What’s new this week?
- Belgian MP becomes first European politician to accept salary in Bitcoin (CoinTelegraph)The Belgian MP will convert his monthly salary of EUR 5,500 to Bitcoin using the country’s popular cryptocurrency trading platform Bit4You.
- Trezor removes controversial address verification protocol, other wallets follow suit (CoinTelegraph)Trezor removed the recently introduced AOPP signing protocol following negative feedback due to privacy concerns.
- Miramax Sues Quentin Tarantino Over Plans To Release ‘Pulp Fiction’ NFTs (Forbes)That’s old news – but apparently it is getting worse. According to one tweep, Tarantino is minting fan artwork into NFTs. If true, this is kinda shortsighted: as the creator said, he’d have gladly cooperated. And probably not asking a lot of money because the value in the NFT is probably not in the fan art, but in the Tarantino endorsement.
- The Demand For Cryptocurrency Products Increased By 922% At Deutsche Börse (CryptoPotato)Cryptocurrency exchange-traded products have been highly sought after on the German market
- Central Bank of Jordan reveals CBDC plans (CoinTelegraph)#CBDCWatch
- Solana Pay launches to expand crypto e-commerce market (CoinTelegraph)Solana positioning itself as a network for everyday transactions here (denominated in fiat!), which is interesting. Cross border payments infrastructure is still largely awful (except within the EU) so this is an important step.
- Litecoin Launches Privacy-Focused Mimblewimble Upgrade After Years on Testnet (BeInCrypto)Interesting marker that privacy becomes increasingly a concern in crypto. Which in turn will probably encourage regulators to go for more stringent KYC measures
- Deutsche Börse Saw 922% Increase in Investors Demand for Cryptocurrency Products (CryptoPotato)That’s a 10x increase in crypto exchange traded products from 2020 to 2021 – from $155m per month to $1bn per month. Still somewhat shy of Uniswap numbers (and definitely Coinbase and friends), but this is getting to be a big numbers
- UK is lagging behind on crypto assets, says Philip Hammond (CityAM)Sir Hammond – advisor to Copper – coming out with a stark warning as to the future competitiveness of the UK in financial services
- (CoinTelegraph)Bitcoin education is becoming more and more important, not only at the professional certification level that we offer at IDCAP, but across the entire usage spectrum. We also have a another initiatives up our sleeves here – stay tuned!
- Alphabet CEO Confirms The Company Eyeing The Blockchain Industry (Blockworks)Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai confirmed the company is “absolutely looking into blockchain”.
- Alphabet CEO Says Company ‘Definitely’ Looking at Blockchain (BlockWorks)This is on the none crypto-asset side of things, but shows that blockchain technology is getting in everywhere, which will have important feedback effects.
- ‘Philly is ready’ for CityCoins says city council (CoinTelegraph)I am not quite sure what to make of this trend to issue City Coins. I mean it is nice additional cash flow to the city treasury, but what next? In other words – what is the benefit of those coins? It can’t just be “we give the cities seignorage rights”.
- Wormhole token bridge loses $321M in largest hack so far in 2022 (CoinTelegraph)Definitely the story of the week. In a rather complex operation the attacker could impersonate the bridge guardians, and at this stage just convince the bridge that it has deposited ETH, allowing them to withdraw wETH on the other side. The number is big – $312m – and at least at the time of writing this comment (Thu evening) there was no sign of them accepting the $10m whitehat bounty.
- Russia’s Minister of Finance Suggests Letting Banks Sell Crypto: Report (CoinDesk)Interesting marker, in a country that has been traditionally hostile to crypto.
Interesting research
- A Look at EU’s GDPR and What It Means for Crypto Privacy (CoinDesk)Important topic. Good overview over the issues. Not many concrete solutions – but that’s just a consequence of the topic
