The 3 biggest crypto stories to look for this week

Next week in crypto should be an interesting one with Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial likely drawing to a close. 

Here’s a brief look at some of the biggest stories for next week.

Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial nears end

Bankman-Fried’s trial is in its final stages of play, with no more witnesses likely to be called upon. 

Currently Bankman-Fried is facing a direct examination from his defense lawyer as he tries to present an alternative picture of how the exchange collapsed. This view differs from the multiple witnesses and former employees who have testified against him.

This will continue on Monday when the trial resumes. After this, he will face cross-examination from the government, which will look to pick apart his recollection of events. Then a possible rebuttal case by the prosecution could follow. It looks like this will use up the majority of the week.

Once this has finished, the matter will be sent to the jury to decide — potentially towards the end of next week.

Celestia mainnet may go live

Modular blockchain platform Celestia is gearing up towards its mainnet over the coming days. The platform has finalized its allocation of tokens, with many given to Ethereum and Cosmos users, and these will become available at the point of launch.

“Between now and Mainnet Beta, the Celestia Foundation will coordinate with the genesis validators to collect their genesis transactions,” said Celestia on X last week. “Once the genesis block is finalized by the validator set through consensus, Celestia’s Mainnet Beta network will be live.”

Some eagle-eyed viewers noticed that the project’s GitHub repository shows a due date for mainnet launch of Oct. 31, which suggests that it could go live this coming week.

News to come out of Solana Breakpoint 

Next week will see the return of Solana's annual Breakpoint event, this year taking place in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

The conference will take place between Oct. 30 and Nov. 3 and it will feature Solana Labs CEO Anatoly Yakovenko, key project leaders from across the Solana ecosystem, and speakers from Stripe and Visa.

The last few Breakpoints have typically delivered large announcements. For instance, at Breakpoint 2021, Solana Labs announced a $100 million social media fund and a $150 million blockchain gaming fund. Although as The Block reported last year, these funds had only been partially deployed due to a prevalence of VCs in the ecosystem.