Welcome to the latest Openware Crypto Digest — we bring you the most recent news that occurred throughout last week to keep you up-to-date on all and any noteworthy developments in the crypto industry.
- The U.S. Treasury Said That It Has to Modernize and Adapt to Digital Currencies
- Polkadot Unveiled a $777 Million Development Fund
- Ethereum Supply Shock Grows as the Reserves Decrease, Leading to Eth 2.0 Contract Increases
- Walmart Began Hosting Bitcoin ATMs
- Binance Blamed a Trading Algorithm Bug for the Bitcoin Flash Crash
The U.S. Treasury Said That It Has to Modernize and Adapt to Digital Currencies
The United States Department of the Treasury issued a review on sanctions and even suggested that the government starts doing a lot more to develop its infrastructure and policies when it comes to digital assets.
On October 18, The Treasury Department issued a report saying that the growing use of digital assets is hampering the implementation of sanctions while balancing funds from legitimate humanitarian organizations.
The department also suggested that better communication between them and the crypto industry, financial institutions, and others, as well as deepening the institutional knowledge and capabilities, could help improve the current policy that’s in place.
The Deputy Treasury Secretary, Wally Adeyemo, said that Sanctions are a fundamentally important tool to advance national security interests. The report also said that if left unchecked, the digital assets and payment systems could harm the efficacy of the current sanctions.
This report suggests that the government should adopt a structured policy framework and coordinate with allies and partners when possible to ensure that the sanctions are understood, enforceable, and adaptable.
Polkadot Unveiled a $777 Million Development Fund
The founder of Polkadot, Gavin Wood, has unveiled a $777 million development fund ahead of the network’s Parachain lease auctions.
In fact, on October 17, Gavin Wood tweeted that the Polkadot treasury has allocated more than 18.9 million Polkadot (DOT) tokens, at the time worth $777 million, to a development fund intended to be disbursed through community governance.
Wood also gave suggestions as to how these funds might get spent, stating the capital will be used to realize the community’s vision of building, improving, and educating Polkadot’s ecosystem.
According to Polkadot’s Wiki, these treasury funds can be spent if approved by the council, which votes on proposals given to them. That said, currently, the Polkadot Council has 13 members and has plans to expand to 24 seats sometime in the future.
Ethereum Supply Shock Grows as the Reserves Decrease, Leading to Eth 2.0 Contract Increases
According to data from CryptoQuant, the ETH exchange reserves have been decreasing, while the locked coins in the staking contract have been rising.
The exchange reserve of an asset is an Ethereum indicator that highlights the total number of coins stored in wallets across all exchanges. When the value of metrics such as this ends up increasing, it indicates an increase in the supply of ETH on the exchanges.
This trend can also show selling pressure within the market, as investors are sending the coins to exchanges for withdrawing to FIAT or altcoin purchases.
When we look at it from another perspective, a decrease implies that the supply of ETH is on a downward trend as investors might take their crypto off the exchanges and hold them or sell them through over-the-counter (OTC) deals instead. This could be an indication that buyers are bullish on the future of the coin.
That said, Ethereum exchange reserves have been heading downwards, and despite the sharp ETH increase in price, it seems like investors want to hold on as they believe that this increase could potentially go even further.
Walmart Began Hosting Bitcoin ATMs
Walmart is the world’s largest company in terms of revenue, and it has quietly started letting customers buy Bitcoin at a lot of its U.S. stores. That said, shoppers can buy the cryptocurrency at Coinstar machines inside the retailer’s large big box stores.
In partnership with Coinme, Coinstar launched a pilot that allows customers to use cash to purchase Bitcoin. There are 200 Coinstar kiosks located inside Walmart stores across the United States, said Molly Blakeman, Walmart’s communications director.
Coinstar has a reputation for allowing customers to exchange coins for paper bills or even gift cards. This ability is enabled through Coinme, a crypto wallet and payment company specializing in Bitcoin ATMs.
Binance Blames a Trading Algorithm Bug for the Bitcoin Flash Crash
On October 21, we saw Bitcoin drop by $8,200 on Binance.US.
A few hours after the occurrence, Binance announced that the incident occurred due to a bug in the trading algorithm of one of its clients.
One of their institutional traders indicated that they had a bug in their trading algorithm, which caused the sell-off.
According to the exchange, this flash crash occurred on Binance’s U.S. affiliate, Binance.US, at 7.34 AM New York Time.
It sent shockwaves through other exchanges, as Bitcoin’s price on Kraken, for example, dropped to $54,000 before recovering quickly.
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