The 15-hour Amazon Web Services outage that halted Coinbase, Robinhood and MetaMask revealed how much of Web3 still relies on centralized servers. The recent Amazon Web Services (AWS) outage that knocked out major crypto and fintech platforms, including Coinbase, Robinhood, MetaMask and Venmo, has reignited debate over how decentralized Web3 really is. While blockchains continued producing blocks uninterrupted, millions of users were unable to access wallets, exchanges and decentralized applications (DApps) because their interfaces and application programming interfaces (APIs) were hosted on centralized servers. “Decentralization has succeeded at the ledger layer but not yet at the infrastructure layer,” Jamie Elkaleh, chief marketing officer at Bitget Wallet, told Cointelegraph. “Real resilience depends on diversifying beyond hyperscalers into community-driven and distributed networks.” Read more
Bitcoin price action favored bulls as the weekly close neared, with BTC nearing $113,000 ahead of a key week for the Federal Reserve. Key points: Bitcoin brings upside volatility into the weekly close with a charge through $112,000 resistance. Traders hope for new local highs next as the BTC price recovery continues. Read more
CZ’s pardon by Trump followed a lobbying push that included $450,000 to Trump-linked lobbyists and $290,000 to former SEC chair contender Teresa Goody Guillén. Former Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao’s pardon by US President Donald Trump came after an extensive and expensive lobbying campaign in Washington. Zhao, who served a four-month prison sentence last year for violating US Anti-Money Laundering (AML) laws, benefited from a months-long effort by Binance and its legal team to win over key figures in Trump’s orbit, according to a Sunday report by Politico. In late September, Binance hired Ches McDowell, a close associate of Donald Trump Jr., and his North Carolina-based firm Checkmate Government Relations to lobby the White House and Treasury Department on “executive relief,” the report claimed. Read more
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said onchain fundraising could make capital formation “more efficient, fair, and transparent.” Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has outlined an ambitious plan to move every stage of a startup’s journey, from incorporation to fundraising and public trading, onto the blockchain. Speaking on the TBPN podcast, Armstrong described his vision for an onchain lifecycle where founders could incorporate their startups, raise seed rounds, receive instant capital in USDC (USDC) and eventually go public through tokenized equity. “You can imagine this whole life cycle coming onchain,” he said, adding that such a shift could “increase the number of companies who go raise capital and get started out there in the world.” Read more