“Take a dubious tweet about an unconfirmed U.S. investigation of financial institutions using crypto to launder money, a report that doesn’t appear to have come from Bloomberg, Dow Jones, Reuters or any other reputable news service.

Add a new CNBC tweet about a month-old Reuters report regarding a coming crypto ban in India. Next fold in several (now-deleted) tweets that incorrectly implied that the Coinbase CEO had sold the majority of his stock in last week’s direct listing (he only sold 1.5% of his holdings).

Serve to a host of relatively inexperienced investors who’d recently flooded into the market. After feeding that meal of purportedly bad news to that audience, it’d have been shocking if those new crypto investors hadn’t fled the table.

While newbies may have left the table, long-term holders are unlikely to quit, as there have been several 20% drops during the current bull run. Besides, pundits seldom take weekend moves seriously, as liquidity is low, especially in Asia.”

See Also: If Bitcoin Starts Closing Below the 50-Day SMA It May Mean Deeper Pullback Ahead
See Also: TA: Bitcoin Correction (Video)

---

“Currently, there is simultaneously a stablecoin liquidity shortage in DeFi as well as high demand for stablecoins in DeFi protocols to be used for earning rewards or leveraging/borrowing, which creates high interest rates that potentially could have a negative impact on ecosystem growth as a whole.

The D3M is an exploration of an alternative path to bring more liquidity in secondary DAI venues by minting DAI backed by aDAI and depositing it directly in secondary markets to release liquidity shortage pressures.

The D3M module is a potential new tool for the MakerDAO to stabilize DAI peg, increase DAI attractiveness for borrowers and create new pathways of revenues for the MKR ecosystem.

Additionally, the Aave Community is deploying new liquidity pools across various L2/chains, which means more DAI can bridge into pools to transact affordably and in an inclusive manner, while still ensuring the security of the MakerDAO collateral in L1.

Essentially, Aave could become the distributor for DAI on every L2 and empower new growing communities as the need for stablecoin as a medium of exchange grows across all chains and L2s. Working together with the Aave community could position both the MakerDAO and Aave communities uniquely to ensure DAI liquidity across DeFi and decrease the liquidity fractionalization on L2s in mid-term.”

---

“Rollups can only offer a linear increase in throughput — all data still must be propagated to all full nodes. But to bring true scalability, we need an exponential gain in throughput.

That’s why we believe this is such an important breakthrough. We have designed a system with 20,000+ TPS that offers more security than optimistic rollups. More importantly, it is coming to mainnet in 6 months with zkSync 2.0.

Compared to mainnet, optimistic rollups will only offer a ~25x increase in scalability and zkRollups a ~100x increase. Before we know it, we’ll be back to square one: unaffordable gas fees and an Ethereum unaffordable for most normal users.

Crypto is about to go mainstream. And in a world with 3.8 billion smartphones (compared to Metamask’s 3 million monthly active users), we need a 1000x increase to handle what’s coming. This scalability gap is what motivated us to build zkPorter.”

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NFT Marketplace Comparison

See Also: Layer 2 TVL

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“One of the most popular ways of generating yield in the traditional financial system is through selling call options. By selling a covered call, users can exchange some potential upside in the future for guaranteed yield today. However, the complexity of structuring this strategy in a perpetual way (strike selection, expiry selection, rolling over positions) make it difficult for the average retail investor to participate. Furthermore, structuring a strategy for yourself on-chain will be an extremely gas-intensive endeavour, making it a non-starter for most.

Today we are launching Theta Vaults, a way to earn high yield on ETH through running an automated covered call strategy with one click.”

See Also: Apophis DeFi on Enzyme

---

“Today we celebrate the launch of MetaMask Institutional (MMI), a product that gives institutional investors access to the over US$43 billion collateral in the DeFi ecosystem. MMI will enable funds to swap tokens, borrow, lend, invest, and interact with DeFi protocols and applications using the familiar MetaMask interface.

These institutional features will enable cryptocurrency funds, family offices, and financial institutions to gain access and exposure to the diverse decentralized finance opportunities that compose Web3.“

---

“MVI is a basket of 15 tokens, designed to capture the trend of entertainment, sports and business shifting to a virtual environment. To kick off the portfolio construction process, we screen for the following token categories on Coingecko: Non-Fungible Tokens, Entertainment, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Music.

The MVI uses a combination of the square root of market cap and liquidity weighting to arrive at the final index weights.”

---

Miners are running MEV-adapted geth clients (flashbots) that are taking inefficient on-chain bidding wars off-chain.

This is likely why – even though $ETH is claiming new ATHs – gas prices are still under 3 figures.

— 0xNick 🐬 (@0xEther) April 12, 2021

---

“Coinbase insiders and investors sold about $5 billion in shares in total during the leading cryptocurrency exchange’s first day of trading on the Nasdaq earlier this week. CEO Brian Armstrong sold 749,999 shares in three batches at prices ranging from $381 to $410.40 per for total proceeds of $291.8 million, about 1.5% of his stake.

An important thing to keep in mind is that selling by insiders was sort of the whole point of Coinbase’s direct listing; it’s where the shares were supposed to come from.

Even though a company gains no proceeds from a direct listing, it does benefit in other ways. In addition to allowing insiders to profit, a direct listing is a tremendous PR event and ,more tangibly, vastly broadens the pool of holders while enabling the company to more easily raise capital in the future.”

“Purpose Investements and CI Global Asset Management both received approval to launch an exchange-traded fund (ETF) in Canada that offers exposure to ether. The ETH will be kept in cold storage with Gemini acting as the sub-custodian and CIBC Mellon Global Securities acting as the fund administrator.

The approval comes a little over two months after Canada approved the Purpose Bitcoin ETF which held 10,064 BTC in the first week of trading.

While Bitcoin tends to get a lot of attention as it was the first major cryptocurrency, what Ether and the Ethereum ecosystem represent is one of the most exciting new technology visions today in society.

By launching the first ETF in the world that directly owns and provides exposure to Ether, we are enabling every investor to have access to this unique opportunity and ecosystem.”

---

“The manager disclosed Thursday its shares in the ETH trust were worth $4.75 million on March 31 and its holdings in the BTC trust were worth $1.92 million. Rothschild is among the first name-brand institutional asset managers to seek ETH exposure.”

See Also: Ark Investment Boosts Coinbase Holdings While Cutting Stake in Square
See Also: Morgan Stanley Confirms Wealth Management Clients Have Access to 2 Crypto Funds

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“Options data shows traders’ bullish conviction on bitcoin has strengthened with the cryptocurrency’s positive performance in the first half of April.

In the past 24 hours, traders have bought more than 2,000 contracts of the $80,000 call option expiring on April 30, pushing the open interest to 8,476.6 contracts – the highest among the April expiry options. The $80,000 call represents a bet that bitcoin would settle above that level on the expiry date.”

See Also: Bitcoin hash rate hits record 200 EH/s in fresh BTC price bull flag
See Also: Bitcoin Price Drops as Turkey Bans Crypto Payments Amid Currency Crisis

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“Two months after opening up its waitlist for Ethereum 2.0 staking, US-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase says some of its customers can now start earning rewards on their Ethereum holdings. Coinbase users can earn up to 6% interest annually.

The good news is that you can stake any amount of Ethereum you own via Coinbase. The downside is that you won’t be able to send, sell, or trade it at your leisure.

Coinbase expects to offer a way to trade any staked Ethereum in the coming months.”

---

“The price of MKR has increased by almost 100% in the past week, rallying from a low of $2,011 on April 7 to a new all-time high at $4,096 on April 15.

Holding MKR is required in order to participate in the governance of the protocol and the increasing number of governance proposals to vote on has led to a higher demand for MKR, pushing its price higher.

The rising supply of DAI has coincided with a surge in the total value locked (TVL) in the Maker protocol which has made the project the second-ranked DeFi protocol behind Compound which has a $9.28 billion TVL. Growth in the supply of DAI is in part due to its use across a number of DeFi protocols including AAVE, Compound (COMP) and Cream Finance (CREAM) as the go-to option for a decentralized stablecoin.”

See Also: Pendle Finance raises $3.5M to launch secondary market for DeFi yields
See Also: As DeFi tokens surge, CRV indicates a bumper crop for ‘DeFi Summer 2.0’

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“There are more than 8,000 monthly active developers working on various cryptocurrency projects, according to the Developer Report, with some 80% of those developers starting in the last two years.

The current leader in terms of people actively contributing to the development of a network is Ethereum, with approximately 2,300 average monthly developers. The number actively working on Ethereum has grown by 215% in 3 years. But there are a number of other communities also seeing strong growth.

Polkadot doubled its developer count in 2020, to nearly 400 active developers. Another project that has been gaining traction has been Filecoin. The decentralized storage network tripled its developer count between Q3 of 2019 and Q3 of 2020. Near, Flow, Avalanche, Uniswap, Balancer, Arweave Have More Than Tripled Their Developers.”

---

“The Ethereum Name Service (ENS) has minted non-fungible tokens (NFTs) representing 25 top-level domains. These include domains such as “.hiphop,” “.click,” “.game,” and “.audio,” among a number of others. The NFT acts as part of the mechanism that easily allows TLD owners to hold control of their TLD on ENS. These NFTs represent control of an entire TLD on ENS.

This is an important step in bringing together the worlds of traditional DNS and blockchain-based ENS in a complementary way, in which owning a name on DNS automatically implies owning the same on ENS on the Ethereum blockchain.

ENS allows Ethereum users to put “human readable names” in place of long wallet or service addresses, making it easier for individuals to transfer funds, use smart contracts or otherwise develop projects. The bottom line is that it should be increasingly easier for people to use a traditional DNS name as their ENS name for crypto payments.”

See Also: NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden Sells NFT for $5.4M
See Also: ‘I’m Obsessed’: Paris Hilton on NFTs, Empowering Female Creators and the Future of Art

---

“Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Robert Kaplan said bitcoin is a “store of value” that’s not yet ready for wider adoption as a medium of exchange.

Right now it’s clear it’s a store of value. It obviously moves a lot in value, which could keep it from spreading too far as a medium of exchange and wide adoption, but that can change.”

See Also: ECB endangers itself by waiting around on digital euro, says ConsenSys exec

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“Dogecoin (DOGE), the popular cryptocurrency created as a joke in 2013, now has a market cap of $52 billion after tripling in the past 24 hours. That’s bigger than several major banks such as Barclays, which has a market cap of $44 billion.

DOGE’s market cap has also surpassed bitcoin cash (BCH) and chainlink (LINK) and is now ranked as the fifth-most valuable cryptocurrency. It’s important to note the market capitalization of DOGE is based on an assumed number of outstanding tokens, but many of them are presumed to be no longer in circulation.”

See Also: Why We Should Take Dogecoin Seriously

---

“Robinhood has continued a pattern of aggressively inducing and enticing trading among its customers — including Massachusetts customers with little or no investment experience.

The firm has filed a lawsuit seeking to invalidate a recently adopted fiduciary rule in Massachusetts that state regulators have accused it of violating. Adopted in 2020, the rule requires broker-dealers to act in their clients’ best interest.

Robinhood has been also experiencing a number of technical issues, reportedly causing major losses for traders and triggering further legal action against the company.”

See Also: Trading apps usurp TikTok in popularity

“Ethereum’s Berlin hard fork went live at block 12,244,000 Thursday. The Berlin hard fork is a network upgrade that incorporates four Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) that tinker with gas prices and allow new transaction types.

The upgrade is a stepping stone to the much bigger London hard fork, which will activate EIP 1559, a momentous change to Ethereum’s fee structure.”

See Also: Ether Breaks $2,500 for the First Time in Wake of Berlin Fork
See Also: Open Ethereum Clients Encounter ‘Consensus Error’ After Berlin Hard Fork
See Also: Ethereum Berlin Upgrade Status

---

“According to the firm’s daily trade summary, Ark Innovation ETF, Ark Fintech Innovation ETF and Ark Next Generation Internet ETF bought a combined 749,205 shares of the leading cryptocurrency exchange for around $246 million.

Ark has its eyes fixed on technology and finance, investing mainly in “disruptive innovation.” The flagship Ark Innovation fund has a stake in major U.S. companies including Telsa, Square, Crispr, Shopify, Zoom and others.”

See Also: Hedge Fund Behind One River Digital to Invest Part of $5.6B Fund in Crypto: Report

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“Ethereum and multi-chain oracle service Chainlink are building out a new oracle network that could provide a solution (in part) to both scalability and front-running issues. Dubbed Chainlink 2.0, the network creates what its team calls “decentralized oracle networks” (DONs). These second-layer networks operate off-chain.

Off-chain oracle services could potentially mitigate miners front-running trades on-chain.

Our work with the top DeFi protocols has clearly shown us that in order to create the next generation of smart contracts developers need an easily accessible, provably secure and scalable set of decentralized services surrounding their smart contract code with key additional functionality.”

---

“Ether’s options market is witnessing an explosive growth, as the second-biggest cryptocurrency rallies to fresh all-time highs above $2,400. The value of open positions has gone up by roughly $1 billion since March 26, and ether’s price has appreciated by over 50% over that period.

Options trading volume has increased rapidly to $425 million, from $183 million as recently as late March. Open interest in the ether futures market has also jumped to new record highs above $8 billion. Ether is currently trading near $2,450, representing a 232% year-to-date gain.”

See Also: Ethereum’s Gitcoin Raises $11.3 Million, Spins Out of ConsenSys

---

“A Miami-Dade County commissioner is backing a new resolution to allow residents to use cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) to pay local taxes. The task force would examine the feasibility of allowing residents to pay their county taxes, as well as pay for fees and services, using digital currencies including Bitcoin, Ether (ETH) and Litecoin (LTC).

According to the document, crypto payments have the ‘potential to enhance convenience and save costs.'”

See Also: Switzerland’s largest insurer AXA starts accepting Bitcoin as payment
See Also: Millions of Swedish savers have exposure to Bitcoin via state pension fund

---

“The future is starting to look “Gattaca”-esque as bidding for a crypto user’s DNA sequence begins.

A crypto user known as “Cybex_Dreamer” recently listed their personal genome as an NFT for sale on OpenSea’s digital marketplace. The anonymous seller is auctioning off three NFTs, each containing one-third of their complete DNA sequence, based on identifier, chromosome number, base pair position and genotype.

Another company has said it is doing the same for crypto users. GenoBank.io plans to allow its customers to create a biological NFT, aiming for people to maintain some ownership of their DNA.”

---

“The company has plans to convert into an ETF when regulations allow. If the ETF had been approved already, Grayscale would be the second-largest commodity ETF behind SPDR Gold Shares.

The Grayscale Bitcoin Fund is likely to surpass the GLD fund by market cap in a few months.”

See Also: Guess Who Might Be Buying $BTC? Grayscale

---

“The U.S. Treasury Department is sanctioning a Pakistan-based organization it claims was paid in digital currencies to create false identities for members of the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a Russian organization accused of election interference and other cyberattacks.

The Treasury Department announced it would identify digital currency addresses used by Second Eye Solution (SES), otherwise known as Forwarderz, which allegedly received some $2.5 million across nearly 27,000 transactions between 2013 and March 2021.“

---

“The PINT token seeks to offer investors balanced exposure to the emerging Polkadot ecosystem, hedging the volatility of individual projects against the broader performance of the sector. PINT’s developers are hoping to see the index adopted as a “treasury reserve asset” across the Polkadot ecosystem.

Six of Polkadot’s leading projects have already given “soft commitments” for inclusion in the index, including Acala Network, Equilibrium, HydraDX, Litentry, Moonbeam and Plasm.“

---

“Smoked meat stick vendor Slim Jim has an actual official dogecoin strategy. And it appears to be working, big time. The social media-savvy snack food saw its Twitter follower count increase 160% and tweet impressions soar to the moon (35 million impressions in 25 days) after it began engaging in Shiba Inu meme coin content last quarter.

The first instance of a public company deploying a bona fide strategy around DOGE highlights how dogecoin has become a serious business while staying true to its roots as an objectively ridiculous meme coin.”

“After opening at $381 at around 1:30 p.m. ET, Coinbase shares (NASDAQ: COIN) soared to as high as $429.54 before dropping more than 100 points over the next hour and a half to close at $328. That was below the $348 price where the shares last changed hands in private markets.

Even with their dizzying drop, Coinbase shares were still well above their $250 reference point price assigned Tuesday evening by the Nasdaq.

At a share price of $328, Coinbase would have a valuation of about $65 billion, assuming 199.2 million shares outstanding. Using the fully diluted share count of 261.3 million, the implied market capitalization would be about $86 billion.

The uninformed were driving price on it more than the informed. In three to six weeks you’ll see higher prices.”

See Also: Coinbase Encodes Secret Message on Bitcoin Blockchain on Day of Public Listing
See Also: After Coinbase: Which Crypto Companies Will Go Public Next?
See Also: Coinbase Is Eyeing NFTs as New Revenue Stream: CFO
See Also: Coinbase Gifts 100 Shares Each to 1,700 Employees Ahead of Public Listing

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“Galaxy Digital founder and CEO Mike Novogratz compared the listing of Coinbase’s shares on Nasdaq today to the dawn of a new age in the adoption of crypto.

This is a really important day for the whole crypto world. This is saying ‘this is an asset class, and it’s an asset class that’s here to stay.

Institutions are going to come flooding into this space. Coinbase is the first big marquee equity that mutual funds are going to say ‘hey, I can make my statement in crypto this way.”

See Also: The World Is Watching as Coinbase Goes Public

---

“Binance announced Wednesday it will be listing Coinbase’s stock token “COIN” later today. The COIN/BUSD trading pair will be launched allowing its exchange users to trade fractional Coinbase shares.

Trading of stock tokens will follow traditional exchange hours and is not available for residents in Mainland China, Turkey and other restricted jurisdictions.”

---

Berlin Network Upgrade Countdown: Thu Apr 15 2021 02:51:27 GMT-0700

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“By most measures, Ethereum had an outstanding Q1.

The native cryptocurrency of the network, ether, outperformed bitcoin and traditional macro assets by a wide margin in terms of price, appreciating 156% over the quarter. Several ETH investment products were also launched, paving the way for greater institutional involvement in the ether markets. The quarter also contained several milestones related to Ethereum’s technology roadmap and the progress of the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade.

In Q1 2021, the total value locked in Ethereum 2.0 more than doubled, rising from 1.5 million ETH staked to 3.6 million by the end of the period. The number of active validators crossed 100,000 by Feb. 27, 2021, and has since passed 118,000 as of April 12, 2021.

Q1 2021 highlighted several possible use cases for ether. ETH could be held as speculative investment, put to work in a decentralized finance (DeFi) application, used to buy a non-fungible token, staked on Ethereum 2.0 for interest or purchased as a corporate balance sheet reserve asset. Any of these use cases has the potential to break out as the dominant one for Ethereum and its native token ether in the coming months.”

See Also: $5,000 Ethereum by the end of May? On-chain data suggests so

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“The Token Safe Harbor Proposal 2.0, published Tuesday, updates Peirce’s 2019 proposal which suggested a three-year grace period that would let blockchain projects actually develop their networks or tokens after raising funds. Under the proposal, a company could sell tokens before building the project but would be exempt from federal requirements that securities issuers register with the SEC.

Tuesday’s version would require companies to provide updates to the SEC every six months, and find outside counsel to explain whether their network could be considered “decentralized” at the end of the grace period.

According to the guidance, network decentralization and functionality are treated as two different issues. Decentralization is assessed by voting power, development efforts and network participation, while functionality is assessed by the ability to transmit or store value on the network, as well as run an application on it.”

---

“Privacy is the number one thing Europeans want out of a digital euro, according to the results of a survey by the European Central Bank (ECB). The ECB said it had received 8,200 replies. While 43% of respondents said privacy is the most important feature of a digital euro, fewer than one in 10 showed support for full anonymity.

We will do our best to ensure that a digital euro meets the expectations of citizens highlighted in the public consultation.”

---

“The Purpose Investments ETF, the first Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund to launch in North America, has seen its assets under management soar to $1.1 billion less than two months after launching. Two Bitcoin ETFs that launched shortly after Purpose’s in Canada have also seen their AUM’s swell to a combined $200 million in the same time period.

The acceptance by regulators and eventual launch of the purpose ETF acted as an opening of the floodgates for Canadian Bitcoin businesses. All ETFs have seen their respective values rise in line with Bitcoin’s own meteoric ascent in recent times, with each unit priced higher now than at launch.”

“That’s a valuation of $66.5 billion, assuming an estimated 266.2 million shares outstanding.

The reference price is discovered using public financial information along with market sentiment and is usually a conservative estimate. This figure came is 27% lower than what Coinbase last traded at in the private secondary market, $343.58 per share.“

See Also: Coinbase ‘IPO’ Isn’t an IPO. Here’s Why That’s Important

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“Coinbase’s listing on Nasdaq sends a powerful signal of legitimacy to the U.S. cryptocurrency community, as well as to the crypto-curious in the traditional financial world.

Coinbase going public is possibly a model for other crypto companies looking to navigate U.S. federal securities laws, and Coinbase’s status as a Securities and Exchange Commission-regulated company might make it more attractive to investors on the fence about the digital asset space. Coinbase’s sheer size and role in the sector might be the tipping point for some investors who were previously cautious about entering the space.

Coinbase will now be a publicly traded company, apparently at a very high valuation and that will make people think a bit more seriously about companies in general in the space.”

---

“Prices for bitcoin rose 6% on the day, reaching as high as $63,661. Ether set a new high water mark of $2,271. Analysts had signaled that the extra publicity and investor-relations chatter surrounding the Coinbase listing might lead to an uptick in the pace of cryptocurrency adoption, or at the very least, speculation.

The dynamics have changed quite dramatically this year. Demand is flooding the market from institutions just as large amounts of bitcoin and ethereum are increasingly being taken offline and holders are transferring them to their own wallets. There is only one outcome from that, and investors should expect higher highs and higher lows throughout the year.

Chart patterns suggest that bitcoin prices have broken out of their recent trend and aren’t expected to hit price resistance until it rises to $68,000-$70,000.“

See Also: Bitcoin Traders Seek Further Upside Exposure, Pushing Futures Premiums Higher
See Also: Bitcoin Analysts Set Sights on $70K (Even $80K) After All-Time High

---

“The ConsenSys chief could not go into detail at this time about what was being built with the large financial institutions that invested in the round, but said:

We have multi-year commercial arrangements with JPMorgan and Mastercard, and have commercial activity with UBS.

Having toughed it out through the crypto winter of 2018-19, Tuesday’s bullish fundraising announcement is further evidence ConsenSys has found its footing. The firm has now been successfully restructured into two parts: a core software business (CSI) and an investment and incubation arm known as ConsenSys Mesh.

The general tightening of the ship has seen ConsenSys appear to chart a course away from consulting and services, towards being more product- and revenue-focused. For example, with Mastercard as an investor, ConsenSys engineers are using the Quorum blockchain to build a permissioned network for commerce and finance.

With this in mind, Lubin pointed to the Baseline Protocol, a way of enabling organizations to link their systems of record to one another using a global frame of reference: the Ethereum mainnet. As such, ConsenSys is positioned to build the infrastructure needed to make institutional DeFi a reality.”

See Also: Press Release: ConsenSys Raises $65 Million to Accelerate Convergence Of Traditional And Decentralized Finance
See Also: Q1 2021 Industry Trends: Institutional Interest in ETH Ramps Up

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“Three years in the making (a lifetime in crypto), Thorchain works a lot like other automated market makers (AMMs) such as Bancor and Uniswap, but with an important difference: it enables trades of real cryptocurrencies from completely different blockchains – not “wrapped” or synthetic versions.

If it works as intended, users will be able to make such swaps with real currencies (not an ersatz version like wrapped BTC on the Ethereum network) and without having to trust an intermediary. Thorchain will start by allowing trades of bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), litecoin (LTC), bitcoin cash (BCH) and Binance Chain’s BNB.

You’ll be able to swap freely from one chain to another, one asset to another. If you want to swap layer-1 real bitcoin with layer-1 real ETH, you can do it.

Bringing trustless trading to many of the biggest chains while skipping the friction of making a copy of a coin on one chain seems likely to drive a lot of activity. The Thorchain launch is also a reminder of the long-term competitive threat DEXs pose to centralized venues like Coinbase ahead of that company’s hotly-anticipated stock listing.”

See Also: ShapeShift launches native Bitcoin trading via THORChain

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“A Switzerland-based cryptocurrency custody company is expanding its offering so that clients can get exposure to more esoteric areas of public blockchain such as decentralized finance (DeFi) and proof-of-stake (PoS) mining. Its clients include several large banks such as Standard Chartered Bank, BBVA and Gazprom Bank’s Swiss division.

Adrien Treccani, CEO and Founder of METACO said the first wave of demand for exposure to DeFi, staking and the like is coming from Swiss private banks that serve high-net-worth consumers.“

See Also: Thailand’s Fourth Largest Bank by Assets Exploring DeFi Offering: Report
See Also: PowerTrade to Launch Bitcoin Options Trading App on Apple Store

---

“U.S. headline inflation rose to a 12-month pace of 2.6% in March, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in its latest CPI report, accelerating from the 1.7% increase reported last month. The pace exceeded economists’ average estimate for a 2.5% increase.

The gauge of consumer prices is now rising at its fastest since August 2018. Powell has said he views higher inflation as temporary and not enough for the U.S. central bank to alter its record-low interest rate policies.”

---

“The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) minted its first set of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on Monday with six homages to hot tech stocks that debuted on the world’s largest bourse. The NFTs memorialize first trade metadata for Unity, Coupang, Snowflake, Spotify, Roblox and DoorDash. They appear to live atop Crypto.com’s native blockchain.

The NFTs were gifted to their respective companies. The source explained NYSE has no plans to sell NFTs – not now, not ever – though Cunningham has announced that more are on the way.“

See Also: NFTs by mail? US Postal Service plans to support postage tokens

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“The European Union’s lending wing is reportedly planning to trade, settle and sell digital bonds using blockchain technology.

The European Investment Bank (EIB) tasked Goldman Sachs, Banco Santander SA and Societe Generale AG with assessing the feasibility of settling and registering the bonds using the nascent tech. No date was given for the initial sale.”

See Also: Linux Foundation, Insurance Group Roll Out Platform to Cut Costs Using DLT

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“Potential money launderers aren’t really using bitcoin – and of those who are, many are likely to move away from the cryptocurrency due to the fact every transaction is recorded and visible to all. That’s one conclusion of a report published by the Crypto Council for Innovation, a new lobbying group hoping to inform and influence regulatory actions around the cryptocurrency sector.

As more seizures and arrests are made, we believe illicit actors – who are technology agnostic – will continue to move away from using Bitcoin for money laundering purposes to other avenues that make it easier for them to hide their activities.”

“President Joe Biden’s administration is reportedly troubled by the long-term effects a digital yuan may have on the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency.

According to a Sunday report by Bloomberg citing unnamed sources, officials at multiple government departments are increasing efforts to better understand possible threats posed by China’s initiative. Officials have begun ramping up their efforts to understand how the digital yuan will be distributed and whether it works around trade sanctions, according to the report.”

See Also: Peter Thiel Defines Bitcoin’s Accidental Role in Global Politics
See Also: China’s Digital Yuan Comes With An Expiration Date (Recommended read)

---

“Despite Binance supporters celebrating Binance Coin’s (BNB) chart-topping performance for Q1 2021, concerns are growing regarding the centralization of the Binance ecosystem.

BSC uses proof-of-staked authority consensus, with its 21 active validators being chosen daily by Binance Chain — a network that is governed by just 11 validators.

It’s hard not to presume that each Binance Chain validator is in some way connected or tied to Binance. They each take turns producing blocks in a seemingly predefined order.

BSC is an Ethereum fork with a centralized validator set. That’s it. Nothing more.

Every cycle people get hoodwinked by the latest centralized solution to all blockchains problems. Every cycle influencers pump these narratives so they can dump on naïve retail traders when it’s over.”

---

“Binance is allowing its users to buy fractions of companies’ shares with a new tokenized stock trading service, starting with Tesla. Users will be able to purchase as little as one-hundredth of a Tesla share, with prices settled in Binance USD (BUSD).

It’s not the first tokenized stock play. But where [alternatives] use synthetic stocks (or tokenized representations of actual equities), the Binance product is “backed by a depository portfolio of underlying securities” managed by an investment firm in Germany. Holders qualify for returns including dividends.”

See Also: Binance Coin Soars to New All-Time High of $610. Here’s Why

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“One of the most recognizable publications in the world, TIME Magazine will now be receiving some payments in Bitcoin.

Grayscale is partnering with TIME on a new video series coming this summer explaining the crypto space. Equally as important, KeithGrossman & TIME has agreed to be paid in Bitcoin – and will hold the BTC on their balance sheet.”

See Also: Galaxy Digital Files for US Bitcoin ETF

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“The house in question is located in a small German village, near a castle and a short drive from Frankfurt. The NFT is being sold in an auction on OpenSea, with a minimum reserve price of 34 ETH ($74,000).

Whoever purchases the NFT will be able to contact the seller and organize the sale of the house through standard legal means. If somebody purchases the NFT, they will be able to access unlockable content that comes with it. This is how they’ll be able to contact the seller.”

See Also: Topps to Launch Official MLB NFTs in Bid to Best NBA Top Shot

---

“Rail cargos from China to Europe can now be delivered in days instead of months, after a new blockchain system was installed at a major Chinese rail port.

Trades where cargo was delivered from China by rail used to take over a month to reach their destinations in Europe. Documentation and waybills would have to be checked at every border crossing, the logistics of which was made harder by translation difficulties and bureaucratic hold-ups.

We take advantage of blockchain’s merits, such as its tamper-proof nature and timestamps, to form reliable trade data. That can greatly improve the financing capabilities of small and medium-sized foreign trade enterprises.”

See Also: JPMorgan Testing Blockchain Solution to Improve Transfers With Taiwanese Banks

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“Halo Arc includes updates to Zcashd (Zcash’s consensus node), an ECC wallet prototype and the ECC wallet software development kits (SDKs). The wallet will enable shielded-by-default transactions, something that is merely optional for Zcash right now.

Halo is a “trustless recursive” version of zero-knowledge proofs that allows greater scalability and removes the controversial “trusted setups” involved. Previously planned for release this summer, Halo Arc will now launch on Oct. 1, 2021.”

See Also: Keep Network unveils v2 specs for tBTC protocol

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“Ant Group whose $37 billion initial public offering (IPO) was suspended by China’s regulators in November, will restructure as a financial holding company. Two days ago, Chinese regulators hit Alibaba with a $2.8 billion fine as part of its anti-monopoly investigation of the tech giant, claiming the company had abused its market dominance.

The terms of the restructuring are expected to curb Ant Group’s profitability and valuation. Under a “comprehensive and feasible restructuring plan” Ant Group would cut the “improper” linkage with payments services including AliPay, Jiebei, and Huabei.

Ant Group is known for its major subsidiaries including Alipay and Kakao, but it also has a blockchain arm offering services based on its own AntChain technology.”

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“Telegram is close to fully repaying investors in its TON blockchain effort nearly a year after settling allegations it violated U.S. securities law in raising over $1 billion for the project.

On Monday, Russian newspaper Vedomosti reported that Telegram is preparing to launch an IPO in 2023, aiming for a $30 million to $50 million valuation. The IPO will benefit the buyers of Telegram’s bonds, which the company sold in February to raise $1 billion.”

Recommended read.

“Overwhelmingly, the two public blockchains with the greatest degree of gainful use today are Ethereum and Bitcoin, and frankly it’s not even close. Both of these blockchains provide value to their users, to the point where users are willing to pay significant fees to use them.

The value proposition for Ethereum and ETH is:

• Maximally censorship-resistant transactions with ETH and Ethereum-based assets
• Expressive, smart-contract based interactions with ETH and other Ethereum-based assets; including use in a a robust and composable ecosystem, within an economy where billions of dollars of value are transacted each day
• Use of ETH as a “programmable store of value” asset in DeFi, etc.
• Use of ETH as a “unit of account” for NFTs and other digital goods and services
• Use of ETH as a “medium of exchange” to pay for Ethereum block space (via “gas”), as well as other digital goods and services within the Ethereum economy

And for Bitcoin and BTC, the value proposition is:

• Maximally censorship-resistant transactions with BTC
• Use of BTC as a “store of value” macroeconomic asset
• Use of BTC as a “medium of exchange” to pay for Bitcoin block space

The biggest elephant in the room for other chains right now is Ethereum Layer 2 technology (L2). If successful, this could scale Ethereum by orders of magnitude, all while relying on Ethereum for security. These rollups could also natively interact with Ethereum-based assets and inherit trust-minimized operation directly from Ethereum, i.e., Layer 1 (L1).

In this world, economic settlement & security become the primary value proposition of Ethereum L1, and L2 is used as a computational layer.

The real question is will other L1 blockchains provide a real value proposition people are willing to pay for? In their current state, many occupy an uncomfortable middle-ground between decentralized Ethereum and centralized side chains. Over time, as these chains prove they have fair, censorship-resistant operation and perhaps develop dynamic economies, they may become more attractive. But so far, based on actual paid & gainful use, the market is saying there is not a unique value proposition for these chains.

Further, it is very unlikely that other L1s at this point will be able to develop their native tokens into a form of money, thereby earning a monetary premium demand on top of basic utility and speculative demand as BTC and ETH have. Over time, I actually expect monetary premium is where ETH will draw most of its financial value—with growing use as a programmable store of value in DeFi and as staking collateral.

In general, I suspect that Ethereum L2 will address most, if not all, needs over time.”

See Also: Ethereum Scalability Race

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“Back in 2016, the idea of a collectively owned vehicle for the Ethereum community to invest together was ‘born’ as The DAO.

As many of us know, this early experiment ultimately ended in drained funds, a hard fork and a good few years of ‘PTSDAO’. The implementation of this experiment is famous for having failed on a technical level, but perhaps more importantly, the community, tooling, and breadth of investable projects weren’t really ready five years ago.

Fast forward to early 2020, and the soil for a decentralized venture fund was much more fertile.

MCV sees a future where decentralized technology will serve as the backbone of venture funds, investment clubs, startups and more. A world where most people work for a DAO rather than a traditional company, where remuneration and value exchange is discussed in an open and transparent manner, and where no person has an unfair advantage over another.

We’re finding new ways to coordinate, incentivize, collaborate, and new tooling to empower all of this.”

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“It’s an irony not lost on anyone: the biggest company in the Bitcoin business is… a trusted middleman.

But how long can Coinbase thrive as more and more financial activity moves online natively? What happens to the original fiat-to-crypto on-ramp when people stop needing on and off ramps because all the money they earn and all the places they spend it are on the leaderless record-keeping systems known as blockchains?

That bridging process is going to take decades.

Coinbase prevails today on [user experience] and easy onramps for US retail. Both will be commoditized in DeFi over time – open systems inspire and mobilize developers to tackle both problems aggressively in a way that a closed monopoly like Coinbase never can.

You cannot discount how important this function is to putting crypto into the wallets of the next hundred million users and beyond. That said, DeFi is maturing rapidly, and will continue to offer complementary solutions that give users maximum control.

I would say the biggest threat to Coinbase is from banks not from DEXs, that’s my view. If banks start letting customers buy crypto from within their checking accounts, there won’t even be a need for users to connect Coinbase to their bank.

If crypto is money native to the internet, using it with a nice user interface while borrowing a stranger’s identity (the exchange’s) will always be tourism. Anyone who visits blockchains often enough will want full citizenship eventually.”

See Also: Communitas Capital’s ‘Infrastructure-First’ Investing Approach Is Paying Off With Coinbase and Others

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“Polygon’s goal is use their existing experience with Matic to build infrastructure to allow developers to easily deploy their own L2 systems all with bridges to Eth. As a key proponent of a multichain Ethereum, we think that a Polygon world with many L2s makes sense and the case for Connext much stronger.

Connext will be used for fast, frequent L2-L2 interactions between Polygon chains. Using Connext, these applications will be able to enter and exit Matic with fast, simple UX and will also be able to interact directly with other EVM-compatible systems like xDai and BSC.

As a first step in the partnership, we’ve integrated Connext into wallet.matic.network for fast USDC and USDT transfers between Ethereum and Matic. Currently, the Matic wallet takes 6–7 minutes for onboarding and up to 3 hours for offboarding using the POS bridge. With Connext, this time is reduced to a couple of minutes at most.

In the longer term we expect to work with the Polygon team on researching more generalized communication between Polygon chains, with the goal of creating a Polygon/Ethereum equivalent to IBC.”

See Also: MVP of ENS on L2 with Optimism
See Also: DyDx L2 Perpetuals Now Live!

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See Also: Kyber DMM beta is Live!

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“Savvy traders are locking returns of over 40% in the wake of bitcoin’s widening contango – the spread between prices in futures and spot markets.

Acarry trade taken now will yield an annualized return of 44% to 48% – a number significantly higher than interest rates on crypto deposits offered by lending platforms such as Genesis and BlockFi or government bond yields in emerging economies.

With the premium on bitcoin futures expanding to as high as 40% per annum for the June expiry, there is a lot of interest from cash and carry traders to arbitrage the premium and lock-in risk-free gains.”

See Also: JPMorgan: A Bitcoin ETF Could Dampen Yields on Bitcoin Futures

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“Bitcoin’s price neared its all-time high of $61,712 early Saturday while ether set a new all-time high at $2,190.

The price action comes just days before leading U.S. exchange Coinbase begins trading on Nasdaq in one of the crypto industry’s most anticipated events. A sign of the maturing market, the listing will likely give Wall Street traders their most accessible bet yet on growth in the space.

Bitcoin bulls were further bolstered on Friday by the idea that an exchange-traded fund (ETF) with exposure to the digital asset space might be approved in 2021, after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) confirmed it was reviewing ETF giant WisdomTree’s application.”

See Also: Watch these key technical levels as Bitcoin price nears $61,800 all-time high

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“VET’s price growth in 2021 has largely been stimulated by the adoption of its supply chain tracking technology. The price of VET has increased more than 400% over the past two months.

On April 8 the team announced a collaboration with the software company Salesforce. VeChain’s technology has also been utilized on several projects that are managed by its partner DNV. DNV uses VeChain’s blockchain solution to manage the data from projects with the Danish company ReSea and the Norwegian industrial company Hydro.”

See Also: SingularityNET (AGI) rallies 1,000% as industries aim to merge AI with blockchain

“Following its spectacular Q1 earnings report Tuesday, Coinbase’s historic stock market listing next week – which some estimates value at $100 billion – will likely stir investors to seek out alternative bets on “this crypto thing,” opening a new fundraising opportunity for startups in the space.

This is a version of the “fear of missing out” that afflicts venture capital investors and which, in the process, drives tech development. A wave of crypto FOMO is poised to infuse yet more money into the crypto startup community – arguably the hottest hotbed of innovation right now – as these early-stage investors seek out “the next Coinbase.”

Valuations are rising across the industy: Kraken, a crypto exchange, is raising funds at a targeted $10 billion valuation – making it a “decacorn” – and Blockchain.com recently raised $300 million at a $5.2 billion valuation. Money is flowing into NFTs: Dapper Labs recently closed a $305 million round.

And DeFi could be next: Coinbase said in its SEC filing that DeFi presents a risk to its centralized business, which means adventurous investors could see decentralized exchanges as the New New Thing.”

See Also: Daniel Loeb’s $17B Hedge Fund Is Keeping Crypto With Coinbase – And Maybe Even Staking It
See Also: Communitas Capital’s ‘Infrastructure-First’ Investing Approach Is Paying Off With Coinbase and Others
See Also: SEC approves Exodus wallet for Regulation A stock offering

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“The SEC published a public notice Friday announcing it would begin evaluating the WisdomTree Bitcoin Trust, which the ETF giant filed with Cboe BZX Exchange. WisdomTree first filed for this ETF last month.

This is the second active bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) application the federal regulator is evaluating in the U.S. The first, filed by VanEck, has been under review for a few weeks, with its initial comment period closing on Friday. As of press time, only five comments had been filed.

The regulator’s initial decision on whether to approve or reject, or otherwise continue evaluating VanEck’s application is expected to come next month.

Also on Friday, Kryptoin Investment Advisors, an asset manager launched by Jason Toussaint of SPDR Gold Shares fame, filed a registration form for a bitcoin ETF, bringing the total number of active applications to eight.”

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“The MSTR blacklisting appears to be part of the bank’s amended user policy prohibiting users from interacting with cryptocurrencies. The investment banking giant now reportedly classifies MicroStrategy as a “virtual currency product.”

Companies with significant Bitcoin investments such as Tesla, Hut 8 Mining and Square, to mention a few, are still listed on the HIDC trading catalog.

The blacklisting of MSTR is only the latest in HSBC’s recent anti-crypto moves. Earlier in the year, the world’s sixth-largest bank also reportedly blocked customers from moving profits from crypto exchanges to their bank accounts.”

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“The new DeFi Compli tool creates an oracle on Chainlink that details crypto wallet addresses on government watchlists, such as the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions list. DEXs or other decentralized smart contracts could tap these lists and prevent transactions from touching sanctioned addresses.

What we’ve seen in the U.S. at least is really a focus on sanctions. That’s the angle regulators are most concerned about right now.

If the crypto sector can prove that DEXs can still comply with existing regulations, entities like FATF may focus less on carving out specific rules for developers or projects.”

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“Fast forward a few years and interoperability is poised to become perhaps the most major bottleneck for CBDCs.

CDBCs will need to share compatible technology, code languages, and standards, to achieve full functionality. Standardizing legislative structures, harmonizing regulatory discrepancies between jurisdictions, and ensuring CBDC’s legal tender status is another major dimension of interoperability challenge.

Recent research by the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) and other bodies proposes various models such as a multi-CBDC bridge between different central banks using wholesale CBDCs. CBDCs may require a common technical interface or even a shared clearing system between local systems. Enter payment players.

VisaNet, interoperates between the layers of government in 200 countries, 15,000-plus financial institutions, 46 million-plus merchants and businesses and over 3 billion card holders. PayPal acts as a gateway for a variety of merchants and payment processors to plug in, including card players such as Visa and Mastercard.

CBDC interoperability is a harder challenge to solve than blockchain interoperability because it requires tackling both complex engineering and complex regulations. The real advantage for these players is not their systems, but that they are legally-compliant in every jurisdiction they operate in. This already gives them a near Herculean advantage compared to blockchain players when it comes to the realm of CBDCs.”

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“Greenspan notes that the U.S. has fallen far behind on crypto regulation and warns this case could set a precedent of classifying “multifaceted programmable money” as securities. Greenspan believes the platform’s only crime was to set up in the U.S. and told Cointelegraph the case highlights the U.S.’s “backwards approach to forward-looking innovation.”

Although the Isreal-based commentator doesn’t think an SEC victory would stifle innovation in the crypto industry overall, it will certainly do so in the United States.

Projects like this are flourishing in Europe and some parts of Asia and the technology continues to progress globally. America is being left behind.

Hopefully, the judge will be able to see the blatant holes in the SEC’s case. LBRY seems to have some very sound arguments, so I’m quite optimistic.”

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“Signal is facing criticism over its integration with MobileCoin, with eyebrows raised over a 450% increase in the price of MOB ahead of the announcement. Controversy surrounds Signal’s recently announced MobileCoin integration, with users expressing concerns over ties between Signal’s founder and the cryptocurrency, opacity surrounding the coin’s issuance, and suspicious gains leading up to the partnership’s announcement.

While MobileCoin CEO Joshua Goldbard has sought to assure the community that Marlinspike only served as a “technical advisor” to the project and has never served as an executive, Goldbard appears to have been inconsistent in his characterization of Marlinspike’s involvement with the project. In the Reddit thread, Goldbard describes Marlinspike as one of the three individuals who “created Mobilecoin.”

Buymobilecoin, a website that allows individuals to purchase MobileCoin tokens directly from the project, has also attracted controversy. The buying process is opaque, with no reference price provided and orders organized via email correspondence.”

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“All nine CryptoPunks are from mints below 1,000, meaning they were created in the earliest days of the company’s digital collectibles.

The announcement signals that NFTs continue to be legitimized by establishment art firms, even as athletes and musicians also ramp up their participation in the NFT space. Rival auction house Sotheby’s, which was founded 22 years before Christie’s, will also sell NFT art later this month.”

“State Street, the second-oldest bank in the U.S. with $3.1 trillion in assets under management, is providing the infrastructure for a new bank-grade trading platform for digital assets set to go live mid-year.

State Street’s Currenex trading technology arm is working with London-based Pure Digital, infrastructure provider to the foreign exchange trading world, to create an institution-focused digital currency trading platform.

All these banks are waking up to crypto and can’t ignore it anymore. Either they find a way to get involved and provide services to meet client demand or they will start to lose relevancy over time.”

See Also: Citi Completes Cross-Border Payments Pilot

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“A set of common rules would lay the groundwork for efficient cross-border payments. The BOJ official said CBDCs play differing roles for advanced nations with a robust banking system and emerging economies that can use digital currencies to make up for shortfalls in their financial infrastructure.

It’s, therefore, better to come up with common rules among countries with similar economic structures.”

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“Over 200 UK crypto firms are still waiting to hear about their licensing status from the FCA. Many businesses are now considering relocating, the trade association’s chair said. The UK regulator made headlines earlier this year, by banning the sale of crypto derivatives to UK retail investors.

It makes the UK not an attractive place to do business if you’re in the fintech sector.”

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“1inch announced on Thursday a rebrand to “1inch Network” — a facelift designed to better reflect the current and future state of the multichain, multiprotocol platform as it continues to grow.

The multifaceted growth strategy is part of a wider goal of decentralizing the development of the various protocols to coincide with forthcoming fully decentralized governance via a fork of Compound’s governance structure.

We as core contributors want to see more people and teams participating and contributing to the 1inch Network. Not only one team should be a core contributor, but as many as possible.”

See Also: C.R.E.A.M. launches Iron Bank flash loans, eyes cross-chain capital efficiency
See Also: Vesta Equity and Algorand breathe new life into real estate tokenization

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“Is bitcoin a Chinese plot to destroy America? China doesn’t control bitcoin and would find it hard to do so, because, you know, decentralization.

But it has opened the door on monetary technology, with big geopolitical consequences. Because of bitcoin, we think differently about how to transfer value. Growing numbers of people understand that you don’t need a bank or middleman to do that.

China is adapting this insight to its very state-oriented view of the world. Its plans for a digital yuan allied to an international blockchain services network could obviate the need for companies and individuals to use any form of reserve currency and allow trade to go around the U.S. banking system.

Going forward, we’re likely to hear a lot more comments like Thiel’s, even if they’re a bit confused. China is a convenient foil. As China rolls out its blockchain weapons, differences in monetary approach will become starker – privacy versus surveillance, state-run versus private enterprise.“

See Also: US must embrace Bitcoin to counter Chinese ‘financial attack’ — Pomp
See Also: Digital yuan campaign planned for contested island in the South China Sea

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“NYDIG raised $100 million from insurance companies Thursday as the institutional crypto shop previewed its latest business venture: bitcoin insurance products. Liberty Mutual and Starr Insurance joined NYDIG’s “growth capital round”.

The fact that NYDIG has now raised $300 million in two months – speak to the New York firm’s aggressive and multifaceted bitcoin expansion plan. It is now gearing up to make bitcoin insurance plays with financial backing from some of that industry’s most visible names.”

See Also: Publicly Listed Meitu Now Holds $100 Million in Bitcoin, Ethereum

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“Coinbase’s blowout Q1 earnings results led investment bank DA Davidson to up its price target for the company’s soon-to-be-direct-listed shares by 125%.

Rating COIN a “buy,” Davidson raised the exchange’s share price target from $195 to $440, which is a 20x multiple of its expected 2021 revenue. The analysts said the company’s Q1 performance was proof the crypto exchange giant could generate “healthy margins” despite the uncertainty of the bitcoin markets.

Coinbase reported preliminary 1Q21 results prior to [its] direct listing that were multiples higher than our estimates on both the top and bottom lines. We continue to believe COIN’s product experience and best-in-class compliance and regulatory controls should provide a defensible moat.”

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“According to Bloomberg bitcoin (BTC) analysts, the price could climb as high as $400,000 this year, from about $56,000 now. The uber-bullish prediction is based on bitcoin’s performance during the 2017 and 2013 bull runs.

Our graphic depicts bitcoin on similar ground as the roughly 55x gain in 2013 and 15x in 2017. To reach price extremes akin to those years in 2021, the crypto would approach $400,000, based on the regression since the 2011 high. The year after a supply cut (halving) is what 2021 has in common with 2017 and 2013, along with subdued volatility.

Rising real yields are a headwind for gold prices, but less so for bitcoin, still in its price-discovery stage. Gold is fighting a battle with bitcoin, which can earn 6%-8% in crypto savings accounts and is well on its way to becoming a global reserve asset in a digital world.”

See Also: Bitcoin Still Has Support From Long-Term Uptrend, Says Technical Analyst Katie Stockton
See Also: Here’s How the Archegos Debacle May Have Spilled Over to Bitcoin

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“Miami Mayor Francis Suarez is pushing a commitment for the city to explore crypto by turning his attention to Ethereum. Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin and Suarez announced that they have embarked on a new collaborative project focused on city services.

We want the city directly involved in a way that demonstrates the applicability of the software so that we can continue to provide better services for our residents.”

See Also: Wyoming’s New Online Sports Betting Law OKs Crypto Wagers

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“California real estate stalwart Caruso properties will now accept bitcoin for rent on all its properties.

In a partnership with Gemini Exchange, Caruso will now let tenants of its retail and commercial properties pay their rent in bitcoin. This makes Caruso the largest real estate manager in the United States to accept the digital asset as a form of payment. Additionally, Caruso has allocated roughly 1% of its treasury into bitcoin.

This partnership marks the beginning of a holistic, long-term relationship intended to bring cryptocurrency, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and blockchain applications to Caruso properties.”

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“At a panel for the World Economic Forum’s Global Technology Governance Summit today, United Arab Emirates minister of economy Abdulla Bin Touq Al Marri said that cryptocurrency and asset tokenization will be key to the country’s plans to double its economy — currently estimated to be the 34th-largest in the world — in 10 years.

Perhaps most exciting from an adoption standpoint, the minister said that the country has several ambitious projects underway, including a study being conducted with the WEF on funding small and medium-sized enterprises with a government-run token platform, possibly as part of a ‘regional token exchange that is in our agenda.’“

See Also: PayPal Co-Founder, Bitcoin Investor Thiel Says Bitcoin Could Be Chinese ‘Weapon’

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“In a recent study, Sweden’s central bank presented the first results of its central bank digital currency pilot on a network based on R3’s Corda blockchain.

The Riksbank simulated core aspects of a potential CBDC system, including liquidity supply via the Riksbank’s settlement system, RIX, and network members serving as e-kronor distributors. The central bank also simulated participants, end-users and payment instruments like mobile apps.

The solution tested in phase one of the e-krona pilot has met the performance requirements made in the public procurement. But this has taken place in a limited test environment and the new technology’s capacity to manage retail payments on a large scale needs to be investigated and tested further.

The central bank also noted some privacy challenges, stressing that the information contained in an e-krona transaction must be protected to uphold banking secrecy laws and avoid revealing personal data.”

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“Brady and Richard Rosenblatt, the former CEO of Myspace parent company Intermix Media, will serve as co-chairs of Autograph, while the CEO will be Rosenblatt’s 23-year-old son Dillon.

Autograph has also loaded up a team of tech and sports heavyweights as board members or advisors, including Apple SVP Eddy Cue, DraftKings CEO Jason Robins, Spotify CCO Dawn Ostroff, Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer, Cameo CEO Steven Galanis, and Golden State Warriors part owner Peter Guber.

Autograph, will bring together some of the world’s most iconic names and brands with best in class digital artists to ideate, create and launch NFTs and ground-breaking experiences to a community of fans and collectors.”

See Also: Playboy Is Turning Its Classic Centerfolds Into NFTs
See Also: McDonald’s Teases NFT Big Mac

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“Decentralized finance (DeFi) management and protocol aggregator platform Instadapp announced the launch of their governance token, INST. While not currently transferable by the average user, the token is set to go fully live later in the year to coincide with a transfer of control over the protocol to a DAO governance process in Q2.

Instadapp is known as being an aggregator, but we are much more than that. Instadapp is a complete toolkit for building DeFi applications. As we transition our platform into a defi middleware, we are not only aggregating different protocols but our platform will create unique use-cases by leveraging different components across defi.”

See Also: Fei Protocol struggles with a bug as holders are mostly unable to sell the token