RaaS #529: BTC Whitepaper's 17th Anniversary!

Tether Posts $10B+ in Profits, Manta Announces Manta Labs, and Moar!

Semantic Layer agents are now live on Polymarket, placing real-money bets via x402. In a month, they’ve gone from simulation to execution, autonomously coordinating capital, identifying inefficiencies, and settling trades.

Crypto runs on cabals. Blingoh maps the hierarchy, from apex funds to BD foot soldiers, where alpha, access, and attention are the real pegs. Your rank is how early you hear the whisper. And yes, leverage is the only cycle and market-agnostic virtue in this landscape.

This week’s On The Radar is packed: Manta Alpha, LighterEVM, Cookie3, x402, ETFs, and Trump Media Prediction Markets, featuring Kenny (Co-Founder, Manta) & Shubham (Ecosystem Lead, Manta). Check out the full episode. 👇️ 

Minty shares must-reads from October, covering themes like risk, liquidity, and market structure. Highlights include Loopify on exiting with profits, TGA analysis, and insights on social capital, airdrops, and ETH flows.

Smart to farm Monad, foolish enough to overlook the whole ecosystem.

Aster updates S3 buyback model to strengthen ASTER tokenomics. 50% of buybacks will now be burned, while the other half is redirected to the locked airdrop address, reducing circulating supply and preserving airdrop potential.

Kite AI drops its whitepaper: a trustless payment infrastructure stack for agentic AI. It combines sub-cent stablecoin rails, x402-native authorization, revocation safety, and session-based keys. These are agents as autonomous economic actors.

Radarblock’s co-founder (read: chief intern) Blingoh returns to SEZ as a speaker after attending last year. Get ready for insane mental models from one of the best brains in the industry.

Your daily dose of bite-sized news to stay updated.

1. Western Union signals stablecoin entry with “WUUSD” trademark.

2. Hyperliquid founder calls out VC-funded token launches for violating protocol neutrality.

3. Semantic Layer raised $5M to scale on-chain AI agent autonomy and sequencing sovereignty.

4. Today marks 17 years since the Bitcoin whitepaper was published.

5. $1.1B in crypto liquidations sparked renewed BTC volatility.

Self-custody, yield, and card access rarely coexist; most crypto neobanks compromise at least one. Plasma One lacks ramps, Cryptodotcom takes your keys, and Gnosis Pay skips yield. The trilemma still holds.

NGMI much?

Top Gainers: ICNT, PIPPIN, AVICI, HONEY, IDIA.

High-signal reads are worth your time, all in one place.

1. Coinbase’s x402 is a perfect fit for Virtuals’ ACP, which structures agent-to-agent commerce. One live agent (S.A.N.T.A.) is already transacting with x402, and ACP txs are up 6x in a week, big growth in agent economies.

2. Trove’s first HIP-3 perp markets are live on Hyperliquid testnet, starting with CS2 skins and Pokémon cards. Plugged into HL infrastructure but fully independent, HIP-3 gives Trove deep liquidity, oracle accuracy, and fast scaling via a planned LST model.

3. ZKsync’s Atlas upgrade gives Ethereum a new role as a real-time capital hub. With 15K TPS, 1s ZK finality, and sub-block latency, RWAs and institutional flows no longer need isolated liquidity hubs.

4. Stablecoins collapse Visa, ACH, and SWIFT into one global, programmable dollar network. For the first time, anyone can move money without banks or borders, instant, final, and permissionless.

5. Tether posted $10B+ profit YTD with $135B in U.S. Treasuries, surpassing South Korea as a top 20 holder. USD₮ supply hit $174B+, backed by $6.8B in excess reserves.

Polymarket gets a Coinbase cameo. Brian Armstrong read out all the words not said on the earnings call, triggering prediction market payouts.

Manta Labs launched as an app incubator to drive user growth and token utility. Backed by Manta Network, Labs is chain-agnostic and already boasts 30K+ DAUs via JunkFun and others. This positions Manta as a vertically integrated ecosystem, where growth in apps feeds value back to the base layer.

That’s all for today!