Welcome to The Node, a summary of the latest crypto news and why it matters.
Consensus 2023 kicks off Wednesday, and for the duration of the conference The Node will send out twice-daily dispatches from Austin, Texas. In the morning we’ll send guides for major events worth checking out (or livestreaming) and in the evening a rundown of major news from crypto’s “Big Tent” event.
If you are thinking about going, our colleague Joey Prebys has written handy guides to help you build a schedule:
Ethereum generated a record-breaking weekly inflow of staked ether (ETH) deposits last week, following the Shanghai upgrade. Much of this activity was driven by institutional staking service providers and investors reinvesting rewards after withdrawal. Investors deposited some 571,950 ETH tokens into staking contracts, worth more than $1 billion, according to Dune Analytics. In other news, layer 1 blockchain Cardano briefly overtook Ethereum scaling platform Polygon on Monday as the fourth-most popular blockchain by non-fungible token (NFT) sales volume. NFT sales volume on mainchain Ethereum has shrunk 12% in recent days.
Back in the, Back in the…
Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, quietly lifted restrictions placed on Russian citizens and residents, allowing users to deposit Russian rubles, euros, British pounds and other currencies from Russian bank cards. Russian Binance users initially reported the exchange had lifted limits on accounts with over 10,000 euros earlier in April. Binance first placed these sanctions on Russia in response to its attack on Ukraine. And as of now, the exchange has not officially released a statement on these charges.
Sales Slump?
Crypto exchange Coinbase (COIN) filed an Administrative Procedure Act challenge against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), asking a federal court to order SEC to provide “regulatory clarity” on its petition filed last year asking for formal rulemaking within the digital assets sector. Monday’s filing is a preemptive move by Coinbase to argue that the SEC doesn’t provide sufficient regulatory guidance for U.S. companies operating in the crypto sector. This comes as the SEC warned Coinbase last month that it planned to sue the exchange over claims of listing and offering unregistered securities products.
The Takeaway: Pitch Fest
For all the noise surrounding cryptocurrency markets, crypto has always offered something fundamental to human progress: an open, democratic financial system. Despite all the meme coins and joke products, there are still many testing the power of crypto to provide the easy access to resources to the world’s 1.4 billion unbanked people.
Gane, a freemium mobile provider, is one such firm that reaffirms our faith in this technology. Co-founded by Henry Baiz, Gane aims to make mobile services accessible to everyone by providing free cellphone services using Web3 wallets. (It is a contender in CoinDesk’s Pitchfest, happening next week at the Consensus festival.)
Through its service, customers can interact, learn skills and earn tokens that can eventually be swapped for free voice, text and data. “Today, with just two minutes a day on Gane [app], you can get 2 gigs [of data] a month,” said Baiz in a CoinDesk interview.
As of now, Gane is the first free mobile carrier in Latin America, with goals to expand in the United States, where many still use prepaid mobile services. Its services can also be used for easy and quick remittances globally.
“One out of every five weeks a [prepaid] user has no outgoing service, they only have Wi-Fi and incoming calls. Isn’t that sad?” added Baiz, affirming the need for more accessible service options in the world.
Representatives from Gane are coming CoinDesk’s Pitchfest to talk more about its future. There the firm will get an opportunity to showcase how innovation in crypto can make the world a more financially inclusive space.
Speaking of financial inclusion innovation, Stable, a consumer app that offers global remittances and peer-to-peer payments, is also pitching at Pitchfest. Using Stable, customers can send money globally using the company’s stable token and withdraw it in a fiat currency. One does not have to worry about the volatility of crypto using it.
“The whole cost of a stable is risk dispersion and to a select basket of stablecoins so the people don’t buy and hold a specific stablecoin, but they have a stable token which is imposed in our ecosystem,” co-founder Alvaro Jose Mosquera, said in a CoinDesk interview.
Today, the firm is focused on establishing trust and transparency in the market while safeguarding the most important asset of its customers – their money.
“We’re bringing back trust in a way that is auditable,” said Mosquera, explaining that every dollar in Stable’s reserve is backed by a mixture of digital and fiat currencies, making it a reliable service for its customers.
As Stable continues to grow, its presence in CoinDesk’s Pitchfest will allow many to witness the firm’s game-changing plan to make global remittances easy, safe and not daunting for the average customer.
Financial inclusion isn’t the only challenge that contestants in the Pitchfest are taking on. Boto, a no-code platform for creating and sharing bots that automate decentralized finance (DeFi) activities, is on a mission to increase technical transparency for its users.
Boto allows its users to build automation by simply picking and dragging blocks that consume machine-readable information. One can find several “recipes” on its platform that help you perform Web3-related tasks, including tracking NFT sales and mints, without requiring you to code.
Alongside Boto, Magic Square, a discovery and Web3 platform will also present at the Consensus Pitchfest. This firm brings accessibility to Web3, making it effortless for its users to find new applications and games on it. Think of it as the Apple Store of Web3.
Magic Square’s user-friendly interface allows users to explore without compromising on their privacy and security. Additionally, the firm has over 300 listed apps and offers dynamic incentives to its users.
At Pitchfest 2023, these firms are bringing their game-changing innovations to showcase to the world that crypto is more than a technological revolution, it is a tool of empowerment that creates a safe, inclusive and accessible society.
Visa Hiring More Crypto Developers To Drive Mainstream Adoption (Blockworks)
It’s not too late to register for Consensus 2023! Join us in Austin, Texas April 26-28 to recalibrate, collaborate and find resolution amid one of the most tumultuous times in crypto history.
Kudos for making it this far! On occasion, we’ll give our loyal Node readers the opportunity to claim DESK, our social token, which is a mechanism for returning the value of engagement directly to the users who create it.
