Former President Trump and his two oldest sons lent their social media accounts' tens of millions of followers to a livestream last night launching a so-called decentralized finance project called World Liberty Financial.

Reality check: Over the meandering audio-only stream on X that lasted two hours, we didn't learn anything specific about the project beyond how it plans to distribute its token, WLFI.

• We attempted to wring some news out of the event, but here I want to tell readers about the misery of listening.

In the room: The former president didn't say a word about the project on last night's stream.

• He gave a first-hand account of the assassination attempt against him Sunday, he talked about how his kids brought him around on blockchain technology and the success of his NFTs.
• As something like 150,000 people listened, he said that the digital asset industry is "a fledgling business, and yet it is a massive business. But it has a chance to be really something special."

By the numbers: At its peak, over 160,000 people were listening to the livestream, but they started dropping off fast as it became clear that Trump wasn't going to say anything about the topic.

• By the end, it had dwindled to the range of 50,000 people (live shot of me listening).

World Liberty Financial's press email told Axios that nothing beyond the livestream would be released last night.

The project's founders Chase Herro and Zachary Folkman eventually showed up on the stream, as did Trump's two older sons, Eric and Don Jr. (Barron left midway through without saying anything.)

• They talked about the problems in traditional lending a lot, the value of stablecoins and people's need for liquidity in their financial lives, but they never really articulated anything about what World Liberty Financial would do.
• It seemed that one of the first products would be enabling people to borrow against their DeFi assets, but that's based on random comments, not any actual explanation.

Zoom in: The founders said that previous news accounts of the distribution of the token were wrong.

• Instead, they said, roughly 63% will be sold to the public (accredited investors only), 17% will be saved for promotions and 20% will be reserved for the team.
• The token will only be used for governance of the project. It won't be transferrable and it won't earn yield.
• It also has limits built in to make it harder for anyone to dominate a vote.

Friction point: Farokh Sarmad, the founder of Rug Radio, who hosted the event, acknowledged near the end that he'd meant to cap it at 75 minutes tops.

• He failed.

💭 Our thought bubble: It's impossible to imagine how the Trumps and World Liberty thought two hours (plus) of calling each other brilliant and Trump Organization war stories would sell this thing.

• But that's what a small city worth of people suffered through last night, all to get a tweet's worth of fresh info.

We all knew these days would come, but crypto's fate in the U.S. is being decided in the courts, which have seen a flurry of blockchain-relevant activity.

Why it matters: Some of these actions look to be teeing up more aggressive actions down the line.

Galois Capital

The SEC opted to kick a firm when it's down and really, truly out.

• Galois Capital closed shop amid the FTX debacle. But that didn't stop the agency from suing it for failing to use a registered custodian for its securities under management. The defunct company (unsurprisingly) settled.
• The settlement alleges that Galois held securities for its investors, but it doesn't identify them. (It also alleges some other things, which aren't really crypto-specific.)

Plot twist: It's debatable whether there are any registered custodians for crypto securities. (Some firms might say they are, but the SEC probably wouldn't say either way, outside a lawsuit.)

Friction point: One attorney has argued that the settlement basically puts all crypto funds out of compliance.

eToro

Crypto exchange eToro has been in the space a very long time, first adding bitcoin trading to its platform in 2013.

The latest: In a settlement with the SEC announced Thursday, it's nearly entirely leaving the United States. Its users will only be able to trade bitcoin, bitcoin cash and ether from here on out.

• U.S. users have 180 days to sell off anything else they have on the exchange.

💭 Our thought bubble: The fact that they are allowed to continue trading ether in the U.S. is a big win for the Ethereum world.

• That seems like a sign that the second-largest crypto asset isn't in the crosshairs any longer.

Kalshi

The non-crypto prediction market, Kalshi, sued the CFTC after the agency stopped the startup from offering markets on who would control each chamber of Congress.

• The District Court in D.C. smacked the agency's directive down, saying it wasn't the commodities regulator's job to assess whether or not offerings were in the public interest.

The latest: Kalshi posted the markets, but then had to take them down by order of an appeals court.

Bancor

Bancor was an automated market maker (or decentralized exchange) even before Uniswap. It got sued by investors over a product it built to mitigate losses.

Catch up fast: A court in Texas threw the case out earlier this month.

Yes, but: Despite raising precisely a bajillion dollars in 2017, Bancor has been irrelevant in DeFi for years.

Binance

The SEC amended its complaint against Binance, the world's largest exchange.

Notably, it struck every instance of "crypto-asset securities" in the complaint, stating in a footnote that it's all the expectations around the offering of a token that makes it a security.

In the weeds: It goes into more detail about why it alleges that various tokens traded on Binance are securities, including Binance's BNB token, the fourth most valuable crypto-asset and Solana, the fifth.

👩‍⚖️ What we're watching: More is likely on the way.

🙋‍♂️ FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has filed his appeal. (Blockworks)

📆 Former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison, a cooperating witness in the case against Bankman-Fried, is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 24. (CNBC)

🕊️ Binance founder Changpeng "CZ" Zhao is set to be released from prison at the end of the month. (CoinDesk)

🇧🇹 Bhutan: Bitcoin mining powerhouse. (CoinDesk)

Stablecoins are becoming a bigger part of the financial lives of many people around the world, according to a new report.

What they're saying: "Our survey results contradict the common belief that stablecoins are exclusively used as a tool for the speculative trading of cryptoassets," say the authors.

• "Gaining access to crypto exchanges remains the top use case for those surveyed, but a long tail or ordinary (non crypto) economic activities is evident as well."
• 47% of crypto users surveyed used it for saving, 43% used it for currency conversion, and 39% used stablecoins to access yield.

Context: The report comes from seven authors including Nic Carter at investment firm Castle Island Ventures; Peter Johnson and Ross Trachtman at institutional investors organization Brevan Howard Digital; and Anthony Yim at data company Artemis.

The bottom line: As is so often true with innovative new technologies, the breakout use case has not been what the inventors intended.

• The blockchain made to support bitcoin was meant to be an alternative to the dollar, but the first killer app turned out to be an all new way of using dollars.