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 edition, we will be covering all the market news you need to know in the week of 12th – 16th December 2022 including news about on-going Digital Assets vs Inflation, GBTC discount, FTX follow-up and other major industry and adoption news. Let’s dive in!

SEC Responds to Grayscale Suit Over GBTC ETF Conversion

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has denied claims that its rejection of Grayscale Investments’ application to turn its Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) into a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) was arbitrary and discriminatory. Grayscale filed a lawsuit against the SEC on 29 June, the same day that the regulator rejected its application. 

The regulator’s first response since the lawsuit was filed, it reiterated that its reasons for denying Grayscale’s application were in line with its earlier decision to reject other applications for spot bitcoin ETFs. 

In its lawsuit, Grayscale argued that the SEC’s approval of several bitcoin futures ETFs meant that its rejection of its application violated the Administrative Procedure Act. However, the regulator argued that the two types of instrument were not the same, and that futures ETFs are only tradable on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, which is overseen by federal regulators and performs “extensive surveillance of the trading activity on its market.” 

Bitcoin and Ether Rally on Slower-Than-Expected November Inflation Report

The US consumer price index (CPI) slowed more than expected in November, with a rise of 0.1% from the previous month, compared with an increase of 0.4% in October, according to the US Labor Department. The annual CPI rose 7.1%, down from a predicted 7.3%. The slowdown has boosted prices for cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, as it may give the Federal Reserve more justification to pause on interest-rate hikes.

Bitcoin rose 1.6% immediately after the report was released, while Ether was up 6.9% over 24 hours. Tight monetary policy can lower prices of assets, including stocks and cryptocurrencies. The Federal Open Market Committee is meeting this week to decide on interest rates.

FTX Founder Formally Charged with Conspiracy and Fraud in US Court

Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of crypto exchange FTX, has been arrested in the Bahamas and faces extradition to the US on a range of charges including wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering and campaign finance violations. The US Department of Justice has also sought to have Bankman-Fried forfeit any assets derived from the alleged crimes. 

In addition to the criminal charges, the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodities Future Trading Commission have filed their own charges against the former CEO of FTX. The indictment alleges that Bankman-Fried “agreed with others to defraud customers of FTX.com by misappropriating those customers’ deposits and using those deposits to pay expenses and debts of Alameda Research, Bankman-Fried’s proprietary crypto hedge fund, and to make investments.”

With the recent collapse of the FTX, the debate of self-custody has once again taken the spotlight. Moonstake offers non-custodial staking services for our users so never have to worry about the safety of your funds. Currently we offer staking for 18 PoS (Proof-of-Stake) coins and many more to come. Download the Moonstake Wallet today on Web or Mobile and get staking today!

Grayscale Bitcoin Trust’s Discount Reaches Record High

The Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) has hit a record-high discount rate relative to bitcoin (BTC), pushing past 50% for the first time. This follows the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s decision to deny an application to convert the world’s largest bitcoin fund into an exchange-traded fund (ETF). 

Crypto analysts believe that if the conversion went ahead, the discount would likely close as the redemption process available for ETF market makers would likely cause the shares to trade back toward the price of the underlying bitcoin. GBTC, which is managed by Grayscale Investments, was designed to let investors in traditional markets gain exposure to bitcoin. 

The fund currently has around $10.7 billion of assets under management, but this figure has fallen 65% over the past 12 months due to this year’s steep decline in crypto prices. The fund is trading at a discount partly because investors have no way to redeem their holdings in exchange for bitcoin in the trust, but are still being charged a 2% fee. 

Fears have recently surfaced that crypto trading firm Genesis Global Trading, which is owned by Grayscale’s parent company Digital Currency Group, might file for bankruptcy. Grayscale claims that it is operating as usual, but analysts and Twitter posters have suggested that any financial issues for DCG could affect GBTC. Hedge fund Fir Tree is currently suing Grayscale to obtain details about GBTC in order to investigate potential mismanagement and conflicts of interest, and has called for Grayscale to resume redemptions and cut its 2% fees for the trust.

Binance CEO CZ Embraces ‘Stress Test’ as Exchange Resumes USDC Withdrawals

Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao has welcomed a “stress test” on the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, which saw withdrawals of USDC temporarily suspended on Tuesday. CZ said it was “business as usual” for Binance, which had net withdrawals on some days and net deposits on others. 

The temporary halt in USDC withdrawals had sparked speculation that Binance’s USDC reserves were depleted, while others said the exchange had paused the service to wait for new supplies. Net outflows on Binance reached $2.5bn at one point on Tuesday, according to blockchain data intelligence platform Nansen.

US Senators Warren and Marshall Propose Anti-Money Laundering Bill for Digital Assets, Including Crypto Wallet Providers and Miners

U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Roger Marshall have introduced a bill aimed at preventing money laundering and financing of terrorists and rogue nations through cryptocurrency. If passed, the Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act would impose know-your-customer (KYC) rules on crypto participants such as wallet providers and miners, and prohibit financial institutions from conducting transactions with digital asset mixers. Digital asset mixers are tools designed to obscure the origin of funds. The act would also allow the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) to implement a proposed rule requiring institutions to report certain transactions involving unhosted wallets, which are wallets that are completely controlled by the user rather than a third party like an exchange. There are ongoing concerns about the use of cryptocurrency for money laundering and terrorist financing, and this bill aims to address these issues through greater regulation of the digital asset industry.

PayPal Partners with Crypto Wallet MetaMask to Enable Easy Purchase and Transfer of Ether

PayPal and MetaMask Wallet have announced that they will integrate their buy, sell and hold cryptocurrency services in an effort to expand users’ options for transferring digital assets between their platforms. The partnership between PayPal and MetaMask developer ConsenSys will allow users to select their PayPal accounts as a payment option to buy ether (ETH) from within the MetaMask app, enabling seamless purchases and transfers of ether from PayPal to MetaMask. The offering is intended to help bring more users into the Web3 ecosystem at a time when the sector is seeking ways to move forward during the current “crypto winter.” The new offering will initially be available to select U.S. customers, with PayPal planning to roll it out to the rest of its U.S. customers over the coming weeks. This follows PayPal’s efforts in June to enable cryptocurrency transfers between its own platform and several popular cryptocurrency exchanges. The company launched its buy, sell and hold cryptocurrency service in October 2020.

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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!

Follow us on Twitter and Telegram for the latest updates on Moonstake news!

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 edition, we will be covering all the market news you need to know in the week of 5th – 9th December 2022 including news about on-going Ethereum Staking Release, Bitcoin Mining Update, Chainlink Staking and other major industry and adoption news. Let’s dive in!

Nexo to Exit US Market Due to Regulatory Challenges

Crypto lender Nexo will immediately stop offering its Earn Interest product in eight US states and will no longer be signing up any new US customers to the product. In a blog post, Nexo said it had been in talks with both state and federal regulators in the US, but these had come to a “dead end”. The company did not provide many specifics about these discussions, but said it had shared information with the regulators and tried to “proactively modify its business” to respond to these law enforcement agencies’ concerns. The company also said it would stop offering products and services in the US in the coming months.

Nexo had already off-boarded Earn clients in New York and Vermont at those states’ regulators’ insistence. It will now suspend access to new users in Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Wisconsin, California and Washington. Residents of these states can continue using Nexo’s other services. “It is now unfortunately clear to us that despite rhetoric to the contrary, the US refuses to provide a path forward for enabling blockchain businesses and we cannot give our customers confidence that regulators are focused on their best interests,” the blog post said.

Bitcoin Mining Difficulty Experiences Largest Drop in Over a Year as Crypto Winter Impacts Profitability

Bitcoin mining difficulty has fallen by 7.32%, with miners turning off their machines as the bear market hits profitability. Data from mining pool BTC.com indicates that the adjustment at block height 766,080 is the largest downward change since July 2021, when China banned the industry and saw hordes of miners drop off the network. The country was then the world’s biggest bitcoin mining hub. 

The mining difficulty automatically adjusts according to the online hashrate, or computing power, to maintain a stable mining time for a bitcoin block. The more miners working, the higher the difficulty becomes. Bitcoin miners have been caught between a low bitcoin price, which cuts revenue, and high electricity rates, which increase costs. Leading producers including Core Scientific and Argo Blockchain are dealing with liquidity problems, while Compute North has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. 

Efficient new machines and an increase in the number of miners coming online as projects started months ago come to fruition have exacerbated the situation, driving the hashrate higher. Between early August and the last upward adjustment on 21 November, the hashrate and difficulty both rose by around a third. The hashrate started dropping around mid-November, but is still well above levels seen after China’s crackdown on the industry. 

Profitability has fallen by around 20% in the past month, according to Luxor’s hashprice indicator. Even miners using energy-efficient machines need access to electricity priced lower than 8 US cents per kWh, said Jaran Mellerud, an analyst at Luxor. Although the average energy price on the network is around 5 cents per kWh, many miners are paying 7-8 cents per kWh, Mellerud added.

Goldman Sachs to Invest in Cryptocurrencies Following Market Turmoil

Goldman Sachs is reportedly looking to invest tens of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency firms, according to Reuters. The move comes following the bankruptcy of crypto exchange FTX and the troubled financial condition of several other high-profile firms in the industry. Goldman Sachs believes there is an increased need for trustworthy and established players in the market and sees an opportunity in the discounted valuations of crypto firms following the market turmoil. “We do see some really interesting opportunities, priced much more sensibly,” said Mathew McDermott, head of digital assets at Goldman Sachs.

ConsenSys to Improve MetaMask Wallet in Response to User Concerns Over Privacy

ConsenSys, the company behind the popular MetaMask crypto wallet, has announced plans to release a series of updates to the platform in response to user backlash over its data-collection practices. In a statement, ConsenSys clarified that it only collects and shares MetaMask user internet-protocol (IP) information with Infura, its “RPC (remote procedure call) service” for reading and writing data to the Ethereum blockchain, in connection with “write” requests or transactions. The company added that it does not collect wallet and IP address information for “read” requests, such as checking account balances. The changes follow concerns raised by some users that the company’s data-collection practices violated Ethereum’s privacy-focused, decentralized ethos.

Chainlink launches staking of its native token LINK, providing incentives for system growth

Chainlink, a provider of price feeds and other data to blockchains, has launched staking of its native token, LINK, on its network to help keep the protocol secure. Staking will provide incentives to help the Chainlink system to grow, according to co-founder Sergey Nazarov. Stakers will commit LINK tokens in smart contracts to back certain performance guarantees around oracle services. This first phase of Chainlink staking will help secure data feeds. The Chainlink network has enabled more than $6.6tn in transaction value this year, Nazarov said. The staking is setting the foundation for Economics 2.0, Chainlink’s vision for the protocol to scale and become more efficient by providing the right incentives as the network continues to expand.

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Ethereum Developers Plan Staked Ether Release for March 2023, With Withdrawals Available in Spring. “Proto-Danksharding” to Follow in Subsequent Hard Fork.

Ethereum developers have agreed that the network’s next hard fork, known as “Shanghai”, will have a target release time frame of March 2023. The upgrade will include EIP 4895, which will enable Beacon Chain staked ether (ETH) withdrawals. Developers also plan to address the implementation of the EVM Object Format (EOF) in Shanghai, which is a collection of Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs) that upgrade the Ethereum Virtual Machine. If EOF is deemed too complicated to implement by the next All Core Developers call on 5 January, the team will push back EOF to the fall. The Shanghai hard fork will be followed by a second hard fork in the fall of 2023 to address the issue of proto-danksharding, or EIP 4844.

Coinbase Urges Users to Switch from Tether to USDC, Citing Questions About Tether Reserves.

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has launched a campaign encouraging users to switch from Tether to Circle-owned US Dollar Coin (USDC) by waiving conversion fees. The move comes amid speculation about the quality of Tether’s reserves, which have reportedly been called into question by a US judge. Tether was knocked off its peg in the days following the collapse of FTX, trading as low as 93 cents. The majority of trading pairs on exchanges have since returned to $1, although data from CoinGecko shows that it continues to trade at 99 cents on some pairs at Binance. Coinbase is a co-founder of USDC, which on-chain data reveals is the third-most traded digital asset on the exchange, accounting for 5% of its volume. The company said in a blog post that it believes USDC to be a “trusted and reputable stablecoin” following recent events. In late September, Tether was ordered by a US judge in New York to produce financial records relating to the backing of its coin. Separately, the New York Supreme Court is considering a lawsuit asking the New York Attorney General to release documents it gathered in its investigation into Tether’s reserves.

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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!

Follow us on Twitter and Telegram for the latest updates on Moonstake news!

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 edition, we will be covering all the market news you need to know in the week of 28th November – 2nd December 2022 including news about on-going BlockFi Bankruptcy, BNB Chain OpenSea Integration, Ankr Exploit and Alameda and FTX debacle and other major industry and adoption news. Let’s dive in!

BlockFi Seeks Bankruptcy Protection in Wake of FTX Contagion

Crypto lender BlockFi filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Monday, days after suspending withdrawals amid the ongoing fallout from the bankruptcy filing of exchange FTX. In a press release, BlockFi said it had around $257m in cash on hand. The company’s petition indicated that it has over 100,000 creditors, and estimated its assets and liabilities to be between $1bn and $10bn. BlockFi’s largest creditors are West Realm Shires Inc. (the legal name for FTX US), with a $275m unsecured claim, and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), with a $30m unsecured claim. 

The majority of the other top 50 creditors were not named. BlockFi’s largest creditor is Ankura Trust Company, which it appears to have hired in February and which now has a $730m unsecured claim. BlockFi, which suspended withdrawals due to confusion about FTX’s assets, has had a challenging year. It liquidated a large client earlier this year and needed a line of credit from FTX to survive. In announcing the suspension of withdrawals, BlockFi warned clients not to deposit funds to its wallet or interest accounts. 

The lender had planned to raise funding at a $1bn valuation in June, after raising $350m at a $3bn valuation in March 2021. Last July, the company was looking to go public within the next year and a half, with a potential $500m fundraise in the pipeline. However, in February it had to pay $100m as part of a settlement with the SEC and several state regulators over allegations that its high-yield crypto lending product violated state and federal securities laws. As part of the settlement, BlockFi also had to register its BlockFi Yield product with the SEC. The company cut around a fifth of its workforce in June as the wider crypto market declined. The market capitalization fell from over $3tn a year ago to $1tn by June. After the collapse of Three Arrows Capital, BlockFi CEO Zac Prince announced that the company had to liquidate a large client, though he did not confirm whether it was Three Arrows. 

Shortly afterwards, crypto exchange FTX extended a $250m credit facility to the lender, which later increased to $400m and also gave FTX US the option to acquire the lender. However, FTX filed for bankruptcy in the second week of November, after days of speculation about whether it was fully liquid. FTX later suspended withdrawals.

Phantom, Solana’s Leading Crypto Wallet, Plans to Expand to Ethereum and Polygon Networks

Phantom, a leading crypto wallet provider in the Solana ecosystem, has announced that it will add support for assets on the Ethereum and Polygon blockchains over the next three months. The self-custody wallet is built on closed-source code and will take aim at Ethereum ecosystem stalwarts such as Metamask, which is open source. Phantom’s CEO, Brandon Millman, has previously said that the company meant to challenge Ethereum wallets in 2021 before focusing on the then-nascent Solana ecosystem. The firm says it has three million active users on Solana.

However, Solana’s short-term prospects have been disrupted by the sudden collapse of FTX and Alameda, two major supporters of the ecosystem, which triggered a drop in Solana-linked asset prices and caused chaos among the blockchain’s developers. Some projects are now planning to pivot to other ecosystems. Despite this, a representative for Phantom said that the wallet remains committed to Solana. Phantom’s multichain strategy will focus on non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and will include protection against malicious spam drops, as well as added capabilities for viewing multimedia NFTs. The company is working with Polygon on the Polygon wallet.

BNB Chain NFTs to be Supported by OpenSea by End of Year

BNB Chain will integrate its non-fungible tokens (NFT) onto OpenSea’s Seaport protocol by the end of the year. The move will enable multiple creator payouts, collection management and other benefits for BNB Chain creators looking to list and sell digital collectibles on OpenSea’s marketplace. The BNB ecosystem already supports over 1,300 dApps across multiple categories including decentralized finance, the metaverse, blockchain gaming, and NFTs. Last month it launched a $10 million fund to incentivize growth on the blockchain. In September, OpenSea announced it would be expanding support for additional blockchains and languages to retain its standing as the world’s largest NFT marketplace.

Morgan Stanley: Crypto Winter Dented Confidence but Digital Asset Infrastructure Development Key

Morgan Stanley has published a research report that suggests retail interest in the price levels and volatility of digital assets has eased, while demand for regulated products for traditional financial clients has increased. The bank held its second annual Cryptocurrency vs. Traditional Finance event earlier this week, with discussions suggesting that there will be more bankruptcies and deleveraging in the sector. Despite this, participants were in agreement that crypto, blockchain and distributed-ledger technology will continue to be developed and increasingly used to trade financial assets. Some investors predict that digital assets will take 10 to 15 years to become fully mainstream. The bank said that it is a year since the start of what has been called the “crypto winter” and that current market conditions are similar to those seen in 2017-18. It expects deleveraging to continue, with stablecoin market capitalization falling, particularly for the largest stablecoin, Tether.

Telegram is Developing Crypto Wallets and a Decentralized Exchange

Telegram’s CEO Pavel Durov has said the company has sold $50m worth of blockchain-based usernames in less than a month through its auction platform Fragment. The success of the platform has convinced Durov to push forward with Telegram’s plans to build a decentralized exchange and non-custodial crypto wallets, which could reach millions of users given the app’s popularity among traders. Durov has said the Telegram Open Network blockchain, which was abandoned in 2020 under regulatory pressure, will be at the heart of the new services. Earlier this week, backers of the TON network announced a $126m “rescue fund” to support crypto projects affected by the collapse of FTX.

Binance’s “Centralized Exchange” Could be Obsolete in 10 Years, Chief Strategy Officer Says

Binance’s centralized exchange may not exist in 10 years because the crypto market is moving toward decentralized finance (DeFi), said Patrick Hillman, the company’s chief strategy officer. Binance is implementing proof of reserves to show customers their assets are fully backed, but the process has been slow, Hillman said on CoinDesk’s “First Mover” program. Binance is participating in an industry recovery initiative for Web3, contributing up to $2 billion from its corporate reserves. Hillman claimed that while Binance is “larger than New York Stock Exchange, London Stock Exchange [and] almost the Tokyo Stock Exchange combined,” it’s “a little bit embarrassed” about how slow it has been to set up a proof-of-reserves system.

Ankr to reimburse users after $5M exploit

Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Ankr has said it will reimburse users who were impacted by a $5m exploit on its platform. A bug in the code of the platform, which calls itself “node-as-a-service”, enabled unlimited minting of its token. The attacker was able to swap 20 trillion of these tokens for Binance Coin (BNB) and then sent them to crypto mixer Tornado Cash. From there, the BNB was swapped for roughly $5m in USDC. Ankr said it will take a snapshot of the situation and reissue its ankrBNB token to all valid aBNBc holders before the exploit. “The ankrBNB token will continue to be redeemable, while aBNBc and aBNBb will no longer be redeemable,” it said in a tweet.

Alameda Research Loses Up to $1 Billion in Leveraged Trade in 2021: Financial Times

Alameda Research, the company affiliated with the now-bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, reportedly shouldered losses of up to $1 billion following a leveraged trade in early 2021, according to the Financial Times. The news comes as it has been revealed that FTX bailed out Alameda with as much as $10 billion in user funds this year. The revelations shed light on the close ties between the two companies. In early 2021, a client’s leveraged bet on mobilecoin caused it to spike from almost $6 to $70, exposing weaknesses in FTX’s financial buffers. The trader then borrowed against the position on FTX, which could have allowed them to extract dollars from the exchange. Alameda then stepped in to assume the trader’s position to protect FTX’s liquidity, incurring losses of hundreds of millions of dollars that could have been as high as $1 billion.

Trader Joe to Deploy on Ethereum Scaling System Arbitrum

Avalanche-based decentralized exchange (DEX) Trader Joe is set to deploy on Ethereum scaling system Arbitrum in a bid to attract new users. This marks the first time that Trader Joe will be deployed on a separate network. The DEX will initially be deployed on the Arbitrum testnet, with a mainnet launch scheduled for early 2023. Trader Joe is the largest DEX and lending service on Avalanche, with over $95m worth of tokens locked as of Friday. The exchange captured $2.5bn in locked value at its peak and continues to attract the highest transactional volumes among all Avalanche-based products. Trader Joe’s Liquidity Book AMM will be introduced in the initial launch, but the DEX’s native JOE token and full suite of DeFi products will not be available on Arbitrum.

We recognise that AVAX is a high-demand coin and the Avalanche network is an esteemed blockchain project with active development and continued growth. We are confident that AVAX will be a strategic addition to the lineup of PoS coins supported by Moonstake. AVAX Staking will also be coming soon to our platform. Look out for the official announcement on our Twitter!

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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!

Follow us on Twitter and Telegram for the latest updates on Moonstake news!

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 edition, we will be covering all the market news you need to know in the week of 14th – 18th November 2022, including news about on-going FTX debacle, The Cardano Stablecoin, Self-Custody Debate, regulatory sentiments towards crypto, and other major industry and adoption news. Let’s dive in!

Cardano-Based Regulated Stablecoin USDA To Hit the Market in Early 2023

USDA, U.S.-pegged stablecoin is being launched early 2023 by Emurgo, the official commercial arm and a founding entity of the Cardano blockchain. It will become the first fully-fiat backed and regulatory-compliant stablecoin in the Cardano Ecosystem. Partnering with a regulated financial services company based in the United States, Emurgo ensures the strength and credibility of the product. Not only will USDA enable the tokenization of USD, but will also enable the conversion of other other stablecoins to USDA in the future. 

Emurgo looks to bolster the robustness and usability of the Cardano ecosystem through a $200 million investment, which was announced towards the end of September this year. With USDA being a part of Emurgo’s Anzens product plans which include lending and borrowing services, crypto-based card payments and bridges between traditional markets and decentralized applications (dApps), we are excited to see the growth and adoption which will take place in the Cardano space. 

Market response to FTX Collapse

The FTX Collapse has triggered a major slide in cryptocurrency prices that wiped out around $183 billion of value from digital assets this month. The lowest market capitalization level seen was on Nov. 9, at around $736 billion. At the time of writing, the total crypto market capitalization stands at around $794 billion. 

This decline has been prompted by wavering investor confidence since the collapse of FTX and the on-going investigations. On Nov. 10, the traditional markets had a positive week following the much-awaited October US CPI print, coming out at 7.7% YoY over the 8.0% predicted. With major stocks being rallying off the hope that inflation has peaked, leading indices also had their best performance since spring 2020. 

Bitcoin is now trading below $16,000. Ethereum saw its low around $1,100 on Nov. 9 and is now trading at around $1,100.

Proof of Reserves Have Too Many Shortcomings: BOA

As the crypto industry deals with the aftermath of the collapse of FTX, crypto trading platforms are rushing to provide “proof of reserves” to their clients. However, The Bank of America (BAC) suggested in a report on the 17th of Nov. that “proof of reserves, at least in the form they’ve been suggested, have too many shortcomings to inspire confidence.” 

Many exchanges have already reported or are planning to report their assets through data structures known as Merkle Trees. These can be securely verified and provide a map of customer funds. The bank noted that among the shortcomings, opportunities for manipulation are present when assets are shown at a fixed point in time when snapshots of accounts are taken. 

In order to get a more accurate understanding of the reserves, proof of liabilities is required in order to determine leverage and safety of assets. The note also added that proof of reserve procedures often rely on third party audit firms that can be manipulated or which may be even created by the trading platform itself. 

To conclude, BOA also stated the need for clear delineation between MMs (Market Makers) and trading platforms along with the all-important regulation aspect for the future growth of the industry.

Genesis Block Ceases OTC Trading Services Amid FTX Contagion

According to a Reuters report, Hong Kong based crypto services firm Genesis Block said on Nov. 18th that they would cease over-the-counter (OTC) trading services in the wake of risks stemming from the contagion risks from the collapse of FTX. OTC trading which is also referred to as off-exchange trading is a transaction conducted directly between two parties without the supervision of an exchange.

“We have ceased trading, as we don’t know which counterparties would fail next, so we would rather close out all our positions to regain some of our liquidity,” Genesis Block chief executive Wincent Hung told Reuters this week. 

Genesis Block also asked customers to withdraw their funds and stated that they will not be accepting any new customers.

Crypto Self-Custody Debate

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao tweeted “Self-custody is a fundamental human right” on Nov. 13th to his 7.8 million followers. Understood to be a call on the members of the crypto community to take charge of their digital assets, CZ’s comments follow the wake of FTX’s collapse as well as a hack of around $600 million from the same exchange. 

The above mentioned tweet sent TWT token (the official token for Trust Wallet, a hot wallet company acquired by Binance in 2018) soaring by about 80%, to a record $2.30.

CZ also recommended that investors start with small amounts and get comfortable with the technology to avoid mistakes that can be very costly. Data from on-chain analytics providers points to the fact that investor preference for self-custody has increased recently.

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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!

Follow us on Twitter and Telegram for the latest updates on Moonstake news!

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 edition, we will be covering all the market news you need to know in the week of 3 – 7 October 2022, including news about the upcoming Cardano Voiltaire era and ADA staking, institutional sentiments towards crypto, and other major industry and adoption news. Let’s dive in!

Cardano Voltaire is Coming Soon, Promises to Enhance ADA Staking Experience

Just a little while after completing its milestone Vasil upgrade, Cardano is already quick on its heels to prepare for the next big update: The Voiltaire Age. According to Founder Charles Hoskinson, this next era of Cardano will focus on further decentralizing the network’s governance, as well as empowering users and builders. With the introduction of a voting and treasury system, network participants will be able to use their stake and voting rights to influence the future development of the network.

As expected, user sentiments on the future of Cardano are largely bullish, despite the recent Vasil hard fork having little impact on ADA’s market price. We’ll just have to wait and see how it will all unfold, but it is always great to see such enthusiastic continued developments for blockchain networks, which is one of the most appealing aspects of the Cardano ecosystem that makes it stand out in the market. And as always, Moonstake will be closely monitoring all developments to provide you with prompt support for the best ADA staking experience!

Polkadot, Ripple, and Cardano Are Amongst The Top 10 Cryptos Chosen By Banks

A new report by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) revealed the top 10 cryptos popular with banks: BTC, ETH, DOT, XRP, ADA, SOL, LTC, XLM, and BNB, with Bitcoin and Ethereum expectedly making up almost 90% of the reported exposure due to their massive market capitalization. As expected, cryptocurrencies with a focus on scalability and interoperability make up most of this list and according to the report, the largest activity adding to banks’ crypto exposure was custody or wallet-related services. 

The report details that institutional investors looking to gain regulated exposure to the digital asset space are “likely to turn to the growing number of crypto investment products” and adds that these make “crypto more accessible to investors because they can be traded on traditional stock exchanges”. Indeed, it will be interesting to see how institutions will utilize these crypto assets and decentralized networks to improve the banking industry. We have a whole article dedicated to institutional adoption of crypto and why some crypto users oppose it here if you’d like to explore this aspect further.

Users Can Cross-post NFTs Between Facebook and Instagram

Since changing its company name into Meta, Facebook has been getting more and more involved in the decentralized space. From developing its own blockchain programming language, Move, to integrating more NFT supportive features on both Facebook and Instagram. Now, the company has taken the support for NFTs to the next level by allowing users to cross-post NFTs between these two social media platforms, which are the largest in the world. Currently, users can connect their crypto wallet to both Facebook and Instagram to start using their NFT features. This is development serves as a key part of Meta’s plan to expand their presence in the Metaverse and increase the use cases and flexibility of NFTs.

Kazakhstan Going Big with Cryptocurrency

After the Chinese government formally enforce a ban on cryptocurrency mining in its territory, several mining companies there has migrated operations to neighboring pro-crypto states such as Kazakhstan. Recently, the Central Asian country has received support from Russia with electricity supply to bolster crypto mining activities, as it is one of the major contributors to the Kazakshstan economy. And just earlier this week, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao announced that they have obtained presidential approval to develop a crypto marketplace in Kazakshtan. Even though the governmental ban seems to be doing little to slow down the growth of crypto in China, it is interesting to see that the mining exodus from China is benefitting another country competitive in the crypto adoption scene.

Major Telecommunications Company Now Supports Ethereum with Infrastructure

Deutsche Telekom, the largest telecommunications provider in Europe by revenue and parent company of T-Mobile, recently announced that it “supports Ethereum with infrastructure”. Specifically, they are supporting the Ethereum network with infrastructure in the form of validation nodes. This development notably follows Ethereum’s monumental development, The Merge, where their blockchain network transition from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake. Representatives from the company note that the new PoS Ethereum should solve many common problems of the blockchain regarding to scalability and energy consumption, and they expect high demand for the new upgraded network, thus the decision to take part in the Ethereum network as a validator. 

Regardless of your feelings towards The Merge, this is great news for crypto adoption as a whole and will hopefully reflect on market prices or at the very least, demand.

EU Takes A Major Step Towards Crypto Regulation Following Recent US Movements

This Wednesday, the European Council has agreed on the text for the Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation (MiCA) framework. This is a proposal that establishes rules for how digital asset exchanges and other service providers should operate in EU member states and will be voted on on the 10th October. If passed, this crypto regulatory framework wil come into effect at the start of 2024.

Specifically, MiCA proposes measures like identity checks and minimum requirements on stablecoin reserves for crypto asset service providers, which has become a major concern after the now infamous incident with Terra. Additionally, the proposal seeks to impose restrictions on dollar-backed stablecoins like USDT and USDC due to their prominence in the industry over euro-backed stablecoins. Just recently, Biden signed an executive order on a paper signalling it is now time to start overseeing and potentially regulating crypto assets.

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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!

Follow us on Twitter and Telegram for the latest updates on Moonstake news!

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!

Follow us on Twitter and Telegram for the latest Moonstake news and updates!

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 19 – 23 September 2022, including the Cardano Vasil update, post-Ethereum Merge developments, industry and adoption news, and more. Let’s dive in!

The Long-awaited Cardano Vasil Update Was A Success!

The highly anticipated Vasil update for Cardano blockchain has been deployed successfully, and the start of its first epoch will be on 27th September 2022! The Vasil update promises to bring major performance and capabilities enhancements to the Cardano network. This includes higher throughput, more powerful functionality for Plutus smart contract developers, better efficiency, and lower costs. At the start of the first epoch, which is in 5 days, full Vasil functionality will be available on-chain for users and developers, boosting the user experience and growth of the network in both community volume and application development. It is anticipated that this major development milestone will reflect positively on ADA market price, so let’s wait and see!

Ethereum Merge Received Mainstream Recognition Despite Underwhelming Price Development

Ethereum price hasn’t been looking any better since the Merge, but it is getting acknowledgement from both tech giants and the mainstream media. A few days before the Merge, Google set up an official countdown for this event and just this weekend, Star Trek star William Shatner tweeted to congratulate Vitalik on the successful completion of the Ethereum Merge. As the shift to Proof-of-Stake demonstrates Ethereum’s commitment to reduce emission, the Merge has received noticeably support from the mainstream, as environmental impact is a hot topic amongst opponents of cryptocurrency and blockchain, and this could only impact the future of crypto acceptance positively, as outlined in our insight piece.

Meanwhile, Ethereum PoW Forks Are Seeing Significant Selloffs

Not everyone in the development community was thrilled with the Ethereum Merge. Many miners and PoW believers organized plans to create hard forks of the network to maintain the Proof-of-Work Ethereum because of this and received noticeable traction. However, it seems that these PoW forks are quickly losing steam. 

The prominent ETHW ran into a brief technical issue during its hard fork resulting in some users not receiving free ETHW tokens and caused many scammers to sweep in to make a quick buck. As a result, its price has been dropping with no signs of recovery despite the issue having been fixed very quickly. Another major fork called EthereumFair (ETF) which claims to be the first forked PoW chain, experienced the same trading volatility shortly after the Merge, though seems to be seeing some recovery afterwards. Analysts concluded that this happened because these forks would produce free airdrops, many users only kept up with these forks to get the free money then quickly sell them off and tanked the price. It will be interesting to see if the demand for PoS Ethereum can keep up at this point, and our team will be keen to inform users of any developments for this community.

SWIFT Tapping into Blockchain for Corporate Efficiency

Global cross-border payment giant SWIFT has recently announced it is working with seven other securities companies to implement the enterprise blockchain solution of Symbiont in its corporate procedures. In particular, SWIFT is looking at maximizing the efficiency sharing information of events such as dividend payments, exchange offers, mergers, Dutch auctions, and others to investors, creditors and all other key stakeholders. The company also stated it is looking to eliminate the complicated chain of intermediaries involved in corporate actions, hence the interest in using blockchain technology. This is a major milestone for the growth and adoption of decentralized technology and something worth celebrating amidst the uncertainty of the current market situation.

Crypto Exchanges Are Expanding into Dubai, Signaling Strong Growth for the Market to Come

Binance recently disclosed that they have received an MVP License by Dubai’s Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority to offer their virtual asset services to qualified retail and institutional investors. This will also allow Binance to access local banking channels and provide open money accounts, virtual-fiat currency conversions, assets transfers, custody and management, as well as token offering and trading services. Other major exchanges like CryptoCom and FTX have also been granted provisional licenses and approval to open regional headquarters in the country. It seems that Dubai is trying to get ahead of other forward-thinking countries in the crypto adoption race with these recent developments, as long-time crypto-friendly nations such as Singapore, India, Estonia, has been tightening its grip on crypto regulation as of late. As always, increase global crypto adoption is welcome news for the industry and let’s all keep BUIDLing and expanding the uses cases, thus reach of crypto into the mainstream!

South Korea Looking to Relax Metaverse Laws to Foster Ecosystem Growth

Metaverse, play-to-earn, and blockchain gaming in general have always been topics of much debate in the mainstream in recent years with heated opinions from both sides. Just recently, the South Korean government has revealed plans to create special laws for the metaverse instead of imposing traditional video gaming laws for the industry. The goal of this decision is to incentivize growth for this budding ecosystem instead of deterring innovations, stated by the officials. This is great news for the crypto industry as the topic of metaverse can still be quite controversial amongst mainstream consumers and there are still many misconceptions being thrown around as facts. Receiving more regulatory support will do wonders for the development and eventually, acceptance of the metaverse and crypto gaming.

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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!

About Moonstake
Moonstake is the world’s leading staking service provider that develops and operates decentralized wallet services for businesses and individuals.

Since its launch in April 2020, Moonstake has partnered with 27 leading platform providers, including Cardano’s constituent Emurgo, developer of the Polkadot-connected blockchain Astar Network Stake Technologies, and the TRON Network with over 50 million users. In May 2021, Moonstake further enhanced its corporate credibility by becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of OIO Holdings Limited, a company listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange.

Using blockchain technology, Moonstake aims to progress toward a world where anyone can easily make use of highly secure and reliable digital asset management tools.

https://www.moonstake.io/

About Moonstake’s staking business

For the staking industry, which has grown into a 630-billion dollar market as of September 2021, Moonstake provides a decentralized staking service that does not require user deposits, and supports nodes around the world in addition to its own validator nodes. Moonstake currently supports the staking of 17 blockchains. With a total staking assets of 1.8 billion USD and a global user base, the company ranked third out of more than 10,000 providers worldwide in June of the same year.

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 12 – 16 September 2022, including updates on the Ethereum Merge, Bitcoin news, big mainstream adoption developments, and more. Let’s dive in!

The Ethereum Merge Was Finalized on 15 September 2022!

After a long period of wait and anticipation – as well as much controversy – the Ethereum Merge finally took place and was completed on 15 September. Ethereum network is now officially running on the Proof-of-Stake consensus after 7 years of being Proof-of-Work. Regardless of which part of the crypto community you’re in or what your feelings towards The Merge is, this is a monumental event in the history of crypto and will have a big impact on the market as a whole as well as every day users worldwide. Check out our insightful article on why the Ethereum Merge matters here, and rest assured that your funds were completely safe on Moonstake Wallet during The Merge!

Bitcoin Hashrate Hits New ATH, Next Halving Coming in Q4 2023?

As Bitcoin pushes past the $22,000 mark, the network’s hash rate has reached a new all-time high of 281.79 million. This puts the projected next halving event to take place as early as Q4 2023, as opposed to earlier predictions of May 2024. 

Bitcoin Halving is an event that takes place after every 210,000 blocks are mined and will reduce the reward distributed to the network’s miners by half. The next halving will reduce the miner reward to 3.125 Bitcoins, and this process will continue until all 21 million Bitcoin on the market has been mined. This makes Bitcoin a deflationary network, which means its value will be pushed up over time as argued by proponents of the network.

Web3 and The Metaverse Have Yet To Lose Momentum

A recent report by DappRadar revealed that Web3-based games and metaverse projects raised $748 million since August 2022 despite on-going market downturn. The total investments in blockchain games this year so far is around $7 million, which is already nearly double that of last year ($4 billion). If the momentum remains, it is expected that this number will soar to $10.2 billion by the end of this year. There are lots of ups and downs in different sectors of the crypto industry, but we’re still gaining significant traction over all! As always, keep calm and continue BUIDLing!

Singapore Banking Giant DBS Announces Metaverse Partnership with The Sandbox (SAND)

The largest bank in Singapore, DBS, has recently partnered with virtual world platform The Sandbox to create an interactive metaverse experience. The goal is to create DBS BetterWorld and highlight the importance of building a sustainable eco-friendly world. DBS BetterWorld will be located in the “SingaporeVerse” on The Sandbox, a special plot of land to showcase the culture of Singapore to the platform. This is great news for crypto adoption and will hopefully breathe more life into the market!

Starbucks Partners with Polygon Blockchain to Build Loyalty Program Web3 App, Starbucks Odyssey

The world’s largest coffeehouse chain, Starbucks, has recently joined hands with Polygon to build a Web3-powered experience for its loyalty program. The Starbucks Odyssey app will allow loyalty program members and Starbucks partners in the U.S. to earn and purchase digital collectible stamps in the form of NFTs, while also promising to enable access to unique merchandise, artist collaborations, and exclusive events. 

Starbucks stated that their focus is on long-term sustainability and felt that Polygon’s commitment to being carbon-neutral while also providing a fast and low-cost solution for users aligned with their vision when entering the Web3 space. With The Merge cutting down Ethereum’s energy consumption significantly, Polygon states that their network’s emission will be reduced even further, by 99.91%.

China’s Crypto Ban Proves Ineffective, Lower-Middle Income Countries Continue to Lead Crypto Adoption 

The 2022 Global Crypto Adoption Index by Chainanalysis has been published. The usual insights were featured as expected: lower-middle income countries populate the list, only the U.S. and the U.K. are featured as upper-middle income countries. Most notably, however, the ban on crypto in China doesn’t seem to be stopping crypto’s momentum in the country. In fact, China has re-entered the top ten of the index after being placed 13th in the ranking last year. Overall, global adoption of crypto has noticeably dropped since its current all-time high in Q2 2021, but remains well above the level prior to the bull market run in 2019. And with major developments in enterprise adoption as featured above, crypto adoption won’t be slowing down any time soon!

About Moonstake

Moonstake is the world’s leading staking service provider that develops and operates decentralized wallet services for businesses and individuals.

Since its launch in April 2020, Moonstake has partnered with 27 leading platform providers, including Cardano’s constituent Emurgo, developer of the Polkadot-connected blockchain Astar Network Stake Technologies, and the TRON Network with over 50 million users. In May 2021, Moonstake further enhanced its corporate credibility by becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of OIO Holdings Limited, a company listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange.

Using blockchain technology, Moonstake aims to progress toward a world where anyone can easily make use of highly secure and reliable digital asset management tools.

https://www.moonstake.io/   

About Moonstake’s staking business

For the staking industry, which has grown into a 630-billion dollar market as of September 2021, Moonstake provides a decentralized staking service that does not require user deposits, and supports nodes around the world in addition to its own validator nodes. Moonstake currently supports the staking of 17 blockchains. With a total staking assets of 1.8 billion USD and a global user base, the company ranked third out of more than 10,000 providers worldwide in June of the same year.

Welcome to the first of our weekly article series on the week’s 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 5 – 9 September 2022, including the Ethereum Merge, Binance and Solana new movements, market predictions, and more. Let’s dive in!

Ethereum Merge Officially Has a Date

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin has announced on Twitter that the Ethereum Merge is expected to take place “around 13 – 15 September 2022”. Finally, this highly anticipated event is officially dated. The Ethereum Merge is where the Ethereum network will transition from its long-standing Proof-of-Work protocol to Proof-of-Stake.

This major milestone is expected to have a huge impact on the crypto market and bring staking to the forefront of the industry. Especially as Ethereum has always been the most popular blockchain for developers to build sidechains with different consensus algorithms (such as Proof-of-Stake). With Ethereum itself finally embracing Proof-of-Stake, the future is look bright, especially for the staking market.

As announced, Moonstake is actively monitoring the development of Ethereum network and we will work hard to start supporting the Ethereum Merge as soon as possible. Stay tuned!

U.K. Elects Pro-Crypto Prime Minister Looking to Accelerate Nation’s Adoption of Blockchain and Digital Assets

Liz Truss, the new U.K. Prime Minister, is a known proponent of cryptocurrency and blockchain. In a past campaign debate, Truss shared her plans to foster blockchain development in the country which include “ensuring that customs duties are not imposed on electronic transmissions and creating great opportunities in areas such as blockchain” for the goal of “creating a world-leading ecosystem that supports businesses of all sizes across the UK and leading the world in data and digital trade”. This is fantastic news for global crypto adoption and will hopefully liven up the spirits of the crypto market.

Crypto Market is Slow, But Adoption is Picking Up More Than Ever

Even though the market has been in a long slump, adoption has actually been picking up the pace. A trademark and patent attorney recently revealed that a total of 3,600 trademark applications for cryptocurrencies were lodged as of August. This is a 2.3% rise from the 3,516 total filings of the entirety of last year. For other fields in crypto, it is reported that more than 5,800 trademark applications have been filed for NFTs (280% increase) and 4,150 applications for the metaverse and Web3 (223% rise). With Facebook formally rebranding as Meta and Instagram enabling NFT-focused features on its platform, the growth of crypto is still looking to be unstoppable despite the price turmoil. Keep calm and don’t stop BUIDLing!

Solana to Use Move Programming Language Developed by Facebook for Protocol Development

As a popular emerging chain in recent years, Solana has been attracting much attention from crypto users and even the mainstream media. However, its trading volume has been declining recently due to a combination of mixed reception among some developer communities and the ongoing crypto winter. 

To combat critic-fueled FUD, the Solana team has recently announced a proposal to use Move, a smart contract programming language developed by Facebook that focuses on interoperability and security, in its protocol development from now on. Coupled with milestone DeFi collaborations, this could signal a new era of renewed interest and growth for Solana and SOL.

Are you currently a part of or interested in the Solana ecosystem? Would you like Moonstake to add support for SOL on our staking platform? Let us know!

Binance to Release New zkBNB Chain with “Zero-Knowledge Proof” Scaling Technology

Scalability has always been one of the biggest challenges in blockchain, and the market leader Binance has recently announced its plans to address this issue. zkBNB will be a new chain that utilizes “zero-knowledge proof” technology to solve long-running problems with blockchain networks including poor transactions per second (TPS), finality, transaction costs, and general scalability. Zero-knowledge proof isn’t a new technology, but its implementation in crypto is still relatively new. It will be exciting to see what this new development of Binance will bring to the crypto market!

KPMG Assesses the Current Crypto Market and Predicts Future Trends

One of the Big Four accounting associations, KPMG, has recently shared a report of the current crypto market as well as its assessments of potential future shifts in investor behavior. Most notably, the firm stated that in the second half of this year, crypto investors might try switching to different projects, turning away from NFTs and more towards blockchain infrastructure and blockchain financial technology. Specifically, they noted growing interest in compliance and transaction traceability-related products, as well as stablecoins due to their low-risk nature compared to the rest of the industry. 

With all this being said, how are you feeling about this year’s crypto market situation? Have you formulated any strategies for the rest of the year yet?

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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!

About Moonstake

Moonstake is the world’s leading staking service provider that develops and operates decentralized wallet services for businesses and individuals.

Since its launch in April 2020, Moonstake has partnered with 27 leading platform providers, including Cardano’s constituent Emurgo, developer of the Polkadot-connected blockchain Astar Network Stake Technologies, and the TRON Network with over 50 million users. In May 2021, Moonstake further enhanced its corporate credibility by becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of OIO Holdings Limited, a company listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange.

Using blockchain technology, Moonstake aims to progress toward a world where anyone can easily make use of highly secure and reliable digital asset management tools.

https://www.moonstake.io/   

About Moonstake’s staking business

For the staking industry, which has grown into a 630-billion dollar market as of September 2021, Moonstake provides a decentralized staking service that does not require user deposits, and supports nodes around the world in addition to its own validator nodes. Moonstake currently supports the staking of 17 blockchains. With a total staking assets of 1.8 billion USD and a global user base, the company ranked third out of more than 10,000 providers worldwide in June of the same year.