“Ethereum 2.0’s “final” and “official” public testnet, Medalla, is now live.
Over 20,000 validators have joined the network with some 650,000 [testnet] ether (ETH) staked. Medalla was joined by five clients including Prysmatic Labs’ Prysm, ChainSafe’s Lodestar, PegaSys’ Teku, Status’ Nimbus and Sigma Prime’s Lighthouse.
Medalla is the final testnet before the launch of the Eth 2.0 network, which is tentatively expected by year’s end.”
See Also: Medalla Beacon Chain Explorer
“The Fed is ‘preparing to effectively abandon its strategy of pre-emptively lifting interest rates to head off higher inflation.’ The shift signals an explicit willingness by the central bank to tolerate higher inflation.
The Fed’s extra loosening of monetary policy could help support prices for bitcoin, which many cryptocurrency investors speculate could serve as an effective hedge against inflation, similar to gold.
As more investors look to ‘digital gold’ as an inflation hedge in an increasingly digitized world amidst unprecedented government money printing, we know that it won’t take much of an institutional allocation until $50,000 bitcoin is back on the table.
Bank of America analysts wrote Monday in a report that it’s becoming a popular trade to bet against the dollar, since investors are ‘worried about the long-term impact of the rapid accumulation of U.S. debt for the U.S. dollar’s reserve-currency status.’ The dollar index fell 4% in July.”
See Also: Stocks Crash Can Stop $11.3K Bitcoin Price ‘In Its Tracks’ — Report
“CME’s open interest has surged 127% over the past 2.5 weeks alongside bitcoin’s quick rise from $9,100 to $11,100. ‘The rise in open interest represents an accumulation of long positions by institutional traders.’
The rise in open interest in crypto derivatives suggests investors are looking for alpha – the best returns – in alternative markets as equities look overbought and bond yields move into negative territory.
The U.S. 10-year Treasury note is offering a yield of 0.54% at press time with the real or inflation-adjusted bill at a record low of -1%. Similar bonds in Germany, Japan and Switzerland are offering negative yields.”
See Also: Decentralized Exchange dYdX Debuts Ether Perpetual Swaps
“Four lawmakers wrote a letter to the Internal Revenue Service Wednesday, asking the U.S. tax agency to ensure stakers don’t face tax liabilities for receiving block rewards before they sell their new tokens.
It’s misleading to say that validators get paid to create blocks and to maintain the network.
Sutherland said the appropriate approach to taxing staking rewards could be to treat it like new property. New property isn’t taxed as income right away, he said, but taxed when it’s sold.”
“Google is partnering with FDIC-backed banks to allow customers to sign up for and manage accounts directly through the platform. Google will provide the interface layer and budgeting tools for the accounts, which will still be housed and operated by the partner institutions.
Of course, given all of the privacy red flags surrounding “big tech,” a Google-tapped bank account might be the last thing some users want in their lives.”
“MPP effectively splits payments into smaller pieces so they’re easier to send across the network, making payments more reliable. C-lightning has made changes to make it easier for watchtowers to hitch up to c-lightning.
C-lightning has laid the groundwork for a tool to track “all” of a user’s coin movements. This could come in handy for anyone worried about tracking their Lightning coins come tax season.“
“Online wallets through services such as Yandex, WebMoney, PayPal, and Kiwi maintain approximately 10 million users who use the accounts anonymously by topping them up with cash.
These measures will initially have no effect on the Blockchain space. As Russia tightens its anti-money laundering procedures, however, the existing ban may eventually be applied to virtual currencies as well.“
See Also: Russia’s Biggest Bank Considers Launching Its Own Stablecoin
“The platform seeks a move away from online-policing, conformity, and political correctness on the internet.
Social media like Twitter is increasingly speech-policed, status-game-focused, and less creative. Anonymous discussion boards are rollicking and generative but have obvious downsides. My experiment: Register members and charge modest $2/mo to keep out trolls, help moderation.
Unlike completely anonymous forums like 4chan, users will be assigned a unique alphanumeric ID. This will help to ban users for any untoward reason.
Your view on the world is limited by the set of people you have chosen to follow, as well as how a platform’s algorithm has chosen to present their messages. The result is a conversation that is often performative and susceptible to groupthink and tribalism.
But sites like 4chan, he stated, change these interactions. Their anonymous nature fosters discussion independent of follower counts, likes or retweets, while the site’s algorithm does not push certain expressions or narratives for individual users. One sees what everyone else does.”
See Also: Club P.
“As of now, Alibaba’s financial subsidiary Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat Pay control a majority of the digital payments across China while banks are left far behind in the competition.
They [PBoC] want a more level playing field for the banks. Retail payments are so dominated by Alibaba and Tencent while banks are less active in electronic payments.”
“During an Aug. 4 panel on legal compliance within the cryptocurrency industry, major figures noted recent shifts in public perception of the industry, pointing to arrests within weeks of the Twitter hack as an example of how effective blockchain analytics can be for solving crime.
It’s quite amazing how different this is from what we’d see in the traditional fiat world. You’d never have this resolved so quickly.”
“The card will work at millions of stores in Mexico by converting crypto funds to pesos using the Tauros mobile app. It will also be capable of conducting online transactions.
The fact that we are giving the opportunity for people to earn DashBack rewards with their card will also give a boost to the crypto ecosystem in Mexico as now anyone can use their pesos, and Hodl Dash.”
The Disrupt 