“We are excited about the underlying capabilities and how blockchain-driven collectibles bring trust and authenticity, key components of a marketplace, to the digital space.”
“The Brooker Group, a publicly listed financial consultancy based in Thailand, plans to invest nearly $50 million in decentralized finance (DeFi) and decentralized application (dapp) projects.
Brooker will invest in more than 15 high-growth companies including Binance, Uniswap and Filecoin. The company plans for digital assets, DeFi and dapps to make up around 50% of total assets.”
See Also: Yearn.finance’s YFI Token Surges 22% to New Record as DeFi Platform Adds Collateral
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Recommended read.
“‘Virgin coins‘ in Bitcoin are considered pristine due to their lack of transactional history. And they are something of a chimera – a mythical concept often spoken of but rarely witnessed. But do virgin coins, and more broadly, distinct miner-generated tiers of coins, actually exist?
Almost all mining is done through pools. Pooling introduces one or more hops into the process of miners actually taking delivery of their coins. In some cases, pools mine to exchanges directly, which then credit miners with those accounts. Each successive transaction, especially when multiple parties are involved, increases the perceived “risk” of the coins. Thus the standard mode of mining doesn’t suit virgin coins.
There are other lingering problems. Miners aren’t compensated based solely on the issuance of new coins (6.25 BTC per block). They also collect fees from users bidding for blockspace. Over the last six months, miners have collected 10-25% of their revenue from fees. Those fees derive from units of Bitcoin already in circulation. If non-virgin coins are considered tainted, the taint would be inherited from fees.
Let’s say you can surmount the challenges above. How do you transfer your virginal or distinct coins to a buyer? Once you have virgin coins, they aren’t good for many transactions, as the taint theory holds that the more on-chain transactions occur, the more risk is introduced into the coins themselves. The lack of a transaction history, which gives virgin coins their strength, is also a drawback. When it comes time to actually use these virgin coins, you are hamstrung.
More abstractly, individual units of Bitcoin don’t really have persistence the way that many think they do. Bitcoin is a UTXO system, which means that the Bitcoin protocol tracks quantities rather than specific units of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is interested in making sure users spend no more than the funds they are entitled to spend, but it doesn’t really care to identify the units being spent.
Thus, even if certain coins are dubbed conflict-free, renewable-mined or virginal, these specific units lose their identity once they actually begin to circulate on chain. Virgin coins might better be called sterile coins – they are largely impotent and cannot actually circulate. The moment they do, and get inserted into the chaotic mélange of churning Bitcoin UTXOs, they become just another undifferentiated quantity of Bitcoin.”
“If the alt-season gap between ether and bitcoin widens further, we’re likely to begin to see an erosion of bitcoin’s viability as a market benchmark. If the trend continues, eventually we’ll be looking for broader data sources as benchmarks for the market – the CoinDesk Digital Large Cap Index, for example. That would push crypto more in line with equity markets.
Bitcoin dominance is the ratio of bitcoin’s market cap to the sum market cap of all cryptocurrencies. Ether’s moves this week have pushed it below 45%, testing lows set in 2018.”
“Bitso is starting to see customers in the region hold dollar balances in stablecoins, a trend that has accelerated since the pandemic. He sais that purchasing U.S. dollars via bank accounts in many Latin American countries can be extremely difficult, except for rich clients.
If you’re straight out of college and want to save your money in U.S. dollars, no bank account will even open you an account.
We are seeing a big demand for different stablecoins on our platform.”
“Lawmakers passed a proposed amendment to the state’s Uniform Commercial Code, or UCC, aimed at better adapting commercial law to blockchain innovation and digital asset regulations. The bill could bring Texas closer to being a crypto-friendly state like Wyoming.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has already said he is a “crypto law proposal supporter” — specifically referencing HB 4474 — and seemed to encourage Bitcoin (BTC) mining firms to set up shop in the state.”
See Also: US Senator Proposes Making Distributed Ledgers ‘Key Technology Focus’
See Also: Kazakhstan’s government to create roadmap for developing crypto market
“China’s Chutian Dragon, a maker of high-end smart cards, plans to make a card-based wallet for the digital yuan with fingerprint identification technology from Norway’s IDEX Biometrics ASA. But a new wallet that requires its users’ fingerprints could strike a nerve among those concerned about privacy when using a central bank digital currency.
U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has suggested a digital dollar should be better at protecting privacy than its Chinese counterpart. The Fed, however, hasn’t revealed any technical details on how its digital currency could be more private.
Critics contend that the centralized nature of CBDCs means they can’t replace cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin in terms of security and privacy.”
“As one of the world’s foremost privacy advocates, he thinks Bitcoin isn’t private enough—and that an upcoming software update could make it worse. He went on to praise privacy coins Zcash and Monero and urged Bitcoin to be “private-by-design”.
Cryptocurrency, and by this I’m just going to say Bitcoin, is really failing comprehensively, terribly, on the privacy angle. Taproot does not fix Bitcoin’s privacy problem. And there are some arguments it actually makes privacy worse by sort of fragmenting address space, making forensic sort of flow analysis easier.
Others agree that Bitcoin, now with a market capitalization above $1 trillion and growing mainstream acceptance, is playing a long game that requires patience.
It’s sad that anonymity is not a priority for Bitcoin core, but it would only serve to impede mainstream adoption and slow Bitcoin’s absorption of the world’s wealth.”
“Dfinity Foundation’s internet computer (ICP) token, which allows users to participate in and govern the blockchain network, went live on the U.S.-based crypto exchange Coinbase Pro on Monday. Since then, several major cryptocurrency exchanges including Huobi, OKEx, and Binance have added support to the coin, leading to massive price swings.
Prices tanked roughly 10 minutes after the Coinbase listing on Monday, shedding 60% in value to trade in line with the $300 to $400 price range implied earlier in the day on the FTX exchange’s derivatives contract linked to the ICP token. The cryptocurrency was changing hands around $400 on Coinbase at press time, having dropped from $630 to $250 on Monday.
The platform has raised $121 million of equity funding.”
“Utah-based TaxBit announced the one-year contract Tuesday, saying it would provide auditing services for cryptocurrency transactions as needed by the IRS, helping the agency verify whether high-volume traders accurately reported their crypto taxes.
The IRS will not be specifically auditing TaxBit customers with the contract. Rather, the federal agency will provide its own data and ask Taxbit to analyze the transactions. TaxBit would likely be examining high-volume entities or traders, who report thousands or millions of transactions per year.
[We’ll fill] some of the gaps in tools that just don’t exist right now within their own ecosystem, and so we’re coming in to make sure that they are fully understanding the data.”
“Block.one has launched a subsidiary, Bullish Global, with $10 billion in funding backed by prominent investors including Mike Novogratz and Peter Thiel.
The new venture will be focused on the launch of a crypto exchange called Bullish later this year. The exchange will aim to offer automated market making, lending and portfolio management.“
The Disrupt 