Bitcoin Price: US$ 29,233.21 (+0.01%)
Ethereum Price: US$ 1,870.09 (-1.98%)
This week, United States Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned of the potential consequences of a US debt default, including mass unemployment and economic weakness. As the government lacks a majority, the opposition has the power to bargain their demands, which include $4.5 trillion in cuts to unsound projects. The event, whatever the outcome, is viewed as bullish for Bitcoin, with increased liquidity favoring scarce assets. In another news, Bhutan, known for its focus on Gross National Happiness and hydroelectric potential, has been mining Bitcoin since April 2019 and leverages green energy to power its operations. The country is currently in negotiations with Bitdeer to expand its mining capacity by 100 megawatts of power.
Jack Dorsey’s financial services and technology company, Block, has completed the prototype design of its new 5nm Bitcoin mining chip, which it claims will decentralize the supply of Bitcoin mining rigs and make Bitcoin mining technology open-source. The San Francisco-based firm aims to sell standalone ASICs and other hardware components to maximize the size of the Bitcoin mining hardware ecosystem. Meanwhile, cryptocurrency investment firm Grayscale suggests that Bitcoin Ordinals, or Bitcoin NFTs, could increase mining fees and renew developer enthusiasm for Bitcoin, providing continued network security throughout the lifetime of the Bitcoin network.
Liquid staking solutions such as Lido and Rocket Pool have surpassed decentralized exchanges (DEXs) in terms of total value locked (TVL), making them the top category of DeFi protocols, according to data from DefiLlama. As of now, liquid staking protocols have a TVL of $17.47 billion, while DEXs have a TVL of $17.2 billion. This shift occurred due to a $1.66 billion decline in DEXs and a $280 million increase in liquid staking solutions since April 13. In other news, Eli Ben-Sasson, the president and co-founder of StarkWare, has outlined plans to improve the performance of its layer-2 network, Starknet. These improvements will center around higher throughput and reduced latency, providing developers with more raw power to build. The upcoming Starknet v0.12.0 is expected to be released in the next month and will involve transitioning Starknet’s development stack to a Rust-based Sequencer, among other changes.
Gemini, Genesis, and Digital Currency Group (DCG) are entering into a 30-day mediation process to resolve outstanding issues related to DCG’s economic contribution to the bankruptcy estate, which will benefit all creditors, including Gemini Earn users. An order from Bankruptcy Judge Lane to direct the mediation is expected to be issued soon. Meanwhile, Ordinals, a protocol used for inscribing digital assets on Bitcoin, had its busiest day yet on Saturday, with over 223,000 inscriptions made in a single day. This suggests that the protocol is as popular as ever, as it enters its fifth month since launch. At the same time, the weekly average of daily Bitcoin transactions is nearing levels not seen since December 2017, according to blockchain analytics firm IntoTheBlock.
Venture capital fund a16z crypto has called on the UK to consider a more nuanced regulatory framework for digital assets, stating that a “one-size-fits-all” approach would not be consistent with the Treasury’s core design principle of “same risk, same regulatory outcome.” In a letter to the UK Treasury responding to a consultation paper, a16z crypto argued that policymakers and regulators need to develop a “more uniform” understanding of how decentralisation works in web3 systems. The firm called for a principles-based analysis to be included in regulatory frameworks, which should not unnecessarily hinder a project from decentralising. In a separate news, Blur and Paradigm developers have announced the launch of Blend, a peer-to-peer lending protocol for non-fungible tokens. Blend enables perpetual lending, with market-determined interest rates and collateral.
Source:
https://cointelegraph.com
https://theblock.co
https://decrypt.co
Disclaimer: The following summaries are provided for informational purposes only and are not intended to infringe upon any copyrights. All rights to the original content belong to their respective owners, and the summaries are intended to provide a brief overview of the content. If you are the owner of any of the content summarised here and have concerns about its use, please contact us to discuss the matter further.
