So, a busy week that we left behind, and some concentrated FUD on Binance and BTC. But the bags are soon full, and i see few interesting events coming, like chinese miners settling in other crypto friendly locations, countries taking BTC nationally, Apple may have confirm the 2.5 billion dollars buy and many others. Check them out:
Bitcoin: People on CNBC saying that Bitcoin can fall all the way to 10K, but the coin just sat confortably at 30-34K. They try the FUD, as a concentrated attack, everytime when BTC is close to break the 34-37K resistance. But in the end, resistence is futile. And some interesting numbers, if San Salvador end up doing most of the transactions in Bitcoin as legal tender, then 4% of the whole BTC on-chain volume will be represented by this country. A potential strain, or a challenge for the devs to improve it even further. You see danger, I see opportunity. Some people who know more than me are describing some interesting changes into BTC, thinking that a breakdown is coming soon, as the bottom was reached. They are estimating 35K first and then a longer period of stability around 44K. Spike Lee is making a crypto ad related to Coin Cloud, and BTC is not mentioned at all, as they focus on the fiat lack of diversity instead. Jack Dorsey wants to form a division dedicated to BTC Defi. French TV and theoretical physicists known as Bogdanoff twins said that they helped Satoshi with BTC creations. And the BTC lightning Network node count doubled in just 3 months. I soon believe BTC will go up into the ski. Go! Go! Go!
Ethereum: There is a documentary about ETH world computer development, called Ethereum - The infinite garden, and Vitalik Buterin is playing in it. The fundraiser for the 750 ETH was made, and 210 ETH were collected until now. Ethereum hard fork London will be launched on 4th of August. Still time to get your bags full of ETH, before is getting expensive.
Altcoins: Hop Protocol, a bridge between ETH, MATIC, XDAI, using USDC is up and running, and they will expand soon with MATIC, ETH and WBTC. Uniswap liquidated half of their stablecoin donated funds for Defi Education Fund, creating contreversy with their move. All while they are getting ready tp release Optimism sidechain in order to scale even further. Dogecoin Founder Jackson Palmer is blaming crypto, as a cult like get rich funnel taking the money from naive people. In the second quarter of 2021, Dogecoin and ETC were the starts with 391 and 297% increase, followed by MATIC with 226%. ETH is only 13% up, and BTC is 38% down. Shapeshift is becoming a DAO, after regulatory friction and extra pressure, with CEO stake to be reduced at 5% after the native FOX tokens airdrop. Cub (CUB) new Kingdoms features will double the rewards from x 15 to x 30, and this is awesome. Soon on Cub.Finance BNB rewards will be given for staking on the platform.
NFTs: Dodgers auctioned a physical World Series Ring along with a NFT package on 15th of July, for charity. This is their first collaboration with Candy Digital start-up. Niftys.com entered in a partnership with Warner Bros to create a Space Jam related NFT collection, and they even gave away some free stuff, but the server went down as soon as they started. The Top Scorer Trophy for Euro 2020, won by Ronaldo, is also a NFT, thanks to a collaboration between UEFA and Alipay. Talking about collaboration, American Express is working with the artist SZA to create a line of NFTs for their cardholders. Damien Hirst started a NFT project, with 10.000 paintings, each of them having unique traits, linked to a similar NFT, but there is a catch. If you choose the NFT, the physical artwork will be destroyed. What happen when a blockchain game become mainstream? See Axie story and all the issues raising with scalability in here. We are talking about a x 132 increase in the last half an year. When Splinterlands?
Good news: Rumour has it that Apple bought $2.5B BTC, but no official confirmation was made until now. Coinbase financial results seems to improve this quarter, after some strugling efforts at the start of the year. I consider this good news, as China mining rate fell from 75% in September 2019 to 46% in April 2021. And is much less now, I bet.
Bad news: Strange things happening in the hackers world. As I said before, REvil hacking group has mods to avoid any computer using a language tied to Russia and ex-Russian countries, plus few Arab languages. But, after more than 1500 bussines were attacked by ransomware globally, US and EU asked nicely to Vladimir Putin if he can help. And next, all the REvil tied users disappeared from the online medium. Now, either somebody took care of the issue, or they did too much in terms of publicity, and they will fade away only to regroup across the street with a new name. We will see what happens next! Anyway, statistics say that 8% of the victims paid the ransom. As I use Romanian on keyboard, my computer is safe, at least theoretical. Using Cyrillic alphabet is even better. Meanwhile in Ukraine, in a former warehouse, almost 4000 Play Station 4 were used to mine crypto, creating a local outage and stealing around $250K in electricity every month. The Chinese miners are already packing up and leaving to more friendly locations, and a 28% drop in difficulty emerged after this, but i like to believe that this is a temporary thing, as they will move and set up again in the next 4-6 weeks. Clear Junction, one of the European payment processor companies, stopped processing transactions for Binance. UK police made another record capture of £114M ($157M) in cryptocurrency, investigating a money laundering network. Thorchain is still down after a hacker managed to steal more than $7.5M , and they may use the treasury on tempt the hacker with a huge bug bounty. Binance is under a concentrated attack from multiple fronts, but VISA and Mastercards are supporting CZ on the long term. Anyway, Binance CEO is working on it, even hiring former members of the Financial Action Task Force to stay ahead the curve.
Mass adoption: The Koreean bank Woori will start a digital asset custody service in a joint venture with the fintech group Coinplug. Crypto.com received a Electronic Money Institution (EMI) licence in Malta, being allowed to issue cards and bank transfers in Europe. This is amazing as they are the first global crypto exchange to receive it. Capital Group bought 12% stake of MicroStrategy, exposing themselves to BTC, and being the second biggest stakeholder, after BlackRock. United Arab Emirates (UAE) are getting ready to create their own Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) by 2023-2026. As FTX valuation is now around $20B, Sam Bankman Fried is trying to fry some banks, pardon me, to buy some banks, but unluckily for him, Goldman Sacks is selling for $129B, so FTX needs to grow a bit further to have the top of the pops. VISA is working with the Australian company CryptoSpend to allow their users to spend crypto on VISA terminals. A London based hedge fund, Marshall Wace, is planning to invest in crypto market. They already invested in Circle (USDC guys). Paraguay is following Salvador steps, trying to become a crypto friendly location.
Joke of the day: First I was thinking at Blackrock CEO, saying that there is little to none demand for crypto, but Cristine Lagarde of European Union got us better, telling that EU is working on the best crypto ever, a CBDC called digital Euro, and there is no crypto safer and more amazing than this. Dreaming much?
That's all for today.
All the best,
George
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