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The stars alligned, the sun is out of the clouds, and everything is bright and green again. Ethereum made a new step towards proof of stake, taking the fees from the miners. Miami lauches its own coin. Gary Vee becomes a NFT investor. US is trying to regulate decentralized platforms, yes, they want to do it. China is being China. What elsehappened this week? Read bellow. But are you ready for this?
Bitcoin: Bitcoin ATM maker LibertyX sale is increasing the reach of crypto payments. They got 9500 BTC ATMs and 20K POS in retail stores, and the company buying them, NCR, will reach 31% of the North America market share after the sale is completed. Melanion Capital, a French asset management company, got approved to launch an exchange-traded fund ETF tracking up to 30 stocks correlated to BTC price. The fund meet EU regulators requirements and it is listed on Euronext, Paris with a 0.75% fee. Square's Cash App BTC revenue rised 200% in the last year, even if they lost $45M in the first 6 months of the year, due to BTC depreciation. Not looking bad now, with BTC at $44K, no?
Ethereum: Finally, ETH London hard fork goes live, and I like it. Getting us closer to ETH 2.0, EIP-1559 is changing the way to calculate gas fees and basically is taking the fees away from miners, burning them instead. This aim to make the gas fees lower and predictable, without slowing down the network, or, to put it out in simpler words, every transactions that it is sent to the blockchain with a fee higher than the basic fee and a tip for miner will be included in the next blocks, burning $8000(2.9 ETH per minute. The revolution has begin! Viva la revolution!
Altcoins: MiamiCoin (MIA) was launched, promoted by local gov and CityCoin, letting citizens invest in the city, receiving rewards in Stacks or Bitcoin. Bitcoin SV (BSV) is under 51% attack this week, with three blockchain versions to be mined in the same time. The hackers got control of the whole network for more than 3 hours and a lot of BSV deposits were double spent on various exchanges. USDC got human readable web addresses now, provided by Unstoppable domains, looking like name.coin. MakerDAO increased x40 times in the last year, looking like the most succesful decentralized stablecoin project right now. DAI, not USDT, is the one we need.
NFTs: Gary Vee bought a Cryptopunk NFT paying 1600 ETH. Bet he is looking at the Ethereum price pumping up and it is proud of himself. NBA Top Shots NFTs can be bought from a physical store during NBA summer league games in Las Vegas. The NFT platform MakersPlace raised $30M in a funding round, from the likes of Pantera Capital, COINBASE Ventures, Sony Music and Eminem (yes, the man himself). Marvel and VEVE will work together to release a collection of 5 Spiderman NFTs, with different rarities, the common piece will be released 32.000 times, for like $40, and the Ultrarare one 1000 times, for like $400, as they declare August to be the Marvel month. I see it as a money grab, but heck yes, I like Spiderman. FTX again, partnered with Yield Guild Games, to offer 137 Axie Infinity (AXS) scholarship funds to players from Philippines, Indonesia, India and Latin America. All these countries have in common the following fact: 4500 SLP (840$) obtained by playing the game daily is well above the national minimum wage in those countries. Actually, I just checked, only 14 countries on the globe have minimum wage higher that the monthly income you can get on Axie Infinity. Combine this with SPLINTERLANDS daily quest and you are already in the 1% worldwide in terms of money gained monthly. Just think about this! Blockchain gaming made this possible.
Good news: CoinJar, the oldest Aussie crypto exchange is launching their Mastercard crypto card, both in digital and physical form. The card is supporting more than 30 cryptocurrencies. FTX is teaming up with PR company Dolphin, working towards a NFT marketplace for sports and entertainment brands. Australian exchange Independent Reserve received an 'in principle approval' to operate as a regulated asset service provider, before the likes of BINANCE and Gemini, in Singapore. New York City is planning to record deeds and land sales on blockchain, in a plan to reduce deed fraud. Good idea.
Bad news: China, being China, will continue to promote green finance, making the digital yuan an international success, and closing bank accounts related to crypto companies. They are advising the major banks and payment companies to not offer crypto-related services. And before blaming China for trying to promote yuan, I bet you they will do the same once the digital dollar or euro will be ready. HSBC is one of the UK banks 'trying' to keep the customer safe by not letting him to buy crypto also, to point a finger. China was also very serious into limiting crypto mining operations using various methods. After Bitsonic closure, the South Korean legislators are working to suspend another 11 local crypto exchanges researched for illegal activities and collective accounts fraud. In a move reminding of Al Capone arrest, a former Monero lead developer, Riccardo Spagni, was arrested in US, being accused that he stole $100K in 2009, when he submitted false client invoices. Popsicle Finance (ICE) was hacked, loosing more than $25M after the attackers used a bug already exploited on some other protocols. The pools attacked were ETH/AXS, ETH/SLP, ETH/LINK and EURt. One of the NFL Minessota Vikings, Bitfinex partner, Mr Fowler for you all, helped them Tether monsters to get money to US customers when the payment processor went down in 2018, but also kept $300M for himself. He will go to trial for fraud in February. The establishment started to show us the ugly truth, as Moody's lowered San Salvador rating from B3 to Caa1, due to its Bitcoin bill.
Mass adoption: Binance is playing into the regulators hands, proactively working towards a better cooperation with regulators. They closed futures and derivatives products in Europe already, Paypal is hiring experts in crypto compliance, anti-money laundering and bussiness development in their new Irish headquarters. They are preparing to launch in UK soon. In US, there is a lot of noise related to the newest proposal for the bill regarding crypto tax provision. While some people like senator Pat Toomey said that the bill is unworkable and they need to correct it, and Rep. Ted Budd told them that US fintech will suffer, many are warning the Congress that rushing the bill can harm the economy itself, putting American jobs at risk. The bipartisan infrastructure bill in Congress is proposing to raise $28B from digital assets (meaning your crypto). The main issue is with the wording, as paying tax for every transaction worth more than $10K is not the same as making you deposit the money from crypto profits in bank as taxable event. Do they want to stop trading? Many big names in crypto, like Square and Andreessen Horowits asked them to clarify the language. They are not the only ones to think that the bill is poorly crafter, just trying to create a new surveillance system on the blockchain system. FTX is not collaborating with Riot to sponsor League of Legends in North America. And Google will let crypto exchanges and wallets to advertise now, but only for advertisers registered with US regulator FinCen. The rest are still banned. I can only see double standards in here, and the idea that Google follows the money and wants a part of them for themselves. Voyager trading platform acquired Coinify crypto payment platform, with a mere $85M deal.
Joke of the day: SEC chairman, Gary Gensler said that industries cannot thrive without clear regulation, and crypto is not different at all, as he sees every ICO as a securities sale, and even more, he wants all exchanges, local or foreign, centralized or decentralized, to register as securities sellers. I suppose you want them do KYC and provide the data to government too, right? Yes, Identity reporting on DEFI platforms is one of their requirement, if you believe that. Bad news for you, US Congress, you do not own crypto, doesn't matter how much you wish to make it happen. Keep dreaming and learn about decentralization. You cannot FUD crypto anymore, my friend. His real life friend, CTFC Commissioner Brian Quintenz, told that Bitcoin is more like oil and gold, and can't be regulated by SEC, as they do not have the authority to do it.
That's all for today.
All the best,
George
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