7/29/22 FAL Weekly Digest
The FAL Weekly Digest is a source for this week’s biggest cryptocurrency-related news and updates. This newsletter features excerpts and links to this past week’s biggest news articles written by members of FAL Consulting’s writing team or gathered from other listed sources.
Lawsuits and Investigations
Kraken Under Federal Investigation
Kraken, one of the largest crypto exchanges, is being investigated under suspicion of violating U.S. sanctions according to a recently posted New York Times article. Kraken is accused of allowing users in Iran to buy and sell digital tokens, breaking OFAC Sanctions against Iran (imposed in 1979). The sanction prohibits the export of goods or services to people or entities in the country.
US Federal Trade Commission Is Suing Meta
The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is suing Meta, over their purchase of VR app maker Within.
Meta is the parent company of both Instagram and Facebook and is considered to be the biggest player in the VR space through its ownership of the formally named Oculus VR, with its ultimate goal being to leverage this technology, bringing in the new era of metaverse living.
But the FTC believes the corp has too much control and its acquisition of Within would push them further toward monopolizing the space. Meta would be one step closer to its ultimate goal of owning the entire ‘metaverse,’” the filing alleges.
Development Updates
Cardano Rolls Back Latest Update and Delays Vasil Hard Fork
Input Output Global (IOG) was founded by Charles Hoskinson and Jeremy Wood and builds cryptocurrencies and blockchains. It is also the driving force behind Cardano.
Cardano developers officially pushed version 1.35.0 last month on June 26, but has since been rolled back to the previous version 1.34.1 (originally pushed on March 7, 2022). A large portion of the update was to prepare node operators for the upcoming Vasil hard fork. The release enabled the use of the new Plutus capabilities after the Vasil upgrade. The 1.35.0 tag still exists but has been pushed out of the official releases, likely to work on some fixes.
Many node operators chose not to upgrade their mainnet setups from 1.34.1 to 1.35, as commit tags for 1.35.1 quickly followed the 1.35 release. Those that did upgrade noticed vast speed improvements.
After making the update unavailable, IOG announced that in their monthly video update that the upgrade would be delayed a few more weeks to allow developers, pool operators, and exchanges to test the changes on the testnet.
In addition to the performance upgrades, the Vasil hard fork should also lower transaction fees. The average transaction fees on the blockchain are already well under $1, usually around 0.16 $ADA or a few cents. Smart contract functionalities will be improved but puts more focus on scaling and network/ledger optimization. The Alonzo era/update introduced smart contract support for the platform in September 2021.
The upgrade should also help additional Dapp projects launch on the Cardano platform.
Read more about the Vasil Upgrade
Ethereum Takes Another Step Towards The Merge
On Tuesday 7/26, Ethereum’s mainnet went through its tenth shadow fork to copy over data from the mainnet to a testnet for further testing. ETH developer Parithosh Jayanthi told CoinDesk that “this shadow fork will test releases that approximate the releases that will be used in the Goerli merge.”
The Goerli merge will be the final testnet merge, while there will be more mainnet shadow forks, until the upcoming Merge to proof-of-stake.
Market
Bitcoin and Ethereum Lead In Losses Ahead of Fed Meeting
The Fed increased interest rates again by 0.75% on Wednesday- the rumor of which led to a steep decline in both BTC and ETH prices, as well as other small players within the market.
BTC dropped to $21800 and ETH saw lows of $1,500.
All these decreases come ahead of the latest Federal Reserve meeting which began Wednesday and finished with the expected increase in interest rates by 75 basis points, issued by the U.S. central bank.
The Fed had already given a 75 basis point hike back in June, which was also the largest increase in nearly three decades. Officials had also given short-term borrowing rates a bump to 1.5% this year.
Markets Rally Following The Fed Rate Hike
The Federal Open Market Committee concluded its monthly meeting and announced another 75 basis point hike, marking one of the highest back-to-back increases since the 1980’s. While that would normally signify trouble for markets, a 100 basis point increase is what traders prepared for in anticipation of more restrictive rates.
The restraint on the part of the Fed to take a more aggressive approach subsequently led to a rally for both traditional and crypto markets, with the S&P 500 closing the day up 2.6%, the Nasdaq Composite gaining 4.1%, BTC over 8%, and ETH over 16% by the days end.
Market Cap: $1.101 T; up from $1.028 T last week
24h Volume: $100.1 B; up from $73.1 B last week
BTC Dominance: 41.5%; down from 42.1% last week
ETH Dominance: 19.1%; up from 18.1% last week
None of our posts or newsletters are meant to be taken as financial advice.
