James' Crypto Weekly - August 13, 2021
News
SEC chairman Gary Gensler spoke about crypto regulation during an event appearance on Tuesday. His remarks indicate that the SEC is scrutinizing major trends in the crypto space today, including decentralized finance (DeFi), stablecoins and more. Notably, he wants to see Congressional legislation focused on “crypto trading, lending, and DeFi platforms” and granting regulators additional authorities to regulate the crypto ecosystem. Link
Coinbase removes ‘backed by US dollars’ claim for USDC stablecoin after an audit done by tax advisory firm Grant Horton showing only 61% of USDC’s reserves were held in cash. Link
Circle, the company that oversees USDC in partnership with Coinbase under The Centre Consortium, recently announced its plans to become a full-reserve national digital currency bank in the United States. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said the company is willing to operate under regulators’ supervision and risk management requirements. Link
Bitfinex Exchange now supports Satoshi, the smallest unit of Bitcoin, for trading. Link
The Senate has rejected an amendment that exempts non-custodial crypto actors from a crypto tax reporting requirement built into the infrastructure bill and passed the infrastructure bill with a 69-30 vote, clearing the way for a $1.2 trillion infusion into the nation’s public works. The infrastructure package now heads to the House of Representatives, where it’s set to be reviewed this fall. Link1 Link2
Poly Network suffered record-breaking $600.3M hack, however, the hacker(s) had returned $342M of the stolen fund claiming they pulled off the heist “for fun.” Link1 Link2
Venmo to allow credit card holders to automatically buy cryptocurrency with their cash back. Link
Market Data
Storage chain PR has been merged into Substrate. This feature allows you to build “storage chains” which can store arbitrary data on-chain for a period of time determined in the chain’s configuration. Link
Khala Network launches the first Ethereum bridge on Kusama. Link
The number of nominators has reached the configured maximum number on Polkadot and a Polkadotassembly proposal is currently voting to increase minimum nominator bond to 80 DOTs. Link1 Link2
Update on Polkadot rebranding. Link
Video from Substrate builders program office hours on XCM, cross consensus messaging. Link
Videos from REORG.WTF summit. Link
Paradigm’s thread on EIP-1559. Link
Dates of Note
Upcoming dates of note (new/changes in bold):
August 25 - Deadline to apply to Polkadot Base Camp by Outlier Ventures
August 27 - 29 - EDCON2021 (Shenzhen & Online)
TBA - Devcon
Follow me on twitter: @_polkadotjames
Permalink for this week’s issue: https://jamescryptoweekly.substack.com/p/august-13-2021
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