Banks / Institutions
MicroStrategy will pay its board of directors in bitcoins!
Microstrategy is the American company with the largest portfolio in bitcoins at the moment (over 4 billion dollars). It has just decided to pay its board of directors in bitcoins. In addition, the HSBC bank prohibits its customers from buying Microstrategy shares because of the dangers of bitcoin for the holders of these shares.
Miami’s mayor continues to push for crypto development in his city
After announcing a few months ago the possibility for Miami city employees to receive their salaries in Bitcoin, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez is following up on that, and wants to add Bitcoin to the city’s treasury.
In addition, during a discussion with V.Buterin, the mayor also announced that many projects based on Ethereum, and in participation with Buterin, are being launched, whether for official documents of Miami residents, or real estate ownership certificates.
First test phase completed for the Swedish CBDC
The Swedish central bank has just completed its first test phase for its CBDC, e-krona. Although this test proved successful enough to continue the project, the Swedish central bank announced that some critical flaws need to be resolved before launching the next phase of the project.
Cryptoactive ecosystem
The NFT madness continues
The NFTs craze continues. This time, Christie’s auction house will put up for sale nine cryptopunks, image files corresponding to the platform of the same name.
The cryptopunks in question belong to the founders of the platform and are among the rarest.
Coinbase to go public
Coinbase’s stock is scheduled to go public on April 14 on the NASDAQ index.
With a valuation of $100 billion, the company confirms its status as the U.S. leader in the cryptoasset market.
The fact that the cryptoasset market is at an all-time high is an advantage for its valuation.
Fundraising for Consensys
Ethereum specialist Consensys has managed to raise $65 million in funding. Among the investors are JP Morgan and UBS banks, as well as Mastercard and a Chinese semi-public investment group. The acceleration of the development of Consensys will be done in particular through a separation between the development and investment activities.
Metamask Institutional product announcement
After announcing that it would offer institutional clients a tailor-made solution for accessing DeFi, Consensys and Metamask are announcing the Metamask Institutional product, which combines Metamask’s current features with new options for preserving and securing institutional funds. This fund custody will be done in partnership with Curv.
Technology
Update planned for Ethereum
New big update planned for Ethereum on April 14, called Berlin. Among the changes, we will find modifications on the cost of some internal operations of smart contracts (upwards and downwards), as well as the creation of new types of transactions. We will wait a few more months for IEP-1559, which could at least partially solve the current saturation problems.
Exit of the USDT on the Polkadot network
Tether has announced the upcoming release of its stablecoin, USDT, on the Polkadot network, as well as on Kurama, Polkadot’s test network. USDT can be added to the Polkadot ecosystem once the new update is made, activating parachains, autonomous networks, and interconnected via Polkadot.
New problems for FEI
FEI, the new stablecoin, which has already had a difficult launch, is experiencing new problems following the discovery of a critical flaw in the protocol. This flaw, which would have drained the liquidity of the ETH-FEI pool on Uniswap, has been mitigated by the protocol team, but causing the reward system to be disabled at the same time. With no interest in buying the stablecoin, its price has continued to fall, moving further away from the target value of $1 (1FEI = $0.77). There is still nearly $1 billion worth of ETH locked up in the FEI protocol.
Figures of the week
New record for Compound
Compound exceeds $10 billion locked within the protocol.
Ethereum more popular than Bitcoin?
Ethereum overtakes Bitcoin to become the most popular cryptocurrency on Youtube: 230 million video views, compared to 199 million for Bitcoin.
A statistic on Ethereum 2
The equivalent of $8 billion in Ethereum is now deposited in the Ethereum 2 smart contract.
A stat on the L2 Polygon/MATIC network
The L2 Polygon/MATIC network now has over $1 billion under management.
New order of mining equipment
Riot Blockchain, the leading Bitcoin miner in the U.S. and listed on Nasdaq, orders $138 million worth of hardware to nearly double its mining capacity.
