☕️BRC-20 has exploded in popularity. But not everybody’s onboard.
Gm gd and gn! Onto the news😎
📈📉 Market Watch!
BTC trades sideways at $27K amid heightening transaction fees and US debt limit fight
The market has been and continues to hold its breath, with BTC ending the 7-day period closer to $27K but without any significant up or down. This comes as the recent explosion in altcoins being deployed on the Bitcoin network have caused transaction fees to skyrocket. Meanwhile, the United States is headed for a congressional showdown over its debt limit. As both Republicans and Democrats are digging themselves in, the US approaches a deadline to pay its bills and must come to a resolution lest it defaults on its debts.
The top gainers for the last 24 hours on Poloniex are GEN/USDT, HARRY/USDT, BEN/USDT, SIMPSON/USDT, BIBI/USDT, and FLOKICEO/USDT.
🗞️ So, what happened?
💥The big story
BRC-20 has exploded in popularity. But not everybody’s onboard.
Although not necessarily new, the token standard on the Bitcoin network has recently seen a meteoric rise in popularity. But this rise has been met with a fair bit of controversy. The recent rise in token mintings on the network has caused a lot of congestion on the legacy blockchain, and thus a rise in network fees. In fact, a couple of weeks ago, the amount of unconfirmed transactions on the network hit a historic high. As a result, fees went up, and crypto exchange Binance had to pause withdrawals. Not a good headline in a time of uncertainty like the one we’re living through now. To give you a sense of BRC-20’s recent popularity, in the short time that altcoins were able to be issued on the network, BRC-20 tokens reached a cumulative market cap of $1.6 billion.
Bitcoin’s token standard, BRC-20, stands for Bitcoin Request for Comment, and was launched in March by a pseudonymous developer by the name of Domo. Like the ERC-20 or TRC-20 token standards, this allows developers to deploy DeFi solutions and issue tokens on Bitcoin’s network. This all was made possible by Bitcoin’s recent taproot upgrade and subsequent ability to add data to Satoshis, the smallest unit of BTC. However, unlike the ERC-20 token standard, BRC-20 is not an approved standard. And BRC-20 tokens cannot be traded on exchanges very conveniently. What further separates BRC is the fact each of its transactions contain the instructions for the related token or NFT, which takes up more block space and thus congest the network.
All this has caused a fair bit of backlash against the token standard, with some calling for censorship of the ability to mint tokens on the network. Many, especially Bitcoin maximalists, have also spoken to the notion that the standard is antithetical to Bitcoin’s original mission: of a peer-to-peer money transfer system. It is important to note, though, that congestion has led to a high demand for verifying transactions, which of course has benefited Bitcoin miners.
Amazon is developing its own AI capabilities
Hold onto your hats, because yet another tech titan is adding artificial intelligence to its platform. This time, e-commerce and tech giant Amazon is looking to supercharge its web store’s search function with AI. As originally reported by Bloomberg, Amazon has recently listed job postings hiring for engineers to develop a search experience with a more conversational, personalized feel to it. This push is described by Amazon as being one that will bring about “a once in a generation transformation for Search’’. Interestingly, it appears that the company has already been using an in-house AI chatbot service called Titan to return search results.
An improved Amazon search experience could come in the form of more tailored results specific to each user, product comparisons, and intelligent answers to product questions. And this makes sense, given the quite specific product or parameters a shopper might have in mind when looking to buy something. This is something that has been sorely missing in online shopping compared to shopping in person. And with an improvement to Amazon’s search, customers would have a virtual store associate at their fingertips.
In related news, Amazon Web Services — Amazon’s cloud computing platform — is offering Amazon Bedrock, a serverless API with which users can build their own ChatGPT-like AI applications. It’s evident that AI has the potential to revolutionize retail, especially as Amazon is one of the most popular websites in the world, with half of US shoppers beginning their search for a new product through Amazon- according to Bloomberg’s report . Amazon is also aiming to improve its virtual assistant, Alexa, with AI.
As for when a fully-fledged, AI-powered search experience might be available, your guess is as good as ours but it should be interesting to see what improvements (or what competitors) the race for an AI shopping experience will bring about.
Cointelegraph, Bloomberg, The Verge
OpenAI’s Sam Altman nears $100million in fundraise for crypto project Worldcoin
In OTHER artificial intelligence news, OpenAI’’ former chief Sam Altman is close to having raised $100 million for a new crypto project. And you’ll definitely want to read on for this one. The Worldcoin project is building out a global identity and financial network, where any user regardless of domicile can access it. Now this is of course a familiar refrain in the world of crypto, but here’s where things get more interesting. The company plans to use “eyeball-scanning technology” to create a ubiquitous identification system. This will be achieved through hardware devices called “Orbs’’ which can scan one’s iris and set up an online profile wherein people can interact pseudonymously with each other over the Worldcoin network. Once one sets up an identity, they will receive free Worldcoin, which contributes to the company’s other objective of providing a sort of universal basic income.
The company’s raise is remarkable, given the current state of the crypto market as well as the resultant cautiousness of many investors. However, the project’s ascent has not been without its bumps, as just a couple of days ago it was reported by TechCrunch that hackers had been able to store malware and steal information of various Orb operators. It should be noted that it is currently unclear as to whether or not user information would be made accessible by such a data breach.
Epic Games and Lego are making a metaverse
You read that right. Video game and software developer Epic Games, which is the company behind the wildly popular game design software Unreal Engine, is partnering with toymaker Lego to create a metaverse. This metaverse will, understandably, be tailored towards families and with the goal of creating a “family-friendly digital experience” where kids can get the tools they need to become creators. It’s no surprise that this metaverse effort emphasizes skill development in younger age groups, as this is very much in line with Lego’s mission since its founding.
Such a development coming from two venerable companies such as Epic and Lego is interesting given the waning interest by many in metaverse applications as of late. The dip in interest does follow the trend of the current bear market, however, and this news signals that the technology itself is believed to have a bright future.
What’s happening here at Poloniex?
This is what Poloniex’s week looked like
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