Happy 5th Birthday Ethereum: This is Your Life

“In 2009, game developer Blizzard released an update for the massively-multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft. Among the patch notes was a statement informing players that the spell ‘Siphon Life’ would no longer cause damage. The link between this seemingly innocuous event and the birth of one of the decade’s most important tech breakthroughs? A man called Vitalik Buterin—the founder of Ethereum.

Half a decade on from Ethereum’s 2015 launch, we take a look back at one of the most important crypto developments in history.“

See Also: The incredible story of Ethereum, “The Infinite Machine”
See Also: Who are Ethereum’s co-founders and where are they now?
See Also: Three of the biggest companies building on Ethereum
See Also: This Month’s Top Ethereum News, Innovation & Development (Video)

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“Iran has announced that it will now allow industrial-scale power plants in the country to operate as Bitcoin miners —- provided they don’t use subsidized fuel.

14 crypto miners in Iran had requested more than 300 megawatt (MW) of power — equivalent to the usage across three provinces in the country.”

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“Dharma wants to do for DeFi what Robinhood did for stock trading: make it stupid easy. For the sector to realize its potential of unseating legacy lending systems (think student loans rather than crypto “arb opps”) a user-friendly gateway is sorely needed.

In addition to earning “interest” on Ethereum stablecoins, Dharma users will now be able to trade any ERC-20 token for another.”

See Also: Ethereum’s DeFi Luminaries Discuss What’s Next

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“Audius has now raised a total of $8.6 million as the platform prepares for prime time, having grown in less than a year to over 250,000 monthly users and 40,000 artists. EDM artists seem to be the site’s burgeoning specialty with notables including RAC, deadmau5, Lido, 3LAU, Zeds Dead, Mr. Carmack and REZZ all signed on.

The Audius P2P network allows artists to be paid in full by their fans, directly and instantly for every stream with the ability to cash out daily or hourly.

Payments will be done with a kind of stablecoin mechanism. From the user’s perspective, they don’t even know this is happening. They just put in a credit card and top up that account and see a balance.”

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“The BoE will ensure its redesigned real-time gross settlement service (RTGS), the payments network used by U.K. financial institutions, can be forwards compatible with CBDCs, such as a digital pound.

The BoE announced Thursday it had chosen Irish tech consultancy firm Accenture for a £150 million ($195 million) contract to redesign the payments network. The new RTGS system is expected to go live in 2022.”

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“Chinese regulators and major banks have been rushing to curb precious metal trading by domestic investors to temper speculation that could send prices explosively higher.

That directive was in response to “violent price volatility” and “the need to control risks.” It’s odd how investors are never “protected” when stock prices soar… but only when gold and silver do.

The reality? It is neither in China’s, nor any other government’s interest, to see gold prices soaring as they likely would if tens of millions of Chinese speculators rushed to bid up the precious metal.”

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“YFII was announced via a Medium post, written by a pseudonymous person named “White Noise.” By issuing more tokens and halving, the YFII creators want to attract even more new capital.

It turns out that YFII runs a vibrant community on WeChat, where they turn all anti-YFII rhetoric into anti-China sentiment. Anger, fueled by nationalistic sentiment, prompted many to join the movement.

Even the project’s poster is a classic pink color, representing a generation of young, angry and extremely nationalistic, Maoist Chinese known as “Little Pink.””

See Also: Blacklisted YFI copycat spurs DeFi soul searching

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“The upgrade will utilize the Ouroboros consensus algorithm – a proof-of-stake (PoS) protocol leveraging cryptography, combinatorics and mathematical game theory.

By implementing Shelley on Cardano’s mainnet, staking pools will now be able to register on the chain visible to token holders, enabling them to delegate to pools.

Cardano will reach consensus equilibrium once 1,000 stake pools have been established, 485 of which are currently live.”

See Also: Coda Protocol Touts User Growth One Year Into Testnet

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“The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) appears to be gearing up for a closer look at Binance coin (BNB) and other tokens on cryptocurrency exchange giant Binance’s eponymous blockchain.

CipherTrace CEO Dave Jevans said regulators ‘demand better transparency,’ while Binance Chief Compliance Officer Samuel Lim said the partnership put Binance in line ‘with global regulatory standards.'”

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“In the report, the BAC clarified China’s legal stance on cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

According to the BAC, China prohibits token funding and trading platforms from engaging in exchanges between the legal tender and virtual currency or tokens. The commission then states that the same law that bans cryptocurrency as money, recognizes it as a virtual commodity.

In summary, the state does not prohibit Bitcoin’s activities as virtual commodities, except for the activities that Bitcoin is engaged in as legal tender.“

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“Blockchain statistics indicate that the total number of ETH addresses in the green is 31.86 million, whereas the total number with a Bitcoin balance at all is 30.83 million. The number of Ethereum ‘hodlers’, or those holding the asset for over a year, has also increased by 10 million over the past twelve months.

The last time Ethereum was priced above $300 was a year ago, and on-chain metrics have improved vastly since then.”

See Also: Curve’s Daily Volume Increases 50x in Two Months

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“We are hurtling toward a hyperconnected economy, and blockchain will provide the way to make it happen.

HFS believes that blockchain has six features that are responsible for its success and future adoption. These features include its ability to drive distributed data sharing, consensus-driven trust cuts, immutability, security ensured by data hashing, smart contracts and the flexibility of being able to use permissioned (managed) or permissionless (open) systems.”

“Acting Comptroller of the Currency Brian Brooks points to existing stablecoin projects as an example for U.S. payments infrastructure.

I’m a believer in decentralization. At the end of the day, I think that stablecoins and other blockchain-based tokenization of dollars are the most resilient model for long-term faster payments. Better than a central bank monopoly on the payments system.”

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“The ultimate decentralized finance (DeFi) money Lego has arrived: Augur Version 2 released July 28.

The Augur v2 protocol contracts have been successfully deployed to the Ethereum Mainnet.

v2 has all the bells and whistles of today’s DeFi market including the Interplanetary File System (IPFS), 0x Mesh, MakerDAO’s dai and Uniswap’s v2 oracle network.

Augur is serverless [and] has integrated the Interplanetary File Systems (IPFS) for decentralized client storage. Augur will launch without an admin key. Augur is one of the first dapps to integrate 0x Mesh, an on-chain relay order book system that can be used for betting. Augur now has a stable betting medium, USD value mimicker dai. And, to round out the stack, Augur will use Uniswap as a price oracle service.”

See Also: Augur: Launch
See Also: Augur: Decentralized

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“Rate to stay in range between 0 and 0.25%.

Purchases of Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities will continue ‘at least at the current pace to sustain smooth market functioning.'”

See Also: Coinbase Now Offers 2% Rewards on Dai Stablecoin Accounts

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“A proposal from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in June said China’s global lead in CBDC development could become a national security threat.

Senior Japanese lawmakers have been calling on the government to step up research since February.”

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“Managers who are used to a fund custodian and fund administrator are starting to experiment with automating technology.

Chitra said some traders are beginning to move away from over-the-counter (OTC) desks in favor of emerging DeFi platforms like automated market maker (AMM) Curve and lending protocol Compound. Why bother with an OTC middleman?

For traditional funds, operation costs are normally less than $100,000 for the first year and $75,000 for every year after that. On Melon, the setup cost is currently $100 for the first year and around $1,000 to $2,000 per year in gas prices after that.

The track records are not long enough to make that attractive for people yet. I think in a few months people will be like, ‘Wow, this fund has consistently been outperforming ether.”

See Also: DeFi Lender Aave Rolls Out Governance Token on Path to Decentralization
See Also: Aave Ascends Market Rankings as Flash Loans Explode

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“The United Arab Emirates is debuting a blockchain-based Know Your Customer, or KYC, platform. The platform has over 120 companies already on-boarded.

The new blockchain platform is designed to unlock digital customer onboarding, instant bank account functions, and verified KYC data sharing between licensing authorities and financial institutions.”

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“Today, there’s exponentially more capital, human capital, infrastructure, and high-quality projects than in 2017. Not to mention the very real specter of inflation that all fiat regimes face going forward. Buckle up!”

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“The collective capitalization of every DeFi project put together is roughly $4.12 billion — less than that of the fifth-ranked crypto asset by market cap, Bitcoin Cash (BCH).

Analyst Ryan Watkins believes the small size of the DeFi sector means it still has significant room to expand, arguing that it could benefit from a “reallocation” of capital from top 30 projects that are ‘useless first-gen cryptocurrencies, ghost town ‘ETH killers’, and dead projects.‘

DeFi doesn’t need new money flowing into crypto to continue its rise. All it needs is a reallocation of capital.”

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“There’s no way right now for you to determine that a tree hasn’t been sold 100 times over.

The Microsoft-backed IWA sustainability group is stepping in with a tokenization standard that aims to bring transparency to carbon accounting.

The group will create a standardized framework for tokenization, starting with voluntary carbon offsetting, and will then expand its focus to regulated markets in the near future.”

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“The crypto-enabled investment app eToro is set to launch its debit card in the United Kingdom as it acquired Marq Millions Ltd, a licensed e-money business holding a principal Visa membership.

The card will reportedly provide an instant “cash-in and cash-out” functionality for the platform’s customers, which should provide an additional avenue for crypto traders on eToro to convert their profits to cash.”

“The European Union, acting on its two-year-old vision for a European blockchain services network (EBSI), has unveiled the minimum technical requirements for nodes participating in its bloc-wide testnet.

Nodes in ESBI version 1.0 must feature at least three computer hosts: a master for core services and two protocol hosts for the BESU and Hyperledger Fabric blockchains. Member states can stage their nodes physically or virtually.”

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“What people are doing in the digital asset space is effectively building within a decade or less an entire economic system based on human incentives and trust … I just find that fascinating.

Tarbert said he is fascinated by decentralized finance (DeFi).

When you think about the idea that at some point a large part of our financial system could very well exist in blockchain format, that’s also revolutionary.”

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“FiCAS AG will [actively] manage a Bitcoin Capital Active ETP’s portfolio of up to 15 altcoins as determined by market capitalization, liquidity and the rules of its host exchange, the SIX Swiss Exchange.

Product managers will trade bitcoin against ETH, XRP, BCH, LTC, BNB, EOS, ADA, XLM, XTZ, TRX and exit to Swiss francs, euros and U.S. dollars.”

See Also: Israel’s Stock Exchange Says It Is Launching a Blockchain Platform for Securities Lending

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“Per local regulations, any encryption technology used in public applications in China must be developed in China and registered with Beijing. Hyperledger, for instance, is reportedly working on a government-approved “refined” version of its fabric with a China-developed encryption protocol for use inside the country.

With that in mind, it’s likely that one of the priorities of the Beijing Certificate Authority’s assessment process will be ensuring that government-approved encryption keys are used.”

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“The milestone comes as the price of ETH increases and Ethereum 2.0 progress give investors confidence about the long-term potential of the decentralized protocol. Futures contracts are the domain of more sophisticated traders, indicating that the smart money is feeling good about where Ethereum may be headed next.

BTC futures open interest passed the $4 billion mark on July 21, but have increased at just half the rate of Ethereum futures interest since recent price jumps began.”

See Also: Soaring DeFi Usage Drives Ethereum Contract Calls to New Record

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“Blockchain firm Mainframe has acquired Sablier, an Ethereum-based protocol for real-time finance. Mainframe plans to integrate Sablier’s money streaming technology into a fixed-rate lending protocol and create tokenized debt markets akin to digital bonds.

Crypto-backed loans often require collateralization rations of 150% or higher, and borrowers don’t fully actualize their spending power. With Mainframe’s novel Guarantor Pools providing protection for collateral vaults, collateralization ratios can be much lower without increasing risk to the system.”

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“The Graph has launched the testnet version of its decentralized infrastructure that will make it easy for anyone to get data from a blockchain.

Founded in 2018, the Graph’s purpose is to give developers the ability to request specific blockchain data, which is typically hard to access. But rather than run a centralized service, it is based on its own blockchain. This enables it to be a decentralized part of the Web 3 stack.”

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“The Fasset Enterprise Platform (FEP) enables hard-asset owners in sustainable infrastructure to tokenize their assets for fundraising purposes.

The system is intended to democratize investments in sustainable infrastructure, including the construction of solar power plants, wind farms and fiber optic networks, by tokenizing (creating digital representations of) those assets to make them accessible to a global pool of investors.

Infrastructure assets are some of the most resilient and long-yielding financial assets, continuing to provide dividends long after the project is complete.”

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“Celsius lends out portions of the collateral borrowers hand over. Because of rehypothecation, which the trader said several crypto lending platforms are engaging in, he is seeing many clients pull out. The lender’s rehypothecation of loan collateral is also why crypto miners don’t take out loans from the firm – they don’t want to end up unable to access crypto they mined.

Anastasia Golovina, an external spokesperson for Celsius at the Ditto PR agency, confirmed the company also makes uncollateralized loans. Celsius has also at times invested deposits in perpetual swaps, futures-like contracts with no expiry date. This activity, one source said, increases Celsius’ vulnerability to brutal sell-offs.”

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“The No More Ransom decryption tool repository, an initiative launched by Europol to combat ransomware attacks, has saved individuals $632 million in ransom demands since 2016.

The initiative’s website lists 100 different tools covering 140 different families of ransomware.”

“We’re happy to announce the release of the eth2 validator launchpad (testnet version). We’re releasing it now so that you can keep track of, and make deposits into, the upcoming Medalla multi-client testnet. But we’ll continue to fine-tune the interface in the run-up to mainnet launch.

The idea behind the launchpad is to make the process of becoming an eth2 validator as easy as possible, without compromising on security and education. The first mission of the launchpad is to help validators educate themselves about all aspects of the process. Above all, we want to make sure validators know what they’re doing, and why they’re doing it.”

See Also: Ethereum as Lifestyle Brand: What Unicorns and Rainbows Are Really About

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“Bitcoin (BTC) price rallied within $50 of the $11,000 mark after managing a strong breakout above the $10,500 level. For the past 6 months analysts have kept a laser sharp focus on the key level and many forecast that Bitcoin price would soar once the multi-year resistance was obliterated.

Bitcoin’s recent surge above the long-term descending trendline from the 2017 all-time high, and today’s move above $10,500 were fueled by high volume spikes.”

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“The total value of cryptocurrency locked in decentralized finance’s (DeFi) oldest project has surpassed $1 billion for the first time. The milestone, which represents how much money has been committed and not earned, demonstrates a rising interest in MakerDao and DeFi projects alike.

Collateral, locked up in the form of ether (ETH) or basic attention token (BAT), is used on Maker’s protocol to undertake lending and generate DAI as debt against collateral.”

See Also: The amount of value locked in DeFi just hit $4 billion
See Also: Self-Service Platform Issues Security Tokens Backed by Real-World Assets

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“BCB Group, which provides payments services in Europe to institutional players such as Bitstamp, Coinbase, Galaxy and Kraken, is launching an instant settlement network for cash and crypto.

BLINC is a real-time gross settlement system. BLINC members no longer need to use conventional payment schemes such as SWIFT and SEPA, which can be slow moving and only operate during office hours.

BLINC is an appealing proposition for Bitstamp as it enables us to offer our clients a frictionless mechanism to fund their trading accounts.”

See Also: FTX to Launch ‘Scalable’ Decentralized Exchange in Weeks
See Also: Bitmain Spin-Off Launches Crypto Exchange to Go After Booming Options Market
See Also: 85% of Italian Banks Are Exchanging Interbank Transfer Data on Corda

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“The first model looked at synthetic CBDCs (sCBDC), which are backed by the liabilities of a central bank but issued with the aid of a private entity, such as a commercial bank.

The private sector should be left to deal with customer due diligence, wallet design and currency distribution, while the central bank would be in charge of regulation and supervision.

The second, “two-tiered,” model puts central banks in charge of the issuance of a CBDC and transaction settlement”

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“Red Date Technology, the Beijing-based crypto company behind the network, is ramping up plans to roll out BSN across the world.

The BSN, which is supported by the Chinese government, aims to provide developers with the tools to create blockchain applications, acting as a blockchain hosting platform for individuals and small businesses.

BSN has already made a significant impact since its initial rollout in April, signing up over 6,000 customers. Most of its users are government organizations, businesses, and people based in China, who are using it for tasks such as managing supply chains and government documents.”

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“Twitch is giving subscribers a 10% discount if they pay using cryptocurrencies. Users can pay in bitcoin, ether, bitcoin cash or litecoin.

Twitch had around 3.8 million broadcasters in Q1 2020 and around 1.44 million concurrent users as of March 2020. The company uses U.S.-based BitPay to process its crypto payments.”

See Also: Leading Austrian Telecom Provider Adds Cryptocurrencies to Its Cashless Payment Network

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“A second private sale of the Polkadot token (DOT) netted the Web3 Foundation and Parity Technologies some 3,982.07 bitcoin (BTC) worth an estimated $43.3 million at press time.

The token offering was not available in certain jurisdictions such as the United States, according to the sale’s website. DOTs were listed for $125 per token, according to Reddit users claiming to be involved in the sale.

Polkadot raised $145 million in 2017, selling 50% of the network’s then 10 million DOTs.”

See Also: Polkadot Passes Proposal to Make DOTs ‘More Ergonomic’

“You only need to be online >50% of the time to be profitable. This means that validators need not go to extreme lengths with backup clients or redundant internet connections as the repercussions of being offline are not so severe.

You’re less likely to suffer large penalties. Proportional slashings mean that a staking provider stands to lose a lot more ETH than an individual running their own validator if they experience a bug or a hack that causes the validators under their control to fail collectively.

You retain control over your ability to exit. If you choose to use a staking provider, you will have to hand over control of the signing key.

Staking hardware is affordable and easy to use. You should be able to run a validator on an old phone or raspberry Pi ($100) by the time eth2 launches.”

See Also: How To: Running an Eth 2 Validator (Recommended Read!)
See Also: DappNode.io

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“While Bitcoiners were left using centralized crypto banks for their financial needs, projects like MakerDAO, Compound, etc. were busy building transparent, open, and non-custodial solutions for Ethereum folks, creating everything from a censorship-resistant stablecoin to a transparent money-market.

But why weren’t these type of applications being built on Bitcoin? Part of this may stem from the challenges of building on Bitcoin. Bitcoin script is a simple, primitive, and secure stack-based language. It is not Turing complete and has no concept of state.

Another challenge stems from the lack of ecosystem for building financial applications on top of Bitcoin. Without a MetaMask or Web3 ecosystem, the gateway to building on Bitcoin and DeFi is much more difficult.

You need to know the participants’ Bitcoin address before entering into an agreement. You also can’t create a liquidity pool on Bitcoin. That means no AMM’s, and liquidity providers need to be online 24/7 to allow for participants to interact with any type of Bitcoin DeFi.”

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See Also: Synthetix for Beginners
See Also: How to speculate on DeFi tokens with binary options

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“ConsenSys announced that the SKALE Network’s SKALE token (SKL) will be available for purchase through a 3-day Dutch auction on the platform on August 17th, 2020.

The SKALE token supports the highly anticipated SKALE Network, an open source elastic blockchain network designed specifically for scaling Ethereum.

Activate, by ConsenSys Codefi, is the first platform designed to launch decentralized networks and allow customers to purchase, manage, and use their tokens in one application. The SKALE Network is the first project to launch with Activate, which has since accepted registrations to participate. For users verified on the platform, registrations for the auction are now open.

Participants will be required by the protocol to delegate at least 50% of their purchased tokens for 90 days before being able to transfer them outside the network. This creates a measurable incentive mechanism aimed at minimizing speculative behavior from participants, while maximizing active contribution to the network.”

See Also: Token Launch

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“Chainlink (LINK) is integrating with CenterPrime to bring a foreign exchange, or FX, rate data feed from the Korean banks to the DeFi space.

The daily trading volume in the forex market is $6.6 trillion, it is over 100-times that of the daily cryptocurrency trading volume. If the DeFi space manages to capture even a small portion of this value, this could translate into a positive momentum for the crypto space.

For the first time in history, applications will be able to access decentralized foreign exchange rates compiled by the best banks in Korea.”

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“Tron representatives completely declined to learn any new information from our source. This behavior seems in line with a company trying to get out of a public promise.

It is unclear how Tron intended to honor its $1 million promise without a proper tips line and while actively ignoring credible information that it claimed to want. This behavior is more in line with an empty attention grab than a genuine effort to bring perpetrators to justice.”

“Hammond said that while the letter might provide cover for smaller banks, major ones would need more reassurance before they’d be willing to enter the space. The way banks are likely to dip their toes in is by going the sub-custody route, he said, by partnering with small specialist organizations.

I don’t expect you will see much change in the next three to four months, but then we might see some acceleration thereafter.

Now that this activity is going to be regulated, I expect the cheapest solution for bigger banks is to have some kind of semi-derisked trial of this is to use someone as a sub-custodian.”

See Also: Crypto’s $35T Moment Could Come From Analog-World Stock Listings

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“Bitcoin may be the original, but it’s living in an Ethereum world. Nearly $180 million in Bitcoin is now locked on the Ethereum blockchain among formats like Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), Synthetix’s sBTC, and the Ren Project’s renBTC.

Less than $10 million is currently locked in Bitcoin’s Lightning Network.

The rapid growth since the end of June, when Ethereum-locked BTC was just crossing the $100 million threshold, reveals how dominant Ethereum is becoming in the world of decentralized finance, as DeFi use cases and yield farmers hunting for more liquidity to increase their gains drive demand.”

See Also: Ether Leaves Bitcoin Behind With 2020 Gain of Over 100%
See Also: Analyst: Token Sale Boom Suggests Major Bull Run Has Already Started

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“Bitcoin is a form of “money” covered under the Washington, D.C., Money Transmitters Act, a federal court said Friday.

Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell wrote that money ‘commonly means a medium of exchange, method of payment, or store of value. Bitcoin is these things.'”

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“Major Japanese financial services company SBI Holdings now owns a 10% stake in the digital security offering platform Boostry. 54% of the platform is owned by Nomura Holdings.

The agreement between Nomura and SBI comes as the security token sector has shown consistent growth. Rivals are quickly moving to enter the space, with Watchdog Capital announcing a new U.S.-based securities offering platform on July 23.”

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“Ant Group, which runs Alibaba’s Alipay mobile payments platform, this week announced its public listing will occur in Shanghai and Hong Kong but not New York. This is a big deal. U.S.-based investors will now be denied access to this monster primary share offering.

Excluding the company from SEC oversight is consistent with China’s resistance to allowing the U.S. any gatekeeping capacity over future blockchain-based payments and value exchange systems.

Until the digital assets era, the U.S. enjoyed uniquely influential powers over the exchange of analog money and property around the world. This was on account of the dollar’s reserve status, which meant the currency settlement in any international exchange almost always flowed through a U.S.-regulated bank. China’s blockchain-integrated digital payments system could bring an end to that era.”

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“José Delbo, a comic book artist who has drawn for both DC and Marvel, kicks off a week-long exhibition today (July 23) in the Ethereum-based virtual reality world, Decentraland.

The artist, who started his career at the age of 16, is known for drawing Wonder Woman for DC Comics and Transformers for Marvel. He is releasing a number of digital images in the VR world for viewing and sale at the in-game MakersPlace gallery, with proof of ownership recorded using blockchain technology.“

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“Delta Exchange, a crypto derivatives platform, announced the launch of an interest rate swap contract for DAI.

The contract will allow its purchasers to enter interest swaps on the Dai Savings Rate, which the exchange sees as a way for Maker (MKR) borrowers to fix their stability fee interest payments, which are routed into the Savings Rate as earnings for DAI holders.”

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“Opera’s web browser is slowly amassing a following among those advocating for a decentralized internet, with 170,000 users now engaging with its built-in Ethereum, Tron and Bitcoin wallets every month.

While the firm would not provide a breakdown of the numbers by blockchain, Charles Hamel, head of crypto at Opera, said Ethereum is ‘by far the most popular.‘”

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“According to rumors circulating in Polkadot’s community chats, the proposed offering will be structured as a Dutch auction starting at a price of $120. After 72 hours, the asking price will be decreased as per the rules of a Dutch auction.

Further rumored details suggest that only Bitcoin (BTC) will be accepted as currency. A vesting period of five months will be reportedly required as well.

If the rumors are true, this would be the second token sale for DOTs. The first was only offered to private investors at the inception of the project.”

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“The son of former Renault and Nissan head and fugitive Carlos Ghosn used Coinbase to pay two men $600,000 in bitcoin to get his father out of Japan last December.

U.S. prosecutors said Wednesday that Anthony Ghosn sent 63 bitcoin to Michael and Peter Taylor. Coinbase gave evidence to Japanese investigators this week.

Michael Taylor, a former green beret, and Peter Taylor are currently being held by U.S. authorities on the request of Japan, which is trying to extradite them.”

“Following the excellent stability of Altona and based on conversations with eth2 client teams, Medalla – the next multi-client testnet [will launch] August 4th, 2020, 1pm UTC!

This is a major step up from Altona in the sense that Medalla is a testnet built for and maintained by the community. The multi-client testnets prior to Medalla were considered “devnets”, run primarily by client teams.

Medalla will start with no fewer than 16,384 validators (524,288 ETH). We’ll have no fewer than four clients fully running at genesis – lighthouse, nimbus, prysm, and teku. In addition, I fully expect lodestar to be on net in some capacity at the start, and we might even have another surprise client join the mix.

Three attacknets were launched this week, each with a $5k bounty to bring it down. Following the beta-0 attacknets, we’ll scale up the size and complexity of attacknets as well as add more complex challenges with larger bounties.

Exciting progress on the eth1+eth2 merger.”

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“Inflation-adjusted yields on all U.S. treasury bonds are now negative as the Fed is widely believed to be propping up markets.

According to statistics published by the U.S Treasury, real yields on even the longest-term bonds fell below zero since June 2020. Currently, annualized real yields for bonds reach as low as -1.13% for five year bonds, while 30 year bonds net -0.32%.“

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“Wozniak was one of 18 plaintiffs that filed the lawsuit on Tuesday, which seeks punitive damages, a trial by jury and demands YouTube remove all bitcoin giveaway scams and promotions using Wozniak’s name and likeness.

For months now, Defendant YOUTUBE has been unapologetically hosting, promoting, and directly profiting from similar scams. YOUTUBE and GOOGLE took the further step of promoting and profiting from these scams by providing paid advertising that targeted users who were most likely to be harmed.

Defendants’ failure to warn was willful, malicious, oppressive, fraudulent, and/or in reckless disregard of the Plaintiffs’ rights.”

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“Crypto was brought up as one of many possible tools to maintain U.S. economic supremacy. This could be interpreted as crypto’s increasing acceptance as a mainstream idea.

Former CFTC Chairman Christopher Giancarlo called for the U.S. to begin conducting pilot programs to test out different facets of a tokenized dollar.

We have to assume that as the nature of finance changes, the nature of currencies change, we have to stay at the leading edge of that.”

See Also: US House Passes Two Blockchain Amendments in Annual Defense Budget Bill
See Also: World Stablecoin Association Launches in Switzerland

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“Augur v2 is a new universe. Augur v2 will allow for a manual migration of Augur v1 REP tokens “REP” to Augur v2 REP tokens “REPv2”. Upon Augur v2’s deployment, you will be able to migrate your REP to REPv2 within the Augur Client.

There is no immediate requirement to migrate REP to the new REPv2 upon deployment. If you wish to participate as a reporter in the Augur v2 universe, you will need REPv2.

Augur v2 will be deployed on Tuesday, July 28th, 2020.”

See Also: DeFi protocol Curve locks in more than $300 million on YFI hype

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“The Alibaba-affiliate company made the claim in a release Thursday that announced Ant Blockchain was rebranding to AntChain. An Ant spokesperson [stated] these were mostly transaction records, as well as copyright and property ownership certificates.

The company now claims to be the largest operating blockchain in China. Chinese shipping giant Cosco said it was trialing Ant Blockchain earlier this month.”

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“Everything related to cryptography in Russia falls under the supervision of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, which is the successor to the KGB. The FSB has a certification process for blockchain companies, which might cost over $100,000 and take more than a year.

If the blockchain solution is open source, it’s certified version won’t be. Russian-made systems might end up isolated from the global market due to distrust of Russian government cryptography standards.

Russian enterprise blockchain projects working on getting certified include Masterchain, Waves and Bitfury’s Exonum.”

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“Shapeshift has launched a mobile trading app for iOS and android users to buy and sell digital assets such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) without trusting their private keys to a 3rd party.

As traditional financial systems become increasingly tenuous, Bitcoin offers refuge and empowerment. We’re here to make it easy.

Our new app gives you the power to trade with competitive rates & buy Bitcoin in 120+ countries, all while enjoying self-custody of your crypto.”

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“Unstoppable said domain registrars will utilize Gemini’s custody services when purchasing .crypto addresses for their clients through its service.

The blockchain domains are based on non-fungible tokens (NFTs) built on top of the Ethereum network and provide access to the decentralized web.”

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“Led by Wyoming blockchain advocate Caitlin Long, the crypto-friendly bank announced its plans to issue Avit, a programmable digital asset that can only be issued by banks and will be treated as a cash equivalent.

With Blockstream as the bank’s technology partner, Long said in an interview that ‘one could presume that the Bitcoin blockchain will be involved,’ but could not comment further.

If Avanti’s charter application is approved in October, the bank will be the only financial institution capable of issuing Avit. The currency would be 100% backed by a reserve of liquid traditional U.S. assets.”

See Also: SEC Registered Broker-Dealer Is Launching a Security Token Platform

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“Bitcoin options traders have completely deserted Bakkt, with its volume and open interest flatlining at $0 since June 15.

92% of bitcoin options trading volume is controlled by Panama-based exchange Deribit, which reported $101 million in volume Tuesday.”

“Senior Deputy Comptroller and Senior Counsel Jonathan Gould wrote that any national bank can hold onto the unique cryptographic keys for a cryptocurrency wallet, clearing the way for national banks to hold digital assets for their clients.

The letter marks a major development for the crypto industry. Previously, custody was the province of specialist firms, such as Coinbase, which typically needed a state license.

Wednesday’s letter also ‘reaffirms the OCC’s position that national banks may provide permissible banking services to any lawful business they choose, including cryptocurrency businesses.’

The OCC is currently headed up by Brian Brooks, a former Coinbase exec who joined the regulator earlier this year.”

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“A US Senate hearing today will see a panel advocate the need for the US to build its own US cryptocurrency in light of China’s advancement in the area.

No doubt, there is growing bipartisan interest in a dollar-based CBDC and that is indeed reflected in the recent series of Congressional hearings.”

See Also: CFTC Seeks Industry Advice on Blockchain Applications
See Also: Tether Jumps to $10 Billion Market Capitalization

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“Deutsche Telekom is one of Germany’s leading companies, employing over 200,000 people and has a market capitalization of $80 billion. The fact that one of its subsidiaries is to become a provider of decentralized data feeds that are rewarded in cryptocurrency is significant.

By providing real-world data to the Chainlink network, T-Systems MMS engages in a so-called ‘generalized mining’, where it provides an IT service to a blockchain network while getting paid in digital assets for reliably doing so.

As there is a significant value locked in DeFi, such IT services play an important role in the overall Ethereum ecosystem.”

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“So what’s so great about YFI that traders are pouring over their crypto to get it?

The token can only be earned by using the yEarn platform. It has a total supply of 30,000 which will be distributed to stakers in the platform’s liquidity pools. There is no separate stash for investors in the project, and it wasn’t sold in an “initial dex offering” like many other DeFi tokens.

As if 1,000% APY wasn’t exciting enough, YFI’s first governance poll has also intrigued yield farmers. Proposal 0 decides whether the YFI supply should be capped at 30,000 in perpetuity or if the protocol should retain the ability to mint additional YFI tokens in the future as new pools come into play.

The premise of a truly community-owned yield farming token is as exciting as it is scary. This experiment around truly decentralized governance is one that has us at the edge of our seats.”

See Also: How To: Farm YFI with Curve’s Y-Pool (Video)

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“With the NBA’s concerns apparently addressed and the sale closed out, Dinwiddie’s plan hit a different obstacle: investor interest.

Dinwiddie’s issuer SD26 LLC sold just 9 of the 90 available tokenized contract shares to 8 total investors as of Wednesday. With shares priced at $150,000, just $1,350,000 (or one-tenth of the target $13.5 million sale) were sold.

Dinwiddie, who has previously tested positive for the coronavirus, will not be there for the Nets’ final push. He has opted out of the remainder of the NBA season.”

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“Three “key values” will now steer Visa’s digital currency playbook: maintaining robust data protection standards; remaining network and currency agnostic; and partnering with projects that align with the payments firm’s existing expertise.

Visa said it is also working directly with policymakers and non-governmental organizations to “help shape the dialogue” around digital currencies, including the evolution of central bank digital currency.”

See Also: Australian Payment Card Company to Trial Micropayments Using Hedera Hashgraph

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“The blockchain and smart contracts you interact with may be decentralized, but the cloud services often used to access them aren’t. Dfinity’s Internet Computer is stepping up to set that straight.

The Internet Computer rewards data centres based on the number of computer nodes they run, providing a platform on which to scale. The result is a giant blockchain computer running on the public internet, which provides performance and capacity, but also enhanced security.

Dfinity recently opened up the Internet Computer to third party developers with its “Tungsten” release. The final public release is scheduled for later in the year.”

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“Australian crypto business owners, represented by Sydney-based law firm JPB Liberty, allege they were harmed by the banning of their advertisements and are seeking damages amounting to A$872 million (US$600 million).

That amount could rise to A$300 billion in total as more litigants join the class action.”

See Also: YouTube: We’re Not Liable for Crypto Scams

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“After initiating the bill back in 2018, Russian authorities have finally agreed to provide a legal status to cryptocurrencies. The bill “On Digital Financial Assets,” or DFA, is expected to be officially adopted in Russia on Jan. 1, 2021.

The bill provides a legal definition to digital assets and legitimizes cryptocurrency trading in Russia. However, the bill prohibits the use of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin as a payment method.

The Bank of Russia, will reportedly become officially authorized to oversee the activity involving issuance of digital currencies in the country.”

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“The legal system should enhance protections over new types of ownership rights such as digital currencies, online virtual assets and data.

The guideline comes at a time when there are rising numbers of legal disputes in China over the ownership of digital assets. Previously there have been legal decisions made by provincial and municipal courts in China in which digital currencies like bitcoin were treated as virtual properties.”

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“The South Korean government has proposed obliging crypto investors to pay more than a fifth of their profits to the state.

The new tax rule will also apply to non-residents and foreign companies who trade on Korean exchanges.“

“The stage is almost set for full-scale testing of Ethereum 2.0. The final public testnet is to launch on August 4.

Developers have previously said that the testnets should run for at least three months—which means the launch of the Ethereum 2.0. mainnet could be as early as November 4.

[Danny Ryan] added that “Launchpad”—the test educational deposit interface aimed at hobbyists—would be included in the testnet, and that further details would be made public in a couple of days.”

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“Global banks including Credit Suisse, HSBC, Julius Baer, and UBS are now screening their clients in Hong Kong on potential ties to the city’s pro-democracy movement.

The records include comments made by clients and their associates in public and media, as well as recent social media posts, the report notes. The banks are reportedly looking to apply major service limitations to accounts associated with so-called “politically exposed persons.”

The designation, called politically exposed persons, can make it more difficult or altogether prevent people from accessing banking services.

The latest report clearly demonstrates the apparent flaws in the traditional banking system when it comes to protecting freedom and democracy.”

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“A blockchain infrastructure backed by the Chinese government will open its services to decentralized applications (dapp) developers on a global scale on August 10.

The move is part of China’s plan to be the one and only infrastructure provider for blockchain firms across the world.

The global version of Blockchain-Based Services Network (BSN) has integrated its data centers with six major decentralized blockchains: Tezos, NEO, Nervos, Cosmos’ IRISnet, Ethereum and EOS.

The public chains could benefit from BSN’s cheap services, interoperability with other Chinese enterprise blockchains and access to financial data from China UnionPay.

The move is a milestone as BSN is the first state-backed blockchain infrastructure that is reaching developer communities outside China by integrating with major public chains.”

See Also: Kazakhstan Needs National Crypto to Fight Corruption, Says Local Official

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“China’s consortium was founded to promote the advance of blockchain technology in the country. Now it is splitting into two independent entities: BSN-Chain and BSN-International. The latter will be headed by one of the original members of BSN that happens to be a private company — Red Date.

This rift was caused by the ‘pushback from its core, state-owned members on the public chain integrations‘. The consortium is led by State Information Center, the China Mobile Communication Corporation and China Union Pay — all state-controlled entities.

This development indicates that despite chairman Xi’s enthusiasm towards blockchain technology, local elites remain uneasy about public blockchain networks that cannot be easily censored or controlled.”

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“New data from Messari shows that Ethereum has just surpassed Bitcoin as the network that settles the most value per day. This means that the dollar value on the transactions of both Ether (ETH) and its tokens is now higher than that of Bitcoin.

While the DeFi sector has been gaining popularity, stablecoin transactions have been responsible for most of this volume, having settled over $508 billion in transactions over the course of 2020. This figure is nearly double the $253 billion settled in 2019.”

See Also: July’s Decentralized Exchange Volumes Have Already Topped June’s Record, Reaching $1.6B

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“Axie Infinity, an Ethereum-based, Pokémon-inspired game that lets players collect and battle cute creatures, has now added something potentially even more compelling than adorable beasts to collect in the game: real gold.

The Ethereum-based game’s developers have partnered with Digix to introduce special Axie-DGX tokens to the game, which can be collected and redeemed for Digix’s native, gold-backed DGX token (one DGX is equivalent to one gram of gold).

This initiative elevates the play-to-earn narrative to new heights.”

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“On July 19, the Philippine Bureau of the Treasury along with the UnionBank and Philippine Digital Asset Exchange launched a blockchain-enabled mobile application for distributing government-issued treasury bonds.

The mobile application dubbed Bonds.PH is particularly aimed at providing easy investment options to the unbanked population of the country. The application will allow national citizens to easily invest in retail treasury bonds for as little as 5,000 Philippine pesos (~$100).”

See Also: China Considers Implementing Blockchain Tech in Equity Trading Centers

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“The Polkadot blockchain is now fully decentralized and permissionless after a decision passed by community governance removed the admin rights enjoyed by the Web3 Foundation.

Polkadot was live since late May, but it began its life as a permissioned “proof-of-authority” network.”

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“CipherTrace, a blockchain analytics software firm, has deployed a predictive risk-scoring system that the company says provides real-time alerts on suspect crypto transactions for its exchange, investor and investigator clients. The score could warn exchanges of incoming plunder.

The tool will assign risk based on the on-chain histories of transacted funds. Inbound cryptos with unseemly ties (from sanctioned countries or a fraud campaign, for example) would get a “high risk” score under the system.”

See Also: Crypto Exchange Group Eyes ‘Bulletin Board’ System for FATF Compliance
See Also: CoolBitX and Elliptic Team Up to Offer Crypto Firms Compliance Tools

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“The Ethereum-powered platform allows users to monetize and build a virtual world using non-fungible tokens (NFTs), or crypto collectibles.

The platform’s native tokens, LAND and MANA, are now supported by the Samsung Blockchain Wallet App. LAND tokens represent parcels of virtual real estate.”

“The new Paxos brokerage, an API-based solution for making crypto services easy for businesses to roll out, allows cryptocurrency buying, selling, holding and sending capabilities – while handling all regulatory compliance aspects. Paxos, which holds a New York state trust charter, is a qualified custodian, legally permitted to hold gold and digital assets such as bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) on institutional investors’ behalf.

The offering would make PayPal one of the most prominent mainstream companies to offer cryptocurrency purchases, joining fellow publicly-traded payments provider Square and unicorn stock brokerage Robinhood.

A formal announcement of the PayPal relationship could come as soon as this week, one source said.”

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“The Ethereum Foundation launched two Ethereum 2.0 ‘attack networks’ for hackers to break in exchange for a bug bounty.

The networks are designed to give security researchers a sandbox environment where they can try to break Ethereum 2.0’s networks by exploiting potential issues in the clients. Currently, there are two “beta-0” attack networks based on the Lighthouse and Prysm clients.“

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“The French central bank will start working with each of the eight players “over the coming months”, aiming to explore “new methods of exchanging financial instruments”. Additionally, the pilot projects will try to establish how CBDCs can be distributed and used for cross-border payments.

Notedly, Banque de France seems to be researching wholesale rather than retail uses for a digital euro, meaning that the CBDC be designed for “interbank regulations”, not consumer purposes.

The list of approved participants includes mainstream juggernauts like Accenture, HSBC, and Societe Generale, as well as smaller crypto-focused players like Seba Bank and LiquidShare.”

See Also: Bank of Japan Forms New Team to Explore Central Bank Digital Currency
See Also: Japanese Financial Giant MUFG to Launch Digital Currency in 2020

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“The firm is building what he claimed would become one of the most-secure crypto custody solutions on the market. As many as 20 institutions have expressed interest in the custodial solution.

Although it will be based in the U.K., it will be open to clients from around the world. As well as assets such as bitcoin, SC Ventures is looking at also making the solution suitable for security tokens.

If digital assets more broadly are here to stay as an asset class, then you will need the infrastructure to keep them safe.”

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“Mastercard said it was simplifying access to its Accelerate program for crypto card issuers, allowing applicants to be onboarded as partners “in a matter of weeks.”

The cryptocurrency market continues to mature, and Mastercard is driving it forward, creating safe and secure experiences for consumers and businesses in today’s digital economy.

Wirex has become the first native cryptocurrency platform to be granted a Mastercard principal membership, which will allow it to directly issue crypto payment cards.”

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“The latest DeFi yield farming mania involves yEarn, a yield aggregating platform developed by just one man, Andre Cronje. Despite his warnings that the platform’s token, YFI, is worthless and “won’t be on Uniswap,” it was in fact listed on Uniswap. A price run for more than 4,000% in a single day kicked off as a consequence. The valuation for the token began at about $30 dollars, and it reached an all-time high of $2,374 the next day.

The YFI token can be earned by simply providing liquidity to a family of DeFi platforms developed primarily by Cronje, where yEarn.finance is the flagship product. The platform automates the process of finding the highest yield among other DeFi platforms.“

See Also: Synthetix Takes Mimetic Trading Platform Out of Stealth Mode

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“Ant Group has kickstarted the process of a concurrent initial public offering (IPO) on both the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock exchanges. The fintech giant said that a dual listing would allow it to fund further domestic and global expansion as well as invest more in technology and innovation.

JPMorgan and Bank of America analysts now value the company at well over $200 billion. If that valuation holds, Ant Group’s offering would make the company one of the most highly valued in the world and, arguably, the largest firm operating in the blockchain space.”

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“What this means is, of the 615 current Ethereum Classic nodes listed by ETC Nodes, 425 won’t update in the future as developers make changes via hard forks.

We explored various options to work with different players from ETC but in the end we felt we want to focus on the thing we know and that is Ethereum.

In addition, it has concerns about that blockchain’s immutability. Phoenix introduced new internal changes to the tokenomics of the blockchain network, called OP-CODEs. Changing those tokennomics necessarily broke some smart contracts thereby harming the network’s image as the “immutable” version of Ethereum.

If the original good reason that caused the disruptions and splits of ETH and ETC is no longer valid, then I think for a healthy ecosystem of Ethereum, we should follow the majority consensus of ETH, or support a merge of ETH and ETC.”

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“HM Treasury said Monday it was looking to clamp down on “misleading and inadequate promotions” that endangered retail investors.

The proposals call for companies to pass through a “regulatory gateway” before being approved to promote cryptocurrency products. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) would become the body responsible for overseeing digital asset promotions.”

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“A new version of Russia’s major draft bill on cryptocurrency regulation does not include criminal offense codes as lawmakers are expected to hold the bill’s second reading tomorrow.

Each bill is subject to three readings as it passes the development from draft to adoption. The proposed legislation does not intend to introduce criminal liability such as fines and prison terms for illegal use of crypto in Russia.”