GeckoPulse: Monad Airdrop Details Emerge!

Monad Madness

Layer-1 network Monad has opened its eligibility checker and revealed further details about its MON token airdrop.

Until November 3, users will be able to check their eligibility and register their wallet to receive the airdrop, but the exact amounts will only be revealed as early as October 28.

However, this hasn’t stopped users from swarming onto the claims website, which caused a partial outage of Privy’s wallet service.

According to Monad’s airdrop announcement, tokens will be distributed to over 5,500 of the project’s community members, as well as over 225K users across the wider crypto community.

Besides implementing stringent anti-sybil measures, Monad has centered its airdrop around DeFi power users and active DEX traders, with an emphasis on duration and value of transactions.

Furthermore, holders of specific Ethereum and Solana-based NFT collections such as CryptoPunks, Doodles and Mad Lads will also get a share of MON.

MON is currently trading at $0.069 on Hyperliquid’s pre-markets, valuing the blockchain at $6.9B.

Figure Flows to Sui

Crypto lending firm Figure Technology has expanded its yield-bearing security token YLDS to the Sui blockchain.

YLDS is a tokenized debt instrument, collateralized by short term US treasuries.

According to a recent press release, the reasoning behind the expansion is to provide yield for Sui’s order book DEX, DeepBook.

Stablecoin deposited onto the protocol will be automatically exchanged into YLDS to generate returns.

What Does He Know?

After making a $192M profit through short positions during last Friday’s crypto crash, this Hyperliquid whale is once again shorting the market.

According to HypurrScan, the whale has now increased their 10x leveraged short position on Bitcoin from an initial $163M to $492M.

With the price of BTC falling by another 3.3% from $115.2K to $111.3K today, their position has currently generated an unrealized profit of over $17M.

The address in question previously opened $900M worth of short positions on BTC and ETH, just before President Trump tariff announcement which drove the crypto market lower last week.

The community has since speculated that this whale could be an insider related to the Trump family, with on-chain sleuths claiming that it could be connected to former BitForex CEO, Garrett Jin.

However, Jin had denied the accusations, explaining that the wallet belonged to one of his clients.

Regardless of the wallet’s owner, the crypto space is waiting to see whether these short positions will truly be followed by another incoming crash.

Airdrop Apology

The Hyperliquid DEX has deployed its HIP-3 upgrade.

The team announced earlier today that a network upgrade will take place on October 13, allowing eligible builders to launch their perpetuals markets once the update is complete.

With the upgrade, entities that have at least 500K staked HYPE will be able to deploy perpetuals markets permissionlessly, with the option of receiving up to 50% of trading fees.

Since the announcement, the price of Hyperliquid's native HYPE token has surged by 8.5% from $38.70 to $42 as of the time of writing.

In Other News

Japan Clamps Down on Crypto Insider Trading. Japan’s Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission, will soon be authorized and empowered to investigate and enforce insider trading laws on digital assets. Insider trading previously did not apply to digital assets.

OwlTing NASDAQ Listing Tomorrow. Trading for OwlTing, a Taiwanese stablecoin infrastructure company, is set to go live on Thursday October 16. OWLS will become one of the first Asia-based blockchain firms to list directly on a US stock exchange.

Coinbase Invests into India’s CoinDCX Crypto Exchange. Coinbase is reportedly investing into the Indian exchange as part of a strategic move to expand into emerging crypto markets such as India. CoinDCX also recently weathered a $44.2M hack in July.

Bitcoin Ordinals NodeMonkes on the Rise. NodeMonkes, a popular Bitcoin Ordinals collection, has seen two consecutive yearly highs on its weekly sales volume. Historically, trading volume spikes on NodeMonkes have been followed by near term BTC pullbacks, suggesting that this could be a “top signal”.

NYC Deploys First Ever US City Office for Crypto. New York City Mayor Eric Adams is creating an office focused on digital assets and blockchain, the first of its kind in the nation. Adams is known for being pro-crypto, taking his first three paychecks as Mayor in Bitcoin.

Celsius Wins $300M from Tether in Bankruptcy Case. Celsius’s year-long court battle with USDT issuer Tether has ended, winning about ~$300M, a tiny fraction of Celsius’s initial claim of $4.3B. Celsius is a crypto lender that went defunct in 2022.

Bhutan Tokenizes National ID on Ethereum. Bhutan is set to fully migrate its national digital ID platform onto Ethereum by 2026. Bhutan would be the first country to anchor a live, population-scale identity system on a public blockchain network.

Citi Launching Crypto Custody Service in 2026. According to CNBC reports, top bank Citi will roll out its crypto custody services to mainstream financial institutions in 2026 amid rising digital asset adoption.

Steak ‘n Shake Gives in to Bitcoiners. Restaurant franchise Steak 'n Shake who had a successful Q2 and Q3, thanks in part to accepting Bitcoin payments, has decided not to move forward with its plan to accept ETH payments following pushback from the Bitcoin community.

Metaplanet Valuation Dips Below Bitcoin Holdings. The enterprise valuation of the Japanese Bitcoin treasury firm has dipped below its Bitcoin holdings for the first time. While this may mean that Metaplanet is currently trading at a discount, this was also the result of continued declines in Metaplanet’s share price.

Unclaimed Crypto No Longer Forcefully Liquidated. Californian Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a bill to prevent unclaimed crypto assets from being automatically liquidated. This bill would allow any unclaimed crypto assets to be transferred to state custody in its original form, without having to be liquidated.