Blockchain Bites: Buterin’s Stake, Google’s Bitcoin Search, Square’s Bustling BTC Business

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Cash App generated over $ 1 billion in bitcoin revenue in the third quarter. Vitalik Buterin sent 3,200 ETH to the Ethereum 2.0 deposit agreement. Google search data shows little “FOMO” in the current bull market.

Upper shelf

District of monsters
Cash App, Square’s mobile payment service (led by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey), generated $ 1.63 billion in bitcoin revenue and $ 32 million in gross bitcoin profit for Square during the third quarter of 2020, according to the letter. of the company’s Q3 investor. That’s 11 times more in terms of bitcoin revenue than the $ 875 million in the second quarter, when Square earned $ 17 million from selling bitcoin. However, Square’s bitcoin business has relatively modest profits for a money services business, with profit margins of less than 2%. In an earnings call, Dorsey said, “We believe [bitcoin] it will be the native currency of the Internet and will help people thrive in the world and the economy. “

Buterin’s mail
Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin sent 3,200 ether, worth approximately $ 1.4 million, to the newly launched Ethereum 2.0 deposit agreement. Ethereum 2.0 is making progress in its transition to proof-of-stake, which will move to the next readiness phase once 524,288 ether has been staked into the contract. The deposit agreement now contains 38,693 ether, valued at approximately $ 17 million. Industry publication TrustedNodes reports that Buterin’s “VB2” address sent 100 transactions in total.

VASP
The South Korean Financial Services Commission (FSC) is seeking legal amendments that make it mandatory for virtual asset service providers (VASPs) – generally understood as custodians, wallet providers or intermediaries – within the country to report the names of their customers. The change is part of a broader sweep involving most money services (from gift cards to electronically registered shares) to help prevent money laundering. If approved, VASPs will be required to use real name accounts in their financial transactions with clients and to implement other data security measures. The rules are in line with the FATF recommendations on “travel rules”.

Identity
Several Spanish companies, including Banco Santander, have teamed up to develop a “self-managed” digital identity system using blockchain technology. The organization, Dalion, said the “secure and trustworthy” ID platform could be used for car rentals, insurance and loan applications, and registrations to utility providers. Designed to give users control over personal information, it also makes it easy to fill out “boring” forms by automatically providing the validated data requested by the requesting entity. Using the Quorum blockchain, the group said, will ensure that the data hasn’t been tampered with. The system could be launched in May 2021.

Quick bites

  • Faulty code in a fork of Compound Finance froze $ 1 million in Ethereum tokens. (CoinDesk)
  • The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) is pursuing antitrust action against the planned $ 5.3 billion acquisition of Visa by crypto-friendly Fintech and Plaid. (CoinDesk)
  • “Crypto Twitter is not as influential as they like to think, according to the BDCenter researchers.” (Decrypt)
  • Grayscale’s Ethereum Trust reaches $ 1 billion in assets under management. (The block)
  • Andy Edstrom: Financial advisors, Bitcoin is the next Amazon. (CoinDesk)

Market information

No FOMO
Despite rising to levels last seen in the 2017 bitcoin bubble, web research data suggests that the cryptocurrency “FOMO” among the masses is shrinking. After approaching $ 16,000 yesterday, bitcoin is still trading in the mid $ 15,000 range, up nearly 120% year-on-year. Google Trends, a barometer used to measure general interest in trending topics, is currently returning a value of 10 for the worldwide search query “bitcoin price”, significantly lower than the value of 93 observed in early December 2017 after bitcoin’s record over $ 15,000.

At stake

Gradually, then suddenly
CoinDesk’s head of research, Noelle Acheson, thinks cryptography is still in the “gradual” phase of “gradually, then suddenly”. Reading the tea leaves of headlines – from PayPal’s cryptocurrency game to Microstrategy’s buying bitcoin – in October can create the image that mass adoption is just around the corner. The truth is, cryptocurrencies are still maturing.

In the latest CoinDesk monthly review (available for download here), the team looks at some key Bitcoin and Ethereum performance metrics from last month. What has been found is gaining momentum and an increasingly clear sense of real use cases, albeit gradually.

Notably, Ethereum’s volatility, transaction count, and fees have cooled after a summer that saw the second largest blockchain “overturn” Bitcoin in many of these key measures.

In September, the 30-day volatility of ETH (annualized) increased by approximately 110%. While bitcoin’s volatility flattened throughout October, Ethereum’s decreased, a signal that “the ETH market is even more immature than BTC’s,” writes Christine Kim, research analyst at Acheson and CoinDesk.

In addition, the average transaction fees on Ethereum dropped by more than 80% in October, retracing the sharp increase in September. There has also been a similar decline in miners’ revenues as the dapp business has cooled.

“This is a positive sign for the network, which in recent months has been pushed to the limit by the showy weak of new DeFi assets such as COMP, SUSHI and others,” they write.

Many more ups and downs are likely to be in store before Ethereum “suddenly” takes hold.

Who won #CryptoTwitter?

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