“One of the most significant and contentious alterations to the Ethereum blockchain in recent memory is now scheduled for inclusion into its codebase.
Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1559 will be packaged with the London hard fork this coming July regardless of the mining industry’s discontent with the proposal, according to the All Core Developers call Friday. At least five other EIPs are likely to join EIP 1559 in London.
EIP 1559 flips a typical blockchain transaction on its head in order to fix numerous issues with Ethereum’s user experience. Traditionally, a user sends a gas fee to a miner for a transaction to be included in a block. That gas fee will now be sent to the network itself as a sort of “burn” called basefee with only an optional tip paid to miners. The burnt fee is algorithmically set as well, ostensibly making it easier for users to pay a fair fee.
The proposal has garnered some of the largest support to date from Ethereum application creators and users alike, given the current difficulty of selecting a correct transaction fee. Miners and mining pools, on the other hand, have been gathering in opposition against the proposal as it progressed toward mainnet.
Ethereum developers decided to pair EIP 1559 with a delay to the difficulty bomb. Geth team lead Péter Szilágyi said that pairing EIP 1559 with the delay helped ensure no one would fork Ethereum at that time without having to undergo some technical hurdles.”
“The newest Wrapped Ether has an extensive list of improvements, including the anticipated flash mint feature. WETH10 includes the ability to make transactions free for the end user, and it skips the “approve token” mechanic to save on gas costs and avoid security threats.
One limitation of flash loans is that the total sum available for a transaction is limited by the liquidity locked in a particular protocol. This is where the concept of a flash mint comes into play — instead of taking funds from a liquidity pool, the mechanism mints tokens out of thin air and destroys them once no longer necessary.
The only limitation to flash mints of WETH10 is that the flash minted amount can never exceed 2^112-1 at any given time.
In decimal terms, the number quoted by Cuesta Cañada has 33 zeros, which should be enough to cover any liquidity needs in DeFi. In practice, if the user needs to unwrap the WETH for a particular use, there may be limitations due to how much ETH is stored on the WETH contract.
Most DeFi protocols actually use WETH in the backend, though they hide this from users by automatically wrapping and unwrapping it at each interaction. If they were to switch to WETH10, the flash mint could grow to its full potential.”
“Schulman describes how PayPal’s crypto unit is experimenting with smart contracts, and testing Ethereum and other blockchains as potential candidates to help the company improve payments and other transactions. Schulman says PayPal’s crypto endeavors, which currently amount to just offering Bitcoin and a handful of other cryptocurrencies, will soon expand beyond “buy, sell, hold.”
Schulman explained that PayPal envisions a “super app” offering a set of features that once would have required a series of different apps. These include tools for payments, shopping, financial services, and “even new forms of digital identification.” The arrival of such a “super app” would also suggest U.S. consumers are ready to adopt trends popular in Asia.”
“The group has already met with or is in the process of scheduling meetings with high-ranking Whitehouse officials including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Deputy Secretary nominee and former BlackRock executive Wally Adeyemo, along with representatives of the Treasury Department.
Our number one priority is helping Yellen understand crypto goes beyond the financing of criminal enterprises.”
“According to Jimmy Lee, CEO of Wealth Consulting Group, financial advisors are frustrated by not being able to manage crypto for their clients. Many investors end up pursuing it on their own.
In lieu of holding the asset itself, wealth managers are clamoring for the approval of bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that would meet the legal standards required of traditional investments. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has not ruled whether mutual funds can own cryptocurrency directly.”
See Also: 40% of Goldman Sachs Clients Reported Exposure to Crypto: Survey
See Also: Ex-Prudential Securities CEO: Bitcoin ‘Attractive Part of Almost Any Portfolio’
“The Bloomberg terminal now provides price data for orchid (OXT), omg network (OMG), eos, chainlink (LINK), tezos (XTZ) and stellar lumens (XLM).
The data comes from CF Benchmarks, a Financial Conduct Authority–regulated indices provider and Kraken subsidiary.”
“While bitcoin can suffer deeper drawdowns because of traditional market instability, its broader bullish trend would remain valid as long as historically strong chart support is held intact.
The cryptocurrency repeatedly found dip demand (marked by arrows) around the 21-week SMA throughout the rally from $300 to $19,783 seen in the October 2015-December 2017 period. The technical line is now located at $32,240.
The 21-week SMA (Simple Moving Average) is the level to defend for the bulls. The bias remains bullish as long as the SMA support is intact.”
See Also: Bitcoin’s next top could be between $75K and $306K, Kraken research suggests
“The crypto exchange’s new CEO also said he aims to repair relationships with regulators.
I was coming from the regulated and classical world. I have a lot of touchpoints with the regulators already…Now I’m working on the crypto side and bringing the crypto side to the regulated world.”
“Tech entrepreneur John McAfee has been indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice on fraud and money laundering charges tied to McAfee’s touting of various cryptocurrency projects without disclosing he was paid to do so.
McAfee, who is currently detained in Spain on a separate tax charge by the DOJ, was indicted alongside Jimmy Watson Jr., an executive advisor to McAfee, according to a press release Friday. They allegedly made more than $13 million from investors.
The defendants allegedly used McAfee’s Twitter account to publish messages to hundreds of thousands of his Twitter followers touting various cryptocurrencies through false and misleading statements to conceal their true, self-interested motives.”
The Disrupt 