“The committee will continue tightening monetary policy methodically through a series of interest rate increases and by starting to reduce the balance sheet at a rapid pace as soon as our May meeting.
Given that the recovery has been considerably stronger and faster than in the previous cycle, I expect the balance sheet to shrink considerably more rapidly than in the previous recovery, with significantly larger caps and a much shorter period to phase in the maximum caps compared with 2017-19.
The Federal Reserve last reduced its balance sheet in 2018, after its assets quadrupled following the financial crisis in 2008.”
See Also: Bitcoin and Stocks Briefly Dip After Fed Comments
“Elon has always been very public about the concept of a more decentralized and censorship-resistant social media platform, and this is something that blockchain and Web3 technology can help enable.
Elon Musk‘s investment in Twitter could help to increase the acceleration of Twitter‘s crypto adoption. It remains to be seen whether Twitter will begin adopting Elon‘s beloved Dogecoin moving forward.”
See Also: FTX US to invest in IEX stock exchange to launch digital securities
“Bitcoin is getting a boost by way of a new Taproot-enabled protocol known as Taproot Asset Representation Overlay, or Taro. Taro is an open-source protocol powered by the Lightning Network (LN).
Lightning Labs describes Taro an asset overlay network on Bitcoin. The security of Taro is based on embedded consensus, which means that transactions on Taro include Bitcoin data that needs to be verified on the Bitcoin blockchain.
The protocol is uniquely enabled by Taproot to embed spending conditions into MASTs without disclosing all details to the blockchain. Using MASTs, Taro embeds data for new assets such that these assets can all be treated as bitcoins.
A critical distinction between Taro and other stablecoins, like UST on Terra, is that Taro is only the infrastructure to enable the movement of assets over Lightning, be they stablecoins or some other asset. Taro is not a stablecoin, it is simply infrastructure to enable the movement of assets. Developers still need to build projects using Taro.”
“There are a couple of things going on here: One is that crypto enables you to move assets person to person without intermediaries, which is a virtue when you are in a conflict zone and access to financial intermediaries is unreliable at best.
Individuals, organizations and countries have had major security and logistical issues sending cash into conflict zones, said Tapscott. Notoriously, in 2007, the U.S. sent $12 billion to Iraq, including billions of dollars of shrink-wrapped cash on pallets, only to have much of it go unaccounted for. But cryptocurrency transactions are irrevocable, and for the most part transparent. So not only can cryptocurrency get to where the donor wants it to go but the donor has evidence that it went into the right hands –and crypto is allowing donors to give more directly than they have in the past.
Many of the suppliers to the Ukrainian military prefer to be paid in crypto. ‘Generals in Ukraine say that 40% of their suppliers are now accepting cryptocurrency directly.’
On the other side of the conflict, Russia’s population of more than 145 million is now cut off from the global financial system and the global economy, said Tapscott, and cryptocurrencies might be a refuge for Russian citizens amid international sanctions.
So far most crypto companies have resisted the mass exodus from Russia.
Here you have a situation in Russia where many people don’t care for this war and it isn’t fair to them that their bank accounts are frozen. Russians are increasingly turning to digital assets to make payments, save and make payroll.
As the world becomes more unstable, there’s a growing role for digital assets as a hedge against geopolitical risk and as a lifeline for people whose access to the global financial system has been removed or restricted.”
See Also: US sanctions Russia’s largest darknet market and crypto exchange Garantex
“The new product, called Ledger Nano S Plus, is the next generation to the original Nano iteration released in 2016, and is designed with NFT collectors’ needs in mind.
The Nano S Plus combined with the recent support of “clear signing” technology through Ledger Live aims to provide a safer user experience for Web3 customers. Clear signing technology aims to provide all the details of a transaction, removing the risk of “blind signing,” or consenting to a potentially risky transaction.
Ledger’s software application Ledger Live prioritizes NFT support where users can view their NFTs in Ledger Live and securely transact through clear signing.”
“A presentation given by ECB officials to finance ministers yesterday suggests in practice there could be multiple different kinds of wallets available to hold a digital euro with fewer checks associated with lower-risk payments. Smaller payments could potentially be fully offline and private, the presentation said, analogous to how cash is used today.
A digital euro should comply with AML requirements but this is different to the current discussion on cryptoassets. We will be assessing whether a higher level of privacy should be made available, in particular, for low-value transactions, depending on the risk characteristics of the digital euro.
In a recent, controversial vote, lawmakers at the European Parliament favored tough anti-money laundering (AML) rules for bitcoin payments, requiring customers to be identified for even the smallest transactions.”
See Also: EU Consultation Looks at Issues With a Digital Euro
See Also: US House of Representatives to Consider Legislation on El Salvador’s Bitcoin Adoption
“Nearly 20% of Bitcoin’s hash rate is produced by public mining companies, up from just 3% in January 2021. There are currently 26 publicly listed Bitcoin mining companies, including Riot Blockchain, Bitfarms and Argo Blockchain.
Despite their larger share of the industry, public miners have “continually missed” recent hash rate growth targets. A more likely cause for their increased dominance, according to Arcane, is that many existing private miners simply became public over the past year. Furthermore, public miners’ increased access to capital allows them to expand operations faster than their private counterparts.”
“In exchange for HONEY tokens, the map contributors install specially designed dashcams in their cars that share footage with Hivemapper, which is then used to create maps. Because Hivemapper sells equipment to independent contributors who have their own vehicles, the company’s cost is much lower.
Google’s maps are high quality but also very, very expensive. Your ability to refresh an area is, for places like Lagos, Nigeria, or Manila or other locations – it becomes cost-prohibitive over time.
Seidman said he was inspired by the success and rapid growth of Helium, a crypto-incentivized network of wireless hotspots. Hivemapper will generate revenue by building tools that can then be licensed by companies. The company’s first dashcam is expected to begin shipping in July.”
The Disrupt 