The weekend is here again! Will you be outside having fun, or do you just want to enjoy some peace and quiet at home? Whatever you choose, you deserve a break, and we’ve got all the top crypto stories while you’re at it. From staff poaching to a stablecoin with a wish to become a bank, it’s going to be a really interesting one, so get comfortable and read on. First, let’s take a look at crypto’s biggest gainers and losers this week.
Top Gainers
- Pudgy (PENGU) The Penguin-themed NFT project is having a great time as this week’s top gainer. With a 68.09% uptick, Pudgy is now selling at $0.01604. Everybody loves penguins, even if they’re in crypto form.
- Bonk (BONK) comes in strong at second position with a 24.22% rise, which brings its price to $0.00001647.
- Fartcoin (FARTCOIN) also came in hot at third place with a loud 16.03% increase, bringing it above the $1 mark at $1.17.
Top Losers
- DeXe (DEXE) is this week's biggest loser. Although the token is still selling at a reasonable $7.50, we can’t help but notice its 15.16% dropoff.
- Pi (PI) The life of Pi doesn’t seem to be going very well at the moment as the token sees a 13.05% downtick, causing it to sell at $0.4837.
- Maple Finance (SYRUP) comes in at third bottom place with an 11.05% downturn, bringing its price to $0.5436.
Crypto Meme Of The Week
Mark Zuckerberg Poaches Open AI Talent, Unveils New Meta AI Lab
Mark Zuckerberg has been poaching AI talent from many other top companies, and he’s not likely to stop anytime soon. The CEO of Meta has also poached talent from other top rival companies, bringing all the talent into a new team called Meta Superintelligence Labs. And if you see the squad he has assembled, you’d think he was assembling the Avengers.
The team is led by Alexandr Wang, former CEO of Scale AI and now Chief AI officer at Meta. His assistant is none other than former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, who is now in charge of MEta’s AI product development and applied research. According to The Wall Street Journal, he also took three OpenAI researchers, Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov, and Xiaohua Zhai.
However, that’s not the end. According to a CNBC memo, Meta has poached talent from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind. Mark may be happy about his recruitment success, but OpenAI’s Chief Research Officer, Mark Chen, has come out to express his feelings. Chen said it feels like “breaking into our home and stealing something.”
Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill Flies In Senate But Forgets One Big Beautiful Detail
Donald Trump, now President of the United States, promised a more crypto-friendly government and laws during his campaign. The passing of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” as the president calls it, could be said to be one heck of a fulfillment of that promise.
To be fair to Trump, the Big Beautiful Bill contained and covered many perks for crypto stakeholders, miners, crypto-holding businesses, and even everyday retail digital asset users. In addition to these perks, there were some other crypto tax provisions spearheaded by Senator Cynthia Lummis that perhaps would have made the bill even more beautiful. However, these additions could not make the deadline. The bill had been passed by Vice President J.D. Vance's tie-breaking vote before Lummis could include those additions. Time really waits for no man, not even congressmen.
RobinHood Goes The Arbitrum Way And Not Solana
RobinHood (the crypto platform, not the legendary robber) has made what could be its biggest crypto bet yet. The company announced that it’s currently working on an Ethereum L2 scaling network for trading digital versions of physical assets like stocks and shares. It doesn’t sound like a bad idea, except that similar products are already up and running on the Solana network.
Unlike many other top crypto companies who would rather launch their platforms on Solana networks, Robinhood has decided to use Arbitrum’s design to build its very own network, which would be compatible with Ethereum. Robinhood’s crypto general manager, Johann Kerbrat, has said they are choosing this way because they want to cast as large a net as possible. While it sounds like a diss to the Solana network, which is not as popular as the Ethereum network, it is true that the Ethereum network is probably the biggest network there is.
Circle Applies For National Trust As It Aims To Become Its Own Bank
Circle can’t seem to get enough of the spotlight in recent times. It’s only been a few weeks since the stablecoin issuer had a massively successful IPO, and it’s back on the news again. The company is now seeking approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), aiming to launch a national trust bank.
If approved, Circle would establish First National Digital Currency Bank, N.A. The company is also eyeing a federal trust charter, which would help with USDC’s compliance under the recently passed GENIUS stablecoin legislation. Don’t get it wrong. Even if Circle becomes its own bank, as it wishes to do, it would be unable to carry out some banking activities, such as creating loans or taking cash deposits. But if its request is successful, Circle would be able to oversee its own personal reserves and take custody of assets for institutions. Although this would be subject to OCC oversight, it’s still better than nothing.
Abimbola Adu
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