“55 of the top 100 banks by assets under management (AUM) have some form of exposure to the novel technology. This involvement reportedly cuts across direct and indirect investments in crypto and decentralized ledger technology firms by the banks themselves or via their subsidiaries.
Blockdata’s research places Barclays, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs among the most active backers of crypto and blockchain firms, with JPMorgan and BNP Paribas also identified as serial investors in the emerging space. These investments are part of a larger trend of significant backing for blockchain startups, with funding figures already doubling the amount recorded in 2020.
Blockdata attributed the growing crypto and blockchain involvement among banks to three main factors — skyrocketing profits of cryptocurrency startups, regulatory advancements, and the increasing demand among bank customers for exposure to digital assets.
At $58.09 billion as of the time of writing, Coinbase sits on a valuation almost half that of Goldman Sachs, the 13th largest bank in the world, despite employing only about 4% of the latter’s workforce.”
See Also: Blockchain, Crypto Investment in H1 Topped 2018-20 Full-Year Totals: KPMG
See Also: DBS Bank Gets Greenlight From Singapore Regulator to Provide Crypto Services
“Including the fees generated by both Uniswap v1 and its v3 deployment on Optimism, roughly $1.02 billion has been distributed to Uniswap liquidity providers since the protocol’s creation in November 2018.
By contrast, IntoTheBlock’s data shows that the Bitcoin network has generated $2.24 billion in fees since its 2009 launch, while the DeFi-driven surge in activity on Ethereum has raised its total fee revenue to $4.74 billion in six years.
With Ethereum’s recent London upgrades introducing a burn mechanism into the network’s fee market on Aug. 5, the surging popularity of Ethereum-based DApps has resulted in $100 million worth of Ether (ETH) being burned and more than 1,000 deflationary blocks being mined over the past week.“
See Also: Anchorage Digital Adds Ethereum DeFi Token dYdX
See Also: Leading Latin American Venture Firm Kaszek Makes First DeFi Investment
“U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to amend the crypto tax provision in the Senate’s infrastructure bill in an open letter on Thursday. Eshoo, described by Politico in 2014 as “Pelosi’s closest friend in Congress,” wrote that the current definition of the term “broker” for crypto tax reporting purposes is too broad and may be difficult for some entities to comply with.
When the House takes up the Senate bill, I encourage you to amend the problematic broker definition in Section 80603 of the legislation.
Eshoo joins a growing group of bipartisan lawmakers pushing back against the crypto provision. House Financial Services Committee Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) and a handful of other congressmen on both sides of the political aisle have expressed their support for changing the language.
The House is in recess, but is expected to take up the bill when it returns at the end of August.”
“As the SEC weighs approving its first bitcoin ETF, Kryptoin and others are getting in line for an ETH ETF. VanEck filed for a similar ETH vehicle in May.
The trust will not purchase or sell ether directly, although the Trustee may sell ether to pay certain expenses. Instead, when it sells or redeems its shares, it will do so in ‘in-kind’ transactions in blocks of 100,000 shares.”
See Also: Crypto Asset Manager Valkyrie Files for Bitcoin Futures ETF
“Crypto has now gone mainstream. We have double-digit percentage adoption in both developed and developing countries. We even have Bitcoin adopted as legal tender in a country and many other countries are considering adopting Bitcoin as legal tender.
What’s more interesting to see is the growth and acceleration of institutional adoption of cryptocurrencies. Almost all major institutions have invested in cryptocurrencies or plan to invest in cryptocurrencies.”
“According to a Thursday update on the attack from Poly Network, all of the $610 million in funds taken in an exploit that used “a vulnerability between contract calls” have now been transferred to a multisig wallet controlled by the project and the hacker. The only remaining tokens are the roughly $33 million in Tether (USDT), which were frozen immediately following news of the attack.
The hacker had been communicating with the Poly Network team and others through embedded messages in Ethereum transactions. They seemed to have not planned to transfer the funds after successfully stealing them, and claimed to do the hack “for fun” because “cross-chain hacking is hot.”
Poly Network said it determined that the attack constituted “white hat behavior” and offered the hacker, whom it dubbed “Mr. White Hat,” a $500,000 bounty.
The poly did offered a bounty, but I have never responded to them. Instead, I will send all of their money back.
Though the hacker’s identity has yet to be made public, Chinese cybersecurity firm SlowMist posted an update shortly after news of the hack broke, saying its analysts had identified the attacker’s email address, IP address and device fingerprint.”
“China’s central government issued a five-year plan Wednesday that calls for tougher regulation across industries, signaling that the last few months’ crackdown on tech industries that has shaken investors’ confidence in the market will not abate any time soon.
Beijing’s push to rein in tech industries goes far beyond crypto, and has led global investors to reconsider their exposure to China. Share prices for Chinese tech giants like Tencent and Alibaba have been tumbling, and SoftBank is holding back on investing in the country.”
“The electronics giant plans to test the functionality of BOK’s CBDC pilot with its Galaxy smartphone.
Specifically, Samsung wants to know whether it is possible to ‘conduct payments via mobile phones using the digital currency with no internet availability.’“
The Disrupt 