News
The Senate draft of Biden's infrastructure bill contains a crypto provision that could create new surveillance requirements within the blockchain ecosystem. The proposal would seek to expand the definition of “broker” under section 6045(c)(1) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to include anyone who is “responsible for and regularly providing any service effectuating transfers of digital assets” on behalf of another person. These newly defined brokers would be required to comply with IRS reporting requirements for brokers, including filing form 1099s with the IRS. That means they would have to collect user data, including users’ names and addresses. If passed this proposal could generate lots of tax revenue from the blockchain ecosystem to help cover some cost for the rest of Biden's infrastructure proposals. Link
DYDX, one of the largest decentralized exchanges on Ethereum that offers spot, perpetual, and margin trading, airdrops governance tokens to its investors, team members, and layer 2 users. Link
Shopify allows merchants to sell NFTs directly through their storefronts. Link
PayPal announces a new crypto wallet in the Q2 earnings call with features including high yield savings, direct fund deposit and withdrawal, and encrypted messaging. The wallet will be available in US market in the upcoming months Link
Ethereum London hard fork is live now. Link
Coinbase is adding support for Apple Pay and Goolge Pay with instant cashouts up to $100,000 per transaction available 24/7. Link
Market Data
Vice’s piece on how the Metaverse has always been a dystopian idea. Link
Kylin Network develops a two-way messaging XCMP architecture on Polkadot. Normally XCMP only supports one-way messaging, however, Kylin achieves two-way XCMP by using an off-chain worker. Link
Ethereum London hardfork is now live and you can monitor ETH burning and supply changes at ultrasound.money or mainnet.watchtheburn.com
Videos from the Open Metaverse Conference. Link
Video for NFTs on Polkadot. Link
Dates of Note
Upcoming dates of note (new/changes in bold):
August 8 at 10pm CEST - Deadline to submit proposals for Sub0 Online
August 8 - Deadline to apply for Next Top Blockchain Startup Hackathon.
August 8 - Deadline to apply for Encode Academy, a free 8-week solidity bootcamp
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-6-2021
Did you get forwarded this newsletter? Sign up to receive it weekly