Category Archives: Cryptocurrency

Blockchain.com, London-based crypto exchange, has been granted a provisional regulatory approval by the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA), Dubai. With granted provisions, institutional and retail clients can use the crypt platform in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Blockchain.com, via ablogpost, stated that the organization is in the process of setting up a local office in the area. Furthermore, the company has full intentions of hiring for the same. The platform also underlined the importance of the licensing process as critical to its commitment to global compliance and regulation.

Peter Smith, CEO and co-founder, Blockchain.com appreciated the efforts of the local team via Twitter.

It was on 9 March 2022 that HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai approved the crypto assets law. Furthermore, with the establishment of VARA the goal of establishing the UAEs position as a global player in the virtual assets industry becomes easier.

The countrys crypto assets law necessitates cryptocurrency exchanges and users to register with the regulatory body before engaging in crypto-related activities, such as operating a crypto exchange, transferring crypto assets, and trading tokens or other assets. Since then, a number of cryptocurrency exchanges have been granted regulatory approval in the UAE by VARA.

Furthermore, on 3 June, Crypto.com received provisional approval of its Virtual Asset MVP from VARA. Thus, allowing crypto.com to offer crypto products and services. On 21 June, Hex Trust received a provisional approval from VARA.

On 14 July, crypto trading application OKX was provided a provisional virtual assets license by VARA. On 29 July, FZE, a division of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, received the Minimal Viable Product (MVP) license by VARA. This proves that the country is open to offering virtual asset exchange products and services in the UAE.

In July, HH Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum announced a new metaverse strategy. This strategy aims at increasing the number of blockchain and metaverse companies by 5x in the next five years.

The plan also aims to generate $4 billion. He further added that the move will help Dubai become a metaverse leader in the region. Thus, making it one of the 10 leading economies, besides generating 40,000 virtual jobs.

On 2 August, Blockchain.com successfully registered itself in the Cayman Islands to offer a range of crypto services to institutional clients. Soon after, the company secured regulatory approval from Italys Organismo Agenti e Mediatori (OAM) as a Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP).

Blockchain.com said that the company is actively pursuing additional licenses in other countries as well. These include Germany, the Netherlands, France, Spain, and Ireland.

The crypto firm operates several offices in North America, Europe, South America, and Singapore.

See more here:
This cryptocurrency exchange becomes the latest to set up shop in the UAE - AMBCrypto News

The primary objective of decentralised finance (DeFi) has been to simplify the exchange and trading of digital assets. This occasionally can be too technical for the average user, and it doesn't offer anything else that makes it appealing. Crypto fans are currently looking for alternatives that can provide significant gains in the future due to the current bear market. A lot of support and a quick increase in value is anticipated for cryptocurrencies in the presale stage. Although new to the market, Big Eyes Coin has had one of the most successful presales in the crypto market.

Addresses owning Ethereum (ETH) will receive an equivalent amount of ETHW on the branched blockchain after the cryptocurrency is forked.

Although miners are preparing a Proof-of-Work fork, Ethereum is transitioning to Proof-of-Stake. After the Merge next week, a group of anonymous developers with the backing of numerous significant Ethereum miners is anticipated to hard fork the Ethereum blockchain, maintaining a portion of the network using the current Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanism while the main blockchain switches to Proof-of-Stake (PoS).

The ETHPoW fork, which has the same transaction history as the main Ethereum network, will produce its own blocks upon activating the Merge update.

The pre-Merge state of the Ethereum network will be used as the starting point for the PoW split, meaning all token balances and smart contracts will also be carried over. As a result, everyone who now has ETH on-chain will end up with an identical amount of ETHW on the ETHPoW chain. Only the PoW fork will have native ETHW, which will be a distinct asset from the original ETH on Ethereum.

The PoS chain is now almost universally supported by DeFi, NFT, and network infrastructure protocols, which puts the PoW fork in a vulnerable position. Decentralised exchanges on the fork will probably stop operating when it launches, and centralised stablecoins like USDC and USDT will lose all of their value. This might lead to widespread liquidations and disrupt numerous DeFi protocols.

View Full Image

Big Eyes Coin (BIG) wants to enter what it sees as a "billion-dollar market" by developing a unique mascot. The project team is fully aware of how crucial tangible evidence is to guaranteeing the project achieves a favourable response rate. BIG has had a very successful presale raising $1 million in the first week.

Big Eyes Coin (BIG) is a community-driven currency that will redistribute wealth within the decentralised financial ecosystem. Big Eyes intends to donate 5% of its profits to a non-profit organisation to safeguard sea life and its ecosystems.

One of Big Eyes Coin's most important advantages is the end of taxes! As the platform acquires more popularity, the capability will unquestionably attract more market future investors. The taxation system will initiate various automated changes, including purchasing the liquidity pool, the auto burn, and the marketing wallet. Big Eyes Coin (BIG) wants to provide an environment where its user base is actively encouraged to participate in daily activities.

Goals for its marketing strategy include the creation of a green, organic community and major contributions to the DeFi environment.

If interested, you can instantly buy the BIG Token online with a debit or credit card. Users can also use the USDT or ETH tokens from Tether or Ethereum to pay for it.

A MetaMask wallet must be installed on your browser, or you must use one of the wallets that Wallet Connect supports to proceed. When the public presale closes, users can claim the BIG Tokens on the claims website.

Learn more about BIG down below:

Website: https://bigeyes.space/

Telegram: https://t.me/BIGEYESOFFICIAL

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BigEyesCoin

Disclaimer: This article is a paid publication and does not have journalistic/ editorial involvement of Hindustan Times. Hindustan Times does not endorse/ subscribe to the contents of the article/advertisement and/or views expressed herein.

The reader is further advised that Crypto products and NFTs are unregulated and can be highly risky. There may be no regulatory recourse for any loss from such transactions.

Hindustan Times shall not in any manner, be responsible and/or liable in any manner whatsoever for all that is stated in the article and/or also with regard to the views, opinions, announcements, declarations, affirmations etc., stated/featured in same. The decision to read hereinafter is purely a matter of choice and shall be construed as an express undertaking/guarantee in favour of Hindustan Times of being absolved from any/ all potential legal action, or enforceable claims. The content may be for information and awareness purposes and does not constitute a financial advice.

Subscribe to Mint Newsletters

* Enter a valid email

* Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter.

More:
Meme Coin Big Eyes Ready To Follow The Second Biggest Cryptocurrency Ethereum | Mint - Mint

Everything indicates that good times are coming for the cryptocurrency market and Bitcoin,

At least thats how Ivan Tello of Decrypto.la analyzes it. But also, he says, there are high risks for Uncertainty generated by next Ethereum merge, What do we do with the weights? (A24), highlights that These last 90 days have been more than good for crypto. Many have gone up to 70%. Ethereum, for example, has practically started at a low of $800 and climbed up to $2,000. The market is slowly starting to reverse the trend, largely thanks to Ethereum, which has taken a huge hit. In fact, it has grown a lot more than bitcoin at least over the past few weeks and there are good opportunities starting to emerge.

expert refers Next Ethereum Mergeannounced for the next September 15The date on which your mining system will change. That innovation will be responsible for the growth of other cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin: It did not achieve what Ethereum did. However, It remains positive in last 90 days after 5% fall it had suffered, While it remains within those limits, it has begun to exhibit at least a firm hold on these values.

chiliso: in August climbed 78 percent. This is because it is the platform through which clubs can obtain their fan tokens. really, The Argentina national team has direct links with all the clubs and mainly with the World Cup in Qatar.

Matic: It went up over a 25%, It deals with smart contracts. And, fearing what is happening in Ethereum, many people are starting to move their smart contracts to other options within Ethereum. It increased its value from US$0.32 to over US$1 in just 90 days.

Ethereum: The changes announced for this month are some good and some bad. When talking about cryptocurrencies, immutability stands out as its fundamental premise, that is, it does not change the rules of the game while one is playing. However, this is the second time in its history that will change all of its currency theory. The merge is going to change the mining system to make it more eco-friendly, its going to improve the emissions system to make it deflationary, but it also has a negative consequence. Tello warned.

It could be that miners dont support this and a fork occurs, a split of the original chain into two ethereums like this one. This has already happened in 2016. During the last fork, Ethereum Classic emerged. This version is still traded in the market today; The one who had Ethereum in 2016 had two as of July 20Yes from a series that continued and a classic. It was thus that the fork suddenly found itself with the two currencies with different quotes, the Decrypto.la co-founder explained.

Thats why investors saw a great opportunity and started buying in large quantities. Today the classics have grown more as they seek alternatives to smart contracts. Everyone holding NFTs by September 15th will have 2, who will have $1 virtual for a chain, will have $2, so this change is a social experiment that could go exceptionally well or generate a huge debacle. Is. For this reason investors are starting to migrate to other smart contract processing coins.Tello concluded.

See the original post:
Cryptocurrency And Bitcoin: What Will Be The Impact Of The Coming Changes - Nation World News

Bitcoin price: The leader of the cryptocurrency market, Bitcoin made a strong rally on Friday with the coin skyrocketing more than 11% in 24 hours. The rally can be attributed to an easing in the US dollar that has kept other currencies under pressure since the start of this year. Also, investors took a breather from concerns of a further aggressive monetary policy approach from the US Federal Reserve. The US inflation data scheduled next week will give more clarity on the intensity of the Fed's rate hike trend going forward.

Led by broad-based buying sentiment, Bitcoin traded at $21,192.54 up by 10.37% with a market cap of more than $405.75 billion. The coin has touched a 24-hour high of $21,279.27 - climbing by over 11% so far in the day.

Counterpart Ethereum also picked up momentum. It was trading at near $1,710 rising by around 6%. The coin's market cap is around $211.62 billion.

At the interbank forex market, the US dollar currency has plunged by as much as 1% against the pound and euro. The dollar pulled back from its two-decadal peak in the second half of this week.

Dileep Seinberg, Founder & CEO, MuffinPay, Bill Payment & Utility Crypto said, "With this rise, the crypto market extended its gains for the second straight session and the total Market capitalisation raced past the $1 trillion mark once again. This rally can be attributed to the ease of the US dollar which had been hurting the sentiments of the other currencies. The dollar index, after hovering near multi-year highs, took a breather and sparked a rally in other assets including cryptos."

The US is set to announce its August inflation data on Tuesday next week -- which is likely to provide more translucency on the US Federal Reserve's hawkish stance on keeping high-interest rates to fight inflation at cost of economic growth. In July 2022, the US consumer price index slowed better-than-expected at 8.5% -- pulling back from a four-decadal high of 9.1% in June this year.

On Thursday, James Knightley, chief international economist at ING wrote in his note, that Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powells comments to the Cato institutes conference today on monetary policy are clearly supportive of a third consecutive 75bp interest rate hike on 21 September.

ING economist further wrote, "there is no hint that he supports moderation, arguing that we need to act now, forthrightly, strongly as we have been doing and we have to keep at it until the job is done". There is also the usual mention of inflation expectations and the need to anchor them in order to ensure inflation doesnt become ingrained."

However, the economist believes the rate cut scenario is high in 2023. He said, "With recessionary forces intensifying, we expect inflation to fall relatively swiftly next year thanks to lower gasoline prices feeding through more broadly, weaker wage pressures and declining input costs combined with falling house prices depressing the rental components of CPI. We are currently pencilling in a rate cut in June with further easing through the second half of 2023."

The performance of Bitcoin has been co-related to US stocks amidst the country's inflation data. Especially, since mid-May deep depression due to macroeconomic uncertainties has led to the co-relation between Bitcoin and stocks higher.

"Investors shrugged off Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell's pro-liquidity tightening stance. Cryptocurrencies strengthened from sliding inflation expectations and prospects of renewed monetary easing next year," Seinberg added.

Om Malviya President, Tezos India said, "In my opinion, its just a basic market short-relief and one should refrain from believing that the bull market is over. Had there been any substantial reason behind this, it could have been crystal clear. Such market volatility is akin to Crypto and a much clear image will appear to post the Ethereum Merge."

Subscribe to Mint Newsletters

* Enter a valid email

* Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter.

Continue reading here:
Bitcoin crosses $21k, rises over 11% in 24 hours: Here's what to expect ahead | Mint - Mint

By Anuj Yadav

The crypto market is renowned for its wild volatility, which often becomes the roadblock to broader adoption of crypto & utilising its virtues. The investors need the best of both worlds i.e agile features of crypto and the stability of traditional finance. The concept of stablecoins forms a bridge between the crypto & fiat world as their value is linked/ pegged to more stable reference assets like other currencies, commodities, etc. Most cryptocurrencies are lucrative for traders & speculators due to their high volatility but they fail to become a risk-averse medium of exchange. Stablecoins are designed to reduce the volatility of crypto and to make them the store of value and digital money to facilitate day-to-day commerce/exchanges.

The first successful stablecoin, Tether launched in 2014 and the idea of stable digital currencies captured global attention. The popularity of stablecoins grew exponentially over the years and 2020 observed a booming growth in the stablecoin market. As per a recent estimate by CoinMarketCap, their market capitalization reached approximately $167 billion in May 2022 viz. approximately 3000% increase since the beginning of 2020. The strong fundamentals & potential innovative use cases of stablecoins made them an integral part of the crypto ecosystem and enhanced the adoption rate globally. Recently, many countries and their respective central banks are engaging in discussions to consider launching their own stablecoins. In Davos at WEF 2022 discussions, CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currencies) was among the main agendas of discussions on the crypto ecosystem.

The year 2022 started on a promising note with a 15% increase in the stablecoin market in the first quarter of the year but the catastrophic meltdown of the Terra Luna decided otherwise. Although the crash of Terra Luna lost billions from the market and raised questions over the stability of stablecoins, its failure pushed the market towards maturity. It helped in weeding out the existing bad actors in the crypto market & educating the investors. It highlighted the shortcomings of algorithmic stablecoins and raised awareness among investors about the fundamentals of stablecoins. Algorithmic stablecoins are not backed by any collaterals, they maintain their value pegged to fiat by using complex algorithms. These are not stable in the true essence as their price derives from the supply and demand of investors. However, all other collateralised stablecoins such as fiat-collateralized (eg. Tether- USDT), crypto-collateralised (eg. Makers DAOs Dai- DAI), Commodity- collateralised (eg. Tether Gold- XAUT) stablecoins are stable & safe crypto investment options as they are always backed with the stable reference assets. They also conduct regular audits to ensure that their reserves are in line with the stablecoin circulation.

Stablecoins successfully retained the faith of investors and survived the crash due to its strong fundamentals. They are more than just investment instruments. Stablecoins have the potential to bring revolution to the payment industry by facilitating cross-border payments. Traditional methods take up to a few days to process the wire transfer and they also impose a heavy transaction fee on international transactions. Whereas stablecoins can make these payments quick & affordable for users by reducing the transaction time and fee significantly. Due to underlying potential various governments worldwide are exploring ways of integrating & regulating the stablecoins. Japan has recently passed a stablecoin bill for investor protection whereas there are ongoing discussions in regulatory bodies to bring a robust regulatory framework for stablecoins in the EU and countries like the UK and the US etc.

Gradually stablecoins have become an integral part of the crypto ecosystem and they are steadily rising in the market. There are more players entering into the stablecoin space which indicates the increased confidence of institutional investors in the idea of stable digital currencies. Recently Tether announced to launch of a new stablecoin (GBPT) pegged to the British pound and Shytoshi Kusama announced that the Shiba Inu community is also planning to launch their stablecoin.

The future of stablecoins seems promising but it certainly depends on the factors like regulatory policies & legal acceptance worldwide. The stablecoin market is still in the nascent stage, the rate of mass adoption in coming years will be the key factor to determine the fate of stablecoins.

The author is co-founder and CTO, Kassio

Also Read: Crypto fraud: Man held for duping Meerut bizman of Rs 1.84 crore

Follow us onTwitter,Facebook,LinkedIn

Follow this link:
What are the implications of stablecoins growth in the cryptocurrency market - The Financial Express

Over the past 24 hours, Cosmos Hub's ATOM/USD price has risen 10.24% to $13.22. This continues its positive trend over the past week where it has experienced a 8.0% gain, moving from $12.2 to its current price. As it stands right now, the coin's all-time high is $44.45.

The chart below compares the price movement and volatility for Cosmos Hub over the past 24 hours (left) to its price movement over the past week (right). The gray bands are Bollinger Bands, measuring the volatility for both the daily and weekly price movements. The wider the bands are, or the larger the gray area is at any given moment, the larger the volatility.

The trading volume for the coin has increased 41.0% over the past week while the overall circulating supply of the coin has increased 0.41% to over 292.59 million. The current market cap ranking for ATOM is #23 at $3.87 billion.

Powered by CoinGecko API

This article was generated by Benzinga's automated content engine and reviewed by an editor.

View post:
Cosmos (ATOM/USD) Cryptocurrency Cosmos Hub's Price Increased More Than 10% Within 24 hours - Benzinga

r/Bitcoin r/Ethereum r/Binance r/Tether r/Solana r/Cardano r/Coinbase r/Ripple r/TerraLuna r/AVAX

Welcome to /r/CryptoCurrency. This subreddit is intended for open discussions on all subjects related to emerging crypto-currencies or crypto-assets.

Please make quality contributions and follow the rules for posting. If you meet our requirements and want custom flair, click here.

Moons Wiki

CoinCheckUp (Tracking and analysis)

CoinDesk (Crypto News)

Coingecko (Price graphs)

CoinMarketCap (Cryptocurrency market cap info)

Crypto.jobs (Jobs in crypto)

Hyperledger (Linux Foundation)

Microsoft Azure Blockchain

10k.pizza (Portfolio tracking. Warning: Background mining)

Cointest Archive

IBM's ZeroToBlockchain (Free learning resources)

Khan Academy on Bitcoin (Free Course)

Mastering Bitcoin (Open Source book)

Mastering Ethereum (Open Source book)

/r/CryptoCurrencyMemes r/CryptoCurrency_Tech r/CryptoMarkets r/CryptoRecruitingr/Best_of_Cryptor/BitcoinMarketsr/BitcoinMining r/CryptoTrader/Ethfinancer/EthTraderr/Jobs4Cryptor/Liberland r/NFT r/OpenBazaar r/GPUmining

Follow this link:
Crypto Currency

1. Cryptocurrency Explained for You. In 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto wrote a | by Stephen Dalton | Aug, 2022  DataDrivenInvestor
2. Three cryptocurrency funds for the adventurous investor  MoneyWeek
3. What Is Cryptocurrency Anyway? - Video - IBD  Investor's Business Daily
4. Is cryptocurrency the future?  Cryptopolitan
5. 10 Proven Strategies To Make Money With Cryptocurrency In 2022  TechJuice
6. View Full Coverage on Google News

View original post here:
Cryptocurrency Explained for You. In 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto wrote a | by Stephen Dalton | Aug, 2022 - DataDrivenInvestor

On 15 September, the ethereum blockchain is planning to switch off its mining rigs. If it happens, it should reduce the carbon emissions of the entire ethereum ecosystem by orders of magnitude overnight, leaving bitcoin as the only major cryptocurrency to be built on the destructive proof-of-work concept. But the switchover could also throw some of the largest institutions in the sector into chaos, and seems likely to evolve into a cold war between the new version of ethereum and the diehard followers of the old. And thats if it happens at all.

A brief refresher on cryptocurrencies. The two biggest in the world, ethereum and bitcoin, are based on an idea called proof of work. This and Im simplifying involves the networks outsourcing their security to a decentralised network of miners, who compete to burn ludicrous amounts of electrical energy to generate lottery tickets. Each time a winning lottery ticket is generated, the miner who did so gets a reward (for bitcoin, that is currently 6.25BTC about 110,000), and gets to verify all the transactions that have happened since the last winner, packaging them up into a neat block, and adding them on to the chain made up of all previous blocks. They stamp the block with their lottery number and the process begins again.

Nearly all of the above paragraph is false, so please do not write to me. It is true enough for what follows: this proof-of-work model is at the root of everything youve heard about the environmental impact of cryptocurrencies. And ethereum is planning to drop it.

The replacement is called proof of stake. Conceptually, it is more complex, but with the same broad brushstrokes we can describe it like this: rather than burning electricity to generate lottery tickets, you instead use your ethereum to buy premium bonds, and the system picks a winner in proportion to the amount of bonds theyve bought, who then gets to do all the validation stuff as normal. You can cash out of your premium bonds, but the process is slow, so you are motivated not to abuse your validation privileges.

A version of ethereum has been running on those principles for a while. Its had different names over the years, from testnet to Eth2, but on 15 September its going to become simply ethereum. This switchover, dubbed the merge because the old and the new networks will be merged together has a good shot at being the single largest technological event ever to happen in the crypto space. Which means it has a good shot at being messy as hell.

To start, theres the date. If youve noticed a soupon of scepticism, its because Ive been burned before. I wrote about the forthcoming merge being months away in May 2021:

The switch to proof of stake has been planned for several years, with a host of problems, both technical and organisational, delaying implementation. But now, according to Carl Beekhuizen, a research and development staffer at the Ethereum Foundation the change will be complete in the upcoming months.

It was not.

But this time, the switch is rather more final. For one thing, theres an actual hard date; for another, the preparation for the merge is now live in the code that runs the ethereum network. It could still be delayed, but the default case, if no further action is taken, is that the merge will happen as planned.

Whats at stake

That doesnt mean the merge will be smooth. The first stumbling block will be the forks: clones of the old version of ethereum, spun up to keep the proof of work system alive.

This wont be the first time this has happened. Theres untold bitcoin forks, with names like bitcoin cash, bitcoin satoshi vision, bitcoin classic and bitcoin gold, but none have ever toppled the originals dominance.

So why might the ethereum fork have more of a chance? Because it will almost certainly have the backing of a powerful constituency: ethereum miners. After years at the centre of ethereum infrastructure, the miners face their industry being simply switched off overnight, and many of them arent happy with that proposal. They have real, physical assets invested in the continuation of a proof-of-work cryptocurrency, from expensive graphics cards to electrical hookups, and its not easy to repurpose it for something else.

Due to the open-source nature of cryptocurrencies, its easy enough for the miners to simply pick up where they left off, and carry on running Nu-thereum, or whatever it gets called, on 16 September as though the merge had never happened. The question is, what happens next?

Everyone who has a balance of ETH will suddenly find that they have two balances, one on each blockchain. And everyone who has a smart contract running on ETH will suddenly find they have two of them, as well: there will be the proof-of-work version of the Bored Ape NFTs, and the proof-of-stake version, and so on.

Some of those duplicates may happily coexist. Others might try to talk down the forked version, but never quite kill it how much would someone who wants to own a killer NFT pay for an unofficial version on the forked chain? If its not zero, then the trade could continue for some time, even if the developers of the Apes disown the forks.

But for other projects, there can only be one. Each USDC token is backed by $1 of hard assets held by Circle, the company that develops the stablecoin. If there are suddenly twice as many USDCs because of the fork, Circle doesnt have twice as much cash, and it will have to choose one network to support and the other to reject.

Alex Hern's weekly dive in to how technology is shaping our lives

It seems unlikely that the big stablecoins, like USDC and Tether, will back the rebel chain. And that, in turn, means the entire rebel ecosystem will come into existence in a slow-motion collapse, as forked projects fail one by one. But it will still provide a base for new creation, and one that is ultimately more similar to the ethereum developers know and love than the environmentally friendly version it is about to morph into.

Whats next

The upstart miners arent solely acting out of self-interest. There is a point of principle at stake, as well, which is the decentralisation that underpins the crypto economy. That decentralisation is, at heart, the only real reason for cryptocurrencies to exist: a centralised conventional database is faster, cheaper and safer to run, but requires you to trust whoever is running it.

A decentralised cryptocurrency cant be interfered with by big business, or big government, which makes them great for well, crime and evasion of government regulations, in the main, but also loftier concepts like permissionless innovation and uncensorable speech.

Some of the backers of the proof-of-work (PoW) concept including the bitcoin maximalists who look down even on upstarts like ethereum worry that proof of stake (PoS) ultimately results in Dino: decentralisation in name only. The nature of the system involves handing control of the network to those with the most money held within the network. Worse, it hands extra power to those who look after other peoples money: centralised exchanges like Coinbase or Binance, and centralised notbanks like Celsius or Voyager, if theyd survived that long. Those exchanges can offer staking services where they do the hard technical bit of making proof of stake work (buying the premium bonds, in the terms of my fantastic analogy), and their customers get the rewards.

The rise of the Dinos is more than just a theoretical concern. In a post-Tornado Cash world still dealing with the fallout of North Koreas favourite decentralised app being accused of money laundering and sanctioned by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) it isnt at all clear whether it is legal under US law for a validator, the PoS replacement for miners, to approve a block that contains a transaction to or from a sanctioned address.

Ethereums developers are trying to force the matter, proposing a credible commitment to punish censors. What that means is not yet clear, but the hope is that it doesnt have to be that the credible commitment means that organisations who have to comply with OFAC simply do not stake ethereum in the first place.

It is not entirely clear what an ethereum with no validators who are trying to remain in compliance with US sanctions would look like. But that is the world were heading to.

If you want to read the complete version of the newsletter please subscribe to receive TechScape in your inbox every Wednesday.

Read the original here:
TechScape: How a major change to ethereum could change cryptocurrency forever - The Guardian

Companies with significant ESG commitments to shareholders will not be able to hold investments in cryptocurrencies or NFTs and still meet theirsustainability goals; public companies with these technologies in their portfolios will be responsible for the emissions created by their investments.

Blockchain has become the go-to technology solution for enabling traceabilitythroughout circuitous product supply chains most notably infoodandtextiles.But in the finance world, blockchain has become inextricably linked to the risein popularity of cryptocurrency and non-fungibletokens (NFTs).

While blockchain has proven its value as an emerging solution for certainapplications, there is more to consider about the techs implications specifically, as we think about the role future iterations of blockchain have oncarbon-reduction goals for a rapidly changing climate.

Thats not to say that these technologies will never be carbon neutral; but intheir current iterations, market leaders such as Bitcoin and Ethereumare not sustainable. New currencies and NFT development processes claim to begreener because they dont rely on the same Proof ofWork system that involveshuge amounts of calculations (and thus, processing power) to produce a singletoken. Cryptocurrencies that instead use a Proof of Storage or Proof ofStakesystem use far less energy, as do currencies using a technology called blocklattice which doesnt requiremining.Similar processes are being applied to the NFT market in an attempt to reachcarbon neutrality. At this point, however, it's hard to tell if thesetechnologies, were they to scale, would be any better or even worse for theenvironment.

Therefore, everyone from the everyday individual to the global corporation should welcome the continued evolution of these types of energy-consumingtechnologiesand how theyre created; since, as of now, most cryptocurrencies and NFTs areproduced by methods that are completely at odds with efforts to mitigate climatechange, which affects every living thing on the planet.

These technologies require massive computing power to generate, resulting in anoutsized and irresponsible carbon footprint. In fact, the process is purposelydesigned to be highly energy inefficient, to make it harder to tamper with afiles legitimacy. Bitcoin alone uses as much electricity as an entirecountry.The same goes for NFTs, the security and value of which hinge onenergy-intensive processes a single transaction can use as much electricity asthe average household uses overdecades.

Every cryptocoin mined uses more energy than all those mined before and about21 million Bitcoins have been mined so far. After its mined, cryptocurrencycontinues to generate a vast network of computer connections with everytransaction. Bitcoin and Ethereum activity combinedconsume as muchelectrical energy as an entire nation nearly 290 TWh per year.

2023 could be the tipping point for these technologies as new federal rulesaround carbon accounting are slated to take effect next year. An SECproposalseeks to improve transparency among funds that purport to take Environmental,Social and Governance (ESG) factors into consideration when making investingdecisions. This new reporting regulation will require any publicly tradedcompany to disclose their full carbon footprint and enforce carbon-offset fineson those that greenwash theirprogress.

Companies that have significant ESG commitments to shareholders will not be ableto hold investments in cryptocurrencies or NFTs and still meet theirsustainability goals. Corporations that continue to embrace NFTs andcryptocurrency will face expensive carbon-offset costs and negative brandperception. And once every publicly traded/reputable company pulls out of cryptoand unloads their NFTs to meet their ESG goals, there will be nothing left toprop up these markets.

Sustainability experts might see this on the horizon; but ideally, individualsand corporations will also have the foresight to not continue throwingadditional money into these notoriously energy-intensive technologies until theycan truly be sustainable. Cryptocurrency and NFTs use mind-boggling amounts ofcomputer energy and create substantial greenhouse gas emissions, outweighing anycurrent perceived value. Public companies with these technologies in theirportfolios will be responsible for emissions created by their investments. Thenew federal reporting regulations might mark a fork in the road for thesedigital currency trends.

Published Aug 24, 2022 2pm EDT / 11am PDT / 7pm BST / 8pm CEST

Andrew Blauvelt is Senior Product Director at Atrius part of the Intelligent Spaces Group, a division of Acuity Brands revolutionizing spaces to sense, think and act.

Jol Dsir is Connected Building Solution Manager at Distech Controls, which connects people and companies with intelligent building solutions.

Read the original post:
The Hidden Cost of Cryptocurrency and NFTs - Sustainable Brands