Daily Digest 12/9

Insight on the biggest stories of the day.

Back in May China put out a country wide ban on crypto mining which not only sent the market into a reset but also took down the hash rate of BTC. The Hash rate is a measure the total computational power being used to process transactions and mine new coins.
Before this happened China had accounted for over 60% of the overall hash rate and that sent BTC mining companies looking for new homes. The US and Canada have been major benefactors of the sectors transition as many are choosing North America.
Since these companies have settled in the hash rate now stands at triple or 170% what it was since it hit its low in late June. The US now accounts for 43% of the total BTC hash rate.

WhatsApp has announced that they are bringing a currency to their popular messaging app by integrating another Facebook product Novi. Novi is the digital wallet made by Facebook for its Stablecoins Diem.
Facebook has been pushing its brand heavily since the announcement of Meta. For their met averse to run successfully they will also be testing out the functionality of their Novi wallet.
They will be using Coinbase as their custodian and payments will be facilitated in Paxos (USDP). Paxos is regulated by the NYDFS and also has a bitlicense making them fully operational for New York residents.

According to research done by Cointelegraph it turns out that a single transaction on Ethereum uses 30Kh, which is the same as powering a house in the United States for a whole day. Even crazier is that 100 ETH transactions uses the the same amount of power that it takes for a Tesla Model 3 to to drive 242 miles.
Energy consumption has been an issue that has been brought a lot through out the year. One of the biggest users of energy being done on blockchain is also one of the most popular in NFTs. Blockchains like Tezos have been working to make their platforms more energy efficient and even boasts that it is 35,000 times more energy-efficient than ETH.
The energy consumption is also a major reason that ETH is trying to move over to a proof-of-stake consensus instead of mining computing power to validate transactions. Many projects have already started making the switch from the start but ETH is a lot more established and will require a lot of work to pull off.

FAL Consulting Podcast Episode 23