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2022-04-15 17:00:09 ​Robinhood CEO Steps on the Same Old Rake with Idea to Increase Dogecoin Block Size

Vlad Tenev, co-founder and CEO of the popular trading app Robinhood, shared a new old solution for increasing dogecoin (DOGE)'s throughput – and the community doesn’t seem impressed.

In a Twitter thread, Tenev said that he’s been “thinking about what would [it] take” for DOGE to “truly be the future currency of the Internet and the people.”

He goes on to claim that the first condition – “vanishingly small” fees – has already been fulfilled. And then he came to the block part of his discussion. Block time of one minute, he argues, is “a bit on the longer side” for payments, with ten seconds or less being more appropriate.

With that block time and 1MB block size, its throughput is about 40 transactions per second (tps), he said, while Visa’s network can theoretically handle 65,000 tps – and Dogecoin needs to surpass Visa, by increasing throughput by at least 10,000x.

Tenev, however, says that there is a simple solution, without employing Layer 2 (L2) solutions (those built on top of Dogecoin as Layer 1), writing:

“Fortunately, this is easy to solve simply by increasing the block size limit. […] Dogecoin core devs, I would focus on one thing: coming up with a good process for increasing the block size limit over time.”

Many were quick to comment that “We had this debate and big blocks lost.” User ‘MarinoBTC’ opined: “Keep the base layer prestine building on top and never sacrificing layer 1.”

Popular bitcoin (BTC) investor WhalePanda opined that this is a case of someone hearing about a project for the first time and thinking they have a solution for its issues. “I wonder if [Tenev] has heard about BSV that thought of this first. The classic "I've just heard about Bitcoin (or in this case Dogecoin) and I'm here to fix it",” the investor wrote.

And many more brought forth the issue of centralization – an argument that is especially potent in Robinhood’s case given its controversy during the GameStop saga.

No problem. Let's decrease problems of decentralization with lowering decentralization. Why don't we set up a database at Robin hood cloud and call it "Doggie 2.0 plate version"? Thought about how amazing fast that would be?

— Stefan Stolz (StStolz) April 14, 2022
As previously reported, Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin argued that there are limits to blockchain scalability in order to not sacrifice decentralization, and "you can't "just increase the block size by 10x.“

His comment came after Tesla's chief Elon Musk had tweeted about speeding up Dogecoin's block time and increasing the block size.

Meanwhile, more comments on Tenev's post are coming in, with one commenter arguing that there is marketing involved here, that users of certain large chains do not care about economic or technical sustainability, and that even those chains are inefficient and struggling to increase throughput. Open / Comment

2022-04-14 20:00:41 ​Amazon CEO on Crypto and NFTs, EPNS to Expand Beyond Ethereum + More News

Adoption news
Ecommerce giant Amazon is "not probably close" to adding crypto as a payment mechanism to their retail business, CEO Andrew Jassy told CNBC. He didn't rule out that it's still possible and added that he expects NFTs to grow "very significantly."
US football team The Dallas Cowboys announced a partnership with crypto platform Blockchain.com. The team will be adding a QR code on every seat of their stadium that will link to the Cowboys’ website and highlight Blockchain.com’s wallet so fans can learn more about crypto, they said.
Australian market research company Roy Morgan said that 5% of surveyed Australians older than 18 now own at least one cryptoasset. 59% of investors are younger than 35, but Australians aged 50+, who make up only 13% of the investor base, have the largest average crypto investment at an average value of around AUD 56,200 (USD 41,580).
Investments news
Ethereum Push Notification Service (EPNS), a "decentralized" notification protocol, said it has raised a USD 10.1m Series A funding round, with an average valuation of USD 131m. Jump Crypto led the round. EPNS said they will use the funding from the Series A to expand the team, grow the user base, and develop beyond the Ethereum ecosystem "to stay true to the vision of a multi-chain, interoperable decentralized future."
Blockchain ecosystem Klaytn (KLAY) announced the launch of a USD 20m fund to create a Blockchain Research Center program, which would back research projects for the development of its blockchain technology over the next four years. The Request For Proposal, which is available for universities and research consortiums interested in blockchain-related research, will be open from April 14 to June 13.
Skynet EGLD Capital, a fund that accepts in-kind subscriptions in Elrond (EGLD) native tokens, announced it raised more than USD 40m to support the development of the Elrond blockchain ecosystem. They added that “significant amounts” of capital have already been deployed into different existing solutions in the ecosystem.
Digital currency investment platform Symphony Digital announced the closing of its inaugural fund, Symphony Digital Opportunities Fund, securing USD 40m from institutional and private investors.
Exchanges news
Gemini announced their Gemini Credit Card is now available in all 50 US states, enabling users to earn up to 3% crypto back on dining (some exclusions apply), 2% crypto back on groceries, and 1% crypto back on all other purchases.
Bitfinex announced that it is enabling real-time Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) payments for euro-denominated deposits and withdrawals in collaboration with fiat on-ramp services provider OpenPayd.
Indian crypto exchanges CoinSwitch Kuber and WazirX have disabled INR deposits for the purchase of cryptoassets through a widely-used state-backed transfer network Unified Payments Interface (UPI), per Reuters.
Taxes news
Crypto tax software and blockchain analytics company ZenLedger announced a partnership with the major, France-based manufacturer of crypto hardware wallets, Ledger, to allow users to keep track of their taxes when using crypto.
DeFi news
Decentralized storage and computing network Aleph.im announced that it will integrate with Tezos (XTZ) blockchain. Tezos-based decentralized apps (dapps) and marketplaces will be able to utilize Aleph’s distributed compute and storage nodes, they said. Open / Comment

2022-04-13 19:30:01 ​Five-year Jail Term: Has Virgil Griffith Become Ethereum’s Ross Ulbricht?

Locking up crypto developers who stray into murky legal waters may become a more everyday occurrence in the years to come.

Back in 2015, Ross Ulbricht – the creator and main operator of the darknet marketplace Silk Road – was handed a double life sentence with no chance of parole, plus an additional 40-year term and a USD 183,961,921 fine. Silk Road’s currency of choice was bitcoin (BTC), and while there’s no doubt that the darknet more than lived up to its name, one can only speculate that the American legal system relished the chance to ramp up the spectacular in the sentencing process to effectively lock Ulbricht up and throw away the key.

Bitcoin crime has its poster boy in Ulbricht, who will almost certainly spend the rest of his days in the United States prison system. Rightly so, some might say. But when you look at the charges he was actually convicted of – money laundering, conspiracy to commit computer hacking, and conspiracy to traffic narcotics – some might argue that such crimes, generally speaking, do not get punished with double (or triple) life sentences in the USA.

So much for Ulbricht. The ethereum (ETH) community has now seen one of its own, Virgil Griffith – a former developer and a personal friend of the co-founder Vitalik Buterin – locked up for five-plus years for giving a talk at a crypto conference in 2019.

Of course, this wasn’t just any old conference. It was held in North Korea. And it wasn’t just any old talk. It covered matters including how to use blockchain technology to evade economic sanctions. The USA and the UN believe Pyongyang views crypto (and crypto hacking) as a means of raising money to pay for its nuclear and ballistic missile program.

And Griffith didn’t just give a one-off talk. He spoke to North Korea in detail about the idea of setting up a blockchain node and tried to convince the Ethereum Foundation that this was a good idea. But Griffith has already spent some two years in custody (although over half of this time was spent on bail). He now has to spend a further 63 to 78 months behind bars and cough up a USD 100,000 fine.

Media outlets like the Washington Post have rushed to label Griffith a wayward “tech guru.” But is a five to 6.5 year-jail term really necessary here?

For perspective: The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control late last year reached a settlement with TD Bank after the latter admitted that between December 2016 and August 2018 it “processed 1,479 transactions totaling [USD] 382,685.38 and maintained nine accounts on behalf of five employees of the North Korean mission to the United Nations.”

But things could actually have been even worse for Griffith. Sanctions violations can be punished with 20-year terms, and it seems that only a plea deal helped reduce the term to a single-digit sentence.

But some will inevitably be left wondering if Griffith might not have been handed a slightly lighter sentence had he not been going through the American legal system at such a sensitive time.

While the US and its allies are ramping up the sanctions on Russia, the court and prosecutors may well have felt that it was their duty to ensure that Griffith’s sentence would show that Uncle Sam means business when he starts talking sanctions.

Courts could feel they need to make a public, headline-grabbing sentence whenever they are faced with a tech first. In Griffith’s case, maybe courts feel that being the first person to take ETH to the dark side means he needs to be held up as an example.

But while crypto community members might call for a greater deal of leniency, there can be no doubt that the weight of public opinion is on the courts’ side. When Joe Public reads that crypto “gurus” who used their powers to help America’s enemies evade sanctions have been jailed and fined, his most likely reaction will be: “Serves him right.” Open / Comment

2022-04-12 20:00:07 ​Coinbase Faces Criticism Again for Listing ‘Dead’ and ‘Stupid’ Tokens

The major US-based crypto exchange Coinbase is again facing criticism from the community after it released a new list of tokens it said are “under consideration for listing.” The list includes projects that a community member described as “stupid” and “virtually completely dead.”

Among the tokens that Coinbase revealed it is considering for listing in the second quarter of this year were largely unknown Ethereum (ETH)-based ERC-20 tokens such as StudentCoin (STC), Polkamon (PMON), and Big Data Protocol (BDP). In addition, there are 42 other ERC-20 tokens and 5 Solana (SOL)-based tokens.

Sharing his take on Twitter today, the popular crypto influencer Cobie called Big Data Protocol a project that was “virtually completely dead prior to [the] listing blog post.”

He added that Big Data Protocol was a project that earlier got some attention when Tron (TRX) founder Justin Sun and crypto trading firm Alameda Research “farmed it with billions.” However, everything came to a full stop when the smart contract “accidentally locked people’s assets” because of a bug in the code.

“Nobody really heard about it ever again after that week,” Cobie said.

On the same note, Cobie also attacked StudentCoin, calling it “a great 2017-ICO-style name.”

“What does it do? Did they rebase supply or did it dump 80% and never recover?? Nobody knows, except Coinbase Listings Team,” Cobie said.

The outburst from the popular influencer today came after he has long criticized Coinbase over their listing practice. Last month, he jokingly said the exchange might just add something “stupid like ‘StudentCoin’ next.”

Today, that prediction appears to have come true.

Eric Wall, chief investment officer at crypto hedge fund Arcane Assets jokingly replied to the tweet, that: “Obviously Coinbase added StudentCoin because of this tweet to reverse-farm Cobie for likes or something.”

Similarly, other leading members of the crypto community also called out the exchange.

Business is booming for Coinbase
Despite the backlash, listing the ever-increasing number of what many consider to be questionable tokens may have been good for Coinbase’s business.

The company, which is now publicly listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the ticker COIN, reported its highest quarterly revenue ever in the 4th quarter of 2021 of USD 2.5bn.

The revenue is up from just USD 585m during the same quarter in 2020, while the company’s net income has risen from USD 177m in the 4th quarter of 2020 to USD 855m in the 4th quarter of 2021.

Coinbase quarterly revenue and net income:
According to Coinbase’s blog post announcing the token list, the exchange’s goal is to “list every asset possible that meets our standards for legal, compliance and technical security.”

It further says that their listing considerations "do not take into account" the market capitalization or popularity of a project. Open / Comment

2022-04-10 21:00:10 ​Get ‘Mentally Ready’ for Lower Bitcoin Prices as Rates Rise, Bitcoin 2022 Panelists Warn

The macroeconomic landscape for bitcoin (BTC) could become more difficult to navigate as the US Federal Reserve continues to raise interest rates. However, bitcoin is the only way to transition to a new monetary standard, panelists at a discussion on the current macro backdrop at Bitcoin 2022 have argued.

Opening up the discussion, Dr. Jeff Ross, founder and CEO of Vailshire Capital Management, urged the audience to get “mentally ready for what could happen” to the bitcoin price in the short-term.

Bitcoin is still strongly correlated to the stock market, he said, warning that planned rate hikes by the Federal Reserve (Fed) could translate into lower stock prices going forward.

However, Ross still said that bitcoin remains a viable way to store value and save money over the long-term, given how he expects fiat money to decline in value.

People will flock to bitcoin because they need to preserve their purchasing power, he said.

Ross further added that the value of bitcoin over time “approaches infinity,” and said that MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor is right when he said that ‘it’s going up forever, Laura.’

A technological and decentralized revolution
Meanwhile, Mark Moss, a popular YouTuber and bitcoin advocate, said that “we’re witnessing a technological revolution and a decentralized revolution,” adding that this comes at a time when there’s a lack of trust in society.

Nations don’t trust each other and people don’t trust their nations, Moss said, noting that “a decentralized ledger” is the best way to fix this.

Similarly, other panelists, including Jeff Booth, a technology entrepreneur and author of the popular book The Price of Tomorrow, said technology is a driver for change today, and that it has “always been a driver.”

This is something that Ray Dalio misses when he speaks about the “end of the long-term debt cycle,” both Moss and Booth argued.

Ray Dalio is a famous investor and co-chief investment officer at the world's largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, who has become known for his extensive work on debt cycles.

Fiat money takes from the poor, gives to the rich
According to Jeff Booth, the current fiat money system means that wealth is continuously “transferred from the poor and middle class and to the rich.” Technology is deflationary, but the Fed is trying to counter that by printing more money, he argued.

Booth further opined that this inflates asset prices, which benefits owners of the assets, while people who don’t own assets pay for it in the form of higher prices on everything.

“This is not how the free market is working. The free market is deflationary,” Booth said.

On the same note, he also said that ESG (environmental, social, and governance) issues are “unsolvable” without bitcoin because fiat money must continue to be printed in order to “pretend we live in a growth cycle forever.”

“I asked this question to Bill Gates, I asked this question to Al Gore and on Twitter […] and there’s not one plausible answer,” Booth claimed, adding that this tells us that “there is no answer from the existing system.”

“Remember, the US dollar failed in 1971, and then you created the PetroDollar system, and it’s failing again right now,” he said.

Inflation causing ‘incredible shock’
Lastly, Preston Pysh, a popular BTC advocate and host of The Investor’s Podcast, warned that the transition from the prior era of low inflation to the current era with high levels of inflation is going to be difficult.

When you go from an environment of low inflation, “you can see why we’re in for an incredible shock for the global economy” with the inflation levels we have now, Pysh said, before adding a final piece of advice:

“Buy bitcoin and fall asleep for five years.” Open / Comment

2022-04-09 18:00:20 ​How to Hedge Your NFT Collection With Ethereum Derivatives

The majority of the non-fungible token (NFT) market resides on Ethereum (ETH), tying the performance of the NFT market – to a degree – to the value of ether as most NFTs are priced in ETH.

Therefore, NFT collectors who are concerned about a potential market downturn could hedge the value of their collection using Ethereum derivatives.

Read on to learn how to hedge your NFT collection with futures and options.

Hedge your NFT portfolio with futures
If you are concerned about the NFT hype dying down, which would likely result in a drop in the value of your NFT collection, you could hedge your portfolio by selling Ethereum futures.

Futures are financial derivative contracts where two parties agree to exchange an asset at a pre-agreed price at a specific date. The original idea behind futures contracts is that you can lock in a price to buy or sell an asset in the future. That way, you will know how much you will pay or receive regardless of where the market for the asset is at the time.

йYou can trade ETH futures on numerous leading crypto exchanges or, if you prefer regulated derivatives, on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME).

If you are expecting the NFT market to correct in the coming six months, but you don’t want to sell any of your NFTs, you could hedge your Ethereum-based NFT portfolio by selling ETH futures with a six-month maturity.

You can decide how much of your portfolio you want to hedge by calculating the hedge ratio of your portfolio. That way, you will know how many futures contracts to hedge a part of or your entire NFT portfolio.

Hedge your NFT portfolio with options
Alternatively, you could also hedge your NFT collection using Ethereum options.

Options are derivatives contracts that give the holder the right but not the obligation to buy or sell an asset at a predefined price at a specific time in the future. That way, you can protect yourself against a drop in the value of your portfolio but, unlike with futures contracts, you are only required to pay for the option (and not buy or sell the underlying asset) at the expiry date.

To hedge your JPEG collection from a decline in value in the coming six months, you could buy Ethereum put options on crypto derivatives exchange like Deribit.

By purchasing Ethereum put option contracts, you can buy/sell ETH at a predefined price at an agreed date. If the market price of Ethereum’s token drops below the options’ strike price, your contracts will be “in the money” and you will be able to purchase ETH cheaper in the market and sell them for the higher pre-agreed value (at the strike price).

That way, you make a profit on your put options hedge, which will offset a loss on your NFT collection.

Before you go out and start hedging your beloved NFT collection with ETH derivatives, keep in mind that the NFT market and Ethereum aren’t perfectly correlated. In fact, according to a Coin Metrics report, they aren’t that correlated at all.

The report states:

“[...] There does not appear to be a consistent correlation between OpenSea sales volume and ETH price - at times they are highly correlated, like August 2021, but at other times they’re negatively correlated, like November 2021. Although it’s still early, it appears that NFTs are a relatively independent market and may, for the most part, move separately from the rest of the crypto market.”

That means you can hedge against a drop in the value of your NFTs to a certain degree but the chances are that Ethereum derivatives - even with a 1-1 hedge ratio - will not offset a drop in NFT portfolio value entirely.

Moreover, before you attempt to hedge your NFT collection, make sure you fully understand how futures and options work to make sure you don’t end up inadvertently losing money. Open / Comment

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2022-04-06 20:00:18 ​Metaverse Land Prices Fall, But Still Outperform Ethereum

Prices of land plots in the metaverse fell by 18% last month from an all-time high seen the month before, according to an index covering 30 of the top virtual worlds. However, virtual land still outperformed the price of Ethereum’s native token ETH when seen over the past year as a whole.

According to data from the metaverse analytics provider Meta Metriks, the average price of a virtual land plot fell to USD 8,594 in March, down 18% from an all-time high of USD 10,473 recorded in February.

The recent fall in price is in line with a broad decline in the prices of metaverse-related tokens over the past 6 months.

As of Wednesday, major metaverse tokens such as those issued by Decentraland (MANA), The Sandbox (SAND), and Axie Infinity (AXS) were all down by between 55% and 65% since reaching their all-time highs in November last year.

Still, the average price for March remains about four times higher than the price seen a year earlier, Meta Metriks’ data said.

Among the worst-performing virtual worlds in terms of land prices in March were Decentraland, The Sandbox, and the non-fungible token (NFT) game Fluf World (FLUF), which saw land prices drop by 49%, 23%, and 44%, respectively.

The losses seen in the three virtual worlds were only partially offset by gains seen in Metroverse (MET) and NFT Worlds (WRLD), where land prices rose by 27% and 6%, respectively, for the month.

Despite the slump in land prices in US dollar terms over the past month, owning land in the metaverse still turned out to be a better investment than holding ETH for the year as a whole.

As of the end of March, metaverse land has performed 2.6 times better than ETH for the past year, despite the dip in land prices and growth in ETH prices seen last month, Meta Metriks said.

On Wednesday at 10:17 UTC, ETH stood at USD 3,336, down 5.2% over the past 24 hours and 2% in a week, and up nearly 31% for the past 30 days. Open / Comment

2022-04-05 19:00:51 ​Coffee Giant Starbucks Aims to Enter NFT Business

Starbucks, an American multinational chain of coffeehouses, aims to enter the non-fungible token (NFT) business by the end of the year.

Billionaire businessman Howard Schultz, who has rejoined Starbucks as interim CEO, announced the news at an Open Forum on Monday, claiming that they plan to do so "before the end of this calendar year."

Schultz claimed that they are in a good position to get into NFTs, and praising the company by stating that:

"If you look at the companies, the brands, the celebrities, the influencers that are trying to create a digital NFT platform and business, I can't find one of them that has the treasure trove of assets that Starbucks has from collectibles to the entire heritage of the company."

For those of you praying that I was kidding, here's the video proof.

In an address today aimed at unionizing workers, multi-billionaire Howard Schultz revealed that Starbucks is going to get into the NFT business "sometime before the end of this calendar year" pic.twitter.com/Jb2rGjgHj4

— Jordan Zakarin April 5, 2022
In a blog post, Starbucks confirmed NFT plans, saying that it is among the company's plans "in the works."

The announcement comes as the company faces multiple challenges, including dissatisfaction among some employees, higher prices due to rising inflation, and challenges in its key China market. Open / Comment

2022-04-04 19:01:50 ​Weekend Crypto Trading Offers Clues to Stock Investors as Tesla Faces Shanghai Lockdown

The predictive power of tokenized stocks that are traded 24/7 is finally receiving the attention of Wall Street and the financial media, after Tesla’s stock tokens signalled bullishness among traders despite a difficult weekend for the electric car maker.

The news of Tesla stock tokens signaling a positive opening on Wall Street later on Monday comes after the company’s factory in Shanghai has been suspended intermittently since mid-March due to COVID-19 lockdowns in the major Chinese city.

According to a Bloomberg report early on Monday, citing an internal company memo, the factory will also remain closed on Monday, with workers asked to stay at home.

Shanghai authorities have ordered a two-phased lockdown for China’s financial capital, a city of more than 25m people, as authorities push to test the city’s entire population for COVID-19.

Still, traders of tokenized Tesla stocks are “signaling confidence” that the car maker will get through the problems facing its Shanghai factory, and that shares will rise on Monday, the Bloomberg report said.


For now, the only major exchanges where Tesla stock tokens are traded are FTX and Bittrex. In addition, an option to trade a synthetic stock token also exists via the decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Mirror Protocol (MIR).

At the time of writing (11:36 UTC), Tesla stock tokens on FTX stood at USD 1,098, up by about 1.26% compared to Friday’s closing price on Wall Street of USD 1,084.47.

At the same time, Mirror Protocol’s synthetic Tesla token (mTSLA), which is traded against the terraUSD (UST) stablecoin and usually trades at a premium, traded at UST 1,121, about 3.4% higher than Tesla’s closing price on Friday.

It is worth noting, however, that trading volume in both of these markets is relatively tiny, with only USD 50,647 worth of Tesla stock tokens changing hands on FTX over the past 24 hours. On Terra’s Terraswap decentralized exchange, only USD 44,655 worth of mTSLA tokens were traded over the same time period.

Still, the fact that Bloomberg highlighted the weekend price moves of Tesla stock token shows that these markets are getting noticed and possibly taken more seriously by traditional investors and institutions.

Despite small volume, the markets could represent useful input for stock traders who are otherwise left in the dark overnight and during weekends when traditional stock markets are closed.

With crypto markets, including tokenized real assets, trading 24/7, a market is now always available, opening up a new way for both individual traders and institutions to hedge their bets and manage risks outside of regular hours. Open / Comment