Blockchain Bites: Filecoin Strike, Bitcoin Fees Fall, Coinbase Censorship

Symbolic protest
Five of Filecoin’s biggest miners, protecting that data storage network, went on strike, bringing attention to the project’s “unfair” economic model. According to a report by 8btc.com, miners are required to stake a significant amount of FIL tokens in order to start mining operations. But there is a critical lack of FIL tokens from the start. Buying tokens on the exchange at prices that could be inflated is seen as unattractive. “All miners have been deactivated since the main network was published. This is not some kind of protest, but we have to close them because we don’t actually have the tokens as collateral, “said Chuhang Lai, CEO of ST Cloud in the report. In response to the miner’s concerns, Filecoin decided to release the 25% token rewards once a miner builds a block on the blockchain.

Transaction count
Bitcoin (BTC) miners are seeing depressed gains as on-chain transaction activity and price action cools. “Boring price action and low volatility tend to reduce the count of transactions to and from exchanges,” Willy Woo, an on-chain analyst and author of The Bitcoin Forecast newsletter, told CoinDesk on Telegram. Yesterday, there were just 231,437 transactions processed on the Bitcoin blockchain, the lowest since May 24 and down 40% from the July 1 peak, according to data provided by blockchain analytics firm Glassnode. With the network currently processing far fewer transactions, the percentage of miners’ revenue derived from fees also dropped to a three-month low of 3.49% over the weekend.

Coral reef on the ship
Bitcoin skeptic Peter Schiff’s Euro Pacific Bank has become the focus of a major global investigation into tax evasion. Initiated by the UK, US, Australia, Canada and the Netherlands, this investigation, dubbed Operation Atlantis, is seeking to determine whether hundreds of “high-risk” account holders were involved in tax evasion and money laundering through the bank. The investigation began in January and has its roots in the “Panama Papers”, which shed light on how some of the richest people and companies in the world have hidden money and evaded taxes in offshore accounts.

Cryptographic Insurance
Bitstamp, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, has introduced an insurance policy that covers the theft and other losses of user funds held on its platform. The Europe-based exchange said the new insurance policy will be provided by Paragon International Insurance Brokers in coordination with Woodruff-Sawyer, according to a blog post on Thursday. The policy applies to digital assets, such as bitcoin, that are held in the exchange both online and offline and covers a range of crime-related circumstances, according to the post. The underwriters will be made up of various insurance companies and some syndicates of one of the oldest insurance markets in the world, Lloyd’s of London.

Branch closure
Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange platform by trading volume, is closing its dedicated Jersey branch, which offered a fiat-to-crypto exchange for users trading with Euros and British Pounds against a limited choice of crypto assets . Announced on Monday, Binance said all deposits on the local platform will be disabled on October 30 and trading and other services will cease on November 9. Binance said its global service, Binance.com, now offers GBP deposits via the UK’s fastest payments scheme, as well as SEPA payments for the euro. It also offers trading pairs against both currencies. As such, the company said, the growth of services on Binance.com has “extinguished the logic for Binance Jersey as a distinct exchange.”

Binance had an all-time high spot trading volume in the third quarter (Yogita Khatri / The Block)

MicroStrategy Redirects Hope.com to Bitcoin After Buying $ 425 Million BTC (Robert Stevens / Decrypt)

Binance destroys $ 68 million worth of BNB in ​​most expensive burn to date (Robert Stevens / Decrypt)

Coinbase’s new ‘direction’ is censorship, leaked audio reveals (Edward Ongweso Jr / VICE)

With Ripple’s $ 10 million donation, Mercy Corps strengthens its bet on cryptocurrencies (Leo Jakobson / Modern Consensus)

Over the past three days, central bank digital currencies have been signaled as a means of lifting economic sanctions, tools for strengthening local monetary policy, and slightly worse versions of the payment technology we already have.

The global CBDC conversation started really in earnest after the Facebook-incubated Libra Consortium was announced to the world, which sparked regulatory backlash and demanded national digital currency experiments. In a recent report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), it is clear that Libra is still the center of attention for many central bankers.

In a hypothetical scenario, IMF researchers describe a lure and exchange where “Big Techs” advertise a company-run but fiat-backed stablecoin, only to dismantle them later: become a sort of stateless currency of its own. . This is clearly undesirable for central bankers, who wish to exert granular control over monetary policy.

Even before the pandemic-led economic crisis, the global economy was cooling down. Global productivity, wage growth, inflation and GDP stagnated in the 2010s, leaving most central banks without the “ammunition” to stimulate sufficiently. With many financial leaders, such as Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey, shunning the central bank’s long-standing political independence to call for monetary and fiscal policy coordination.

While CBDCs are seen as a panacea, the IMF thinks it could expand the central bank toolbox, providing new ways to tackle old problems. For example, CBDCs could allow central banks to lower policy rates “below the effective lower bound”, allowing them to exercise better control over their economies.

However, early reports of the world’s most advanced CBDC experiment in China have been lacking. Still early to see how a “digital yuan” could be used for state economic planning, the first trial painted a scene where people aren’t interested in using the new currency.

Shenzhen City and the People’s Bank of China launched a “red envelope” lottery earlier this month, giving away 20 million digital yuan (worth about $ 1.5 million) to locals. Many have found virtual money inconvenient and similar to existing payment apps like Alipay.

“It is especially important to offer convenience and other benefits to promote the use of the digital yuan,” a senior economist at PwC China told Reuters. It’s just another constraint for central banks.