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  • Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cosmos and more week 26 2023

Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cosmos and more week 26 2023

All things crypto, web3 and blockchain across all the Coin Clubs

July 02, 2023

TLDR: Fidelity joins on filing for an ETF, Slovakia decreases taxes for Bitcoin holders, HSBC Hong Kong allows customers to buy/sell Ether ETF, Cosmos and Polkadot are connected, FTX wants another shot & More..

Bitcoin Highlights of the Week

1. Michael Saylor is back accumulating that $BTC. MicroStrategy has acquired an additional 12,333 BTC for ~$347.0 million at an average price of $28,136 per bitcoin.

Today, the company holds 152,333 bitcoin acquired for ~$4.52 billion at an average price of $29,668 per bitcoin.

“Remember when Saylor was making fun of for having $2B unrealized loss?, well now the profit is now close to ~$100M”..

2. $4.2 trillion asset manager Fidelity files for spot Bitcoin ETF, joining peer institutions. (Now a total of seven pending applications).

3. Hong Kong’s largest bank, HSBC, to offer Bitcoin & Ethereum ETFs to customers.

4. Slovakia decreased the bitcoin capital gains tax from 39% to 7%, when held for at least one year.

5. Nebraska’s former head of Economic Development testifies bitcoin mining “lowers property taxes and helps build more renewable energy”. On top, the North Carolina House is to vote on bill directing treasury to study the process of buying and holding Bitcoin "to hedge against inflation.” Swan team quickly noticed the state’s $50K budget and offered the analysis for free so they can use that budget as their first bitcoin purchase.

6. Riot Platforms, partners with Bitcoin ASIC manufacturer MicroBT, to bring production to America.

7. Tether & Bitfinex: Signed MOU with Georgia, Launched Bitfinex P2P, Issued $100k Grant to Qubes OS

8. Amboss just launched Ambucks, a new prepaid credit system. Users can can now bootstrap your first lightning node just by making a simple credit/debit card payment!

9. Spiral Renews Developer Grant for Thunderbiscuit

10. Bitcoin ETF BITO -1.97%↓ just had its biggest weekly inflow in a year as it hits $1 billion in assets.

11. Forbes just published another Bitcoin piece titled: “Human Rights And Electricity, 2 Reasons Why Africans Are Turning To Bitcoin”

Little by little, mainstream media changes to a more positive outlook about Bitcoin.

12. Based on energy, using vented methane to power Bitcoin mining reduces 96.5x more emissions than utility scale solar.

13. Geyser projects were on pace for another big month of Lightning payments, with over 200M sats raised in June, with Bitcoin Beach being the first project raising over 100M sats in a single month.

14. CoinCorner showcase how revolutionary is the Lightning network as payment rails when transferring from 🇬🇧 Bank Account to 🇺🇸 Bank Account within 2 minutes.

Ethereum Highlights of the Week

Dencun (Cancun + Deneb) upgrade

  • Latest all core devs – consensus (ACDC) call video. Notes from Christine Kim:

    • Deneb upgrade Engine API changes: deprecate Merge config exchange and proposed flag for EL to suggest local block building

    • EIP7251 (increase max effective balance) discussion

    • E-star name upgrade candidate for inclusion: EIP7002 (EL triggerable exits)

  • EIP4844:

  • Execution-spec-tests v1.0.0: upgraded to PyTest, EIP4844 tests

Layer 1

Client releases

  • Consensus layer:

    • Lodestar v1.9.1: patch for peering/attestation issues & logging UX

    • Nimbus v23.6.1: database pruning performance improvement for history prior to April 2021

  • Execution layer:

    • Besu v23.4.4: new flat database improves block processing time & attestation performance, BlobDB for non-state blockchain data improves sync time & disk IO

Research

  • BaseSAP: stealth address protocol, extendable for particular cryptographic schemes

EIPs/Standards

  • EIPs:

    • EIP7251: Increase the MAX_EFFECTIVE_BALANCE

  • ERCs (application layer):

    • ERC7229: Minimal upgradable proxy contract

    • ERC7231: Identity aggregated NFT

    • ERC7246: Encumber (ERC20 extension)

    • ERC7253: Universal wallet uplink

    • ERC7254: Token revenue sharing

Stuff for developers

Security

  • Themis (lending) on Arbitrum $370k exploit via oracle manipulation

Ecosystem

Notable at app layer

Regulation/business/tokens

Cosmos Highlights of the Week

Cosmos and Polkadot are connected

Thanks to the Centauri Bridge, IBC-enabled Cosmos chains can now connect to the Polkadot / Substrate ecosystem and make IBC transfers with Picasso Network.

The first official connection is between Picasso and Osmosis.

This marks the very first extension of IBC beyond the Cosmos ecosystem.

EntryPoint expressed its willingness to use Interchain Security

EntryPoint is a project that aims to provide benchmark and thematic indexes for the Cosmos ecosystem. It enables non-custodial passive diversification backed by fully-collateralized index tokens.

Here are the offers from Entrypoint to join the AEZ:

👉 Receive $2.5M from the Hub community pool in exchange for 10% of $ENTRY tokens (FDV valued at $25M)

👉 Gain significant influence over EntryPoint governance

👉 100% gas fee paid in ATOM

Inter protocol’s vaults are now live and operational

This means that you can finally put your $ATOM to work and take advantage of the ATOM vault to mint your very own $IST tokens.

All you need to do is visit app.inter.trade

Osmosis Grants recently announced the grants for Batch 15

One major news from this batch is DAO DAO deployment on Osmosis to ensure that apps on top of Osmosis can set up token governance with ease!

Welcome to Osmosis, DAO DAO 👋

Catalyst announced its move onto Celestia

With Catalyst, Celestia-based rollups will be able to enjoy permissionless cross-chain swaps with each other and connect to the broader crypto ecosystem.

Other Highlights of the Week

FTX wants another shot

When all is said and done, FTX may be one of the great corporate frauds of our time, but the transitional team led by Chief Executive John J. Ray III doesn't want that to get in the way of a relaunch for the exchange.

A relaunched FTX would likely strictly target non-Americans, but according to the Journal's sources, if the SEC deems an asset traded on their exchange is an unregistered U.S. security, FTX could still catch some more heat.

Vitalik feels bad for Solana

When the founder of something you're trying to kill starts feeling bad for you, you know you're down bad.

Vitalik Buterin offered some words of support for the Solana community this week, which has indeed had a rougher bear market experience than most. The exchange was disproportionately pummeled by the FTX implosion and now has caught beef with the SEC which deemed its native token SOL as a security in its latest exchange suits – a move that pushed exchanges like Robinhood to make efforts to delist the asset.

Bitcoin forks surge

While the SEC takes aims at a number of cryptocurrencies, they at least seem poised to leave Bitcoin alone, a move that has pushed investors to rally behind the asset but also its less adopted forks including Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Litecoin (LTC).