Traders are ending the week on a high with Bitcoin reclaiming $60k, up 11.1% on the 7 day chart recovering from the previous week's 9% drop, Ethereum is playing catch up with a 7.8% gain on the week. Peeking at the institutional side of things, BTC inflows were relatively strong this week compared to last with 184m flowing in and just 44m flowing out so far. Looking at our tracked coins, Bitcoin wasn’t the only one experiencing double digit growth.

Odds of a 50 Basis Point Fed Rate Cut next week jumped to 49% today according to the CME FedWatch Tool, that’s almost a coin flip on whether we will see 25 or 50 basis point cut, but regardless it looks like cuts are coming very soon. It’s often assumed that rate cuts are a good thing for risk assets like bitcoin but it could signal the FED is worried about the economy.

According to FOX Journalist Eleanor Terrett, the crypto industry has given over $190 million in political donations for this year's U.S. election, up from just $15 million in 2020.

Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, recently announced that he will only talk about certain Ethereum upgrades called "Layer 2 solutions" (or L2s) that meet higher security standards, known as Stage 1 or above. He said, "The era of rollups being glorified multisigs is coming to an end. The era of cryptographic trust is upon us."

If you're interested in which Layer 2 solutions meet these new security standards, you can visit the L2Beat summary page. This website keeps track of all the latest developments and shows which projects qualify. Recently, OP Mainnet achieved the Stage 1 label, meaning it meets the higher security criteria. Other projects like Mode, Zora, and Metal L2 use similar technology and are likely to qualify soon.

Have a friend that would like Metal Pay? If you invite them to use Metal Pay and they verify their account you could win Bitcoin! Simply send help@metalpay.com an email with your friends full-name and once they are verified you are in the draw! Learn more here.