“reHash” — Your Weekly Summary of Everything Important in the Crypto World — issue no. 16

Published in

Wanchain

6 min readJan 6, 2021

reHash issued for December 31st to January 6th

Last reHash was the last of the year 2020. This one is the first in year 2021 (hoping it’s better). Last week it was another ATH for Bitcoin, this week it is another ATH for Bitcoin. Bitcoin makes it look easy. Just as easy as it is to catch up on all the news from the week in extremely shortened form — welcome to reHash, I hope you enjoy your stay!

NOTE:
reHash is not intended to be original journalism. It is intended to be a brief summary of significant articles and events from the past week with links to the original sources. Sources will always be linked and credited. If you know any good newsletters or Twitter accounts which provide news we have been missing, please mention them in the comments!

ADOPTION

Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has released a groundbreaking stance — banks can use stablecoins to conduct payments and other activities; they published their stance in Interpretive Letter 1174; “Industry participants recognize that using stablecoins to facilitate payments may combinethe efficiency and speed of digital currencies with the stability of existing currencies”; “The OCC has repeatedly recognized that banks may conduct permissible paymentactivities using new and evolving technologies.”; “a national bank or federal savings association may validate, store, and record payments transactions by serving as a node on an INVN [independent node verification network]. Likewise, a bank may use INVNs and related stablecoins to carry out other permissible payment activities.”
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Ukraine government will use Stellar blockchain to issue their CBDC; the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) has signed a deal with Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation to issue a CBDC and stablecoin and virtual asset infrastructure; “The Ministry of Digital Transformation is working on creating the legal environment for the development of virtual assets in Ukraine,”; “We believe our cooperation with the Stellar Development Foundation will contribute to development of the virtual asset industry and its integration into the global financial ecosystem.”
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3
Bitwise now has $500 million under management; “The speed at which professional investors are moving into crypto right now is remarkable,” remarked Hunter Horsley, CEO and co-founder of Bitwise; While adoption of crypto as an asset class and conviction around its role in portfolios rapidly expands, we continue to urge all investors to consider the risks associated with investing in cryptocurrencies in general and the Bitwise Funds in particular.”; the fund has grown considerably in just 2 months when it reported $100 million in AUM;
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3
VanEck has proposed the ETF for Bitcoin, again; VanEck has submitted an application to the SEC for a “VanEck Bitcoin Trust”; their previous application they withdrew in September 2019; SEC has rejected many applications for bitcoin-based ETFs and rejected them all; the new application comes at a time of change in SEC with former chairman, Jay Clayton, having resigned recently
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4
Grayscale currently hold over $20 billion in AUM; recent run up by Bitcoin definitely contributed; they also got rid of their XRP following the Ripple-SEC suit; a Singapore-based investment fund Three Arrows Capital has increased their position in the fund to $1.31 billion
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Anthony Scaramucci’s fund SkyBridge Bitcoin Fund LP has officially opened to accredited investors; the fund currently holds about $310 million worth of Bitcoin; minimum investment is $50,000; “This is digital gold and it is easier to transfer. We love the scarcity of bitcoin,” said Scaramucci, however he also said ”This could be a blow up top bubble. We expect the fund to be volatile and it could lose money,”
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3

REGULATION

Binance.US and eToro has also suspended XRP Trading for US users; following suit of numerous other exchanges Binance in USA and eToro have both delisted XRP from trading; Uphold is one exchange that has speaken out in support of XRP and will not delist or halt trading until final verdict is reached; UK-based investment firm Tetragon Financial Group is suing Ripple over the Series C funding round in 2019;
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4
Bittrex will delist Monero, Dash and Zcash — the privacy coins; amidst regulatory concerns over money laundering — Bittrex is set to delist three of the biggest ‘offenders’ on Friday, January 15 at 23:00 UTC; several other exchanges have delisted or refused to list the privacy coins — these exchanges include ShapeShift, Bithumb and LiteBit; while regulators argue that privacy coins facilitate illicit activity — this is yet to be proven
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
The Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) ban on crypto derivatives went into effect; FCA is a financial regulator in the UK, and considers the derivatives and exchange-traded notes (ETNs) to be potentially harmful for retail customers: “This ban reflects how seriously we view the potential harm to retail consumers in these products,”; “Consumer protection is paramount here.”; consumers themselves do not necessarily share the same sentiment;
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4

DEVELOPMENT

Over $2.3 billion is locked in Ethereum 2.0 beacon chain; it translates to over 2,245,602 ETH with more coming; threshold has been met by 429.15% as of writing; price of Ethereum has also been steadily rising, making the USD value all the more intimidating;
SOURCE: 1, 2

GENERAL UPDATES

According to Glassnode 78% of the Bitcoin Supply is illiquid; “Only 4.2 million BTC (22%) are currently in constant circulation and available for buying and selling.”
SOURCE: 1, 2
Jihan Wu, the co-founder of Bitmain, has reportedly been bought out of the company; his co-founder, Micree Zhan has paid $600 million for the shares of Wu;
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3
Binance has pledged $10 million to compensate victims of Cover Finance hack who traded; “For each user’s net purchased COVER amount, Binance will compensate users out of pocket with the price that they originally purchased the COVER tokens for in either ETH or BUSD. This compensation will be covered in full by the Binance SAFU Fund and totals $10,107,505.79 USD (consisting of 8,171,634.10 BUSD and 2,581.16 ETH).”; other users will get the replacement tokens in 1:1 fashion; COVER themselves will return the total of 4,441.8 to affected users
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
NFT art sales reach an ATH volume of $8.2 million in December 2020; it is over 300% increase over November ($2.6 million); “Crypto natives are starting to understand the value NFTs bring to verifying authenticity of the original artwork. Furthermore, big-name digital artists like Beeple are discovering what NFTs are and how they open up a new business model for artists other than commissions.” as per Richard Chen, the creator of CryptoArt.io
SOURCE: 1, 2
Value locked in DeFi has reached records of over $20 billion total value locked (as of writing); top projects include Maker, Aave, Uniswap; while the USD value is rising there is still an outflow of Ethereum from the contracts from the highs of nearly 10 million Ethereum in September to 6.82 million now
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4

Thank you, as always, for reading and hope to see you next week! We will have news next week too!

About Wanchain

Wanchain is the infrastructure connecting the decentralized financial world. Wanchain’s live cross-blockchain solution is EVM-based, includes optional private transactions, and provides a decentralized, permissionless, and secure approach for interoperability. Wanchain has employees globally with teams in China, the USA, and other team members around the world in Asia, Africa, and Europe.