This week in Crypto (October 2–October 9)
Starting with growth news, Circle and Jack Dorsey’s TBD (subsidiary of the Block) announced a partnership to bring cross-border dollar-linked stablecoin transfers and savings to investors globally. The firms unveiled their partnership Wednesday during Circle’s Converge22 conference in San Francisco. TBD, is an open-source developer platform that has been working on a decentralized crypto exchange called TBDex.
Huobi Global announced it will sell a majority stake to Hong Kong-based investment company About Capital Management. In an increasingly competitive centralized exchange marketplace the transactions is said to help with international expansion after the exchange’s complete a full exit from China in 2021.
In Ethereum news, a researcher has published a report showing that Flashbots is censoring Tornado Cash transactions. Flashbots runs one of the most widely used relays on MEV Boost. MEV refers to the maximum value that can be extracted from block production and can be achieved by the reordering of transactions in a block. On Ethereum’s proof of stake blockchain, MEV is made possible by MEV Boost, an open source middleware mechanism to help gather transactions and propose blocks, relaying them to the block validators.
The news are important for two reasons. Firstly, it shows that network participants are adhering to US sanctions requests. Secondly and more importantly, it highlights how quickly transactions can be censored if not all validators are aware how relays and transactions are organized by participants earlier in the validation process. Such censorship runs agains the very ethos of why distributed and decentralized networks such as Ethereum exist.
In DeFi news, the community governing MakerDAO, the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) behind stablecoin DAI, has allocated $500 million for investing in U.S. Treasurys and corporate bonds. The funds will be come from its overcollateralized stablecoin, with 80% going toward U.S. short-term Treasurys and 20% to investment-grade corporate bonds.
Ending with global regulatory news. The Reserve Bank of India published a concept note on central bank digital currencies, stating a digital rupee prototype will be launched “soon.” It also discusses several issuing models, especially one where a wholesale CBDC would be account-based and issued by the central bank, while the CBDC for consumers would be token-based and managed by an intermediary.
In Europe, the EU’s landmark Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation passed in the European Council on Wednesday morning. MiCA sets out to bring the issuance of cryptocurrencies under the wing of institutional regulation, and establishes a first-time regime for crypto-asset service providers across the EU’s member states.
This week’s long read zeros in TradFi players in Asia cashing in and catching up with the crypto space even as regulation changes. The FT article takes a look into new ETF and fund products launched in Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia.
Major headlines:
Jack Dorsey’s TBD Teams Up With Circle to Take US Dollar Stablecoin Savings and Remittances Global
Huobi will be acquired by Hong Kong-based About Capital Management
At least 23% of Ethereum blocks are complying with US sanctions
Lido’s stETH Token Expands to Layer 2 Networks Optimism and Arbitrum
Celsius’ Top Execs Cashed Out $17M in Crypto Before Bankruptcy
Stablecoin Issuer MakerDAO to Invest $500M in US Treasurys, Corporate Bonds
India’s central bank to launch digital rupee pilot
The European Council passes MiCA, EU’s comprehensive crypto regulation
Big read:
Asia’s crypto craze spurs swath of fund launches
Chart(s) of the week:
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