funding.
Loose change: Binance sued over FTX crypto assets.
The Trumpified Bitcoin boom continues.
There's a farm called Misery, but of that we'll have none.
Whale watching
Does your dog bite? The prominent role of a pseudonymous French trader betting via the Polymarket prediction market on Donald Trump’s chances of regaining the presidency has aroused the suspicions of France’s gambling regulator.
I believe everything and I believe nothing: The trader who went by the name Fredi9999 is thought to have operated up to 11 accounts during the last few months of the campaign.
The trader, who once lived in the US and reportedly commissioned bespoke research from an unnamed polling company, is believed to have netted up to $85m.
Life is not all shoot-shoot, bang-bang: Sniffing an opportunity to inject themselves into the debate, the French gambling regulator Autorité Nationale des Jeux late last week indicated the high-profile nature of the trades in the past month or so hadn’t escaped its notice.
“We are aware of this site and are currently examining its operation and compliance with French gambling legislation,” an ANJ spokesperson told Bloomberg News last week.
Roger and goodbye: This follows a report from France-based crypto news site The Big Whale that the ANJ is set to ban French citizens betting on Polymarket.
However, given Polymarket is based offshore and only allows transactions via crypto, it will surely stretch the ANJ’s jurisdictional capabilities to police any transactions by French citizens.
But sources told The Big Whale that the ANJ felt it had the power to block access to Polymarket.
Polymarket is also unavailable to US consumers after the company reached a settlement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in 2022. The CFTC had accused the site of illegal gambling.
Not HODLing: While the attention of the French regulator is unlikely to trouble Polymarket too much, of more concern will be the apparent outflows from the platform since the election markets closed.
The Defiant pointed out that Polymarket’s total value locked (TVL) dropped 64% from $512m to $185m in just three days late last week.
At the same time, the TVL of Polygon, the network on which Polymarket is to date the most successful app, also fell 19% to $1.1bn.
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Hog heaven
High on the Hog: Nigel Eccles and fellow FanDuel founder Rob Jones’ latest crypto venture, the chain-enabled BetHog, has gone live with $6m of seed funding led by 6MV and with the participation of Will Ventures, Bullpen Capital, Karatage and Advancit Capital.
Several angel investors are on board including Chris Grove from EKG and Josh Hannah at Flutter Entertainment.
The whole Hog: The BetHog website has officially emerged from its beta testing and features a range of original games as well as games from providers Pragmatic and Evolution.
The original games includes crash and mine game variants as well as PvP gaming and features that allow players to bet alongside those live streaming games on platforms such as Kick.
The BetHog iCasino is built on the Solana blockchain with SOL as the supporting token for PvP games. BetHog accepts Bitcoin, Ethereum and USDT on its other titles.
BetHog is available worldwide except the US and the UK.
Eccles said the crypto casino market has seen “dramatic growth” driven by innovations like provably fair games, robust VIP programs and streaming.
“With BetHog, my goal is to innovate even further by bringing unique and highly visual games to market,” he added.
Note: The Token Word will feature an interview with Eccles in next week’s edition.
Loose change
FTX recovery: Those handling the bankruptcy of failed crypto exchange FTX are suing Binance to recover $1.76bn of crypto assets.
The FTX estate claims Binance and its leadership received the cryptocurrency fraudulently siphoned from FTX’s users.
The assets were allegedly sourced from FTX user deposits and handed to its sister trading firm, Alameda Research, to buy Binance out of its ownership stake in FTX in July 2021.
President-elect Donald Trump is reportedly considering multiple pro-crypto officials to take the helm of US financial regulatory institutions including a potential replacement for Gary Gensler at the SEC.
Trump promised on the campaign trail to fire Gensler on “day one” of his second term of office.
Other key roles that Trump will need to fill include heads of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
Bitcoin stonk
Boomtown rat: The Trump boom has continued into the week after the presidential election, with Bitcoin setting new records on Tuesday as the Bitcoin/USD price surged over $90,000 at one point.
The price subsequently gave up some ground and as of Tuesday mid-afternoon was standing at just over $85k.
One Bitcoin booster was quoted as suggesting Trump’s election represented an opportunity to advance legislation that would make the US the “world powerhouse for Bitcoin and crypto.”
“We are seeing absolute bullish sentiment,” Scott Acheychek, COO of REX Financial, told the FT.
Big beast: Bitcoin is in “beast mode,” wrote Chris Weston, head of research at Pepperstone Group, in a note to investors.
“The question for traders not already set is whether there is still room to chase this red-hot play or wait for a slight retracement and for some of the heat to come out of the impulsive trend.”
Further reading: Bitcoin blasts to $90K as crypto rally shakes out leverage traders.
Company focus – 4casters
Give out but don’t give up: Stubbornness has been the key for Ethereum-based smart contract betting platform 4casters, according to co-founder Zach Panos.
Sticking power: Taking to LinkedIn, Panos said that although 4casters never officially launched the Ethereum platform and faced significant financial setbacks in 2019, “persistence kept us moving forward.”
“Our guiding belief was: if you never quit, you never fail,” he added.
I’m a believer: He added that in the early days the company “survived on hope.” “Some of you may remember receiving a simple DM from us in 2019 as we searched for any opportunity to keep pushing forward,” he wrote.
“We reached out to hundreds of people, but as the old saying goes, it only takes one.”
“Thankfully, our next step crystallized from that one response. Who knows where we would be without it?”
He said “fast forward to today” and 4casters was “proud to be on track for our biggest week yet, with over $13m in trades.”
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