9/24/22 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.
Developement Updates
Ethereum and The Merge
Ethereum’s Merge was completed with the Paris upgrade on September 15 and switched the second largest cryptocurrency to a proof-of-stake (PoS) network. Transactions are now processed on the PoS network and authenticated by a staking mechanism. This eliminated Ethereum mining and replaced miners with validators.
ETHPow (ETHW), teased by miner Chandler Guo, forked the Ethereum network to never undergo the switch to PoS. The network experienced major issues from day one. The Chain ID selected for ETHW ended up being one that was already in use, leading to errors. Chain IDs are required to link crypto wallets to certain cryptocurrency networks.
A day before The Merge, September 14, ETHW was trading at highs of $49.81. The coin experienced an immediate and sharp drop to $9.93, once coins were released to users. ETHPoW’s price is hovering around $7.10 at the time of writing.
EVGA announces they will stop GPU production
EVGA manufactured GPU’s (Graphics processing units) through a partnership with Nvidia. While companies like Nvidia and AMD design, build and sell the chips that sit on the board, the casing is built by third parties such as EVGA, Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI. The casing’s main purpose is to cool the GPU that it is housing, as well as to connect it to a computer's motherboard.
The company famously supported crypto mining and would regularly release driver updates to combat Nvidia’s updates to cut mining power.
The company announced on its site that it would not carry the next generation of GPUs but will continue to provide and support existing current generation products.
Miners switch from ETH to ETC mining
Many miners have already moved over to Ethereum Classic. The network’s hashrate rose from 71.73 TH/s (Terra hash per second) on September 14 to highs of 304.99 TH/s on Sept. 15 following The Merge.
Ethereum Classic was forked from Ethereum in 2016 following The DAO hack. The hack resulted in a divide on how to react to the situation. Some investors wanted to reverse the blockchain before the hack, while others argued heavily against this arguing that it would set a precedent for future bailouts. In the end, 97% of poll voters voted for the restoration of funds. The Ethereum we know today is the fork that erased the hack from the blockchain, while Ethereum classic is the original and unchanged blockchain.
Cardano’s Vasil Hard Fork
Cardano’s long-anticipated Vasil upgrade was successfully forked via a hard fork combinator (HFC) event at the start of the latest epoch (365), yesterday Sept 22 at 9:45 PM UTC.
The Vasil hard fork was originally scheduled for June but was postponed due to several bugs that developers had noticed. The hard fork brought the Vasil upgrade to the mainnet, but the full features of Vasil will not be active until the next epoch on Sept. 27 9:45 PM UTC. At the start of the next epoch (366), the Plutus V2 cost model will be active, bringing full Vasil functionality to the network.
Law
Ripple vs SEC
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Ripple Labs have both called for a federal judge to make an immediate ruling on whether Ripple’s XRP sales violated U.S. securities laws. In separate motions filed on Saturday by Ripple and the SEC, both have called for a summary judgment in the U.S. District Court Southern District of New York. Summary judgments are submitted to the courts when a party involved believes there’s enough evidence at hand to make a ruling without the need to proceed to trial.
Both parties have called on Judge Analisa Torres to make an immediate ruling as to whether Ripple’s XRP sales violated U.S. securities laws. Ripple has argued that the SEC has run out of answers to prove XRP sales constituted an “investment contract,” while the SEC has held strong on its beliefs that it does
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US drafts plans to regulate algorithmic stablecoins
The bill would require the Federal Reserve System and state banking regulators to approve any stablecoin plans by non-bank entities before they can be legally issued. Issuers of stablecoin approved by state regulators will have to get themselves registered with the Federal Reserve within 180 days to legally continue their operations, media reports claiming access to the draft bill said on Wednesday. In July, the stablecoin bill was delayed by over a month due to a last-minute change suggested by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. She argued that the legislation should provide for the segregation of the customers’ assets from the wallet custodians to preserve them in a bankruptcy scenario. In June, Japan passed a similar bill recognizing stablecoins as digital money that have to be pegged to the yen or another legal tender.
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South Korea requests red notice on Do Kwon from Interpol
South Korean prosecutors have asked the country’s foreign ministry to revoke Do Kwon’s passport. They’ve also initiated the process to get Interpol to issue a red notice for Kwon, media reports said on Monday.
These developments come close on the heels of Do Kown on Sunday claiming in a tweet that he was not on the run, rather, he was cooperating with authorities in several jurisdictions.
“We have begun the procedure to place him on the Interpol red notice list and revoke his passport… We are doing our best to locate and arrest him… He is clearly on the run as his company’s key finance people also left for the same country [Singapore] during that time,” the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office said on Monday.
Adoption
Colorado now accepts tax payments in crypto
According to the Colorado Business Journal, Colorado taxpayers will now be able to pay state taxes with cryptocurrencies. Colorado Governor Jared Polis outlined his plan to release this feature in an appearance on CoinDesk TV in February 2022. Polis stated that the state wanted to offer as many payment options as possible.
During the Governor's appearance, he explained that they were still seeking companies to handle the crypto transactions. The state seems to have decided on using Paypal. Paypal has a crypto hub that allows crypto payments for an additional fee.
This payment option extends to all state taxes, including individual and business income taxes, sales and use taxes, severance taxes, and fuel taxes.
Coinbase obtains regulatory approval in the Netherlands
Coinbase became the first major crypto exchange to successfully obtain regulatory approval in the Netherlands. The exchange is registered as a crypto service provider with the Dutch Central Bank (De Nederlandsche Bank or DNB). This allows Coinbase to operate and offer its crypto services and products in the Netherlands.
Coinbase announced this milestone in their international expansion on their blog. They also stated that “additional registrations or license applications are in progress in several major markets, in compliance with local regulations.” Coinbase is now supported in 40 countries across Europe, 17 countries in Asia, 25 countries in Africa and the Middle East, and 24 countries in North and South America.
Bahraini financial institution partners with Binance to offer crypto payments in stores
The Kingdom of Bahrain is an archipelago of islands in the Persian Gulf. Its economy has historically relied on processing oil from neighboring countries. Eazy Financial Services, a Bahraini financial institution, entered a partnership with Binance to bring a regulated and approved crypto payment service. The partnership was announced by Binance CEO Changpen Zhao, aka CZ.
EazyPay specializes in Point-of-Sale (PoS) and online payment gateway services. Binance Pay will be made available through EazyPay systems across over 5,000 already established PoS terminals and online payment gateways in Bahrain.
Market
Market Cap: $918.6 B; down from $1.044 T last week
24h Volume: $80.6 B; down from $81.945 B last week
BTC Dominance: 39%; same as 39% last week
ETH Dominance: 17.2%; up from 20.1% last week
None of our posts or newsletters are meant to be taken as financial advice.
