Blockchain Bites: $ 16K BTC, $ 1B DAI, $ 13.6 billion TVL in DeFi

MakerDAO’s DAI stablecoin is the latest unicorn crypto with a market cap of $ 1 billion. The total locked value of DeFi has reached the maximum of life. Hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio said yesterday he is not passionate about bitcoin; a few hours later, the cryptocurrency hit a three-year high.

I can’t come on
Dai (DAI), MakerDAO’s dollar-pegged algorithmic stablecoin, reached a market cap of $ 1 billion on Wednesday. While there are only 993 million DAI in circulation, its $ 1.01 sloped anchor has taken it above the milestone metric. “[I]It works, it’s here to stay and it’s Ethereum’s honey rate, “said Robert Leshner of Compound. About a third of all dai is in the smart contract DAI Savings Rate (DSR), with most of the rest (over 620 million) locked into its ERC-20 smart contract, CoinDesk’s Brady Dale reports.The move comes as the DeFi ecosystem in total has broken a new high of $ 13.62 billion.

Funds forfeited
Chainalysis, in collaboration with Asset Reality, a consultancy firm on confiscated assets, has presented a program for the storage and sale of confiscated cryptocurrencies. Announced Thursday, the program is aimed at government clients, many of whom rely on Chainalysis’s blockchain technology to track down illicit funds. Although no customers were announced, in April, the US Marshals service, which runs semi-regular confiscation auctions, said it was looking for a private sector partner to help it manage and dispose of the lost cryptocurrency.

The dictates of Dalio
The founder of the world’s largest hedge fund Ray Dalio said governments will try to “outlaw” bitcoin if it becomes “material”. Dalio said bitcoin may not even get there due to its volatility and lack of commercial appeal. “Today I still can’t take my bitcoin and buy stuff easily with it,” he said. However, governments can “use whatever teeth they have” to break bitcoin’s back if it becomes necessary, he said.

Staking play
Cryptocurrency trading firm DARMA Capital unveiled a service to provide liquidity to Eth 2.0 stakers via USDC stablecoin loans. Called, perhaps unimaginatively, LiquidStake, the service will allow users to continue earning the interest provided by the Eth 2.0 experiment (which will not allow stakers to recall their assets once committed) using this share as a guarantee on an equivalent loan. cash. While other loan providers are testing similar services, DARMA has received support from the Ethereum establishment, including involvement from ConsenSys, Bison Trails, Figment, OpenLaw, and Filecoin. In other Ethereum news, Tel Aviv-based Kirobo has revealed a way to cancel erroneous ether transactions.

$ 7.6 billion stolen
Since 2011, according to a new report from Crystal Blockchain, $ 7.6 billion worth of cryptocurrencies has been stolen via hacks or scams. About $ 2.8 billion was stolen through 113 security breaches, with a concentration of attacks occurring in the US, Japan, the UK, China and South Korea. Another $ 4.8 billion was stolen via scams. , with Crystal Blockchain identifying 23 major fraud schemes. Noticing that the number of hacks and scams appears to be stable, the bad guys are getting more sophisticated. Adequate insurance, reserve balances, internal security teams, and blockchain analytics software are all recommended remedies.

Crossing $ 16K
Bitcoin hit three-year highs above $ 16,000 today. Around 10 UTC (5 am ET) the cryptocurrency totaled $ 16,157, a price last seen on January 6, 2018, before dropping as low as $ 15,000. Bitcoin is now up 123% year-on-year and has gained nearly 50% so far this quarter. Investors still expect consolidation of between $ 14,000 and $ 16,000 before any potential re-examination of all-time highs of $ 20,000. “The interest so far in 2020 has mostly been from institutions and we may see increased retail participation as bitcoin breaks its previous all-time highs of $ 20,000,” said Kyle Davies, co-founder of Three Arrows Capital.

Bitcoin in profit
Bitcoin’s rally had another effect beyond market exuberance and outlandish forecasts: almost all unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs) are in profit. According to Coin Metrics, 98% of UTXOs are worth more today than at the time of creation, a level last seen in December 2017. UTXOs are the residual value after a bitcoin transaction, similar to receiving change after paying in cash. So what does it mean for the price of bitcoin? Well, Coin Metric analysts said that traders could be encouraged to sell and take their profits, or continue to hold, as there is “a low risk of capitulation”.

Bitcoin in Venezuela
Venezuela continues to dominate peer-to-peer crypto business. According to data reviewed by CoinDesk research analyst Duy Nguyen, in terms of GDP adjustment, the South American nation’s P2P bitcoin market is at least twice as high as the next largest market, Nigeria.

Activity on major P2P cryptocurrency exchanges LocalBitcoins and Paxful peaked in the first half of 2019 but has hovered around $ 20 million since then. Experts point to a number of factors to explain the success story of using Venezuelan cryptocurrencies: including the nation’s rampant inflation, capital controls and remittance markets, US-led sanctions, and the regime’s experiment. of Maduro with an encrypted petro dollar.

The International Monetary Fund measured Venezuelan hyperinflation at 65.374% in 2018, leagues above any other economy. (Zimbabwe, for example, is expected to get hot at 319% in 2020, even though government bans mean P2P BTC trading is close to zero.) Among the 10 economies that have experienced the highest annual inflation rates since 2017, only Venezuela, Argentina and Iran showed significant peer-to-peer bitcoin market activity, Nguyen reports.

While macro level indicators go a long way in explaining a “deflationary” currency like the allure of bitcoin, significant factors on the ground are at play. Gabriel Jiménez, a Venezuelan blockchain entrepreneur who led the development of the petro, said that Venezuelan companies often use bitcoin as a means of obtaining foreign currencies such as the dollar.

“The people living in Venezuela live under a very unstable and predatory government. They suffer from extreme inflation and general economic instability. And here’s a censorship-resistant, inflation-proof resource, so it’s very attractive to people looking for a way to hold value, “Andrea O’Sullivan, director of technology and innovation at the James Madison Institute, told Nguyen. .