“Bitcoin ended Thursday down 13%, posting its largest daily drop since the market crash of March 2020.
The leading cryptocurrency’s drop is “probably just a dip,” according to Techemy Capital trader Josh Olszewicz, who is not expecting a prolonged correction. Bloomberg analyst Mike McGlone agreed, [stating] he could see bitcoin ‘probing for support and resistance within a mostly $30,000 to $40,000 range for awhile until embarking on the next leg of the stair-step rally.'”
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“The Treasury Secretary nominee said that while cryptocurrencies can be used to finance terrorism and other illicit activities, they also have the potential to “improve the efficiency of the financial system”.
I think we need to look closely at how to encourage their use for legitimate activities while curtailing their use for malign and illegal activities. If confirmed, I intend to work closely with the Federal Reserve Board and the other federal banking and securities regulators on how to implement an effective regulatory framework for these and other fintech innovations.”
“According to The Wall Street Journal, President Biden is expected to nominate Michael Barr to serve as Comptroller of the Currency. Like his predecessor, Barr would bring cryptocurrency experience.
In addition to working on Dodd-Frank banking reforms in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, when he was Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions at the Treasury, Barr was named an advisor to Ripple Labs in 2015.
Our global payments system is badly outdated. I think innovation in payments can help make the financial system safer, reduce cost, and improve access and efficiency for consumers and businesses alike.”
See Also: Chris Brummer Said to Be Biden’s CFTC Chair, Crypto-Friendly Tarbert Steps Down
“The dollar amount of ETH deposited into the Eth2 contract stands at approximately $3.75 billion, or 2.5% of Ethereum’s total market cap, with 4,864 unique depositor addresses. [Notably], more ETH is now being staked by individual contributors than single addresses with large balances, which had dominated flows to the Eth2 contract throughout December.
Ryan reports that testing is continuing on the newly-implemented beacon chain, which will serve as the bridge by which ETH1 will communicate with ETH2. He predicts that the first half of the year will be dedicated to research and development of user clients, as upgrade specifications are “vetted and refined.”
Next up is the implementation of shard chains, also known as phase 1 of the ETH2 rollout, which is expected to take place in the latter half of 2021. The sharding of Ethereum will allow the network’s load to be spread across 64 chains, increasing its transaction capacity exponentially and thus ability to scale.
Although Ethereum’s current L1 coupled with L2 scalability techniques will help massively in the next 12 months… Ethereum will continue to see demand outstrip supply as global adoption continues.”
“With the 3.0 release, Kyber will transition to become a network of specialized liquidity pools. For example, Kyber 3.0 will allow very high amplification factors for pairs between different wrappers of the same asset, similar to Curve. The team says this would allow a 100-fold improvement to slippage. Other, less stable pairs like Bitcoin (BTC) to Ether (ETH), would be able to benefit from a five-to-ten-fold improvement in capital efficiency.
The optimization is achieved by implementing dynamic market makers, or DMMs. This iteration on the original concept allows fine-tuned adjustments to the key parameters of a liquidity pool. Creators will be able to customize the pool’s relative weights of each asset — similar to Balancer — and set a custom amplification factor to reduce slippage.
Trading fees will be adjusted dynamically as well: During periods of high volume, fees will be increased, and conversely they will be decreased during lower volume periods. Such a mechanism helps mitigate some of the damage from impermanent loss.
The new architecture is also designed to support future cross-chain and layer-two scaling solutions. The token economics of KNC will also be overhauled to bring it in line with other governance tokens.
The upgrade will be rolled out in two phases, called Katana and Kaizen.”
“Wisely is a blockchain-based communications platform-as-a-service aimed to offer more private and secure messaging.
The edge-to-edge encrypted platform is built on Microsoft Azure as a global network for secure communications including SMS, email and chat messages. Businesses can access the network via a single application programming interface (API) offering multi-channel capabilities.”
“Deposits from digital currency customers now make up nearly 16% of total deposits at New York’s Signature Bank. Signature’s $10 billion in deposits from crypto businesses is now double that of rival Silvergate.
Signature banks the “top five crypto exchanges,” DePaolo said, and is now offering retail banking services through them.
We’ve clearly become the preeminent player in that space. It’s obvious that digital assets and cryptocurrencies are not going away.”
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“It will also let them get paid in Bitcoin Cash or Ethereum.
Many of our employees are enthusiastic supporters of cryptocurrency, and we’re happy to help them gain exposure to this trillion-dollar asset class.
We’re proud to give the members of our team the ability to easily invest in cryptocurrency and build their savings.”
“Eight Ethereum mining pools amounting to around 30% of the network’s hash power have cast their support behind tiny mining pool Flexpool’s stance against Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1559. The small pool – which only mined 10 blocks among 48 miners in December – is now calling on Ethereum miners to jump ship from major mining pools that support the update.
First proposed in April 2019 by Vitalik Buterin, EIP 1559 flips the traditional mining payment scheme on its head by burning most of the transaction fees typically given to miners in a bid to address transaction fee volatility.
Colluding against the update would bare large costs for mining parties.
It is easy for [miners] to signal they are against the change, and much costlier for them to actually follow through on things like forming cartels.
The EIP has received strong support among developers and could be forked into the Ethereum codebase sometime after the Berlin hard fork.”
The Disrupt 