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After a long break from crypto conferences due to COVID19, the world’s biggest Bitcoin event will be taking place in the crypto-loving city of Miami in June. Bitcoin 2021 conference will be held in Miami with a host of attendees and reputable keynote speakers, including politicians, regulators, celebrities, Bitcoin proponents and investors in the crypto industry. The event was originally scheduled for April 30 – May 1 in Los Angeles. However, the venue and date were changed due to the second wave of COVID-19 and vaccine rollout. This week, Bitcoin 2021 will take place between June 3 and 5 at Wynwood’s Mana Convention Center in Miami, Florida (USA). Although the conference is an annual event, Bitcoin 2020 could not be held because of the pandemic which plagued the world. While the Bitcoin 2021 event will have a COVID-restricted capacity of 21,000 attendees. As of now, the organizers are expecting at least 12,000 attendees, which will make Bitcoin 2021 the biggest-ever Bitcoin event. From LA To Miami According to Bitcoin 2021 organizers, the uncertainty around Los Angeles in the post-COVID world made it impossible for them to host the conference in the city this year despite all their efforts. Looking for another city to host the event, Miami became the perfect choice considering that the city has become a hub for several innovative technologies including blockchain and cryptocurrencies. And since Miami’s Mayor Francis Suarez is pro-bitcoin, he was kind enough to ask the organizers to host the 3-day conference in his city. After hosting the Bitcoin Whitepaper Miami’s official website earlier this year, Suarez endorsed the cryptocurrency by saying that the city supports Bitcoin as “an acceptable currency” and hopes to invest in it in the future. In March, the mayor said he would love to see Miami become a bitcoin mining hub as it would harness the city’s nuclear power capacity. Bitcoin 2021 Top-Knotch Speakers Bitcoin 2021 will host headline keynote speakers such as former congressman Ron Paul, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, Senator Cynthia Lummis, MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor, and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey. Other featured speakers include Floyd Mayweather Jr, the Winklevoss twins, Max Keiser, and Warren Davidson to mention a few. The conference is an educational Bitcoin event that focuses on celebrating the largest cryptocurrency and its decentralized technology while also exploring Bitcoin’s technical advancement through a collective contribution from some of the brightest minds in the industry. The event also aims to drive mainstream adoption of bitcoin by giving people the opportunity to use the cryptocurrency in a real-world setting.

Optimistic Rollup solution Arbitrum is hoping to lower gas fees and make DeFi on Ethereum accessible to all. Shutterstock cover by Lightboxx Don't Miss Market Moving News Arbitrum, an Optimistic Rollup scaling solution for Ethereum, has successfully launched. Layer 2 scaling aims to reduce congestion on the base chain while still benefitting from its security. Reduced congestion on Ethereum will reduce gas fees for every user, not only the ones using Layer 2. Scalability has been Ethereum’s biggest challenge as its popularity rises. One of the key Layer 2 solutions hoping to solve the issue, Arbitrum, has now launched. The Road to Scaling Ethereum During the recent market crash on May 19, when BTC and ETH both plummeted over 30% in a day, gas prices reached as high as 1,500 gwei. Some DeFi users reported Uniswap transactions costing upwards of $1,000. Miners earned a record $110 million during the day from gas fees. The explanation behind these high prices is simple. For a transaction to be committed to Ethereum, the user must incentivize miners to include the transaction in their block by adding a tip. Miners select the highest tips available and include them in priority in their blocks to ensure the most profitability from their transactions. Ethereum has a low throughput, focusing on security and decentralization over efficiency. While this wasn’t a particularly pressing issue in its early years, the rise in the price of ETH and increasing demand for transactions have led to high dollar values for any transaction on the blockchain. As the above graph shows, transaction fees have recently become the main source of revenue for miners ahead of the block rewards received after every block mined. The small throughput of the chain and high demand have led to high gas fees, which have driven DeFi users to other Layer 1 platforms like Binance Smart Chain and Polygon. The solution to these issues is to increase the throughput of the chain. To do so, there are two options. One of them is to scale the blockchain’s base layer. This is what Ethereum 2.0 is working on through sharding, which will split the on-chain workload horizontally between 64 shard chains while still benefitting from the security of the entire network. The second option is to move part of the operations off-chain, on a second layer built on top of Layer 1, while leveraging its security. While Ethereum processes around 15 transactions per second (tx/s), Layer 2 could increase throughput to 2,000-4,000 tx/s. The higher the throughput, the lower the gas prices should be. This is the vision Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin presented in his Oct. 2020 piece ‘A rollup-centric ethereum roadmap,’ which described the future of the Ethereum chain and the role rollups could play. He wrote: “The Ethereum ecosystem is likely to be all-in on rollups (plus some plasma and channels) as a scaling strategy for the near and mid-term future.” How Rollups Will Help Ethereum Scale Layer 2 is a general term that refers to a variety of solutions that help increase the capabilities of a blockchain by carrying transactions off-chain while still retaining the security of Layer 1. Examples of scaling solutions include Bitcoin’s Lightning Network. Users lock up their funds and execute any number of trades between themselves, only necessitating one final transaction to be given to the main chain. Another type of solution is Plasma, which works by offloading transactions to child chains. Polygon uses Plasma. However, the issue with it lies in bringing the funds back to the main chain; a transaction can last hours. Sidechains like xDai are independent, compatible chains that decentralized apps can port their smart contracts onto to relieve pressure from the main chain. The scaling solution of choice for Ethereum is rollups. Rollups can bundle thousands of sidechain transactions together into a single transaction that the main chain can verify. If that single transaction is correct, it proves the validity of all the bundled transactions together. That transaction is a type of zero-knowledge proof called a SNARK, which stands for “succinct non-interactive argument of knowledge.” A SNARK is a form of proof where one actor can prove possession of certain information without revealing said information. Zero-knowledge proofs are the most efficient way of scaling Ethereum and the one Buterin put forward as the best option for the near to mid-term future. Rollups are divided into two subcategories, zk-Rollups and Optimism. While zk-Rollups are faster, they’re not easily compatible with Ethereum smart contracts. Optimistic Rollups like Arbitrum allow decentralized apps to port their smart contracts with very minimal changes. In the long run, zk-Rollups could be a more appealing option for decentralized apps as the technology evolves but, in the immediate future, Optimistic Rollups are much more realistic. Two projects are working on Optimistic Rollups with two products that will be battling for market share in the near future: Optimism and Arbitrum. Optimism has met some delays in the past few months, pushing the release date for their public mainnet to July, while Arbitrum launches today. Uniswap’s highly anticipated v3 update launched a few weeks ago with a planned release on Optimism, but delays have led the community to propose a release on Arbitrum as well. The vote received widespread support, and Uniswap founder Hayden Adams has confirmed the most popular decentralized exchange would deploy its smart contracts on Arbitrum. A successful Uniswap launch on Arbitrum would bring a high amount of liquidity to their solution compared to Optimism. Adams confirmed that Uniswap V3 would also launch on Optimism as planned. Synthetix, Ethereum’s leading synthetic assets protocol, is also currently testing a beta version of Optimism. Arbitrum uses ChainLink to secure the connection between on-chain smart contracts and off-chain resources, paying for these services with LINK tokens. How Will Arbitrum Benefit Ethereum Users? DeFi users will be able to trade on the Arbitrum version of popular decentralized apps like Uniswap for a few cents with faster transaction speed. The implications of the Arbitrum launch don’t stop there. Offloading a significant amount of transaction volume off-chain will have ripple effects on the Ethereum network. At the moment, Uniswap is one of the biggest gas consumers on the market. If that volume leaves the main chain, the rest of the transaction will also pay significantly less in gas fees. The existence of Layer 2 scaling solutions relieves pressure from the main chain. This benefits gas prices for traders on both sides, lowering transaction fees for everyone. It’s important to note that rollups are a complex and experimental technology, meaning that the launch of Arbitrum will certainly not be without issues. Only traffic, time, and attacks will help create the perfect Layer 2 scaling for Ethereum.

IN BRIEF Purpose Group’s Ether ETF AUM breaches 50,000 ETH after just over a month of launch. Purpose Group also launched the world’s first Bitcoin ETF. The Canadian Purpose Group Ether ETF has breached 50,000 ETH worth $122.7 million in AUM even when the price of the second largest cryptocurrency has registered a 50% decline from the top during the recent market correction. The Ether ETF was launched by the firm on April 20 and in just over a month it has reached a major milestone indicating high institutional demand for the second-largest cryptocurrency. Eth is currently trading just above $2400 with a price decline of 2% over the past 24-hours. Ether’s institutional demand has peaked this bull season and some of the top financial giants including the likes of JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs have heaped praises for the second-largest digital asset and even claimed it has the potential to unseat Bitcoin as the store of value. Purpose Group also launched the world’s first Bitcoin ETF in February this year which turned out to be a success as well and currently holds over 19K Bitcoin. The Canadian firm offers institutional investors to invest in physically settled Bitcoin contracts held in cold storage by the firm. What is Fueling Ether’s Demand? Ether this bull season has overcome many short-term hurdles like spiking gas fees and network congestion to rise over 3X its 2017 high. Even when the gas fee problems in March made many speculate whether Ether would be able to overcome the network scalability issue, it has risen not just in value but also in demand. The growing value of Ether locked in ETH 2.o staking contracts along with declining exchange supply has fueled its demand and price in recent times. The approval of EIP-1559 for the July upgrade would limit the miner’s fee and hopefully resolve the growing gas fee issue on the network has also helped the second largest crypto asset to gain confidence among institutional investors. While the US regulators are yet to approve a Bitcoin ETF, the North American counterpart has approved multiple Bitcoin and Ether ETFs which has become an instant success indicating the rising demand for such products.

MATIC, the native cryptocurrency of Polygon, rose by over 35% in the past week due to three reasons. 3 reasons why Polygon (MATIC) outperformed Bitcoin and major cryptos this weekALTCOIN WATCH Polygon (MATIC) is on a tear. In the past seven days, it has gained 35% in the past seven days, outperformed every major cryptocurrency apart from Uniswap. There are several big reasons behind the strong uptrend of MATIC, including the growing hype around Polygon, Google BigQuery announcement, and Mark Cuban's investment. MATIC 1-day candle chart (Binance). Source: TradingView.com Growing sentiment and hype around Polygon On Feb. 9, Matic first announced its plans to rebrand to Polygon. At the time, they brought in promising metaverse projects and integrated Matic Plasma Chain. By implementing Plasma Chains, Polygon was able to provide a layer one blockchain network with built-in scaling solutions for projects. The Polygon team said in February: "We implemented and offered Matic Plasma Chains, a production-ready Ethereum Layer2, predicates-based Plasma implementation; We implemented and offered Matic PoS Chain, a permissionless, EVM-compatible, PoS-secured Ethereum sidechain which relies on strong Ethereum security for validator staking and checkpoints; Onboarded 80+ amazing applications, including Polymarket, Aavegotchi, Neon District, Skyweaver, Cometh, EasyFi with more being added everyday." Since then, Polygon has become a major layer-one blockchain project, specifically for metaverse projects with the numbers of users skyrocketing. Polygon ranks top ten of cryptocurrencies by social volume. Source: Lunar Crush The growing fundamentals seem to also be boosting the overall market sentiment for the blockchain project. Bullish momentum for MATIC was picked up by the VORTECS™ data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro, which began to detect a positive outlook earlier this week, prior to the recent price highs. The VORTECS™ Score, exclusive to Cointelegraph, is an algorithmic comparison of historic and current market conditions derived from a combination of data points including market sentiment, trading volume, recent price movements and Twitter activity. VORTECS™ Score (green) vs. MATIC price. Source: Cointelegraph Markets Pro As seen in the chart above, the VORTECS™ Score flipped green on the morning of May 24 and rose until peaking at 94 on May May 27 right as the price reached its recent highs above $2.30. Google BigQuery announcement In addition to several recent development milestones, including a Ren-Polygon bridge for seven top crypto assets and SDK for building Ethereum-compatible chains, Polygon also announced on May 29 that the project completed the integration of Polygon assets into Google Cloud's BigQuery. This integration is important because it improves the accessibility and positioning of Polygon; it allows users of BigQuery users to easily tap into Polygon. The Polygon team said: "We are extremely thrilled to share that we have completed an integration of Polygon datasets into @GoogleCloudTech #BigQuery! This means that you can query Polygon’s datasets, run analytics and extract insights using Google’s #BigQuery platform. Blockchains are some of the richest sources of verifiable data, and this is a big step towards improving developer access to Polygon’s datasets and helping analysts unlock their immense latent value." Polygon is included in the BigQuery 1TB offering, which means that most BigQuery users will be able to run queries on the Polygon blockchain network to access various blockchain-related data sets. Cuban backs Polygon Additionally, billionaire investor Mark Cuban revealed investing in Polygon on May 25. Cuban explained that having a high transactions per second (TPS) output is highly important to lower the cost of usage for users. Furthermore, Cuban also emphasized that network effect is crucial, and Polygon already has many projects using the blockchain. He noted: “Having more TPS and lower gas fees is not enough. There must be a CURRENT network effect and significant user growth. This is a challenge for most L1s and L2s because [with] few exceptions, marketing in the crypto universe is beyond awful. It is fast; it works well, and most importantly, their user base is growing exponentially.”

Large investment fund Grayscale, subsidiary of Barry Silbert’s Digital Currency Group, has tweeted that as of May 28, the size of its crypto holdings has shrunk to $34.1 billion from $36.2 billion a day before. Grayscale sees outflows of $2.1 billion in crypto Grayscale Investments has tweeted that over the past twenty-four hours, the amount of crypto it holds has declined by a whopping $2.1 billion and the company now holds $34.1 billion instead of $36.2 on Thursday, May 27. Data provided by the Bybt analytics platform shows that outflows from Grayscale crypto trusts have been happening not only in the past 24 hours or in the last week but also in the last month. According to the table, it is mainly Bitcoin and major altcoins shared that are being withdrawn to the secondary markets, which investors are allowed to do after locking their funds with Grayscale for half a year. The recently added cryptos (MANA, LPT, LINK, FIL and BAT), as well as Litecoin, are holding better, according to the data that covers the last 30 days. Bitcoin fails to recover to $40,000 : The flagship cryptocurrency has lost around 38 percent, falling from the peak of above $58,000 on May 1 to the $36,140 level at the time of writing. This has been triggered by largely CO2 emission factor that it seems everyone has suddenly become aware of after Elon Musk’s tweet, in which he stated that Tesla stops accepting BTC as payment for its e-cars. Then the Chinese government followed the suit with clamping down on crypto miners for the same reason and generally warning financial institutions against dealing with crypto-related businesses. The most recent factor that has pushed Bitcoin down was the head of the Bank of Japan joining the chorus of other central bank governors in slamming Bitcoin for being volatile and its rare use as a means of payment.

The crypto space suffers from its checkered history and, to grow further, the ecosystem must become safer, more usable and more mature. The remaining steps to mainstream institutional investmentOPINION It has been said that you only get one chance to make a first impression. Perhaps the best example of this old adage is the cryptocurrency space. From exit scams and money laundering, to unaudited code and high carbon footprints, the crypto landscape has spent the better part of the past decade scrubbing itself of its infamous past. For many, the sanitizing of the decentralized ecosystem was inevitable — simply a matter of when, not if. This mindset hindered the sense of urgency that should have been on display and may have ultimately contributed to the skepticism exhibited by mainstream institutional investors. Today, however, the decentralized economy has grown into something much larger. Even in the face of market volatility, the culmination of decentralized finance, the nonfungible tokens craze, and the year-over-year increase in token prices have demanded the attention of these same investors who once shunned the decentralized economy. How, then, do we convert this institutional interest into institutional investment? While the answer may be simple, the execution will likely prove far more challenging. Let’s take a look at what must be done in the months and years ahead to retain mainstream institutional interest and secure institutional investment. Security Given last week’s dip, it’s natural to identify market stability as the most glaring problem within crypto. But, make no mistake, the primary (and most daunting) challenge facing the crypto space is security. According to CipherTrace’s cryptocurrency crime and anti-money laundering report, major crypto thefts, hacks and frauds totaled $1.9 billion in 2020 — the second-highest annual value recorded. The good news, however, is that this figure marks a drastic reduction from the $4.5 billion in fraudulent occurrences recorded in 2019. Significant, sustained measures have been taken by platforms across the space to make the crypto ecosystem a safer environment for traders. With crypto theft down nearly 60% in 2020, early indications are that the heightened security measures are working and that the space is becoming far safer. By all means, that in itself is an impressive feat. However, to parlay interest into investment will require more than a reduction in fraud. It will take a collective effort across the space to implement measures to ward off nefarious activity. Platforms within the space are tasked with demonstrating to institutions that the crypto space is no longer for unsavory purposes but, instead, a tried and tested digital economy that cannot afford to be overlooked. The primary way to attract mainstream institutional investment is through a wholesale cleaning of the space — a commitment to delivering, to users of any skill level, platforms that are thoroughly vetted and that place security at a premium. Safe and secure trading platforms are a must to allow for cross-ecosystem trading without the fear of a faulty platform or shoddy listings. Mainstream institutional investors are driven by sound strategy in safe environments, not hype cycles producing misinformation. In truth, the crypto space is in the process of maturing. For it to mature to a point that translates to institutional dollars, however, will require more sustained growth. Usability Cryptocurrency has long suffered from a usability problem. With regard to financial investments, security and usability go hand-in-hand. Naturally, users feel more secure when the platform is easy to navigate and the functionality is up to par. However, due to speed to market and scale, user experience, or UX, has not been the first priority for crypto exchanges, and erasing that perception from the eyes of mainstream onlookers has been an uphill battle. The early days of crypto were a lot more forgiving. Subpar UX was easy to overlook because the majority of crypto users were traders and speculators who had the technical know-how to navigate complexity. However, when less technical enthusiasts entered the space, exchanges and trading platforms shifted their focus to developing consumer-facing UX. While UX has undoubtedly improved since the early days, there is still a way to go in making transactions easy for the more discerning newcomers who are used to seamless UX across existing trading apps. At present, the average cryptocurrency trader uses 3.36 cryptocurrency exchanges to buy, sell and hold different currencies. That means the average trader is expected to toggle between more than three separate interfaces, complete three different background checks, and track spot prices across three exchanges. This is an arduous process for even the most experienced traders. Making the assumption that the space is ready to welcome new mainstream users into the fray is entirely misguided. Since late 2020, there has been a surge of retail and institutional interest in the space. However, the platforms in place remain hampered by inadequate UX and are far from user-friendly. To accommodate the influx of institutional users who are not crypto-savvy, it is vital that platforms place functionality and usability at a premium to not only attract these users but also to retain them. Maturity Perhaps ahead of schedule, the cryptocurrency space is creating significant waves among traditional investors. With major investors like Mark Cuban and Michael Saylor normalizing cryptocurrency investment, coupled with crypto exchange Coinbase being listed on Nasdaq, there is reason to believe that cryptocurrency will make its way into more investment portfolios. With that said, converting speculators to investors hinges on the crypto space’s ability to mature in a meaningful way. From the outside looking in, the crypto space still conjures images of basement-dwelling twenty-somethings tinkering on GitHub and Reddit. While most of us know this is far from the case, it is incumbent upon those within the space to demonstrate the long-term viability of what is being developed from within. 2020 accelerated interest in cryptocurrency in unprecedented ways. As more centralized laymen enter the decentralized ecosystem, the space has no choice but to mature — and quickly. Rest assured, the space will mature to accommodate this new interest. We are in entirely uncharted territory. Cryptocurrency’s ascension into the mainstream spotlight has occurred faster than many predicted. However, for institutional investors to take the cryptocurrency space seriously enough to invest, the ecosystem must become cleaner, more usable and more mature. The current iteration of the space suffers from its checkered history, and it is incumbent upon those within the cryptosphere to reshape its image.

DeFi solutions, and the decentralized liquidity they protect, are the only way forward for the cryptocurrency space. The future of digital asset liquidity: Centralized or decentralized?OPINION Last month, Bitcoin (BTC) reached above $60,000, highlighting the current frenzy around digital currencies. Following BTC, altcoins also saw substantial increases in value. All of this is music to the ears of long-term and short-term bull investors seeking increased gains, even with the current pullback and support of Bitcoin hovering around $40,000. However, despite all the hype around the current bull run, a lack of digital asset liquidity continues to be a significant challenge for exchanges, traders, token issuers and market makers. The reality of today’s market is that professional crypto traders cannot efficiently access global liquidity or find the best global prices to increase profits. For token issuers, the current climate has forced them to list their coins on numerous exchanges to reach their target client base. It drives up business development costs and forces issuers into niche markets. In order for the digital currency market to continue moving forward, these categories must be understood. Fragmentation and market forces One of the main causes of illiquidity is rooted in market fragmentation. The idea behind crypto is much more than a sexy stock investment. Crypto is meant to be an entirely new way of handling money. But with all of the different coins — even the successful ones — and the lack of businesses accepting crypto payment, users aren’t utilizing crypto in the way it was initially intended. Of course, this was the inevitable result of the disruption of the fiat world. Fragmentation of this type is the only possible path for consumers to transition into the crypto world. And because exchanges are generally localized, they tend to service only one or a few fiat currencies. Again, consumers are left with a fragmented market and a slow adoption curve. This situation isn’t bad, as users have free choice, but it does have consequences. Two of those consequences are a dearth of liquidity and highly volatile prices. Consider how much the price of Bitcoin has changed over the last two years. It’s been a roller coaster ride, to say the least. That volatility makes it tough for a consumer to go on a $500 shopping spree using a mobile digital wallet at a progressive and technologically adept department store. In short, liquidation and price movements become a problem. What’s more, the fragmentation of the marketplace has left newcomers to the space with a massive learning curve. Understanding the market and determining accurate pricing for various coins requires having many exchange accounts and a deep awareness of the sector. For this reason, many newer digital investors simply buy and hold, anticipating changes in the market but hoping for relatively rapid returns on coins — even those without clear use cases Centralize the demons? The complexities of the fragmented market have forced several different solutions. Some suggest centralized approaches to liquidity. By centralizing coins and standardizing markets, investors no longer face a fractured and complex maze of coins and prices. Without such negative fragmentation issues at play, investors would be more willing to trade with rapidity rather than holding for wider bid-ask margins. While this seems coherent at first glance, such a solution is untenable. First, centralization goes against the very ethos on which cryptocurrencies were developed. Centralization is not the answer to fixing a market that grew on the back of a conscious rejection of centralized currencies. To do so would alienate much of the market itself. Second, if the market adopts a centralized policy, the same problems that plague banks (slow processing times, lack of transparency and security, high fees) will eventually come to the digital currency market. The progress once hoped for would only be a replication of the current financial system’s failures. Finally, even in an apparently decentralized system where all market liquidity is actually centralized into a few decentralized exchanges, investors would still be limited in how they could participate. With fewer but larger pools of liquidity available, the inevitable result is a return to a fiat-style financial system. Distributed solutions Because centralized solutions run contrary to the very nature of digital currencies, a more robust decentralized solution is needed to mend the problems caused by market fragmentation. Decentralization, while a longer-term solution to the problem, can provide the market with continued adoption by institutions. This trajectory aligns with the vision of cryptocurrencies while eventually producing stability. However, simple decentralization is not a strong enough answer. For crypto, the key to liquidity is “distributed, yet connected.” This slogan takes the best of both worlds and marries them together. Decentralization — that is, distribution — is what makes crypto so revolutionary. But the 21st century is more globally connected than ever before, a link that will only grow stronger. This growth in connectivity, however, must be maintained through organic methodologies. To seek to force some staunch structure onto the cryptocurrency space is, of course, to centralize it. Therefore, investors and traders must weather the storm of fragmentation to protect what makes cryptocurrency so profoundly disruptive. This pathway offers connectivity, and when connectivity increases, the digital currency market becomes more liquid. Plus, the more distributed the market remains, the more the original purpose of digital currencies remains intact. The market must move in this direction in the next three to five years. Growth toward DeFi As the cryptocurrency market moves that way, activity will only continue to increase, allowing decentralized finance (DeFi) solutions to take over from there. DeFi solutions offer the best of both worlds: a truly distributed connectedness, which will protect the digital currency space and reduce fragmentation of the market. Most cryptocurrency trading companies work the same way as a bank or stock exchange, where buyers and sellers must pay fees for usage. Such a practice can quickly turn into a David and Goliath situation, where traders are taken advantage of by Goliaths with more wealth and higher risk thresholds. However, in a DeFi trading pool, the benefits (and the costs) are spread evenly among all parties. For contributing to the pool, liquidity providers get rewarded with a pool token. Buyers always have a seller, and sellers always have a buyer. Moreover, all the liquidity providers receive a share of the trading fees based upon their stake size. Truly, this is a decentralized system: Not only can someone offer crypto to the DeFi pool, but they can also contribute fiat, providing an avenue for traditional, conservative investors to play a role. If an investment group sees the benefit, count on them being there for the reward. Among the major catalysts that will move the market in this direction, the most prominent are central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). As governments begin issuing CBDCs, they offer a far simpler entry point into DeFi. Investors and consumers alike would already be prepared for digital transactions, and the barrier for transitioning funds from fiat to crypto would be substantially lessened. Additionally, CBDCs would allow for a more significant international movement of funds. Providing a helpful catalyst toward a fully decentralized liquidity pool would make isolated exchanges transacting only in local fiat obsolete. Forces like CBDCs and increased DeFi participation will drive change, and investors will be the better for it.

Recent analytics data shows that the funding rate on Bitcoin futures has begun going red Bitcoin Funding Rate Is In Red As Community Expects Volatile Weekend Disclaimer: The opinion expressed here is not investment advice – it is provided for informational purposes only. It does not necessarily reflect the opinion of U.Today. Every investment and all trading involves risk, so you should always perform your own research prior to making decisions. We do not recommend investing money you cannot afford to lose.Chart provided by Glassnode shows that Bitcoin futures perpetual funding rate across all crypto exchanges has started going negative.As a rule, negative funding rates indicate that the market sentiment is negative since investors are now paying to be short.As reported by U.Today earlier, Chief Investment Officer of Guggenheim Partners, Scott Minerd, had warned investors that they should prepare for a volatile Memorial Day weekend.At the time of writing, the flagship cryptocurrency is changing hands at $36,532 after seeing several major declines since the start of the month when it was holding above the $58,000 level.Overall, Bitcoin’s losses in May constitute a staggering 38 percent.

IN BRIEF Chinese online second-hand market sees a surge in second-hand mining machines from Inner Mongolia and Sichuan. The sale of machines from miners of these regions is a result of the recent crackdown on crypto mining. China’s largest online second-hand market place Xianyu has registered a surge in Bitcoin mining machine listing over the past few days especially from Inner Mongolia and Sichuan regions, the two most prolific Bitcoin mining hubs. The significant increase in the sale of second-hand Bitcoin mining machines comes amid growing crackdowns on mining operations in China. Inner Mongolia brought in new regulations a few days back where it plans to prohibit any kind of crypto mining operations in the region. The new enforcements prohibit all kinds of mining operations big or small to meet the carbon emission goals. The Inner Mongolian region first announced its plans of strict measures against crypto mining in April this year after it failed to meet Beijing’s quarterly carbon emission goals. Inner Mongolia along with Sichuan is one of the most prominent Bitcoin mining hubs in the country and accounts for several Bitcoin mining farms mostly because of the cheap energy sources to fuel these mining operations. What would be the impact of China’s crackdown on crypto mining? China is currently seen as the crypto mining hub of the world as it accounts for nearly 60% of the total hash power input on the Bitcoin network. The main reason for such a high concentration of miners in the country is the availability of clean energy sources at cheap rates. However, many were even worried about such a high concentration of mining input coming from a county like China with authoritarian rule. Thus, many see the recent crackdowns as a way to diversify the mining concentration and make mining has power input more decentralized. A similar selling rush among miners was observed a couple of years back when there were similar rumors about a possible mining ban in the country.

A new research report out of Wall Street banking giant Goldman Sachs predicts Ethereum overtaking Bitcoin as a store of value asset. Santiago Roel Santos, General Partner at blockchain-focused investment firm ParaFi Capital, published a series of tweets showing excerpts from relevant sections of 41 page report ( titled: “Crypto: A New Asset Class?”) by Goldman’s Global Macro Research team, which was) The authors of the report had this to say about Ethereum: “Given the importance of real uses in determining store of value, [Ethereum] has a high chance of overtaking Bitcoin as the dominant digital store of value. The Ethereum ecosystem supports smart contracts and provides developers a new way to create new applications on its platform. Most decentralized finance (DeFi) applications are being built on the Ethereum network, and most non-fungible tokens (NFTs) issues today are purchased using Ether. The greater number of transactions in Ether versus Bitcoin reflects this dominance. As cryptocurrency use in DeFi and NFTs become more widespread, [Ethereum] will build its own first-mover advantage in applied crypto technology.“ As for Bitcoin, they said: “A major argument in favor a of bitcoin as a store of value is its limited supply. But demand, not scarcity, drives the success of stores of value. No other store of value has a fixed supply. Gold supply has grown nearly ~2% pa for centuries, and it has remained an accepted store of value. Plenty of scarce elements like osmium are not stores of value. In fact, a fixed and limited a supply risks driving up price volatility by incentivizing hoarding and forcing new buyers to outbid existing holders, potentially creating financial bubbles. More important than having a limited supply to preserve value is having a low risk of dramatic and unpredictable increases in new supply. And ether, for which the total supply is not capped, but annual supply growth is, meets this criterion.“ Disclaimer The views and opinions expressed by the author, or any people mentioned in this article, are for informational purposes only, and they do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice. Investing in or trading cryptoassets comes with a risk of financial loss.

Kevin O'Leary also revealed that one of the first questions he asks before investing in a project is "how it deals with ESG". Kevin O'Leary, the popular Shark Tank judge, believes that institutional money will flow into bitcoin after miners address ESG concerns. ESG are three central factors used to measure the sustainability and societal impact of an investment in a company or business: environmental, social and governance. Speaking at a convention recently, O'Leary, popularly known as Mr Wonderful, said that one reason for the relatively slow pace of adoption is that firms have sustainability committees that screen every investment and filter ones that don't meet ESG standards. "The fact that they're going through this process, I consider a very positive sign for cryptocurrency," O'Leary said as per a Business Insider report. He emphasized that institutional investors are still interested in bitcoin despite the recent sell-off. "So everybody's got to wake up and realize there's demand, but it has to be done around ESG concerns," he said. O'Leary also revealed that one of the first questions he asks before investing in a project is "how it deals with ESG". The Shark Tank investor even suggested that there should be a way to “tag” a bitcoin to prove that it comes from a sustainable energy source. He claimed the technology was "being worked on" and when available, a flood of institutional money will come into bitcoin. Profitably creating, or mining, bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies requires masses of computers dedicated to solving deliberately complicated equations -- an endeavour that globally consumes more electricity than entire nations. Bitcoin prices have plunged to record lows this month after China intensified its crackdown on cryptocurrencies and banned financial institutions and payment companies from providing crypto services to customers. Chinese Banking Association's website said financial institutions should “resolutely refrain" from providing services using digital currencies because of their volatility. Earlier, Elon Musk had also announced that Tesla would stop accepting bitcoin because of the potential environmental damage that can result from bitcoin mining. The announcement sent Bitcoin falling below $50,000 and set the tone for the big pullback recently in most cryptocurrencies.

IN BRIEF Cuban prefers blockchain projects having an active community of developers and hosting different applications. He also likes to invest in projects with a sound economic model. Mark Cuban, the billionaire investor and owner of NBA Team Dallas Mavericks has been recently in the news after announcing his latest investment in Indian blockchain startup Polygon. Over the last two years, Cuban has been very active in the crypto and blockchain space handpicking some tokens and interesting projects for investments. Speaking to CNBC, the billionaire revealed a few of his secrets behind comparing different blockchain projects. For Cuban, one of the most important things in selecting a blockchain project is the implementation of smart contracts. “Most people look at speed and cost compared to BTC [bitcoin] or ETH [ethereum]. While those things can be important, I look at blockchains as networks with development platforms via smart contracts,” he told the publication. Previously, Cuban has been vocal about his like for blockchain projects like Ethereum. Besides, executing smart contracts, the Ethereum network also hosts decentralized finance (DeFi) applications as well as non-fungible tokens aka NFTs. Additionally, apart from hosting its native crypto Ether, the Ethereum blockchain hosts crypto tokens for several different projects. Billionaire Mark Cuban thus compares Ethereum to the internet. The blockchain can host different platforms, DeFi projects, social media sites, and much more. The Ethereum blockchain can perform a number of economic tasks and serves as a fully working infrastructure platform. The Network Effect of Ethereum Interestingly, Cuban also touches down the well-designed development and transactional ecosystem of Ethereum that fuels the network growth. Cuban notes that such platforms “that have the most active developers and create applications with significant utility for their users will have a network effect.” Besides, the Ethereum network generates significant fees from users transacting on the network. To process any transaction involving ETH, DeFi or NFTs, users need to pay some fee to the blockchain miners. Cuan believes that such a model makes absolute economic sense because “depending on how fees are distributed, [it can] create a real revenue stream that increases the values of the tokens they mint”. Cuban’s recent investment is in the Polygon blockchain network that offers Layer 2 scaling solutions for the Ehereum that focuses on solving the network congestion issues and scalability of the Ethereum network. Apart from this, the Cuban portfolio of investments also includes DeFi companies and the NFT platform. He also holds some direct investments in Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH).

The cash came from a number of high-profile backers, including Digital Currency Group and FTX. Crypto payments company Circle today announced that it has raised $440 million in a funding round. The company, which is behind the US Dollar Coin (USDC), the eighth-biggest cryptocurrency by market cap and the second-largest stablecoin behind Tether, said the cash came from top investors. These include Digital Currency Group, Fidelity Management and Research Company, and cryptocurrency exchange FTX, according to the release. “With powerful backers who are committed to our mission and vision, we will redouble our efforts to expand into new markets, continue driving fundamental technology innovation and grow our team,” said Circle co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire. The company added that the money will be used “to drive our market expansion and growth.” A spokesperson told Decrypt, "We're seeing customer demand around the world and to support accelerated growth we plan investments in every region." Circle works to help online businesses adopt stablecoins and send payments. Along with Coinbase, the US’s first public cryptocurrency exchange, the company launched USDC in 2018. Circle has since attracted top talent in the peer-to-peer payments industry, including the ex-executive vice president of Facebook’s Diem.

China has renewed its apparent negativity toward crypto. Here are three scenarios for what might happen next. For hundreds of years preceding the early 20th century, China’s emperors banned international trade and cloistered the country from the rest of the world. The so-called “closed-door” policy (闭关锁国) was partly a response to the Opium Wars with the British, who had been ruthlessly peddling the drug throughout the previous century and had addicted as many as 12 million people in the country. Though crypto is hardly as addictive as opium, the current regime in China appears to be treating it with similar contempt. Last week, Vice Premier Liu He, who also leads the State Council, explicitly denounced crypto mining and trading as a financial risk that would destabilize the country’s economy. As a result, large crypto mining firms halted operations and began to look for new homes abroad. Huobi and OKEx, two of the largest exchanges that serve investors in China, also suspended pool mining and leveraged trading activities there. Is this the beginning of the “Crypto Wars” in China? Or is it just another example of the FUD that tends to waylay every crypto bull run? This week’s da bing examines both Liu’s statement and reaction from the local crypto community, and proposes three plausible scenarios for how it all will play out. Scenario 1: Completely outlaw crypto The obliteration of China’s “official” crypto industry (save for retail investors and others using VPN to avoid the Great Firewall) is certainly possible. The central government could issue a country-wide ban on mining and trading. Policies would then be enacted that strip mining farms of their licenses and punish those who are currently operating under the guise of “cloud computing centers.”   If this occurs, we would expect to see a crackdown on Huobi and OKEx, given that both exchanges are headquartered in Beijing, less than an hour drive from where President Xi himself lives. True, crypto is still a small player in China’s fintech scene and the government has bigger fish, such as Alibaba and Tencent, to worry about. But crypto could be far more of a long-term threat than Alibaba and Tencent. After all, the government can easily control Alibaba by silencing Jack Ma, but it cannot effortlessly silence crypto once it goes big. Governments, more than anyone else in the world, know that crypto is a rabbit hole that will take many beyond the initial gambling stage to an open, censorship-resistant, decentralized world. And that’s especially scary to the CCP. Even worse: Unbridled, “real” crypto could well be viewed as a competitive and confusing threat to China’s ongoing effort to establish its own digital currency. As China’s DCEP continues to mature, any financial primitive that de-legitimizes it will be viewed as a threat to China’s digital yuan campaign. Plus crypto has been facilitating unwanted capital outflow, which is another thorn in the government’s eye. Nonetheless, many observers see this full-on, kill crypto and salt-the-earth scenario as unlikely, because after tolerating crypto for over a decade, such a “one-knife-cut” solution is too dramatic to execute. And I tend to agree. Da Bing's best guess: 20% likely to happen Scenario 2: Big Thunder, Little Rain 雷声大，雨点小 ( “big thunder little rain”) is a phrase that describes policy statements that sound ambitious but are followed by little action. If this scenario plays out, then Premier Liu’s statement would be the last words we hear from the government. There won’t be additional concrete directives from the central government to provincial governments forcing a crackdown on crypto activities. More importantly, there won’t be any KPIs against which provincial governments would be measured. This is key because, in the absence of directives, provincial governments are unlikely to punish crypto miners. After all, miners have been operating peacefully in the country for a decade. They’ve developed cordial relationships with local governments and have been paying good tax money. If this scenario plays out, then Premier Liu’s statement can be viewed as getting in line with China’s commitment to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. The country has resolved to wipe out any blockers that prevent it from achieving that goal and becoming greener. And bitcoin mining, unfortunately, is one of those blockers. As a result, we might see coal-powered mining farms largely disappear, while those powered by clean energy might be allowed to stay in operation. Crypto exchanges would also be fine other than shutting down their pool mining operations, which account for only a fraction of their revenue anyway. Da bing's best guess: 40% likely to happen Scenario 3: Slow Estrangement As China-based crypto VC Matthew Graham told me: “We certainly hold the view that Liu He's comments indicate that the Chinese government has concerns about excessive speculation, including in crypto. We can anticipate that the government will be taking a ‘close look’ at this issue.” Here, a “close look” could mean that the government will continue to take measured steps to tackle the danger of crypto going mainstream, short of actually outlawing it. It might start with cracking down on coal-powered mining operations, and then slowly hydrogen-powered mining operations, and then spread to hobbling CPU-powered mining operations (for instance, Filecoin and Chia). Huobi and OKEx have already shut down pool mining and leveraged trading features to Chinese users. Other features such as OTC trading could be of imminent danger, too. This scenario is perhaps the most dangerous one because it spreads the pain out for the foreseeable future. The market has no visibility to future policy and can only react passively. Many crypto entrepreneurs have seen such a risk and have either exited China or prepared an escape route. As Graham observed, the crypto community gave a “fear-driven emphasis” to Liu’s statement. But it’s not fear that’s the problem; it’s uncertainty. If the government is clear about its intentions and direction, the community can figure out a way to cope. The bigger problem--for the government at least--is that 闭关锁国 might not work this time. China’s citizens easily and routinely circumvent via VPN the Great Firewall to access Google, Wikipedia and all the other things the government is trying to close off. They will find ways to access to foreign exchanges and participate in DeFi if major exchanges are banned. (Though granted, finding an off ramp to convert crypto into yuan in a Chinese bank account will be trickier.) And if China’s miners disappear? That could well be a good thing for crypto, making the blockchain more decentralized and anti-fragile. But it sort of breaks my heart. If crypto leaves China, a generation of hungry and smart entrepreneurs will miss out on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build and create wealth on a nascent, global, borderless platform. Everyone loses in that scenario. Crypto isn’t opium. The benefits of opening it up to China’s investors and entrepreneurs ought to be obvious. Did you know? 挂羊头卖狗肉 which means “hanging the head of a sheep but selling dog meat” is a colorful way to describe merchants who advertise one commodity but sell something different. In the case of mining, many miners have been accused of branding themselves as big data centers—but are actually burning coal to mine Internet money.

Dfinity founder Dominic Williams says the blockchain he created was inspired by Ethereum and that interoperability between the two is an early goal. In brief Dfinity founder Dominic Williams has announced that the Internet Computer will begin to integrate Ethereum. In a blog post today, he outlined why and how interoperability between the two blockchains will take place. The Dfinity Foundation has begun working to integrate its decentralized blockchain network, the Internet Computer, with Ethereum—which is perceived to be a rival by many in the industry who have watched as Dfinity has built out its treasure chest. The integration was announced by Dfinity founder Dominic Williams in a tweet on Wednesday, and he further explained why it was needed and how it would happen in a blog post published today. "I was very close to the Ethereum project in 2014, 2015," he told Decrypt in an interview earlier this month. "Those years were formative. And that's when the Dfinity project—as it was then called—came into being." Williams said that, after exploring Ethereum, he was eventually persuaded that his research was more suited to a standalone project. "The Dfinity project," which became the Internet Computer, launched publicly this month after five years in development. Its broad aims are to become an entire Internet hosted on decentralized servers. It seeks to expand the functionality of the Internet by allowing developers to build decentralized versions of popular apps. It also aims to take on the cloud computing market and its reliance on centralized server farms. The Internet Computer has big-name backing, a highly experienced team, and a token, ICP, which at launch already ranked in the top 10 cryptocurrencies by market cap. It also claims to solve the scaling problems experienced by Ethereum without compromising on security or decentralization. But far from being rivals, the two complement each other, Williams insists. He has repeatedly explained that the two project’s architectures are fundamentally different but equally necessary. Ethereum, he said, "can run off a node in somebody's bedroom. Whereas the Internet Computer network is constrained by the needs of the protocol to deliver this level of performance. So it actually runs off special node machines—dedicated hardware—that are run by independent partners in independent data centers around the world." The Internet Computer’s architecture means that data storage, for instance, is far cheaper than on Ethereum, he explained. It offers a novel identity solution, and smart contracts that "run at web speed [and] can serve web experiences directly to end users." But most important of all, he said, was that any system running on the Internet Computer was hosted by a decentralized network, rather than centralized server farms. Williams’ blog post details the two stages needed to integrate the two networks. With the use of "proxy" contracts, Internet Computer smart contracts would be enabled to "call into" Ethereum smart contracts, return results and vice versa. But stage two, he said, will take substantially longer, partly because—while the Internet Computer is designed to scale as more dapps are built on it—its smart contracts "currently only hold a maximum of 4GB of memory pages, and so the Ethereum state will have to be sharded across multiple contracts." Some Ethereum developers were already working on this, said Williams, and had "made some headway in code." Yet others both within and outside the industry have criticized Dfinity for being slow to open source parts of its code. They’ve questioned the Internet Computer’s decentralization and raised eyebrows at Williams’ prominent role. One commenter, decentralized governance researcher and Finance.vote founder Nick Almond, took aim at the wording of Williams’ tweet announcing the Dfinity/Ethereum integration. "'I just gave the instruction' doesn’t sound very decentralized," he wrote.

Dogecoin has ballooned to nearly 13% of BitPay's transaction volume, and its fourth-most popular payment option. Elon Musk and Mark Cuban, two of Dogecoin's most famous fans, have been publicly pushing the idea that the meme token is becoming a legitimate utility for payments. Musk has been talking to Dogecoin developers—as he tweeted and as Decrypt reported in depth—about how to make the coin faster for everyday payments. Dogecoin developer Ross Nicoll told Decrypt that Musk's aim is to make Dogecoin easy enough to use for a cup of coffee. Cuban, meanwhile, said earlier this month at the Ethereal Virtual Summit powered by Decrypt that Dogecoin is "becoming more of a utility in terms of as a currency." Cuban added that he's been "talking to BitPay a lot" and that the cryptocurrency payments provider was in the process of onboarding more vendors to accept the coin. "People are popping up all the time to be retailers or merchants for Dogecoin," he said. The premise sounds absurd to many, since Dogecoin was created in 2013 purely as a joke, and its GitHub code page was stagnant for years. But BitPay data backs up Cuban's big talk about DOGE catching on for payments. BitPay, which enables merchants to accept cryptocurrency as payment, tells Decrypt that Dogecoin is now its fourth cryptocurrency by total payment volume (after Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Ethereum) and has ballooned to 12.6% of its transaction volume. Just two months ago, in March, DOGE made up merely 3.3% of volume, and was 7.8% of volume in April. "Very quickly it’s become a material coin for us," says BitPay CMO Bill Zielke. "Because it has climbed in our network as fast as it has, there is utility there. And the fact that merchants are seeing thousands of transactions in Dogecoin, I would say it has utility. It also has an advantage Bitcoin or Ethereum doesn’t necessarily have at this time: Dogecoin has low fees. And when you combine a strong community with low fees, that’s a great recipe. I expect it to continue to grow, and that utility will get greater." Bitcoin Dogecoin Dogecoin Dev Ross Nicoll: What It's Like Working With Elon Musk It was almost midnight in London on a quiet Thursday last week. Software engineer and part-time Dogecoin developer Ross Nicoll was getting into his pajamas, ready for bed, when his message fee... Some of the big-name consumer companies using BitPay include Microsoft, AT&T, Camping World, and WeWork. But before DOGE-holders conclude that these big names have all gone gaga for Dogecoin, there are two big BitPay caveats: Every merchant plugged into BitPay is set up by default to accept all 11 cryptocurrencies BitPay supports, which means that many of the merchants accepting DOGE didn't specifically choose to accept it; and Zielke says the majority of BitPay merchants still choose to have their crypto immediately converted to fiat currency. (BitPay sends them the fiat equivalent, mostly in dollars or euros, within one business day.) "These are large companies, and we believe their mindset is to receive fiat instead of crypto," Zielke says. "Most of them don't want to hold a volatile asset on their balance sheet. Now, for smaller brands, especially those in geographies where the fiat currency might not necessarily be so stable, crypto is a popular option." Despite those caveats, Zielke does say that after BitPay set up Cuban's Dallas Mavericks to be the first to accept Dogecoin via BitPay—a move that made it possible for all existing BitPay merchants to accept Dogecoin as well—the company had merchants "come to us and want to specifically promote DOGE as an option, so we worked with them to create an awareness campaign around it." (Newegg, which sells computer accessories, was one example.) For the moment, BitPay hasn't seen any notable spike in companies choosing to hold the crypto they receive. "I wish I could say definitely we’ve seen a shift in that," Zielke says, "but I think it has remained mostly the same."

Together with Jumio, Klever has created an automated, simple and quick process to onboard new customers globally to its exchange within existing regulatory frameworks... Klever integrates Jumio to verify users worldwide on its new crypto exchange platform Klever, a crypto wallet platform, today unveiled a new partnership with Jumio to provide a global AI-driven and biometric identity verification solution for its forthcoming Klever Exchange service. Soon ready for launch and now in beta testing, Klever Exchange will integrate Jumio’s identity solution; making KYC registration of new users simple, secure, and complete in only minutes. Klever Exchange + Jumio Jumio supports more than 3,500 different ID types from over 200 countries and regions to ensure global coverage for Klever Exchange. “Klever Exchange is using an innovative proprietary security software architecture we have been perfecting for years through our work in the crypto wallet field, making the exchange wallet system extremely secure, based on advanced encryption techniques. With the launch of Klever Exchange, the Klever ecosystem will give our users the option of holding their crypto in self-custody through the Klever app, as well as in the custody of Klever Exchange.” – The Klever Team

Mercurial is developing AMM vaults with dynamic fees for native and wrapped stable coins on Solana, where it seeks to improve the liquidity for these assets... Solana stablecoin platform Mercurial to get development boost from DeFi Alliance Mercurial Finance, a project building a stablecoin infrastructure for the Solana blockchain, announced it has formed a new strategic partnership with DeFi Alliance. The aim is to improve the Mercurial platform in order to grow the liquidity of stable assets in Solana’s ecosystem. In this partnership, DeFi Alliance will: Make a strategic investment in Mercurial Finance. Help to provide and bootstrap liquidity on Mercurial. Collaborate to grow the availability and liquidity of stable assets on Solana. Imran Khan “Mercurial is one of the core protocols needed to bring ample liquidity and usage to Solana’s DeFi ecosystem. The Mercurial team is also one of the most passionate teams in crypto we’ve come across with a proven track record. We’re excited to be supporting Ming and the team.” – Imran Khan, Mentor at DeFi Alliance DeFi Alliance has been one of the most prominent initiatives in the crypto community; helping to connect the best DeFi projects with one another, as well as top market makers in the space. “The Mercurial team has previously worked with DeFi Alliance on several projects, and we have found them to provide tremendous value in the form of connections, feedback, and strategic advice. We are extremely happy to collaborate with them again. The core objective of Mercurial is to be the infrastructure for stablecoin liquidity on Solana, and we are really excited to have DeFi Alliance’s assistance to implement our vision.” – The Mercurial Team

Users can now trade Monero and Bitcoin without needing to use a third party intermediary and without needing to trust the trading counterparty... COMIT Network makes Monero / Bitcoin atomic swaps available on mainnet COMIT Network, an open protocol facilitating ‘trustless’ cross-blockchain applications, has announced that peer-to-peer atomic swaps between Monero (XMR) and Bitcoin (BTC) are now available on mainnet. This allows users to trade XMR for BTC without needing to trust an intermediary or the trading counterparty. Users can more easily trade without using a regulated financial institution. The Monero cryptocurrency is best-known for its private and fungible properties. Unlike other cryptocurrencies, Monero hides the sender, receiver, and amount for all transactions. This allows its privacy protections to grow to cover more transactions than are involved in Bitcoin mixing, Ethereum mixing; and all other “privacy coins” combined. Atomic swaps are now live on COMIT Network, however, other similar projects are in development by other teams including: The Farcaster project raised 2727 XMR (worth $650,000 today) to build out a similar trustless atomic swaps implementation. Haveno, a Monero-focused fork of Bisq, is implementing atomic swaps for their XMR/BTC trading pair. Relatedly, cross-chain bridges have been announced for Secret Network and Thorchain, which will allow for easy trading with Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain tokens. Limited trading venues despite surging retail user demand for private and fungible money have created a strong demand for these decentralized exchanges. There are more than double as many average daily Monero transactions as there were a year ago. “The decentralized Monero exchange technology is here, so now it’s a race for wallets to provide the best user experience,” says Justin Ehrenhofer, an organizer of Monero Space, a workgroup that provides services for the Monero ecosystem. “With such high user demand for easy and private peer-to-peer exchanges; it’s only a matter of time before wallets widely implement them.” A few popular Bitcoin and Monero wallets have exhibited an interest in supporting atomic swaps. Samourai Wallet and Monerujo performed a test swap earlier this month; plus Cake Wallet has also expressed enthusiasm in supporting atomic swaps.

Powered by Airnode-enabled first-party oracles, API3 dAPIs are fully decentralized and blockchain-native APIs with quantifiable security... API3 and smart contract platform Moonbeam bring off-chain APIs to Polkadot API3, a provider of decentralized APIs (dAPIs), has announced integration with Moonbeam, the project that simplifies the process for Ethereum applications to expand to the Polkadot blockchain ecosystem, making APIs effortlessly available to multi-chain applications. The Moonbeam platform offers a full implementation of Ethereum on Substrate and allows Ethereum developers to deploy existing smart contracts and dApp frontends to Moonbeam with minimal changes. Moonbeam benefits from lower gas costs than Ethereum, and the cross-chain functionality of Polkadot. Part of API3’s vision is enabling developers to create dApps that mimic the rich function of Web 2.0 apps. The majority of apps that people use only exist because of their ability access to a huge range of APIs. Offering tools other than price data is vital to enabling this on Web 3.0, as part of the integration, API3 will be able to offer dApp developers on Moonbeam access to the full library of Airnode-enabled APIs. “The future is multi-chain and Moonbeam is a great way for EVM dApps to get there. We’re thrilled to bring the API3 ecosystem to apps running on Moonbeam.” – Heikki Vänttinen, Co-Founder of API3 This integration also represents the first step on the path to deploying dAPIs (data feeds) to Moonbeam, to produce dApps with truly quantifiably secured, DAO-aggregated data. Simplifying the developer experience, Moonbeam combines full Ethereum compatibility with the power of Polkadot, including scalability, cross-chain integrations, and on-chain governance.

Asset manager Wisdomtree has filed for an Ethereum exchange-traded fund (ETF), as the Securities and Exchange Commission continues to mull over its Bitcoin ETF application from earlier this year. The move comes amid Ethereum’s growing popularity. With Ethereum having a far greater use-case compared to its older, larger counterpart in Bitcoin, institutions are finally taking notice. It’s also important to note that, leading up to May’s flash crash, Ethereum was outperforming Bitcoin by a wide margin. Despite the crash sending Ethereum (ETH/USD) tumbling 40% from its highs, the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization continues to outperform Bitcoin (BTC/USD) for the year. Source: Tradingview.com If approved, Wisdomtree’s Ethereum ETF would become the second U.S. exchange-traded fund after Vaneck’s. This would allow traditional investors in the stock market to gain exposure to Ethereum without directly purchasing the crypto. The prospectus classified Ethereum as a “digital asset that is not issued by any government, bank or central organization, and is the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization behind Bitcoin.” “Gain exposure to the price of ether, less expenses, and liabilities of the Trust’s operations. In seeking to achieve its investment objective, the Trust will hold ether and will value its Shares daily based on the [CF Ether-Dollar US Settlement Price], which is an independently calculated value based on an aggregation of executed trade flow of major ether spot exchanges.” Some Canadian ETF-makers have already launched their signature Ethereum funds. Purpose Investments, for instance, received the greenlight from Canadian financial regulators back in April. Since its launch, ETHH — which trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange — saw its assets under management (AUM) grow to over $169 million. For Wisdomtree, its Ethereum Trust is set to be listed on the CBOE BZX Exchange. It appears that there are still details that haven’t been ironed out, as its ticker and crypto custodian have yet to have been determined. With the SEC putting a delay on its review of the first several Bitcoin ETF applications, there’s no telling when and if Wisdomtree’s Ethereum ETF will be approved. VanEck’s Bitcoin ETF application, which was the very first in line for review by the SEC, was delayed to June or later

Another Binance Smart Chain project was exploited by a flash loan attack, with DeFi platform BurgerSwap being the victim this time. According to a twitter post written by the Burgerswap Team, there were approximately $7.2 million in funds lost from the exploit. What Exactly Are Flash Loans? Flash loans, which are blockchain-based loans where tokens can be borrowed, have certain unique properties that are different from more traditional loans. Firstly, they use smart contracts, where the borrower must pay back the loan before the transaction ends, or the smart contract cancels or reverts the transaction. Moreover, there is no collateral required for flash loans. Rather, the borrower must pay back when the flash loan is settled — which is often instantaneous. Thus, the borrower needs to rely on several other smart contracts to perform trades with the loaned funds before the transaction is settled. BurgerSwap’s Key Mistake While exploits using flash loans have become a recurring theme, the attack was only possible because the platform was missing a crucial line of code. According to founder of UniSwap Hayden Adams, BurgerSwap was based on Uniswap V2’s code, but a specific line had been removed, rendering the platform to be “drained.” Due to the single missing line of code, the exploiters could make two separate transactions when in reality they should have been able to make one. This tricked Burgerswap’s protocol into closing a single transaction, leaving the borrower to keep the pool of leftover funds. The same exploit was used on 14 different transactions, stealing a range of tokens including Wrapped Binance Coin (WBNB), Ethereum (ETH), and Burger Swap (BURGER). “The current total loss is around $7 million and we will strive to cover all your loss,” BurgerSwap tweeted earlier today. “We understand what the community cares about the most. Detailed compensation plan is on the way.”

Police drone finds illegal Bitcoin mine while searching for weed farm A police drone accidently stumbled upon a mining facility while trying to bust cannabis operations. Police drone finds illegal Bitcoin mine while searching for weed farm Shaurya Malwa Analyst @ CryptoSlate In a bizarre case, UK police busted an illegal Bitcoin mining operation while trying to weed out cannabis operations, local daily Birmingham Live reported today. Over 100 mining rigs were found by the police. Out for weed, back with Bitcoin The cops were using a drone with an attached heat camera to scout out a location suspected to be running a full-fledged cannabis firm. They were acting on a tip-off about wires running into the facility and human movement in and out of the unit. But what they stumbled upon was a Bitcoin mining plant instead, one that allegedly stole thousands of pounds worth of electricity to mine the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market cap. “It’s certainly not what we were expecting. It had all the hallmarks of a cannabis cultivation set-up and I believe it’s only the second such crypto mine we’ve encountered in the West Midlands,” said Sandwell Police Sergeant Jennifer Griffin in a statement. They added, “My understanding is that mining for cryptocurrency is not itself illegal but clearly abstracting electricity from the mains supply to power it is.” How much electricity is too much? Mining, for the uninitiated, uses up a massive computing system that solves millions of complex calculations each second to validate transactions on the Bitcoin network (a process known as ‘proof of work’). This requires massive amounts of energy for the maintenance, cooling, running of the machines. The activity has come under massive scrutiny in the past few months, mainly due to the alleged amounts of electricity used up to power such operations. Illegal miners try to capitalize on this. Many cases have sprung up in the past which see individuals steal electricity to power the mines, get Bitcoin rewards, and pocket a major chunk of the revenue (as minus the power bills, the cost to run a mining unit falls drastically). Meanwhile, the Birmingham police said that all computers were seized. Inquiries with Western Power, the region’s energy supplier, revealed the electricity supply had been bypassed. “We’ve seized the equipment and will be looking into permanently seizing it under the Proceeds of Crime Act. No one was at the unit at the time of the warrant and no arrests have been made – but we’ll be making inquiries with the unit’s owner,” said Griffin in the regard.

Bullish investors in bitcoin aren’t all jazzed about the long U.S. Memorial Day holiday weekend ahead. The sun, the fresh air, barbecues, the first major summer break, as more doses of COVID vaccines have hit the arms of Americans and those in other parts of the world. That setup appears to be taking a back seat to growing agita about bearishness that could further crystallize in the coming days for bitcoin BTCUSD, 3.48% and the broader crypto complex, including dogecoin DOGEUSD, 1.22% and Ether ETHUSD, 4.19% on the Ethereum blockchain. “There’s a bloody crypto weekend coming,” Yves Lamoureux, president of macroeconomic research firm Lamoureux & Co., told MarketWatch on Friday. U.S. markets are closed Monday for Memorial Day but crypto markets are open 24 hours. Lamoureux isn’t the only one harboring Memorial Day anxieties. Billionaire digital-asset entrepreneur Barry Silbert tweeted that he hopes that bitcoin takes the weekend off. A report on CoinTelegraph speculated that bitcoin still could skid to $20,000 or below. The asset was most recently changing hands at $36,199, down over 7%, on CoinDesk. Bitcoin is up 24% year-to-date, but off 44% from its mid-April peak at $64,829.14. Technical analyst at Katie Stockton, who runs Fairlead Strategies, told MarketWatch that bitcoin has benefited from short-term oversold conditions for the past couple of weeks, stabilizing near $34K support. However, she said it is struggling with its 200-day moving average. Technical analysts use moving averages as gauges of long term and short-term momentum in an asset. “My short-term gauges are pointing higher, but we have no convincing intermediate-term ‘buy’ signals,” Stockton said. With this in mind the technical analyst said that support near $34,000 may be in jeopardy after more of a bounce, “so we have our eyes” on $27,000 “as a possible entry.” What the News Means for You and Your Money Understand how today’s business practices, market dynamics, tax policies and more impact you with real-time news and analysis from MarketWatch. SUBSCRIBE NOW: 50% OFF 1 YEAR MarketWatch on Multiple devices Dogecoin prices, the popular meme crypto engineered in 2013 as a lighthearted riff off the proliferation of bitcoin alternatives, is changing hands at 31.6 cents, down over 6%. The altcoin is down nearly 60% from its all-time peak earlier in May. That said, the digital-asset is up 6,500% in the year to date. The No. 2 crypto by market value, Ether, was down 9% and changing hands at $2,528, up nearly 240% thus far in 2021. However volatile, the gains in crypto have mostly outstripped those for conventional assets (with the exception of meme stocks like AMC Entertainment Holdings AMC, -1.51% and GameStop Corp. GME, -12.64% ). The Dow Jones Industrial DJIA, +0.19% was up 0.2% Friday and up about 13% in the year’s first six months or so. The S&P 500 index SPX, +0.08% was 0.1% higher on the session and looking at a year-to-date rise of about 12%, while the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, +0.09% was up 0.1% and headed for a gain of 6.7% so far this year. Gold futures GC00, +0.41%, meanwhile, were up 0.4% on the day and rising 0.6% year to date. Lamoureux says that weekends for crypto have become notoriously treacherous “because liquidity dries up” and “if there is blood in the water sharks will pressure this lower and kill the weak competition that was in trouble.” The investor and strategist said that leverage in the system also has played a role on amplifying moves in digital assets. A report from Barrons.com written by Avi Salzman explained that there are essentially two bitcoin markets: one dominated by mainstream brokers, like Coinbase Global and Robinhood, and other dominated by investors using derivatives, people who care less about crypto prices rising and are more focused on making money based on directional moves in assets. Volatility can breed volatility in such an environment, particularly if few investors are willing to step in the staunch the carnage as downturns takes hold. There is no one narrative that accounts for the shift in momentum for bitcoin and its ilk. A number of reports have pegged it to comments from China to Japan, but the moves for crypto aren’t always synchronized with the headlines. To be sure, the crypto community has historically viewed slides as buying opportunities, prime for long-term investors. However, new investors may face challenges trying to stomach major dives. Lamoureux said that one, big factor that should serve as support for bitcoin and mainstream crypto has been the ascent of stablecoins, such as Tether USDTUSD, -0.03%, whose price typically has a fiat currency peg and more consistent prices. Stablecoins like Tether, tend to be seen as a gateway into crypto because they can ease transactactions in other crypto using stablecoins. Tether’s market value has been on a steady rise.