Weekly News 03/11/2021: Cryptos as an alternative for emerging countries

Banks and Institutions

Stablecoin regulation could get tougher

The U.S. Treasury Department has just released the stablecoin risk report requested by Secretary Janet Yellen this summer. The main focus is a legislative package that would expand regulatory oversight of stablecoin issuers, with new registration and licensing requirements. Existing stablecoins like USDT would have to go through complex registration procedures.

Digital Yuan is growing widely in China

Nearly 10% of the population or 140 million people have activated their e-CNY wallet. The number of active wallets held by companies has tripled in less than three months, from 3.5 million to 10 million. Since its launch, nearly 62 billion yuan has been traded through this new state-owned digital asset.

Developing countries turn to crypto-assets

Nigeria, Malaysia, Australia, Indonesia and Hong Kong are the countries where the most people claim to hold crypto assets: 24% of the population in Nigeria would hold at least one crypto. Each country also has its favorite crypto: Bitcoin for Japan, Ethereum for Singapore, and Dogecoin for the US.Finally, 37% of crypto holders are women.

Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) launches Ethereum micro futures

Until today, it was possible to buy contracts on 50 ETH. Now this amount drops to 0.1 ETH. The CME already offers this kind of product on BTC, as well as on oil, among others. The proposal is mainly due to the recent increase of the Ethereum price, and an offer targeting smaller holders.

Ecosystem

Big mining operation launches in Canada

Compass Mining is launching a new mining operation in Ontario, with a 140 MW electrical capacity coming from renewable or nuclear energy at 95%. The site should eventually be the largest in America and generate 3 EH/s of mining capacity.

Squid Game token adventure ends badly

The Squid Game token, taken from the famous series, is yet another example of scams in the crypto market. The developers of the much-criticized pseudo-project suddenly resold almost all of their tokens to pocket nearly $12 million, while the program managing the currency did not allow investors to resell it. The price of the token collapsed.

Loopring’s price explodes after a rumor of partnership with Gamestop

The Loopring source code shows that the project has been chosen by the firm Gamestop to produce an NFT platform dedicated to video games. Gamestop is currently working on a activity transformation towards digital, with many projects around the blockchain. The price of the LRC token performs 300% in a few days following this announcement.

Technology

Parachain auctions coming to Polkadot

After the Kusama test network, the first parachain auctions will take place on the main Polkadot network on November 11. A total of 11 auctions are planned, with one per week. The price of Polkadot has been affected with a very strong increase in the last few days.

The Altair hardfork was launched this week on the Ethereum blockchain

This update is an ongoing work to eventually merge the two Ethereum and Ethereum 2.0 chains. From now on, Ethereum 2.0 nodes will be penalized more if they go offline. A support for lightweight nodes is introduced on mobile for example.

ENS launches its governance token

The platform offers .eth domain names and address aliases (satoshi.eth), and wishes to evolve towards more decentralization with a token, whose value could be particularly interesting. A token distribution system will be set up.

Hacks continue on DeFi protocols

The DeFi Cream Finance protocol has suffered another attack, this time for more than $130 million. A project promoted as a fork of OlympusDAO raised $60 million in a token sale, but the funds raised were withdrawn. A phishing attack may have been involved. Such examples prove the need for careful selection in crypto investments.

Figures

• Hacks on DeFi protocols have caused a loss of $680 million since the beginning of the year. 1.4 billion has been stolen in 70 attacks, half of which has been recovered.
• The Ethereum hash rate is at an all-time high, with 747 TH/s, and mining activity has brought in $1.85 billion in October.
• For Bitcoin, mining activity brought in $1.72 billion in October, the second highest month ever.
• MicroStrategy continues its Bitcoin purchases: the company now holds the equivalent of $7 billion in Bitcoin.
• Ethereum is becoming increasingly deflationary, with consistent negative issuance over the past few days.