THIS WEEK IN CRYPTO
- Ethereum surges to a two-month high as it inches closer to a long-awaited upgrade. One of Ethereum’s test networks, called Goerli, simulated a final process identical to what the main network will execute in September. The world’s second-biggest cryptocurrency reached a price above $1,900 on Thursday. Once finalized, the upgrade is expected to speed up transactions on the Ethereum network and make it more energy-efficient via proof-of-stake.
- BlackRock launches a private trust for spot bitcoin. The largest asset manager in the world revealed the new product in a blog post-Thursday, though it was light on detail. The new private Bitcoin trust seeks to track the price of the biggest cryptocurrency and responds to demand from large institutional clients seeking exposure to the asset even after its price plunged this year New York-based BlackRock said in a statement Thursday.
- Ripple Labs is interested in bankrupt crypto lender Celsius’ assets. The blockchain payments company is interested in potentially purchasing assets of bankrupt crypto lender Celsius Network. Ripple has continued to grow through the crypto market turmoil and is actively looking for M&A opportunities to strategically scale the company, according to a spokesperson. Read more here.
- Coinbase reports a 63% drop in revenue amid an industry slump. The cryptocurrency exchange lost more than $1 billion in the second quarter. Blaming the “fast and furious” crypto downturn, the company said revenue was $808 million, down from $2.2 billion a year earlier. Its monthly customer total rose to nine million from 8.8 million last year but was down from 9.2 million in the previous quarter.
- SoFi launches Web 3 ETF focused on NFTs, Metaverse, and Blockchain. SoFi Web 3 will track the SoFi Solactive ARTIS Web 3.0 Index, which uses natural language processing to pick the 40 highest-ranking stocks across four categories: NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and tokenization; blockchain technology; metaverse; and big data and artificial intelligence. Read more here.
- Interactive Brokers offers 24/7 crypto trading. The online broker said the new features are made available through its partnership with Paxos Trust Company, which is known for issuing the stablecoin Pax Dollar. Interactive Brokers said customers trading crypto with Paxos pay commissions of 0.12% to 0.18% of trade value, depending on monthly volume, with no added spreads, markups, or custody fees.
- Crypto broker Genesis says lending fell again in the second quarter. One of the largest cryptocurrency lenders and brokerages for institutional investors said it originated more than $40 billion in new loans in the second quarter, a 9% drop from the previous three-month period. Meanwhile, it saw a 66% drop in active loans outstanding to $4.9 billion from $14.6 billion in the first quarter.
- Crypto criminals laundered $540 million by using a service called RenBridge. RenBridge has been used to launder at least $540 million in crime-related crypto cash since 2020, according to new research from blockchain analytics firm Elliptic. Cross-chain bridges are used to send digital assets across blockchains, bypassing a centralized service that can trace transactions.
- Nvidia's "gaming" loss is actually from ETH miners decreasing. For an idea of how bad the miss was, they were off by $1.4B. Since the ETH merge is expected to occur in September, the downside will look even worse. It won’t get any better. For example, there was a “small” pullback in GPUs after the test merges for ETH ramped up. Once the network no longer needs GPUs at all, expect a flood of used GPUs to be sold. Read more here.
- Coinbase now has a crypto wallet integrated into the Coinbase App. Security is shared between Coinbase and the user, unlike most wallets where 100% of the responsibility is with the user. This dapp wallet experience is powered by Multi-Party Computation (MPC) technology that enables users to have a dedicated on-chain wallet that Coinbase helps you keep secured and can assist in recovery through live support in case of device loss.
- Tornado Cash got blacklisted by the US Treasury Dept. Tornado Cash is an anonymous way for users to send cryptocurrencies. It basically allows users to conduct transactions privately without risking privacy. Jason Calacanis also said that it lets users anonymously wash and clean the money and send it to another person which is probably why it got blacklisted by the US Treasury Dept. Source(15:55)
