“reHash” — Your Weekly Summary of Everything Important in the Crypto World — issue no. 20

Published in

Wanchain

6 min readFeb 3, 2021

reHash issued for January 28th to February 3rd

One word: Doge. Another one word (hashtag?): #bitcoin. Not many words, but such a powerful delivery by Elon Musk. Also Gamestop and WallStreetBets. A pretty crazy week; now recounted in matter of minutes — hope you enjoy the newest reHash!

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

Elon Musk has embraced Bitcoin and Doge apparently with his Twitter bio reading #bitcoin; “In retrospect, it was inevitable” he tweeted which was subsequently immortalized in Bitcoin block# 668,197; “I am a supporter of bitcoin. I am late to the party but a supporter. I think bitcoin is on the verge of getting broad acceptance by conventional finance people.” said Musk via Clubhouse; “The most entertaining outcome… would be that dogecoin becomes the currency of earth in the future. Occasionally I make jokes about dogecoin, but they are really meant to be jokes. Dogecoin was made as a joke to make fun of crypto, but fate loves irony.” he added
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3
Coinmarketcap has listed WallStreetBets at number 0 on the list of market capitalization; they bought Gamestop stock to over $465 per share (now back to $110 area), which created a short squeeze and has in turn created a huge loss for Melvin Capital that lost approximately 53% of their money (total assets before $12.5 billion, after $6 billion + $2.8 billion bailout ended up with approximately $8 billion); Robinhood has blocked possibility of trading GME and other stocks also restricting possibility of Bitcoin and Dogecoin trading AND also raised $3.4 billion to ‘support surging customer demand’; Robinhood has been sued for the manipulation and their app on Google Play boasts a rating of 1.1 now; some of the stocks were consequently listed on FTX and Bittrex; cryptocurrency has seen significant volatility on price Dogecoin and XRP; WallStreetBets has been banned from Discord; SEC allegedly will look into all of this to protect retail customers
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
Ninepoint Partners has launched the largest Bitcoin IPO in Canada for $180 million; their Bitcoin trust has began trading on 24th of January on Toronto Stock Exchange under the ticker BITC-U; “We believe our institutional quality trust structure and lowest management fee of any listed bitcoin investment fund in Canada will be a winning combination for continued investor interest,” said Ninepoint Co-CEO James Fox;
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4
In Visa’s Q1 2021 earnings call the chairman and CEO of Visa — Al Kelly has touched on the topic of cryptocurrencies; “we believe that we are uniquely positioned to help make cryptocurrencies more safe, useful and applicable for payments through our global presence”; “Our strategy here is to work with wallets and exchanges to enable users to purchase these currencies using their Visa credentials or to cash out onto our Visa credential to make a fiat purchase at any of the 70 million merchants where Visa is accepted globally.”
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4

REGULATION

Some fears of India ban on cryptocurrencies have surfaced this week; “The government does not consider cryptocurrencies legal tender or coins and will take all measures to eliminate use of these crypto-assets in financing illegitimate activities or as part of the payment system,” said Minister of State for Finance; they might be looking into creating “a facilitative framework for creation of the official digital currency to be issued by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI),”;
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Virgil Griffith’s motion to dismiss charges of aiding North Korea have been rejected; he was arrested back in November 2019 after his return from the blockchain conference in North Korea; he is charged with “fifteen-month conspiracy (…) to provide services to the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea (“DPRK”) without the required government approvals” to circumvent restrictions and sanctions set on North Korea; the trial is to start in September 2021
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3

DEVELOPMENT

Facebook’s Diem testnet has seen over 54 million transactions; over 221,000 individual addresses participated so far; rumors have it that Diem will be released later in 2021; Spotify reportedly will be one of the first customers accepting the currency
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4

GENERAL UPDATES

According to CipherTrace rugpulls account for over 99% of all crypto fraud schemes; such schemes netted criminals $1.9 billion in 2020, it is down from $4.5 billion in 2019; “Half of all 2020 crypto hacks were of DeFi protocols — a pattern that was virtually negligible in all prior years — and nearly 99% of major fraud volume in the second half of 2020 stemmed from DeFi protocols performing ‘rug pulls’ and other exit scams in a pattern eerily reminiscent of the 2017 ICO craze,”; “half of all thefts in 2020, totaling $129 million, were DeFi-related hacks and some centralized exchangess”
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3
Grayscale has filed for several new altcoin trusts; they incorporated new trusts for coins like Polkadot, Aave, Basic Attention Token, UniswapTezos, Monero, Cosmos, EOSIO and Cardano; while it made some communities excited Grayscale has commented: “Grayscale is always looking for opportunities to offer products that meet investor demands, (…) Occasionally, we will make reservation filings, though a filing does not mean we will bring a product to market.”; they also reopened the Ethereum Trust to accredited investors;
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4
“Darknet markets set a new revenue record in 2020, bringing in a total of $1.7 billion worth of cryptocurrency.”; Hydra — a darknet market servicing Russian-speaking countries is responsible for 75% of that figure; “Hydra is a big driver of Eastern Europe’s unique crypto crime landscape. Eastern Europe has one of the highest rates of cryptocurrency transaction volume associated with criminal activity and, thanks to Hydra, is the only region with a criminal service as one of the top ten entities sending cryptocurrency value to the region,”
SOURCE: 1, 2
“Coinbase Global, Inc. (…) announced its intent to become a publicly-traded company pursuant to a proposed direct listing of its Class A common stock”; reportedly they will pick NASDAQ for the direct listing of the stock; “We believe a direct listing more closely follows the ethos of crypto and Coinbase because it democratizes access and opportunities for all investors.” commented CFO of Coinbase Alesia Haas
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4
BlockFi has submitted to SEC a registration for a Bitcoin Trust; they would compete with Grayscale Bitcoin Trust if the application is approved; BlockFi currently has over $8 billion in total client balances and 125,000+ funded accounts; they will also launch OTC trading desk for institutions and UHNW clients; BlockFi was founded in 2017 as a “centralized” cryptocurrency lending company, which is backed by Coinbase Ventures, Galaxy Digital and Winklevoss Capital; they have generated nearly $100 million in revenue during 2020 and recently has paid its users more than $28 million in interest for January 2021
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

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.