Daily Digest 11/3
Insight on the biggest stories of the day.
Crypto Exchange BitMEX Claims It Is Now Carbon Neutral
BitMEX has moved over to fully carbon neutral as they continue to push moving the exchange green. Back in May they also committed to donating $0.002 for every $1 in fees.
“Sustainability is the challenge of our time. Bitcoin—and cryptocurrency in general—is the transformative technology of our time. Especially around COP26, it’s only natural that crypto faces tough questions about the environmental impact of the technology that enables our work,” said BitMEX CEO Alexander Höptner in a prepared statement.
This is a plan for the future of the company as businesses continue to try and mitigate their environmental impact.
Over the past year we have heard all the stories of how Bitcoin is consuming a massive amounts of energy which causes harm to the environment and also leaves a mark on companies that our in the space as a collateral damage.
Carbon offsetting has since become a popular transition for crypto companies to make as they try to continue improving their public image.
Silk Road Admin Forfeits $667,000 Worth of Bitcoin to British Authorities
Thomas White, an original admin from the Silk Road, has been ordered to $667,000 to the UK’s National Crime Agency. White was the one running the website after the original creator was arrested in 2013.
He plead guilty to charges of drug trafficking, money laundering, and more for his involvement in starting the Silk Road 2.0. He was sentenced to a total of 5 years and four months as well as the forfeiting a chuck of his Bitcoin.
“Thomas White was a well-regarded member of the original Silk Road hierarchy. He used this to his advantage when the original site was closed down and profited significantly from his criminal activity,” said Tyrone Surgeon of the NCA.
Goldman Sachs boosts tokenization efforts with new partnership
Goldman Sachs has been no stranger to getting involved in cryptocurrencies as they have launched their own crypto trading desk, are backers of USDC owner Circle, and now they are partnering with Digital Asset to go further into tokenization.
The partnership will allow Goldman to use Daml which is a development framework that allows institutions to execute agreements on the blockchain. This will allow them to speed up their adoption of blockchain based workflows.
“As we continue to build out our tokenization capabilities, we need solutions that could rapidly capture the full complexity and diversity of assets at the heart of our business for both digitally native or tokenized traditional assets, and be interoperable across multiple blockchains.”
For each of the last 5 quarters funding for blockchain projects has increased with Q3 2021 clocking $2.9 Billion across 137 deals just in the US.
Those investors included big names in the crypto space such as Coinbase, Polychain Capital, and Andreessen Horowitz.
This shows that even though the US may not be the most crypto friendly country we are gearing up to be front runners if regulatory clarity ever becomes available. The US has now seen a 58% increase since 2020 in funding of crypto based companies.