This episode of Crypto Daily Briefing is hosted by Paul Guerra, the producer of Real Vision. He is joined by Ash Bennington, senior host & crypto editor of Real Vision.
They touch on many topics such as regulatory reaction to crypto, and the NASDAQ’s entrance into the crypto space, and they look at the topics discussed in a recent interview with Elaine Ly and Laura Shin.
Read our notes below to learn more.
Markets
Paul
● BTC dominance is around 39.5%.
● Microstrategy bought another 301 BTC, they hold approx. 130k BTC in total.
Ash
● Citi Research report states that ETH has remained stable post-merge.
● Issuance of new ETH is estimated to fall by 90% to around 600k a year.
● 14.5 million ETH or 12% of the total supply is staked.
● ETH is now a yield-bearing asset.
● ETH miners sold ETH at elevated levels last week - 17k was offloaded.
NASDAQ Wants a Piece of the Crypto Pie
Paul
● The company will offer custody services for BTC and ETH to institutions.
● Nasdaq hired Ira Auerbach to head the Nasdaq New Digital Assets Unit.
● Ira has said that Mass institutional adoption will drive the next wave of the revolution.
Ash
● Custody is how people store and secure their assets.
● Crypto custodians store and guard private keys on behalf of their clients.
Wintermute Hack
Paul
The company lost 160 million USD.
● The hack was confined to the DeFi business, lending services, over-the-counter and CeFi services were not affected.
● CEO claims that Wintermute is still solvent.
Ash
● Wintermute is calling this a white hat attack, which may signal that they will get a portion of the funds back.
● Hacks are regular events in this space.
Coinbase Wallet Browser Extension
Pau
● It will be using Ethereum Name Service (ENS), an ETH based domain that replaces your wallet address.
● .cb will be attached to each Coinbase wallet address, which is a great marketing move.
Ash
● Long strings of characters are hard to remember, it will be a lot easier to remember the ENS address.
ETH Merge
Laura Shin
● The merge went flawlessly.
● The reason it’s called the merge is that they initially set up a working PoS network and only then moved over all the economic activity.
● Depending on the demand and usage ETH may be deflationary.
● Arthur Hayes is very bullish on ETH.
● With ultrasound.money you can simulate ETH supply with PoS and PoW.
Ash
● EIP-1559 details how mining fees are split into base fees and tips, and also how the burn mechanism works.
● ETH’s monetary system is now expanding as rapidly as before because ETH staking is more efficient.
● Since staking is more efficient than mining, validators spend less than miners, which means they require less compensation because their costs are lower.
BTC
Laura Shin
● Most bitcoiners would say that ETH switching to PoS does not affect BTC.
● There are multiple governments and regulatory bodies that are concerned with the environmental footprint of BTC, therefore, the PoS question for BTC might come up.
● In the state of New York, there is a ban on new facilities that use PoW mining.
● A study will be done in New York to see if they want to fully ban PoW mining.
ETH Reduces Energy Consumption
Laura Shin
She wonders whether the average person who is not involved in crypto understands that PoS significantly reduces the environmental footprint.
The BTC community is working a lot on using renewable energy, therefore, they are thinking about these issues, however, they believe PoW is safer compared to PoS.
Ash
● He doesn’t think BTC is going to be switching from PoW to PoS in the foreseeable future.
● PoW is considered safe, highly reliable, and in many ways considered the gold standard for consensus mechanisms.
Future of ETH
Paul
● Future updates aren’t easy to digest for most retail investors.
● The surge includes the Shanghai upgrade that will allow people to withdraw their staked ETH, and it will scale the network.
● The verge will allow users to become network validators without storing lots of data.
● The purge will remove all the network history.
● The splurge is the fine-tuning of all the preceded steps.
Ash
● The verge will use Verkle Trees which are more efficient than Merkle Trees.
● Merkle Trees allow protocols to roll up a series of transactions into a highly compressed block of data.
● This allows the network to become more decentralized because it allows validators to process more transactions with less storage space.
Next Big Headlines
Laura Shin
● Developments in the regulatory space are what she will be closely watching.
● Many people would say that the US lags behind in crypto innovation, and certain regulators are very hostile or don’t fully understand the technology.
● One of the biggest topics in the US is whether tokens are securities.
SEC vs ETH
Paul
● SEC claimed that all ETH transactions fall under US jurisdiction.
Ashton
● There's one paragraph in a case filing where SEC seems to imply that they maybe have regulatory authority over the ETH network.
Q&A
Q: Is there a bigger macro headwind for Bitcoin than the DXY?
A:
Ashton
In this case, it’s the central bank policy that’s influencing the rising dollar on one hand, and the suppression of crypto prices on the other.
Q: Can the wealth concentration of BTC hinder its adoption?
A:
Ashton
In theory, it’s a challenge but it’s something that remains to be seen in the future.
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