Crypto Shake

2022-04-24 17:30:00 Opens access to a closed channel only for 100 people - https://t.me/crypto_bubblez

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2022-04-23 15:20:00 ​​Defiance Plans ETF That Bets Against Crypto Industry

Defiance ETFs is seeking to launch a fund betting against the US’s first blockchain ETF.

The fund group’s proposed Short Blockchain and Digital Assets Industry ETF seeks returns that represent the daily inverse of the performance of Amplify ETFs’ Transformational Data Sharing ETF (BLOK), according to a Thursday regulatory disclosure.

The proposed ETF will enter into short positions of the Amplify ETF as well as swap agreements with major global financial institutions. It seeks to achieve its investment objective only for the period of a single trading day and is not intended to be used by investors who do not actively monitor and manage their portfolios, according to the filing.

The disclosure does not indicate a ticker or expense ratio for the planned offering.

Defiance did not immediately return a request for comment.

BLOK, which launched in January 2018, has roughly $900 million in assets under management. Though the fund’s holdings were previously limited to several mining and semiconductor companies, as well as companies investing in private blockchain stakes, Amplify CEO Christian Magoon previously told Blockworks, it now consists of more pure-play blockchain companies.

The fund’s current top five holdings are Silvergate, CME Group, SBI Holdings, MicroStrategy and Nvidia. Other constituents among the top 10 include Galaxy Digital and crypto exchange Coinbase.

Though BLOK has returned 105% since inception, the fund returned roughly -15% during the first three months of 2022, according to Amplify’s website.

A spokesperson for Amplify declined to comment on the proposed Defiance fund.

Defiance is not the first aiming to launch a product betting against the crypto industry.

Toroso revealed plans last September to bring to market the Elevate Shares Inverse Daily Blockchain ETF (KOLB), which would also seek daily results corresponding to the opposite of the performance of BLOK.

ProShares filed earlier this month to launch an ETF that would allow investors to essentially bet against bitcoin, and AXS Investments and Direxion followed suit.

Defiance has eight ETFs trading in the US with combined assets of about $1.4 billion. The firm in December launched its Digital Revolution ETF (NFTZ), which invests in NFT marketplaces and issuers.

Sylvia Jablonski, Defiance’s co-founder and chief investment officer, previously told Blockworks that NFTs will be bigger than the internet. Open / Comment

2022-04-22 16:10:00 ​​US lawmakers sound alarm to EPA over environment concerns of crypto mining

United States House of Representatives member Jared Huffman and 12 other lawmakers have requested the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, assess crypto mining firms potentially violating environmental statutes.

In a letter addressed to EPA administrator Michael Regan on Wednesday, Huffman said he and other Democratic House members had “serious concerns” around crypto firms in the U.S. reportedly contributing to greenhouse gas emissions, not operating in accordance with the Clean Air Act or the Clean Water Act. The lawmakers identified efforts to “re-open closed gas and coal facilities” as a means to produce energy for crypto mining operations as a particular area of concern, as well as “energy-inefficient” Proof-of-Work mining for Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Monero (XMR), and Zcash (ZEC).

“Cryptocurrency mining is poisoning our communities,” said the letter. “The rapidly expanding cryptocurrency industry needs to be held accountable to ensure it operates in a sustainable and just manner to protect communities.”

In addition to air and water pollution as a result of energy production, the U.S. lawmakers pointed to “large amounts of electronic waste” due to crypto miners becoming obsolete, and “significant noise pollution” reported around communities with mining operations in New York, Tennessee, and Georgia. House members including Representative Brad Sherman — who has previously called for a ban on cryptocurrencies in the United States — and progressive lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez signed the letter in support of action against mining firms.

“We request that the EPA evaluate PoW mining facilities’ compliance with environmental statutes, such as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, and engage with the communities when reviewing permits,” said the letter to Regan. “Further, we ask that the EPA investigate and address any harm these existing PoW facilities are causing communities including, but not limited to, ensuring that electronic waste is responsibly disposed of, and noise pollution is abated.”

“As cryptocurrency continues to gain popularity and demand more mining, we must ensure communities are not left with the toxic burdens associated with this technology.”
Related: Are we misguided about Bitcoin mining’s environmental impacts? Slush Pool CMO Kristian Csepcsar explains

The energy requirements for cryptocurrency miners continues to be controversial among policymakers in the U.S. and many other countries. Bloomberg reported in March that oil and gas giant ExxonMobil had been using excess gas from oil wells in North Dakota to run BTC miners as part of a pilot program started in January 2021. In addition, a New York state supreme court judge recently dismissed a petition requesting mining firm Greenidge Generation halt operations, saying organizations had failed to prove residents would suffer from an "environmental injury" wit the company expanding. Open / Comment

2022-04-22 12:31:14 A unique channel about altcoin analysis!

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2022-04-21 15:15:00 ​​Will Crypto Market Hit the Vantage Prediction of $2300 Million by 2028?

In early April 2022, Vantage released a report on their market research in the crypto space development. The report indicates that the crypto market could reach $2300 million by 2028. Vantage also highlighted that the crypto market growth in the past few years has been exponential. In 2018, the entire crypto space was valued at $828 billion, and now it's about $2 trillion. According to the research, as of the end of 2021, the crypto market made nearly $1542.9 million in revenue. Moreover, the study indicates that the compound annual growth rate of the crypto market is 6.9%. Vantages research shows very high hopes for the crypto market growth. But is the forecast realistic?

Is the Vantage Prediction Realistic
Sometimes forecasters could put very high values leading investors to doubt their reliability or whether the details are realistic. However, several factors indicate that Vantage's prediction is realistic in this case. The historical performance of the crypto market indicates that the crypto market will continue gaining year-round. Vantage highlighted various aspects which will drive the growth.

Growth in Software and Hardware Industries
One of the major factors to boost growth in the crypto market is the success of the crypto software and hardware industry. The crypto hardware industry has been a significant force in the crypto market's historical growth. Investors needed mining equipment and other tools like hardware wallets to invest in crypto. Vantage expects this hardware market to grow vastly. The software industry is also an immense force in the crypto market. All crypto networks are built on blockchain-based software. This software, including Dexes, staking pools, mining bots, and others, will continue increasing as the crypto market grows. The software will often need upgrades of features and improvements of services. Hence, the networks will often update the software to continue working efficiently with the increasing demand. The demand for updates and revenues generated in new and updated software will increase the crypto market size.

The Crypto Expected Regional Growth
The North American region is considered the biggest crypto hub at the moment. Based on the vantage research, North America will likely remain the biggest crypto hub over the next decade. Statistics show that North America has a 41% share of the global crypto space. The friendly crypto regulations are the main reason for the lead. However, other regions will be developing in the next decade. The Arab region is one of the exciting regions to watch in the next decade regarding crypto. Recently, the emirates region introduced crypto-friendly laws that have already attracted crypto users' interest. Africa is another area to watch in the coming decade. The adoption of crypto, especially bitcoin, in Africa is exciting. This global crypto growth, steered by several regions, will be another reason for the success of the crypto market. It makes the Vantage prediction seem pretty reachable. Open / Comment

2022-04-20 18:25:00 ​​Blockchain-based Games Raised $2.5 Billion in Q1 2022: DappRadar Report

A recent DappRadar study estimated that blockchain-based games raised $2.5 billion in Q1, 2022 from investors. If this pace maintains, the total investments by the end of the year will be 150% higher than in 2021. Additionally, in March, blockchain games attracted 1.22 million Unique Active Wallets (UAW) and accounted for 52% of the industry’s activity.

Blockchain Games Are Becoming Highly Popular
According to DappRadar’s report, shared with CryptoPotato, high-profile investors poured hundreds of millions of dollars into blockchain games and non-fungible token projects during the first quarter of 2022. For one, Yuga Labs – the studio behind the NFT collection Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) – secured a $450 million fundraise led by Andreessen Horowitz.

The $200 million investment led by Temasek in Immutable-X (IMX) is also worth mentioning. The latter hosts two of the most popular blockchain games – Gods Unchained and Guilds of Guardians. Following the initiative, the entity’s valuation topped $2.5 billion.

In total, blockchain games have raised $2.5 billion since the start of the year. The bold forecast predicts that investments for the entire of 2022 could reach $10 billion (assuming the pace stays the same). Last year the total invested funds into the sector equaled $4 billion.

The number of Unique Active Wallets (UAW) keeps a steady level. On average, 1.17 million UAW connected daily to blockchain games during Q1, decreasing 2% from last year’s Q4 daily average. Nonetheless, the March figures surpassed 1.22 million daily UAW.

Top games are still attractive to their player base, as Splinterlands, Alien Worlds, and Crazy Defense Heroes saw an average of over 650,000 daily UAW in March. 52% of the whole blockchain activity during Q1 came from decentralized gaming applications.

On the other hand, interest in the Metaverse seemed to have cooled down after the hype driven by Meta’s rebranding several months ago. The trading volume in virtual worlds has plunged by 12% from Q4 2021, reaching $430 million in Q1 2022. The average price of lands in The Sandbox and Decentraland decreased by 40%, while both platforms saw a decline in their trading volume by 60% and 20%, respectively.

The Ronin Bridge Exploit
It is worth mentioning that the biggest hack in crypto’s history happened during the first quarter of the year. Last month, hackers breached Ronin Network’s security system and stole over 173,000 ETH and 25.5M USDC from it. At the time of the attack, this equaled over $600 million.

To support the investigation of the incident, the world’s largest crypto platform – Binance – blocked addresses by the potential wrongdoer and temporarily suspended all transactions on the Ronin Network.

For its part, Sky Mavis – the blockchain gaming project behind Ronin and Axie Infinity – vowed to compensate victims who lost funds due to the attack. Open / Comment

2022-04-19 22:40:00 ​​BinanceUS obtains money transmitter license in Puerto Rico

The Puerto Rico Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions has granted BinanceUS a money transmitter license, the company announced on April 19.

"Puerto Rico, in particular, is an important market for the growth of crypto and we look forward to continuing to offer its residents secure, reliable, and low-fee access to a robust selection of tokens," BinanceUS CEO Brian Shroder said in a statement.

Puerto Rico has gained a reputation as a crypto hub over the past few years, with investor Brock Pierce spearheading efforts to attract entrepreneurs to the island now known for its crypto-friendly tax policies.

Earlier this month, Binance raised more than $200 million at a $4.5 billion pre-money valuation. The U.S.-based affiliate of crypto exchange Binance also received money transmitter licenses in West Virginia, Connecticut, and Wyoming this year, the company said in its announcement.

BinanceUS now operates in 45 U.S. states and seven territories through its own licenses and those of third parties, the company added.

According to the Nationwide Multistate Licensing System & Registry (NMLS) Resource Center, a money transmitter license in Puerto Rico is required to "offer services or engage in activities in which any order of payment is received, including, but not limited to bank drafts, checks, personal money orders, or any other means of money transmission or payment, including those carried out by electronic transfer, wire, telephone, or any other medium to be transferred to a beneficiary, and which services require the person for whom the money transmission is processed, transacted, or conducted to pay a service charge." Open / Comment

2022-04-18 15:10:00 ​​An Nvidia RTX 3090 Mod Could Reportedly Make GPU Crypto Mining More Efficient

A PC gaming electronics researcher made headlines in the PC world this week after finding a way to boost the computational efficiency of the Nvidia RTX 3090 card per kWh. That could save the GPU crypto mining community some coin on the electric bill.

In Chemnitz, Germany, a one-man hobbyist PC gaming researcher by the name of Igor Wallossek recently found a way to cut the power consumption of the Nvidia RTX 3090.

A report about the home lab electronics caper by Hassan Mujtaba for WCCF Tech explains why this is a breakthrough for anyone who uses the GPU:

“NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 3090 Ti graphics card is without a doubt the most power-hungry graphics card ever launched, sipping over 500 Watts of power and requiring insanely massive GPU cooling solutions to keep the heat in check.”

Of course, cryptocurrency industry watchers know it’s not just full-time gamers who stand to save some money if Igor’s efficiency mod to the chip is replicable by others.

Unless they’re using the ASIC chips specially designed to mine cryptos like Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Dogecoin (DOGE), Litecoin (LTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Monero (XMR), Zcash (ZEC), and others— GPUs remain the most effective way to mine cryptocurrency.

Igor Labs Mods Nvidia RTX 3090 for Big Efficiency Boost
Out of the box, the RTX 3090 has a manufacturer reference TGP (total graphics power) of 450W. That’s how much power the graphics subsystem requires to run the chip and keep it from overheating. WCCF Tech says most custom models run at closer to 500W. But Igor Labs found a way to limit power consumption to 300W— a 37% drop in its TGP rating — without losing nearly as much gaming performance. This was tested using 10 games at 4K resolution.

That yields an appreciable amount of electricity cost savings for the Nvidia GPU’s computations and the “insanely massive” cost of cooling the RTX 3090 (with electricity fed to the entire graphics rig through a 600 Watt rated PCIe Gen 5 16-pin connector, which is designed to accommodate future graphics chips rated for 600 Watts).

That could save some money for the GPU mining industry
Graphics processing units are optimal for solving the SHA-256 hash algorithm problems that play a key role in the elaborate computational and economic architecture of proof of work cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (and Ethereum for the past seven years, until mainnet merges with the Beacon Chain to create network consensus using proof of stake).

While the RTX 3090 is a powerful miner with a hashrate clocked at 135 MH/s on the Dagger Hashimoto implementation for Ethereum mining, WePC has recommended a more energy-efficient solution because the rig is such a power hog. Igor’s modification to limit the Nvidia card’s electricity usage could bump the RTX 3090 up the GPU mining leaderboards for key benchmarks like hashrate, power consumption, and daily profit/days to break even. Open / Comment

2022-04-17 17:15:00 ​​75% of New Stakers on Lido Finance Joined via Staking Project in Past Month

Staking on Beacon Chain has been booming due to the much-awaited Ethereum Merge despite delays. A major chunk of new stakers on the consensus layer have done so using Lido Finance.

In the latest blog post, the project revealed that 75% of new stakers on the Beacon chain who joined in the last 30 days had utilized the staking protocol.

Centralization Concerns
With the Ethereum Merge approaching, staking on the Beacon Chain has intensified as expected. According to Lido, the blockchain is now secured by more than $35 billion equivalent in staked assets, with the staking project contributing a major share in the past month. This, in turn, has sparked concerns about centralization among the community, which Lido acknowledged and noted,

“While this validates our mission to democratize staking in Ethereum, some people have expressed concern that this level of success can make Lido a centralizing force. We hear you, and your concerns are both important to us and valuable to Ethereum as a whole.”

As such, Lido has announced adopting Distributed Validator Technology (DVT). This system would categorize validators into independent committees that propose and attest to blocks together.

The end goal is to minimize the risks associated with an individual validator underperforming or turning malicious. On implementation of DVT, Lido will be able to pair “untrusted node operators” with a majority of trusted node operators, thereby contributing to decentralization without posing a threat to Lido stakers on Ethereum.

Another improvement that the staking platform aims to adopt is the creation of a Node Operator Score (NOS) put together from various metrics and distribute stake based on that. This scoring system should enable any individual to join Lido as a node operator and build up a stake over time.

Its native token, LDO, had surged by 257% from a low of $1.36 on 21st February to posting a 2022-high of $4.86 in just a matter of 10 days due to its connection to the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade.

Delay in Ethereum Merge
While the traction has been strong, Ethereum Merge will take place a few months after June this year. As reported earlier, Ethereum’s leading developer, Tim Beiko, revealed that “The Merge,” touted as a stepping stone for the blockchain, is in its final stages while stressing that the initiative is set to occur later than most anticipate.

The dates have been pushed multiple times before as well. Notably, Beiko previously commented he wouldn’t be surprised if Ethereum 2.0 happens in the fall. Open / Comment

2022-04-16 19:35:00 ​​Binance launches its first customer service center in Turkey

Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume, announced the launch of its customer service center, Cointelegraph Turkey reported.

Binance picked Turkey, where it established a local entity roughly two years ago, as the pilot country for its new service.

A possible reason for Binance to pick Turkey is the high volume of traffic the exchange is getting from the country.

Similarweb data shows that Turkey accounts for over 7% of the desktop browser access to Binance's primary platform.

Binance will provide its Turkish customers with 24/7 customer care support through its app, according to an announcement shared with Cointelegraph Turkey.

The exchange is preparing to expand the service worldwide provided the pilot test in Turkey becomes successful.

Speaking at the Paris Blockchain Week Summit, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao explained that the firm plans to expand its customer support options:

"We provide customer support only via texting, and in the forthcoming period, we aim to roll this service also via phone in all countries."
According to the announcement, Binance will offer customer support in Turkish, and it will be provided only through the app. The exchange explained that this goal is to put an end to fraud cases before they even begin.

With the new service, customers in need of help will be contacted through the application, and a conversation will start when the customer accepts the call.

Related: Binance CEO explains what he's most excited about in 2022

Apart from expanding its services and improving the user experience, the exchange is also looking to grow its presence in traditional markets by investing in companies from each economic sector.

To enhance crypto adoption and diversify its business, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao believes "forcing traditional companies to adopt crypto will put pressure on the slow-movers and increase market competition." Open / Comment