Welcome to this week’s article on the most relevant crypto news. Keeping up with the latest industry news is key to making strategic moves with your crypto assets. With this new article series, we hope to help users catch all the important information conveniently. For this first edition, we will be covering all the market news you need to know in the week of 26 – 30 September 2022, including Polkadot bullish developments, the Cardano Vasil upgrade, and other major industry and adoption news. Let’s dive in!
USDT Now on Polkadot, Blockchain Unveils New Roadmap
The world’s biggest stablecoin and third largest cryptocurrency, USDT, recently announced its launch on Polkadot. With this new addition, the stablecoin is now available on a total of eleven blockchains including Avalanche, Kusama, Ethereum, Solana, Algorand, EOS, Liquid Network, Omni, Tron, NEAR and Bitcoin Cash’s Standard Ledger Protocol. Tether commented that they have been witnessing the evolution of Polkadot this year and believe that the launch of USDT (Polkadot) will be an integral part of the rapid growth trajectory of Polkadot. In August, Tether changed its security auditor after being accused of lacking transparency in updating the status of its USDT reserve.
After the announcement, Polkadot is seeing bullish price movements. Additionally, the network recently unveiled its new roadmap with a strong focus on scalability, driving DApp development, interoperability, and fairer gas fees.
Cardano Vasil Upgrade Finally Goes Live
Last week on 23 September, the Cardano Vasil fork was completed successfully. As of 27 September, all the functionality improvements of the upgrade have been implemented on the network. Such improvements include faster block creation, increased capacity for Cardano DApps, and reduced transaction costs as a combined result of higher throughput and narrowed transaction size. These enhancements all focus on the core Cardano values of decentralization and efficiency, and will surely benefit not only everyday ADA users but also aspiring developers utilizing Cardano’s now-enhanced Plutus smart contracts to build innovative DApps.
So far, the Vasil update did little to impact ADA’s price, somewhat similar to how the Ethereum Merge failed to make a positive growth for ETH price. However, user sentiment towards the upgrades brought about by Cardano Vasil is largely positive and there is little resistance, unlike the split caused by the clashing PoS and PoW communities. This week on 28 September, Cardano also celebrated its 5th anniversary.
Moonstake Attended TOKEN2049 Singapore
Moonstake team had the pleasure to attend the TOKEN2049 event, which took place in Singapore on 28 and 29 September as part of Asia Crypto Week! It was fascinating to meet leading Web3 leaders to discuss global developments and increased opportunities in today’s crypto ecosystems. We also met up with strategic partner Orbs Network in person for the first time, you can see both our team members here!
Apple Will Allow Apps to Sell NFT, But with a 30% Commission
Tech industry leader Apple has recently announced plans to standardize acceptance of NFT-based apps on the App Store. However, the 30% “Apple tax” will be applied on these apps as well. Even though traditional app developers have been claiming that Apple itself plays no part in facilitating any in-app transactions and is basically only responsible for listing these apps on their digital store. In fact, many young projects and platforms in the Apple ecosystem have been forced to limit in-app functionality in an effort to avoid this 30% fee. However, other critics argue that Apple’s move to standardize NFT acceptance on the App Store as a whole will do more harm than good, as it will incentivize crypto developers to enter the traditional mobile app marketplace and bring more mainstream exposure to NFT-based apps overall.
UK Investors Turn to Bitcoin as GBP Plummets
Bitcoin and British Pound trading volume recently skyrocketed to a record $881 million on September 26. On average, the figure usually stands at $70 million per day. As we speak, the GBP continues to weaken against the rising USD. This is attributed to the recent proposal by UK’s new pro-crypto PM Liz Truss’s that plans to implement a radical tax cut that the government will pay for by borrowing. Investors fear that this move will only worsen inflation in the UK which is already at 10%.
In the last 30 days, the volume of the GBP/BTC pair has increased by a massive 878.11%, versus the USD/BTC pair which grew by a much more modest 66.52%. This is an expected development as crypto adoption historically tends to experience stronger growth in countries going through inflation.
The Verdict Is Out: Bitcoin Is Less Harmful to the Environment Than Gold
Cambridge University recently published a study called “A deep dive into Bitcoin’s environmental impact” and turns out, gold mining is actually twice as harmful to the environment as Bitcoin mining. Specifically, Bitcoin is estimated to produce 47.71 MtCO2e per year, while gold produces 100.4 MtCO2e on a yearly basis. Compared to real-world countries, Bitcoin produces as much emission as Nepal (48.37 MtCO2e) and interestly enough, the Central African Republic (46.58 MtCO2e), who adopted Bitcoin as legal tender in April this year. The alleged “environmental impact” has always been one of the most used arguments against Bitcoin by opponents, so it’s quite cathartic to get official confirmation that other traditional assets like gold do in fact, emit more greenhouse gas than Bitcoin.
Disney Potentially Preparing to Make an Entrance in the Crypto Space
The Walt Disney Company recently posted a job listing for “an experienced corporate attorney to work on “emerging technologies” such as NFTs and the Metaverse. Specifically, the new position’s role is to provide “full product life cycle legal advice and support for global NFT products”. Last year, the company filed a patent for a “virtual-world simulator,” referring to a potential theme-park metaverse. However, it was reported at the time there were “no current plans” to use this patent yet.
As a global entertainment conglomerate, Disney has a long and epic lineup of original characters and well-established media franchises. Therefore, Iit isn’t surprising to see the media giant now trying their hands at using decentralized technologies to experiment with inventive new ways to bring its vibrant original creations to the mass market.
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We hope you enjoy this carefully curated news roundup by Moonstake, as our team strives to only bring the most relevant information for your crypto experience. See you next week!
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