Vitalik Aped Into the Social Media App Anoncast. What's It About?

Transcript

I mean, that was like a dream. Like, I having been like in the Ethereum community for like a long time now, just like, yeah, having Vitalik use your app is kind of just insane. I was like jumping up and You could tell by You could ask my wife. But, yeah, it was insane. Hi everyone. Welcome to Unchained, your no-hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin, author of The Cryptopians. I started having crypto 9 years ago, and as a senior editor at Forbes, was the first mainstream media reporter to cover cryptocurrency full-time. This is the November 29th, 2024 episode of Unchained.

Polkadot is the original and leading layer-zero blockchain with over 2,000 plus developers. And the Polkadot 2.0 upgrade will be a massive accelerator for the ecosystem. Join the community at polkadot.network/ecosystem/community. Today's guest is Kartik Patel, the developer of Anon cast. Welcome, Kartik. Hey, thanks for having me. So, just a quick note before we start. We are recording this on Monday due to the Thanksgiving holiday. So, if anything crazy happens between now and Friday, you will understand why we didn't mention it in this interview.

So, Kartik, you're the developer of this new phenomenon that actually just launched last week, but it has people super excited, and it's got multiple components, Anon cast, Super Anon, Anon, the meme coin, um which Decrypt actually reported was the first coin that Vitalik Buterin bought on Base. So, tell us what all these things are. Yeah, the lore behind all of this is kind of crazy and hard to hard to follow a little bit. It Anon specifically like originated from Farcaster. There's if you're familiar with Farcaster, there are many clients that uh look link into the protocol and provide an app experience. One of these clients is called Supercast. It's probably the most popular outside of Warpcast. And there,

they have an anonymous account that's called Super Anon, and someone launched an Anon token there anonymously uh via Token Launcher bot. Following that, the creator of Supercast kind of disowned the token, didn't really want anything to do with it, but the community started to like rally around around the Anon token, especially around like specifically around like the lore behind the anonymous launch, kind of like going back to like Satoshi vibes where nobody knows who created it. And so like over the ensuing days, like people kind of got together, tried to figure out like what what we could what could we do with this Anon token to kind of uh build more around it and kind of have it diverge away from the Super Anon brand.

Uh particularly because like a lot of these a lot of like the initial contributors, initial holders are like friends with the creator of Supercast, and so we wanted to like do it in an amicable way where everyone is still happy at the end. Um So yeah, that's kind of where the token comes from. And then like as like we were talking, um uh we kind of decided to build this Anoncast platform where people can post anonymously using ZK proofs, and so it's provable anonymity versus in Super Anon, it wasn't ZK based, and so the creator could still see who who actually posted anonymously.

Okay. So So basically the parts that now your kind of project involves are Anoncast and then the Anon meme coin, is that Okay. That's correct. Yeah, tell us like what, you know, what exactly you created and how it works and what people have been doing with it. Yeah so basically about a week ago, we decided to create Anoncast. There used to be a Farcaster account where you could post anonymously called 33 bits, and so in order to just launch something quickly, we decided to take a lot of inspiration from them on how they developed their ZK tech and just kind of forked it. Um and since then we've kind of been building more features on top of it. The inspiration behind it was just like an

anon token. Like we were like getting like what could we do? And the first thing that comes to mind is just let's post anonymously. And as we've been building it, we kind of realized that there's probably a lot more things we can do around this like primitive of anonymity. Um and specifically around like ZK consumer applications that haven't really been like thought through or built out as of yet. And what has surprised you most about how people have been using it? Yeah, I think like the most surprising thing that we didn't initially think of is we like we saw that a lot of people were obviously posting hot takes and spicy takes to try to just like get attention to the account, but a few people have like with low like followers or low distribution on their main

accounts have actually been using it as a way to just like talk to people and have actually like re-engagement from others, which was which was surprising to see. And I think I think it makes sense is that like when you like when you're like a new person on a new social network, you don't have that big of a distribution, but this kind of this is kind of something you can just hook into to get your thoughts out. And what are some of the like favorite casts that you've seen? Yeah, so I mean there's there's like there's a few. I think like some of my favorites are just like the the images that people are creating around the brand. I think like a lot of there's like a creative community that's forming around the question mark, which I think is really cool.

Which is the profile tick, the question mark. Yeah, I think some of the other ones are they're kind of just like playing off of existing meme coins and like building like I don't want to shill any meme coins right now, but like playing off existing ones and like kind of bringing the anonymity part of part of it to kind of make some fun content. Ultimately, I think like my the thing I love about anon cast is like it's it's just content and it's like fun things to consume. I mean some of them are quite gossipy and spicy too actually.

Yeah, there's that I think one went viral on Twitter around the Ethereum Foundation selling it'll be very clear that like the Ethereum Foundation is like selling has like selling pressure by the end of the year or something like that. Um, that was kind of insane. And then I know that there's some people trying to stir up beef between base and slash Ethereum and Solana. That's that's also funny. Yeah, and like honestly I have to say it shocked me just how much people have been using it cuz I tried to scroll back to see when the first cast was sent and I was scrolling like for a long time and I only made it back like four days and then I just gave up. I was like forget I'm never going to get to eight days ago or however many days ago it was.

I think we've it's like it's about to be a week since we launched in a few hours and in total we've had over 3,000 casts already. So. Yeah, so why do you think it's catching on so quickly? I think it's just that there's no like outlet for like anonymous posts right now. Like if you think about it like where would you go where you can like post your thoughts and actually have people read them. And I think like there's like a flywheel effect here where like as the Anoncaster brand and distribution and follower network grows more people are like enticed to post to it because they get more eyeballs on the things that they post, right?

So yeah, and I think like I think particularly we have this system in place where like you're yeah, initially like everything goes to Farcaster and then the best of the best content gets posted to Twitter by certain requirement based Anons holders. So I did see that that like basic Well, so actually before we get there, why don't you talk us through So let's say that I'm somewhere or anybody is somebody who wants to post an anonymous tweet or cast on farcaster using a non a non cast. Sorry.

Yeah. So so many words. Yeah. Then you know, how do we do it? Like how many coins do we need? Like where do we go? You know, all all of that stuff. Yeah, so we have this web app called anoncast.org. You need 5,000 anon to post on farcaster and then anything goes on farcaster. There's no censorship. There's no deletions. Basically, it's just the raw feed of things that people are posting. Uh the reason we choose far chose farcaster is a lot of us are farcaster native and it's really easy to plug in and we still want to give some level of distribution to the raw content cuz we have people that are using warpcast and just like looking through through that feed. In order to actually like build like a

like a brand that isn't just spammy and and and like like a bunch of degenerate content whether it's like racism, porn, or whatever. We wanted to make sure that there is some curated layer to this as well and so we have an account on farcaster called anonbangers and then also the real like meat of this is this Twitter account called that's also called anoncast and anyone that has skin in the game has two 2 million anon can actually promote posts from farcaster to Twitter and we think that we think of this is like an interesting like incentive game where like you have money in anon and so the brand is backed by this token and so you are incentivized to promote the best content and make

sure that it's moderated so that obviously your token holdings stay stay with value. And so basically, you have to pay more to get it onto Twitter. Basically, so that the initial cast goes goes out on anoncast on farcaster. But then when you say is it the is it the best of the best that that goes to Twitter or is it just anybody who who pays the extra can post it to Twitter? It's a Actually, anyone that holds the amount of tokens required, which is 2 million, can post whatever they want from an on-cast at Twitter. So, if you post something and I have enough balance, I can post your tweet for you. You don't You don't You personally don't have to post it.

Okay. And you do that from the Farcaster client? Or they Sorry, they do it from the on-cast client? Yeah exactly. Okay. Okay. And then And then are you basing that threshold basically on like the dollar conversion of the coin? Is Is that it? So, I mean, the threshold is just a number that that we thought like seemed reasonable. It's kind of hard cuz like when we first started last week versus now, like the price has kind of fluctuated pretty significantly. Um and so, yeah, we're kind of still revisiting what Like what is that right system in place? Like whether it's like changing the numbers or like some people have proposed is maybe we introduce like a voted like a weighted voting system where people can upvote different posts

and once it reaches some threshold, it automatically gets posted to Twitter. Just so like whales aren't kind of in control of all the content. Right. Yeah, that makes sense. So, in a moment, we're going to talk a little bit more about, you know, just just how viral this is and where it's going. But first, a quick word from the sponsors who make this show possible. Polkadot is the original and largest layer zero blockchain with over 2,000 plus developers. The anticipated Polkadot 2.0 upgrade will be a massive accelerator for the ecosystem. Upgrading the infrastructure with eight times higher transaction throughput and twice as fast block times, tailored core time for the needs of every protocol, trustless bridges to multiple chains, and revised tokenomics with a token burn to reduce inflation.

Perfect for GameFi and DeFi to build, grow, and scale. Get your Web3 ideas to market fast. Think big, build bigger with Polkadot. Join the community at polkadot.network/ecosystem/community. Back to my conversation with Kartik. So, just to understand the kind of anonymity aspect. So, you created this or you know, whoever you're working with, you guys have created this front end and it uses zero-knowledge technology to hide the identity I I guess from the world, but does it also hide it from you?

Yeah, it nobody nobody can tell who wrote what post, even us. The zero-knowledge proofs are constructed like on the client, so on the web app and none of that data none of that identifying data is actually sent to any servers. Uh just that proof is sent to the servers and once that proof is validated on the server, we then send out the post. And so, yeah, there's no identifying information that's sent. We don't even collect any metrics or analytics on the site just because we wanted to stay as pure as we can to anonymity. And if somebody accidentally uses a wallet that is doxed, then could their identity be traced to any particular cast?

No. So, even even with I use a I use a doxed wallet. I I think most people use a doxed wallet. They the proofs don't actually contain anything related to what wallet posted this. It just validates that you meet the balance requirements. Oh, okay, but like but if it's showing that the balance is decreasing at the same time that a cast goes out, like that's not a way to connect them? I mean, no. I mean, that could be, but like there's no way to know like that the person that actually is selling is Oh, so actually this might be the confusion point is like the there isn't actually like a deduction in balance when posting. It's simply a hold requirement. And that's that's particularly because exactly what you're asking for is like yeah, if if we did a

deduction, then like it's very easy to kind of link that. We're actually talking to some very like much smarter ZK people than me about like how can we actually accomplish balance deductions without like without doxing people, right? Okay. So, you talked a little bit about kind of the origin, but like, you know, why did you get involved? Like, I know you've been working in crypto for a while. Why don't you tell us a little bit about your background and like what about this particular idea captivated you? Yeah, so I mean, I've been working in crypto since 2020. I worked on some DeFi protocols for a bit. In 2021, I joined OpenSea and stayed there since 2020 till 2023. At OpenSea, I led the protocol team. So, built teams around all of our crypto tech, building our smart

contracts, our indexers, our metadata systems, kind of all the things that makes NFTs NFTs. And then, I left about a year and a half ago, kind of like floated around a bit and just decided I want to build something. And so, like the last year has just been a lot of explo- exploring. I was actually like building an app for the last 2 months and it has nothing to do with what Anon Cast is. I just kind of saw a lot of energy around the Anon community last week and was just like, "This This project probably will take like 60 to 8 hours and I can afford that and it's fun for me to like take a break from like just the endless stretch of building an app and just like do something else for a little bit." And so, that's what I did. I did not expect

it to grow as much as it did. And now I've just like last week I just spent my entire time on Anon Cast. Are you going to go back to the other app or are you just That is a very tough decision to make and I have not made it yet. I'm At least for now, I'm just like riding the wave and I'm totally fine with just working on Anon Cast for the time being. And kind of just like taking it like day by day and seeing seeing how it goes. We'll see. Maybe there's like a end state that I can leave Anon Cast at and actually over the last few days we've been getting more and more open source contributions. So, like there might be a like a like a middle ground where like there's enough outside dev energy that like I can also

like shift time to building kind of both. Right. Well, you know, we alluded to this earlier, but also very early on Vitalik bought this meme coin and I wondered how you felt when you saw that. Yeah, I mean, that was like a dream. Like I like I could like having been like in the Ethereum community for like a long time now, I've only worked in crypto for like since my 20, but like I've been in crypto for a long time before that. So, like just like yeah, having Vitalik use your app is kind of just insane. I was like jumping up and you could tell by you could ask my wife, but yeah, it was insane. I I actually like I think like what was really cool is like he he like posted a few casts not

anonymously just through his main account like giving us ideas and like really like analyzing the tech and like just like being excited about it and I think I don't know, just like being able to nerd snipe Vitalik is like just just feels so good. Um well, so one other thing is, you know, as we mentioned, um this uses zero knowledge technology which, you know, as we mentioned, it allows people to prove knowledge about data without having to reveal what that data is.

Um and apparently, I guess the early Twitter account kind of gave a nod to the other big tech trend in crypto right now, which is crypto and AI. Decrypt reported that I guess like early on last week, the Twitter account said that it intended to be, quote, an experimental arena where human collective intelligence competes AI agents. So, I was curious like just why why you were saying that. So, like I mean, first of all, the beauty of Anon cast and just Anon in general is it's not just me, and so I don't even control the Twitter accounts.

I just post to them uh through through through our servers. Don't actually know. I I actually didn't even know that it said until right now. Uh there's actually like a good amount of like the cool like a core community around probably 20 or so that are like just doing various things. There's even actually like a separate project, kind of like a side project on Oncast that like is about to be released that I'm not even working on. Um and I think all of this together is just like what makes it more fun. If I had to guess, the AI part probably comes from like the origins of the token itself because like I mentioned, it was created on a on a separate On Anaccount anonymously, but the token launcher is called Clanker on

Farcaster, and that's actually an AI bot that launches tokens. And so, there's like a lot of these like meme trends that are kind of like coinciding into one here. Overall, it's just like a I think it's just like a very fun time. Yeah, honestly, like when I was doing research, I and even like the last several days, I kept seeing this Clanker thing, and I was like, "What is that?" So, thank you for explaining that. Well, you know, here we are just talking about this new app that's using ZK technology, but you know, we haven't really seen it being used in a big way. So, are there other thoughts that you have about how it could be used that, you know, you haven't quite seen yet?

Yeah, I I've actually like spent a few few months like just exploring ZK tech. I personally am just motivated by building consumer apps and have been like kind of looking for what is like the next like cutting-edge tech that we can build like basically like novel experiences for, right? And to me, ZK is like very interesting. It's still like a bit slow. Like if you try to post on Oncast, it takes like 20 20 seconds to post, but like that is improving rapidly, and over time, I think that's going to get very fast where like you can do very fast ZK proofs. Um yeah, the design space is like it's actually just like net new, right?

Like there's been no real apps, and so that's part of just like what's exciting is just like trying out things and seeing what works. So, anonymous posting is one. There's things like maybe you can do anonymous posts with like verified badges without revealing who you are. So, like I work for this company and I'm posting about this company, but you don't know who I am, right? And a lot of like cool things like that are enabled about from like ZK and specifically like this new field around ZK TLS. Uh and which is ZK TLS?

It's a ZK TLS is proving Web2 data in a verif- proving Web2 data in Web3. So, in like a verifiable way, you can bridge data over and generate these proofs around it. So, for example, if you're if you've taken a thousand Uber rides, you can verify you can prove that you've taken a thousand Uber rides without revealing what your Uber account is. And this is all without the permission of Uber. And that that that gets really interesting. Huh. That is wow, that is very interesting.

Well, something else that I wanted to ask about was in the instructions for posting, it says, quote, "Do not post porn, doxes, shills, or threats. This is not about censorship resistance, it's about great anonymous posts." And I'm sure you've seen with pump.fun that things can go off the rails in crypto really quickly. So, I wondered if someone were to post one of those things that you're discouraging them from posting, then what could Anoncaster do about it, if anything? Yeah, so we're being a bit more conservative right now in that aspect. We have a moderation system in place, and so we will basically try our best to block those things from being posted.

Obviously, some may go through, and again, like that this is why we up front mention is like it's not about censorship resistance. And so, if someone does post that, we will delete it. I think ultimately like there's probably like a few people who just want to ruin everyone's fun, and I think most people don't necessarily care that porn or racism is being deleted. They just want to continue having fun with the account as they've been having. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Shortly before we started recording, Pumps That Fun turned off its streaming. So, clearly, yeah, they're I think I'm saying they probably need to do something similar.

And And out of curiosity, how much kind of, you know, of these prohibited things have you seen that have been posted? Like, how many deletions have you had to do? I mean, we've only done one, and that's cuz someone posted some naked woman, and that that that was it. And we deleted that, and we've not seen that ever since. Oh, wow. Okay. All right. Well, I mean, I I wouldn't say that we won't see that, but for now, we've only seen one. Yeah, yeah. Probably cuz it's still, you know small.

Well, so I saw that there's a new feature called reveal that I think you're going to be launching. Uh tell us what that is and why you decided to implement that. Yeah, so I think that's like the first like big feature we launched on on Oncast since like uh just like making stability improvements. Uh we launched that yesterday. Basically, what reveals allows is you can create anonymous posts and have a secret phrase attached to it that you can prove that you were the one that posted it at a later date. We think that's really interesting cuz there's like there's like gamification element where you post anonymously, just post your raw thoughts, and maybe something really takes off, and you see a lot of people agreeing with you on it. And then at that point, you can claim credit for that post and

like say that you were the one that posted it and bring all that attention kind of back to your main account. Bragging rights. Bragging rights. Well, and what are your longer-term goals with it? Like, I know it's so new, but you know, I don't know if you've thought about where to take it. Yeah, so reveals is actually really interesting, cuz and like a few people have been like kind of think about this is when you have this reveal mechanism, people can incentivize others to reveal themselves. And especially like if you post something spicy, and someone has a million-dollar bounty on you proving that you someone saying that I posted this, that could be enticing to some

people to like basically take like credit themselves as the poster in exchange for some monetary value. Um we're we're experimenting with like how to better enable that, but that seems like an interesting design space. All right. Well, this has been super fun. Thank you so much for sharing on a chain. Yeah, thank you for having me. Don't forget next up is the weekly news recap today presented by Wondercraft AI. Stick around for this week in crypto after this short break. Welcome to this week's crypto roundup.

In today's recap, we'll cover the court ruling that overturns sanctions on Tornado Cash, Pump.fun's shutdown of its controversial live stream feature, a whistleblower claim against Binance, and Kraken's decision to close its NFT marketplace. We'll also dive into Celsius's $127 million creditor payout, how an AI meme coin creator fueled record transactions on Coinbase's Base, MicroStrategy's latest massive purchase of Bitcoin, and Tether's move to discontinue its euro stable coin. Thanks for tuning in to the weekly news recap.

Let's begin. Court overturns sanctions on Tornado Cash. In a pivotal ruling for the crypto industry, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has declared US Treasury sanctions on Tornado Cash unlawful. The sanctions imposed in 2022 by the Office of Foreign Assets Control accused the cryptocurrency mixer of laundering over $7 billion in digital assets, including $455 million linked to the North Korean hacking group Lazarus. Judge Don Willett, writing for the three-judge panel, determined that Tornado Cash's self-executing smart contracts could not be classified as property, and therefore fall outside OFAC's regulatory authority under the

International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Will it acknowledge the real-world downsides of unregulated technology, but noted that updating the law is Congress's responsibility, not the judiciary's. The challenge against the sanctions was spearheaded by six Tornado Cash users with backing from Coinbase. Paul Grewal, Coinbase's chief legal officer, hailed the decision on X as a his storic win for crypto and liberty. Similarly, crypto lawyer Jake Chervinsky described it as a stunning victory for decentralization. Hours after the court overturned Tornado Cash sanctions, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin donated $1 million in ether to Coin Center, the think tank that has helped

lead the industry's fight against the Tornado Cash sanctions. Pump.fun suspends live streaming after series of controversial incidents. Pump.fun, the Solana-based platform that enables users to create and promote meme coins, has indefinitely suspended its live streaming feature following a slew of troubling broadcasts. The feature, introduced in August, allowed creators to engage audiences by live streaming their reactions to token price movements. However, recent events exposed its misuse, leading to the platform's decision to disable it temporarily. Those events included numerous live streams that included threats of violence and other extreme acts. In one case, a user threatened to harm his pet if his token did not reach

a specific market cap. Another broadcast featured a staged suicide attempt that was later revealed to be a hoax intended to promote the creator's meme coin. Despite no actual harm actually occurring, these incidents triggered widespread condemnation. Pump.fun's team addressed the issue in a statement, saying that "To ensure the absolute safety of our users, we will be pausing the live streaming functionality until the moderation infrastructure is ready to handle heightened activity. The platform also plans to increase transparency in its moderation processes. The platform has grown rapidly with over 3.8 million tokens created since its January launch.

However, the live streaming controversies highlight the challenges of managing user-generated content. Ex-Binance executive alleges bribery and retaliation in whistleblower case. A former Binance executive has filed a whistleblower claim in the UK alleging that a colleague solicited a bribe to fast-track a customer's onboarding process. Bloomberg reported. Amrita Srivastava, who joined Binance in April 2022 after working at MasterCard, claims she was unfairly dismissed after reporting the bribery incident in April 2023. Srivastava alleged that a fellow Binance employee accepted money under the guise of providing consultancy services all while concealing his affiliation with the company. The colleague has since left Binance.

According to Srivastava, her dismissal came a month after she raised the issue. But Binance contends her termination was performance-related and unrelated to her report. The hearing offers a rare glimpse into Binance's internal workings as it faces broader legal challenges including a $4.3 billion penalty in 2023 for violating US anti-money laundering laws. Srivastava described Binance's work environment as increasingly chaotic claiming pressure to close deals compromised ethical practices. Kraken closes NFT marketplace. Crypto exchange Kraken is shuttering its NFT marketplace nearly 2 years after its launch signaling a shift in focus toward new products and services. According to a

spokesperson, the company will assist users in transferring their NFTs to Kraken wallets or self-custodial wallets of their choice. The decision reflects ongoing challenges in the NFT market which has struggled to recover from the 2022 crypto downturn. While blue-chip NFTs have gained traction recently, rising 90% since Donald Trump's pro-crypto election win, the Bitwise Blue Chip NFT Collections Index remains 81% below its April 2022 peak. Kraken's closure aligns with broader organizational changes, including a workforce reduction and plans to launch a new blockchain in 2025 called Ink that's designed for decentralized trading and lending. Celsius moves

forward with second major creditor payout. Celsius, the bankrupt crypto lending platform, is preparing to distribute 127 million in its second payout to creditors, according to a court filing on Wednesday. The funds will come from its litigation recovery account and will be allocated to creditors in categories including retail depositors, earn accounts, withhold claims, and general unsecured claims. Each eligible creditor will receive approximately 60.4% of their claims as of the bankruptcy petition date, with payments issued in either Bitcoin or US dollars. A weighted average price of $95,136.23 per Bitcoin will be used for crypto distributions, while cash payments will

be provided to those unable to receive crypto. This marks the second significant distribution after an earlier payout of $2 billion to over 170,000 creditors in January. Celsius declared bankruptcy in 2022 after revealing a $1.2 billion deficit. Its former CEO, Alex Mashinsky, remains under legal scrutiny, facing fraud charges and a potential lengthy prison sentence. AI-powered meme coin creator Clanker drives record activity on Base. The Coinbase incubated layer-2 network Base achieved an all-time high of 11.4 million daily transactions on Wednesday, fueled by an AI agent named Clanker.

This milestone also marked a new record across all Ethereum layer two networks, according to growthepie, created by proxy studio.eth and developer Jack Dishman. Clinker is a large language model designed to help users deploy meme coins. Since its launch, Clinker has facilitated the creation of over 4,700 tokens, including Clinker, which boasts a market cap of 113.8 million dollars. However, Base struggled with the surge in activity as many transactions on the network were reverted. Addressing the issue, Base creator Jesse explained on X that a significant portion of those were reverted as a result of folks trying to capture maximum extractable value. Is

that the most efficient use of block space? Absolutely not. Is it still a significant demonstration of Base scaling? Absolutely. MicroStrategy acquires 55,000 Bitcoin for 5.4 billion. This week, MicroStrategy purchased an additional 55,000 BTC for 5.4 billion dollars, reflecting an average price of 97,162 dollars per Bitcoin, according to a company filing on November 25. The acquisition was the largest single purchase of Bitcoin in MicroStrategy's history and boosted the company's total holdings to approximately 386,700 BTC.

These holdings represent a cumulative investment of 21.9 billion at an average cost of 56,701 per Bitcoin. The latest purchase was funded by proceeds from convertible notes and sales of company stock. Tether ends support for Euro stablecoin. Tether has announced it will discontinue its Euro-backed stablecoin, EURT, citing strategic realignment and evolving European regulatory frameworks. The company has stopped minting EURT and will no no process new issuance requests and is encouraging current holders to redeem their tokens by November 27, 2025.

The decision comes ahead of the European Union's markets in crypto assets regulations set to take effect in December. MiCA introduces stricter rules for stablecoins within the EU market, influencing Tether's decision to focus on other projects. Meanwhile, crypto firm Schuman Financial launched Euro, a MiCA-compliant euro-backed stablecoin audited by KPMG and stored in regulated European banks. And that's all. Thanks so much for joining us today. If you enjoyed this recap, go to unchainedcrypto.substack.com, that is unchainedcrypto.substack.com, and sign up for our free newsletter so that you can stay up to date with the latest in crypto. Unchained is produced by Laura Shin with help from Matt

Pillchard, Joanna Ranovich, Megan Gavalis, Pam Majumdar, and Margaret Correa. The weekly recap was written by Joanna Ranovich and edited by Nelson Wang. Thanks for listening.