Hope you’re well! Fall is coming, there’s a chill in the air (at least here in DC), and we’re all hoping Uptober lives up to its name!

In this edition of the newsletter, we talk about:

• Bitflow Finance being #1 for active users on Stacks

• Our latest blog post on crypto privacy tech

• wBTC getting the boot from Sky / MakerDAO

• And more!

Let’s go!

Portfolio Company Highlights

Bitflow Finance is #1 for active users on Stacks

According to Stackspulse, Bitflow is #1 for active users on Stacks for the last 7 and 30 days (at least!).

The decentralized exchange for Bitcoiners has grown tremendously over the last year. They’ve increased their:

• Daily Active Users by 13.2x

• Daily swap transactions by 8.25x

• Daily swap volume by 12.7x

They’ve just partnered with Xverse and Leather Wallet (two of the most popular Bitcoin wallets) to be their in-wallet swaps partner.

And they will soon launch products that enable trading with assets defined on Layer 1 Bitcoin.

The spice is flowing at Bitflow!

Nuon v2 will go live at Devcon in November

Nuon v2 will launch at Devcon in November and aims to be the currency of choice for digital nomads, putting $80B idle stablecoins to work and reducing financial friction for this rapidly growing demographic.

The Nuon flatcoin (pegged to inflation, not a particular fiat currency) will feature:

• A peg to the Truflation Index

• Daily rebasing

• Yield generation from stablecoin deposits

• Governance via nuMINT token

We believe flatcoins are going to be a super popular DeFi primitive soon, and Nuon will be at the center of that narrative.

Hercules partners with DeFi Kingdoms, continues to be the liquidity hub of Metis

The Hercules team has partnered with DeFi Kingdoms, one of the most prominent play-to-earn games, and will be the home to all things $JEWEL (the token of DeFi Kingdoms).

The team continues to bolster their DEX product, adding limit and cross-chain orders to the swap module. New users can now bridge to the chain and transact on the Hercules front end in a matter of minutes.

And Hercules continues to have the deepest liquidity for most critical pairs on Metis, continuing its mission to be the liquidity hub on the L2.

New Content

Blog post - A Beginner’s Guide to Crypto Privacy Technologies

In our latest blog post, we highlight three of the most prominent crypto technologies - ZK proofs (ZKP), Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE), and Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs). We talk about their applications, pros, cons, and future developments.

Read the post here and let us know what you think!

Mik and Mike Crypto Cast

We have two new episodes of the Mik and Mike Crypto Cast!

In our September 10 episode, we talk about the red flags of Trump’s World Liberty Financial DeFi protocol, the odd Near marketing stunt, the changes Telegram made to their app, and more.

In our September 25 episode, we discuss three projects who raised funds recently, all of whom are building on Solana.

Let us know what you think about these episodes, and if there are specific topics you’d like us to discuss!

Industry News

Sky (formerly MakerDAO) votes to give wBTC the boot

A governance vote for Sky (formerly MakerDAO) reached 88.17% approval to drop wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC) as a form of collateral from their DeFi lending protocol.

The drama began in August when the custodian for wBTC, BitGo, partnered with Tron founder Justin Sun-affiliated BitGlobal in August.

As of October 6, there’s currently around $60 million in wBTC-backed loans

Sky is now considering alternative forms of wrapped Bitcoin for collateral including Coinbase’s cbBTC, Threshold’s tBTC, dlcBTC, and others.

Read more here.

CZ is free!

Founder and Former CEO of Binance CZ was released from prison on September 27 and posted about his freedom on Twitter.

CZ was sentenced in April 2024 to four months in prison for violating the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) by failing to implement adequate know-your-customer (KYC) programs at Binance.

What’s next for the beloved founder?

It looks like he’s working on an education platform, a book, investing, and more.

He’s been busy!

Crypto prices ride a roller coaster in September

Following crypto prices is fun and not stressful at all! 😉

Bitcoin rode a roller coaster in September but ended up around 10%, better than most past Septembers.

The Fed cut the interest rate by 50 bps on Sept 18, which led to a nice bump in the price of Bitcoin. BTC was around $58K on Sept 16, jumped past $64K, and settled around $63K on Sept 20.

The crypto market then tumbled on October 1 after Iran fired missiles at Israel. BTC dropped 5%, Solana 8%, and Ether 6%.

Then the market recovered a bit as the US Department of Labor announced that American employers added a strong 254,000 jobs in September.

Crypto ain’t for the faint of heart, but you knew that already!

Conclusion

We hope you enjoyed this edition of the DV monthly newsletter!

Hit me up at [email protected] or @mikewchan on Telegram with your thoughts about the newsletter, what’s happening in crypto, or anything else!

Give us a follow on Xwitter @deepventuresvc, @mikewchan, and @sherm8n and Deep Ventures on LinkedIn.

Talk soon!