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Ethereum 2.0 has reached an important milestone with the launch of its “Beacon Chain”. Libra “seizes the moment” and changes the brand to Diem. Google searches for “bitcoin” have doubled since last month.
Upper shelf
Coinbase <> MicroStrategy
MicroStrategy revealed Coinbase as the platform that executed its $ 425 million BTC purchase that put MicroStrategy in the spotlight of the bitcoin community. Announced Tuesday, Coinbase revealed that MicroStrategy’s initial $ 250 million investment, which took place over a five-day period in August, came via Coinbase Prime, the cryptocurrency arm of the exchange formed following the acquisition of Tagomi. in May. This was followed in September by an additional $ 175 million investment. MicroStrategy is considered the first publicly traded company to convert a portion of its liquidity reserves into cryptocurrency.
Interest in retail?
Google searches for “bitcoin,” an imperfect measure of popular interest in cryptocurrencies, are at their highest level since June 2019. Google Trends data shows that searches are double the value of last month. Bitcoin set a new record high of $ 19,850 on Monday, having narrowly missed the previous high of $ 19,783 last week. The cryptocurrency rose more than 40% in November to record its largest monthly gain since May 2019. However, the market is far from being in a retail frenzy seen in December 2017 when Google search for the term “bitcoin price” has peaked. The data can validate analysts who say this year’s rally is mainly driven by higher institutional participation.
Acquired identity
An identity management provider backed by PayPal (PYPL), Foxconn and others has been acquired, for an undisclosed sum, by the Nevada-based holding company Blockchains LLC. Announced Tuesday, the acquisition precedes the release of an unhosted portfolio scheduled for April, said Lee Weiss, Executive Vice President of Blockchains. “We reached out to Cambridge and talked with them, and it was clear that we shared a common ethic,” Weiss said. “We made a deal and the transaction closed last week.” Cambridge Blockchain managers Matthew Commons, Alex Oberhauser, Muthu Arumugam and the company’s software developers will join Blockchains’ digital identity team.
Bitcoin rewards
BlockFi will launch a bitcoin credit card to allow users to spend fiat and be rewarded in cryptocurrency in the first quarter of 2021, according to CEO Zac Prince. In a market saturated with bitcoin reward debit cards, the BlockFi option allows people to earn returns on their bitcoin holdings through consumer spending, without having to spend their own cryptocurrency. Visa acts as the card issuing network, Evolve Bank & Trust provides the bank identification number (BIN) which allows BlockFi to connect to the payment network, and Mererve manages the payment flow technology. Rewards back are 1.5% of fiat purchases and bitcoin users receive are deposited into their BlockFi accounts. The annual fee for the card is $ 200.
Seize the Diem
The Libra Association, a 27-member organization leading the development of a global stablecoin that could be launched yesterday, is changing the branding to Diem. The effort is apparently an attempt to distance itself from the original Facebook-led Libra project, which promised a stablecoin backed by multiple assets but was pilloried by financial regulators around the world. Diem also shaped his leadership team and reiterated that a scaled-down version of libra, now diem dollar, will meet with approval from the Federal Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA). Diem CEO Stuart Levey said the blockchain-based project is ready for launch on a technical level.
Quick bites
- IT’S THE SEASON: “Bitcoin Tuesday,” a play on Giving Tuesday, is led by the cryptographic charity platform The Giving Block, with over 100 possible charities accepting cryptographic donations.
- FROM LVMH: Ledger has gathered a luxury brand legend to drive its consumer business expansion.
- LEVELING: Bitcoin’s LVL exchange, backed by Anthony Pompliano, Jimmy Song and Willy Woo, has removed trading fees to wrestle with giants including Coinbase and Gemini.
- FEES FEAR? Brady Dale analyzes what you need to know about bitcoin trading fees on PayPal, Robinhood, Cash App, and Coinbase.
- CARBON COPY: Stablecoin pioneer Uphold claims to have launched the first tradable retail carbon token, which is a certified measure of carbon dioxide.
- TIME OF PRISON: The top operators of the 14.8 billion yuan ($ 2.25 billion) PlusToken scam are going to jail for up to 11 years after being found guilty of investing fraud.
Market information
Mining proceeds
Shareholders of publicly traded bitcoin mining companies enjoyed record monthly gains as the leading cryptocurrency hit a new all-time high on Monday morning. Riot Blockchain (RIOT) ended November with a 160% gain trading at $ 8.45 per share. Marathon Patent Group (MARA) was up more than 190% in November, the company’s largest monthly percentage gain, up more than 600% year to date. Miner producer Canaan (CAN) ended November with a record monthly gain of nearly 140%, with its US deposit receipts trading at $ 4.99 by Monday’s close.
At stake
Eth 2.0
The development of Ethereum 2.0 has today passed an important milestone, with the increase of the skeletal system of the proof-of-stake blockchain. At 12:00 UTC on Tuesday, the Beacon Chain, the backbone of an entirely new scalable blockchain, went live.
Ethereum 2.0 intends to solve the intractable scalability problems that plagued the first generation general purpose blockchain, which is now worth around $ 70 billion.
By moving to proof-of-stake, rather than proof-of-work consensus pioneered by Bitcoin and introducing a host of other crypto solutions, Ethereum 2.0 aims to outdo payment networks like PayPal and Visa, reports CoinDesk’s Will Foxley.
Ethereum’s multi-year upgrade began in 2015, although it went full throttle this year. Today’s launch concludes the “phase 0” transition of the Ethereum consensus mechanism.
Despite chronic throughput problems and high fees, Ethereum’s call to become “the computer of the world” has already attracted the majority of committed blockchain developers. Eth 2.0 is apparently no different in terms of community involvement.
“The launch of the # Eth2 Beacon Chain is characteristic of the emerging and open source ethos that attracts so many to Ethereum in the first place. More than 27,000 validators from around the world are now participating in the new # Eth2 consensus model, “tweeted Joseph Lubin, founder of the Ethereum incubator, of ConsenSys.
“The launch of the Beacon Chain is a huge achievement and lays the foundation for Ethereum’s most scalable, secure and sustainable home,” Ethereum Foundation researcher Danny Ryan told Foxley in an email. “There is still a lot of work to be done, but today we celebrate”.
As Ryan noted, development is far from over. The main technical challenge that Eth 2.0 developers face is breaking the Ethereum PoS blockchain into multiple datasets called “fragments” and adopting Rollup, a throughput solution for decentralized applications.
Who won #CryptoTwitter?
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