More freedom for Stablecoins in the United States
OCC, the U.S. state currency regulator, now allows U.S. banks to use stablecoins for payments and other banking activities.
Banks will also be able to hold blockchain nodes to secure their operations.
The regulator, however, emphasizes the responsibility of banks in the fight against money laundering, but seems increasingly favorable to the use of stablecoins in general.
Trouble continues for Ripple with class action lawsuits
Ripple lawsuits are increasingly developing: investors are attacking Coinbase in the United States, claiming that the company should have foreseen the consequences of classifying Ripple as a security.
This should lead more and more companies to delist XRP, or at least prohibit its use by US customers.
Microsoft develops the use of the blockchain
Microsoft is developing the use of the blockchain in its video game ecosystem.
The software giant, in partnership with the firm EY, will use Ethereum to manage the rights systems in the video games on its platform.
This should in particular make it possible to remunerate content providers such as music and graphics creators, etc.
New distribution of tokens in Shenzhen
Within the framework of the digital yuan trials, the city of Shenzhen will once again distribute tokens to its inhabitants. This time, the equivalent of 3 million dollars will be distributed.
A lottery will be organized and each winner will receive the equivalent of $30.
10000 stores are participating in the operation and will be able to receive the payments through it.
In the last operation, 55% of the payments were made in physical stores, the rest online.
Parity portfolio hedge funds resurface
The funds of the parity hack are moving after 3 years of inactivity.
The Parity portfolio had suffered an attack in 2017 on its multisig wallet.
150000 ETH had been stolen and kept on 7 different addresses.
Since December 27th, these funds start to be converted by the hacker, in order to hide his tracks.
Release of the new Oiler protocol
The family of protocols offering on-chain derivatives is growing.
Oiler is a new protocol that will propose the creation of derivative products residing entirely on the Ethereum blockchain.
These can be evaluated and executed without the need for off-chain tools.
This is made possible by the AMMs that now serve as reference points for the price of Ethereum assets.
In the same vein, Primitive is also a new protocol focusing on decentralized options.
Its innovative architecture allows to build options on any Ethereum asset.
yCredit, the latest DeFi protocol by Andre Cronje
yCredit, the latest DeFi protocol launched by Andre Cronje, is a credit system allowing users to deposit certain ERC20 tokens as collateral to obtain yCredit, a stablecoin supposed to trade at $1.
Unlike a Maker which requires a strong over-collateralization of the created DAIs, yCredit provides 99.5% of the value deposited as collateral in yCredit.
The system is still highly experimental.
Many attacks around Yearn recently
Various protocols revolving around Yearn have recently come under attack.
First of all, the Cover protocol, which announced its partnership with Yearn a few days ago, has suffered an exploit. A first hacker extracted nearly 4.5 million dollars under various tokens, and a second one extracted 4350 ETH, before returning most of the funds.
yCredit also came under attack. Cronje, known for its habit of testing its projects in production, had warned that an exploit might be possible.
The cost of gas on Ethereum causes significant delays.
Aavegotchi, the project linking DeFi and NFT, sees its release delayed due to gas prices on Ethereum, which are at their highest levels. For good reason, a strong activity on the Ethereum network.
The project team announces that it is turning towards a deployment on a Layer2 solution: Matic. This will also allow the project to have lower transaction costs and faster transactions.
Launch of a liquidity mining program by Loopring
Loopring launches a two-week liquidity mining program on its network on January 6.
1.7 million LRC will be distributed to liquidity providers and users of their AMM (Decentralized Market Place).
The particularity of this AMM, similar to Uniswap, is that it runs in L2 on the Loopring protocol. Transaction costs are therefore almost non-existent and transactions are instantaneous.
LRC is up 175% over 7 days.
Figure of the week
BTC over $146,000?
JP Morgan predicts a BTC price above $146,000 over the long term. The asset would develop as an alternative to gold.
To be continued…
