Episode 23: Binance Comeback, MetaMask Token Hype, and Global Crypto Tax Shifts: A Massive Week for Web3

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Hey everyone, welcome to another episode. This is JR, founder and CEO of Social Market. Hey, my name is Leon Hitchens. I’m the chief marketing officer here at Social Market.  And this is Social Ledger Report, our podcast where we talk about the last week’s biggest stories on crypto, finance, and anything in between.  This week, we have actually some pretty big bangers. First, ZZ came back to Binance. Well, that was last week, but um a lot happened this week. Probably the best week that Binance has had out of the year. And then Metamask.

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There’s more details on its token launch. We covered that last week, but things have unfolded and there’s a couple of things we can talk about that. And then next, we’ll talk about Subpark showcasing prediction markets like Polymarket and Caoshi. Not fully crypto, but it’s a little bit in between. So I think it’s going to be a fun one to cover. then crypto taxes are shifting across the world. Some countries are also lowering their taxes or just how much you are supposed to pay. Leon will talk more about that here in a moment.

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But before Before uh

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day the classic SpongeBob the boost.fm slash social ledger. Yeah. So you go there and give us a like check us out on YouTube podcast, Apple podcast, Spotify, you name it. But anyways, so this is your first time tuning in. We usually  showcase what’s happening in the markets. We use the social market app.  This podcast is sponsored by the social market.

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So in market overview here, we can see that altcoin season is still right about mixed market and altcoin I think it was last week or was right about altcoin season. So it’s pretty much the overview Fearing greed index. It’s at all time low of 33 as of the beginning of this podcast earlier this year This is the first time we’re seeing it at this pretty low index  and then inflation is still right about 3 % if you’re tuning in  to this  podcast with Spotify or Apple podcast

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I’ll tell you the price of gold. It’s at $3,748. Invesco QQQ is at $595. DIA Dow Jones, it’s at $462. And the S &P 500 is at $6,643. And the S &P 500 is actually breaking all-time highs this year, so that’s pretty exciting. So that’s kind of the state of the markets this week. Do have any thoughts? Nothing on that part. I think the part that I’m mostly

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Seeing here too is that fear and greed index 33 for fear. I think that’s the first time that we’ve seen it  at a fear index for the market since we started the show. There’s been some shifts and changes throughout the year just because tariffs  and the unpredictability of what the  administration was going to do and when they’re going to do it and at what pace they’re going to do it was always kind of causing the markets to  up and down and generally go in the right direction. But  I’m um

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again, not financial advice, but I’m not too worried about a 33 and the fear. I you have Eric Trump, you have Donald Trump, have all JD Vance tweeting about, keeping buying crypto, crypto is going to be great. Like the regulatory clarity is here. There’s maps, adoptions and IPOs are just crushing it when they’re when they’re hitting the market. I’m not too worried about a little bit of fear in the market right now. You’ve got possibility of war. You’ve got

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military action with Venezuela. There’s a lot of civil unrest in the United States. um There’s a lot going on that can really influence that  fear index. But I think most of it’s probably just around Venezuela and these new tariffs that were announced. Yeah, 100%. Tariffs are never fun. And I feel like we’ve been kind of like the middle child of the parents divorcing between fighting over tariffs. Well, anyways, Bitcoin right now is sitting at 109,000.

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dollars  and in the last 24 hours it’s seen an uptick of 14.14 % and Ethereum is at four thousand and nine dollars  and almost no change from the last 24 hours. So that’s pretty much the state of the markets.  Now as far as our first story Binance.  So like I said it probably had its  best week in all 225. So in the last week we actually saw an all-time high of about a thousand

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and seventy nine dollars or about thousand and eighty almost. And the reason why is because if in case you saw this last week, ZZ came back, he got a jail like  what? Like almost a year ago.  And yeah, you he’s  almost almost a year exactly. I feel like. Yeah, yeah. So I know he was  in  jail for  in  twenty twenty four for about a few months. And then he got out and he joined back Binance.

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And it kind of took a while for him to join back in Binance, but you know on Twitter, which I should actually open it up. Okay, so on Twitter, that’s where he added his at Binance handle on Twitter.  And that kind of exploded the market for Binance and a couple other things, which I’ll go over here, which is why it reached a thousand dollars. Well, anyways,  this is from Binance Square.

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the report here and this is from September 17th. It says breaking CZ strong return to Binance question mark BNB treasury’s trillion yuan plan exposed and price hits historic high of a thousand dollars. So it’s a pretty long and detailed report. You can look at it you want. We’ll leave the link in the description. So the three points that I want to cover are as CZ outlined support for his increasing institutional interest the financial plan for BNB gained traction.

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and then reportedly amid the possibility of the Department of Justice  lifting compliance restrictions, speculation about his return to Binance has intensified after ZZ reverted the X profile back to at Binance. So that’s kind of what I mentioned, like he added back the handle of Binance  in his handle. you everybody was losing their minds. And then last week,

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BNB price reached a historic high of $962 and analysts predict the price will soar to $1,000 as investors refocus. And as of a week later, it reached a new all-time high of $1,080 or $79 if you will. Binance is already pretty popular around the world. It’s used where if not in the US as of yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if in the next four years we see Binance finally being able to have its

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presence in the US.  that’s kind of like the biggest news for Binance. second thing that I want to cover here is Aster. Now, a lot of you  may not be as active  on Binance or  don’t even know what Aster is. I just learned about it this week. um But for those of you who don’t know,  if you’re watching this on YouTube, you can kind of read this on your own. But if you’re tuning in on audio,  Aster, the complete guide to decentralized

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perpetual exchange this link is from Coingecko and they kind of give you an overview here Aster is a decentralized exchange  offering spot and perpetual trading of crypto and stock derivatives derivatives  it’s kind of a mouthful word with up  to  1001x leverage across multiple blockchains so the three key points about this DEX why it’s different than like say Uniswap, Sushiswap, PancakeSwap you name it

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I PancakeSwap is mostly used in Binance.  I’ve used it before.  I don’t use Binance as much, but I use mostly like Solana and Ethereum. Well anyways, what makes Aster different,  it’s by these  three key points. So the first one, yield bearing collateral.  Users earn passive income on their collateral through  as BNB, liquid staking tokens  and USDF stablecoin while actively trading.

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So to me, what it means is if you used the polymarket before and you have like a long-term position  on a bet, on a prediction market, you could actually earn passive income sort of thing where it will pay dividends just by holding that position. Now, not financial advice, but what I often do is I will hold that position and then  if I feel like my outcome will not pay itself, I just withdraw.  So we can probably see similar activity happening by this feature. The second one,

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Explosive growth the Aster token searched over 1500 % after launch which is backed by YZILabs and endorsed by ZZ himself  and MrBeast’s $114,000 purchase. So right now the Aster token is at about  a dollar and 94 cents as of recording of this podcast, but

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In September 19th, it was sitting at about 87 cents and a volume of $615 million. Now, its all-time high was in September 24th. Its price reached $2.31 and had a volume of $2.43 billion. So right now it’s at $1.24 billion volume. So we’ve seen almost a billion dollars in volume decrease from all the hype. Well anyways,

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Its last key feature for Aster as a DEX  is  there’s more privacy here or key features are hidden orders for privacy, dual trading modes such as simple and pro and multi-chain support across BNB chain, Ethereum, Solana and Arbitrum. So Ethereum is a layer one, Solana is a layer one, BNB is a layer one and Arbitrum is a layer two. So what’s interesting about that is while they have their own networks, they all have their own tokens.

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So what this means is you can probably trade Binance based tokens to Solana based tokens and you know, don’t have to pay as much in fees if you had to sell it in Coinbase and then transfer that money to another platform where you can buy a particular BNB token sort of thing. So that’s kind of like the utility behind it. I’m actually bullish on Aster given everything. I’m probably going to add some Aster to my portfolio.

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I know if it’s available on Coinbase for you to just buy it off directly,  what people will often do is they will use these decentralized exchanges like Aster  and they’ll swap their USDC or even USDT for Aster. That’s kind of like the state  of everything right now with Aster and with Binance.  One more thing I’ll I don’t know where you can buy it. was actually while you were talking, I was trying to connect my wallet to Aster and see.  I know they have an airdrop going on.

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I think you have to participate  in something to get that air dropped. I’ve never quite been able to catch air drops fully.  it’s kind of interesting.  You’ve got CZ’s return.  He committed a lot of crimes in the United States on just regulation points.  But  his come too is  being called Binance’s golden error. I think he will push a lot of innovation and expansion.

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But that Aster DEX token, it’s interesting that it’s like Binance ecosystem integration. It’s also kind of just pushing in there of speculation that Binance may list Aster soon. I don’t think there’s anywhere you can buy it at the moment except through Aster or those swaps in there. There’s a lot of liquidity incentives early on right now. I’m just reading through it and I’m like, okay, that makes a lot of sense.

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It’s just like, it’s just kind of showing Binance’s back.  It’s leading a new Bool narrative  and  Aster’s also centralized and decentralized products can like,  like rise together under that Binance umbrella. It’s, it’s kind of cool to see all of that, that happening together. Well, first, I think I would try connecting to a VPN, connecting to another place around the world. Outside of the US, I think like anywhere in Europe, it should work.

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um As far as using Binance and if there’s like an IP restriction with their with Aster try checking pancake swap pancake swap is you know, Really good with Binance based tokens or even orca. think orca. Yeah, I to probably do something like that Yeah, so that’s I’m just telling you what I would do not financial advice That’s what I would probably do after this to get some Aster tokens. Well, anyways So one more thing I’ll talk about this matter  is right before we started this podcast Leon

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I was on Twitter  and  I joined this like this this room where you can like talk to people  and they were talking about Aster and ZZ himself actually joined there and he was answering questions from like the community. So one that’s amazing. Two  this post from Doc Wondo which is you know books. This person made this post said ZZ from Binance just set the bar so high for all central exchanges slash Dex founders.

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blockchain founders and founders leaders in general. Not only did he join the Astor community on spaces. Okay, so it’s called spaces. That’s what I forgot. But he’s answering questions and educating us ahead on this type of leader, ZZBinus. That was kind of a  mouthful post anyways. So I was there for like a minute and I was actually able to, I wasn’t able to speak.  You had to raise your hand before you could  join and talk. But ZZ,  if I remember correctly, he was just kind of telling people

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At the point that I joined, he was just telling people like how it’s supposed to work. As for itself, it’s supposed to like you do different things more than just being a decentralized exchange where you can just swap tokens like you could with a unit swap or something.  When he was talking about perpetuities, that means  in a hidden manner, it means you just don’t have an order book that tells you  this address made this purchase or this sale at X timestamp. It simply is supposed to show you like, I think

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There is supposed to show you like a uh hidden type of order book, but you just can’t associate the address with it. So it’s kind of like Monero where if you’re familiar with Monero, you can make transactions.  Yeah, with Monero, you can make transactions  on the blockchain where it’s normally supposed to be pretty visible. You can track wallets, but you just don’t have that functionality where you cannot track wallets. So Monero is private like that. And I think Aster is

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trying to follow suit as well.  And ZZ a long time ago on Twitter  made a comment saying that order books are pretty exploitable because someone is trying to buy a position, other people will follow suit. Kind of like tracking insider trading sort of thing. I can see the value behind it, but  that’s as far as I know and as far as he told us while I was in that room. So it was pretty interesting to be there and actually hear out ZZ himself. So that was pretty cool experience.

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But yeah, other than that, I think this is pretty much all I wanted to cover as far as DZ and Binance biggest week out of the year. Pretty exciting stuff.  I would keep an eye out on Aster. That would be my only advice and suggestion on people. Like keep an eye on it, track it, name it. If you want to purchase the token, that’s up to you. Moving on. So next, there’s some unfoldings with the Metamask token that has been highly rumored. Last week we talked about Metamask  and we were

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kind of talking about their proposition on releasing a token. There’s been a small development on that story. So this is Polymarket and the first thing that unfolded was that they actually released a market where Metamask launched a token in 2025. Right now it’s sitting at about 43 % chance that it will, but the all-time high of September 24th, which was last week or this week, was like at 61%, 64%, the all-time high. So if we order, if we make some,

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Some market context here. This is powered by Grok from Twitter. So this is what Grok is saying as far as generating context for this market. says, recent news from the past week indicates growing anticipation for a Metamask token that will launch in 2025, which will potentially shift the odds from current no, which leads out 57.5 % on September 25. Reports highlighted Consensus CEO Joe Lubin

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which by the way, he’s actually the co-founder of Ethereum, Joe Lubin, stating the launch could happen very soon, fueling speculation. Additional updates suggest a possible October launch, though no official data is confirmed. Social media buzz on platforms like X also reflects the heightened excitement and airdrops rumored among users. These developments could sway market sentiment towards yes, though uncertainty remains without an official announcement from Minimask. So.

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There’s a lot of rumors which is why we’re seeing an explosive yes and then it’s kind of back to no leaning more on the no than on the yes. So  the rumors this week are that the co-founder of Ethereum who’s also the CEO of ConsenSys, Joe Lubin, he was saying that, you know, they’re looking at an October launch. It’s not official for Metamask so it’s  not fully confirmed. But because ConsenSys  is the parent company of Metamask, I would not

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dismiss this either. This is a little bit suspicious and I think that it is very possible that next month we could see that token come out. I would put my money if I had to bet in this poly market dude, I would put my money on yes, just because I think that the launch could happen this year. I don’t know about September or October though, but I could see a very likely happening this year. Not financial advice, but I could see it this year 100%. Like they’re not gonna do all of this.

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to kind of do it.  I think the airdrop is probably going to be what happens this year. You know, just like Uniswap’s like famous  airdrops, like  I could see that where they kind of like reward Metamask users, DeFi participants,  know, any D app developers kind of use it as a way to  push all of that. This could also be like one of the largest token distributions in history. There’s  I think 30 or 40 million Metamask wallets out there.  And  this is a huge thing.  It’s also like

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A decentralized wallet governance can happen here. Staking, fee sharing, all of that could help push Metamask as the go-to wallet out there for it. It’s really going to push a new governance era in Web3 if they execute on this token right. It’s pretty exciting. I never thought Metamask would launch a token, if I’m being honest, but I would trust Metamask token more than Aster token.

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now that we just recently talked about Aster. Just because Metamask is more reputable, it’s based on Ethereum. Like Metamask for a long time has serviced the Ethereum network for tokens there. It’s more established, it’s more trustful. I mean the fucking parent company, who is also the co-founder of Ethereum,  is, you know, in a way backing up Metamask. So I would trust this token more than anything,  if I’m being honest. So there’s this story from AI Invest and it-

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headline reads metamask token coming very soon airdrop season begins so kind of going back to to to airdrop season i think the last time we saw it was like 2021 where a lot of tokens on ethereum and solana even were starting to do airdrops that’s generally how people make a lot of decent money through airdrops so i wouldn’t dismiss this at all because it’s basically free money  not financial advice but

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AirDrops are a pretty good opportunity. So the Metamask co-founder Joe Lubin, I think it’s interesting that he is labeled as the co-founder. Well, anyways, Joe Lubin confirmed that Metamask token is coming very soon. Other major protocols, including OpenSea, Base, Pump.Fun, Meteora, Meteora is a decentralized exchange from Solana,  and Polymarket are also expected to drop tokens in coming months. AirDrop season is approaching with free tokens potentially being distributed to users.

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Metamask co-founder Joe Lubin has confirmed that the Metamask token code name  is MASK. It’s imminent, stating that it could arrive sooner than expected. This announcement follows years of speculation about a native token for the popular Ethereum wallet, which boasts over 30 million monthly active users. First of all, I didn’t realize it was that many people who using Metamask, but that’s amazing. The MASK token is expected to support decentralization, governance, and user rewards.

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further enhancing Metamask’s ecosystem. Lubin emphasized the decentralized aspect  of the platform is a strategic priority. The token could launch on Metamask’s Linea network a zero-knowledge roll-up layer 2 blockchain which is fully EVM compatible. EVM is Ethereum Virtual Machine. It’s pretty cool actually.  I’m pretty excited about this. I still believe it could come out this year. There’s no way they are.

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Making all these announcements  and for it all to just  not happen this year. I know Baze  was also talking about exploring a token that would be launched. They didn’t say anything about releasing it when or soon. They were just exploring the utility  or logistics of having a token. Pumped Up Fund did release its own token this year. Polymarket hasn’t and OpenSea, I’ve only heard rumors. I’ve seen people talk about it, speculate on it, but nothing solid.

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solid so I would only consider metamask, base, pump.fond,  and  maybe meteora. I don’t really follow meteora that much. I would consider at least those out of all the lists here that are in the realm of possibility. That was an interesting development from metamask so that’s pretty much all I wanted to cover about metamask. So  on to the next topic. So Saupark announced prediction markets or had this… if you’re following the lore with

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the latest season Trump and Satan had a child or expecting a child and they were in the in the South Park episode they were kind of talking about, okay is this gonna be a boy or girl and then Polymarket saw it and then they not made their own Polymarket about it which is kind of fun and it’s pretty interesting. meta. Dude it really is so meta. I know if you’ve been on X all week at least I was I saw that Kalshi and Polymarket were kind of glazing the fact that South Park

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announced them or were talking about them, which is kind of like, oh, you’ve made it if South Park talks about you, which is kind of interesting, kind of funny. Matt, I want to bet on this market just for the shits and giggles, but I really don’t know what the writers are going to do. Yeah, let’s watch the Polymarket clip right now. I just really like it. I think it’s kind of funny. Number one trending bet on the apps. Will President Trump and Satan’s baby be a boy or a girl? Betters on Polymarket are at nearly 60%.

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The demonic butt baby’s gonna be a girl. Number one trending b- I just- it’s so well done. It’s also kind of pushing into mainstream culture that this is a mainstream culture movement at the moment. Prediction markets are becoming something and it’s not just Cauchy. Like, I saw Cauchy think that this prediction market stuff was gonna be them, but it ended up being Polymarket and I think huge win for Polymarket in the end because they’re-

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They’re the ones who’s really setting the tone for everything. I think they’ve done a really good job of marketing their stuff overall. And the fact that South Park is  not only poking fun at them, but including them is a uh big cultural moment for them.  It’s  crypto is becoming mainstream and  it does lean in a little bit to the crypto bro culture that is there. But also it’s nice that everyone can be made fun of and talk about it. Because even Polymarket has been tweeting about it.

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nonstop of just like what’s going on and it’s like  any markets on this they’re called poly markets.  Yeah as you can see on poly markets handle that moment on the episode is now in their banner so that’s pretty fun.  It’s just a great cultural moment.  It really is  so if I look at Kelshe as well  it’s there as well although I think that one’s edited so I don’t know.

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Funny enough, did you know that YC is backing Kalashii as of 2019? I don’t know if you knew that. That’s really interesting. guess it makes sense. just from like a perspective of like actual like Web3, Kalashii is just a, you know, they’re just a betting platform. Nothing quite unique to that. It makes sense to back them. I didn’t know about prediction markets until last year, so I was pretty late into the game. Well, anyways. Yeah, I bet on like presidential elections like in

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2018 times 2019. Like I’ve done prediction markets a little bit for a while.  It’s just that they got renamed from like betting on like real world stuff to prediction. I don’t know when that twist happened, but that’s a big one. I think the word betting has this stigma behind it. People are like associating as like gambling. Gambling is not a good thing that people look at anyway. So  I can see it happening. But yeah, this was pretty much prediction markets this week. It was pretty fun, pretty wild.

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You can pick whichever one you want to use. Now into our last story. It’s all taxes. Yeah. So I’ll jump in here. uh Taxes  on crypto.  There’s a lot of countries right now coming in making shifts. So one of the ones that was announced  recently was Japan. Japan is going to cut their crypto tax from 55 % down to 20%, which is massive  for a country that largely hasn’t been a big talk.

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about crypto like when you talk about crypto I don’t hear Japan too often. know Japan is pretty established like they’ve been pretty ahead on adopting crypto compared to the rest of the world. So it’s kind of interesting. Yeah  interesting this is way too high but.

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Overall sentiments really really good the other country that is also doing it beyond Japan is Thailand They’re gonna offer 0 % capital gains tax on Bitcoin trend and traded in national exchanges There’s a little bit more caveats on the Thailand stuff than just overarching like flat tax on any like crypto gains like Japan 20 % versus the 55 But it’s a it’s a sign. It’s also moved by these countries to

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try to push innovation and people to those countries. If you’ve got a 0 % tax on Bitcoin, like I could see a bunch of companies going and mining in Thailand, going and  setting up crypto reserves and  buying and selling in  Thailand over other countries. The same thing with Japan. Like I could see that  pushing. There is also a really big rumor happening right now on Twitter,  just around uh President Trump talking about 0 % tax on cryptocurrencies.

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This has been tossed around a few times about uh users not not pay or any capital gains tax on crypto in the past and any US space exchange, but it’s starting to pick up steam again, especially as these other countries around the world are trying to stay competitive  with the crypto market while the United States is really deregulating  crypto and putting a much more.

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Positive tone on the the regulatory stance. I’m honestly excited if  if it actually comes through where you pay zero taxes on crypto in the US Oh, man, I’m gonna have a field day. It’s gonna be amazing.  I think if the United States adopts a zero percent crypto  tax on cryptocurrency It’s gonna be a massive thing I could see a lot more people coming to the United States to do crypto  if they’re allowed in or they can get visas or they could buy their way in  that’s gonna be a huge thing the benefit to is just

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there’s gonna be a lot more capital thrown around. If you’re able to go  spend on crypto and do stuff in crypto and not have capital gains, you’re gonna have a huge, huge opportunity to make some investment and do it all in crypto and then not have any  capital gains on it.  I think the benefit of no tax on crypto is gonna be crazy and I could see it.

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more of like a layered system like hey after this much money you you do have to pay some sort of tax or if you have  less than $300,000 in capital gains you get 0 % and then after that you know or if you make less than XYZ you know in a year you won’t pay capital gains oh just because the government will they’ll hunt their money down but I think it’s going to be a net positive for the crypto industry yeah I mean I think taxes need to be  more fair for lower incomes

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So I’m excited. We’ll see what happens. A lot could happen. So who knows? We’ll keep you covered on everything that develops. But yeah, I think that’s pretty much everything we had to cover this week for Social Alert Report. Thanks for watching. Give it a like, subscribe to the channel so it costs you nothing. It supports us. It keeps us going. It literally keeps the lights on. Dislike it if you dislike it. Give it a like if you liked it. Share it around. See you next week.