Also, Consensus Magazine has published a data-driven ranking of the 15 best cities to live and work for crypto professionals. Check out our Crypto Hubs 2023 list here, and read about the project’s methodology here.
Bitcoin in Focus
Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy spent $347 million buying 12,333 bitcoins (BTC) between April 29 and June 27, the company said Wednesday. With the most recent buys, MicroStrategy now holds 152,333 BTC, worth over $4.6 billion at current prices. Meanwhile, crypto miners have sent over a billion dollars worth of bitcoin to crypto exchanges over the past two weeks, according to on-chain data from CryptoQuant. The analytics firm said those flows were largely going to derivatives exchanges, suggesting miners are taking out financial hedges. Finally, Block CEO Jack Dorsey called out Apple CEO Tim Cook on the tech giant’s recent aggressive stance towards bitcoin-base apps in the App Store, including popular social media protocol Damus.
Off Kilter
TrueUSD (TUSD), a stablecoin with a $3 billion market cap, lost its peg to the U.S. dollar Wednesday on crypto exchange Binance.US. The TUSD/USDT trading pair fell to a low of $0.80 on the U.S. wing of Binance, according to TradingView, after news broke TrueUSD shared an auditor with defunct exchange FTX and that $26,000 in TUSD reserves were frozen on a U.S. depository institution ordered to halt withdrawals. Separately, Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), one of the largest institutional crypto products, has seen share prices rally nearly 50% in the two weeks since BlackRock’s exchange-traded fund (ETF) application. GBTC is now trading at a discount of 30%, the smallest difference between the trust’s share price and value of its underlying bitcoin since September on renewed hopes Grayscale will be able to convert the trust into an ETF. (Grayscale is owned by CoinDesk corporate parent Digital Currency Group.)
A message from PayPal
Your money is your money. You own it. You make the decision. PayPal believes that you should have the same freedom to use and manage your crypto. If that means adding to your NFT collection or HODLing, have some peace of mind knowing that PayPal has your back. Buy, sell, hodl, transfer, send and checkout. Make your crypto move, today.
European Union legislators agreed on new privacy and data rules that some in the Web3 community have raised concerns about. In an early draft, legislators suggested rules specifically addressing “smart contracts” could have stifled development, though the latest version of the text (which has not been finalized) has been adjusted in part to address Web3 lobbyists’ concerns. The provisions, collectively known as the Data Act, are part of an overhaul of the trading bloc’s oversight of internet-connected appliances. Meanwhile, TRM Lab published a report saying crypto “Ponzi schemes” cost victims at least $7.8 billion in 2022. And, Horizen, which now calls itself a “layer 0 blockchain,” scrapped its privacy coin branding and deprecated “shielded transactions” on its base layer to appease regulators including the European Banking Authority.
The Takeaway: Hack Away
Web3athon, an annual hackathon event hosted by CoinDesk with partners Alchemy University and HackerEarth, has announced its latest cohort of winners. Six teams building in five blockchain ecosystems will take home over $200,000 in grants to help fund further protocol development.
The six-week virtual event, which ran April to June this year, is focused on bringing more developers into Web3 through partner grant programs. The Web3athon grants were funded by organizations representing the Solana, Polkadot, XDC, OKT Chain and Coreum blockchains.
“[T]he industry needs more developers learning and building in Web3,” Garrett Skrovina, senior audience partnerships manager for CoinDesk’s Consensus event, said in an announcement. “Each protocol approaches ecosystem development differently, so the Web3athon provided a platform to showcase the various developer relations initiatives of our partner protocols and foundations.”
“We love Web3athon because it is multichain in nature, connected to Consensus, and attracts top talent across the ecosystem,” a representative for Web3 identity project Civic told CoinDesk. Civic was one of several secondary sponsors, as well as wallet giant Ledger, gender-equality-focused community H.E.R. DAO and Hexens, a Web3 and novel cryptography auditor.
With over 6,400 participants, the winners were selected from over 160 final submissions. The winning projects addressed a wide range of needs around protocol infrastructure and applications, including network privacy, zero-code development and e-commerce. Nearly half of applicants were building on Solana and XDC, with the next most popular networks being Polkadot and the Ethereum and Cosmos-compatible OKT Chain (OKTC).
While not every project takes home funding, previous Web3athons have seen several participants continue to build their applications after the event.
Mike Hale, who was building the first version of Vanward – a tool that helps manage and verify professional certifications – on Solana, plans to continue the work through the ongoing Encode x Solana Summer hackathon.
“I didn’t go into Web3athon expecting to win a prize. Instead, I used it as a deadline and motivation to get the first version developed,” Hale said.
While hackathons are only one step in creating a diverse and sustainable software industry, they are designed to get people into the ring, and to start building. They play a critical role in incubating innovation, spurring open-source development and building communities.
If we’ve learned one thing about the crypto space in the past year, it’s this: Trust matters.
One way to earn trust is to get vetted by a reputable financial institution. Which is why it’s notable that Alchemy Pay, a gateway between fiat and crypto, has been given the stamp of approval, of sorts, by a trusted brand in finance: Mastercard. Continue reading
