“reHash” — Your Weekly Summary of Everything Important in the Crypto World — issue no. 24

Published in

Wanchain

7 min readMar 3, 2021

reHash issued for February 25th to March 3rd

According to a report by Crypto.com more than 106 million people now use cryptocurrencies. MicroStrategy (again) plans to invest more into Bitcoin, but just $15 million now. Gary Gensler, the SEC Chair nominee has said that he’d work to “both promote the new innovation, but also, at the core, ensure for investor protection” referring to crypto, marking a possible change in SEC stance towards cryptocurrencies. I hope you enjoy reading on all the relevant cryptocurrency news in this week’s 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

Goldman Sachs Group Inc has plans to restart its cryptocurrency trading desk; plan is to start from the next week as Reuters’s source alleges; reportedly they will also explore potential exchange traded fund and digital asset custody;
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Rakuten, an e-commerce giant from Japan, will let their users to spend Bitcoin and other cryptoccurencies at merchants throughout Japan; Rakuten is one of the biggest business groups in Japan; they run their own cryptocurrency exchange; users will be able to easily exchange their cryptocurrency holdings into ‘Rakuten Cash’, which they will be able to use to purchase nearly anything;
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
A Swiss bank Bordier & Cie SCmA has added trading of cryptocurrencies to its services; bank was established 177 years ago in 1844; “We have seen increasing demand from our clients to diversify into alternative asset classes such as digital assets,” said their managing partner Evrard Bordier; the new service will allow customers to buy, hold and trade cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, BCH and Tezos; they plan to add support for more coins in the future;
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4
IBC Group based out of Dubai has pledged investment of $4.8 billion in BTC in Miami to help Mayor Francis Suarez’s dream of making Miami the cryptocurrency capital; IBC would invest 100,000 BTC to establish the Miami 2.0 Blockchain Strategy Foundation and to support other projects; “Making the largest Bitcoin investment in history is proof of our commitment to assisting cities adopt Blockchain, which we see as the key to enabling widespread adoption,” as commented by the IBC Chariman Khurram Shroff
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4
Cboe BZX Exchange has filed with SEC to list and trade shares in (still not approved) VanEck Bitcoin Trust; the filing “builds on VanEck’s earlier S-1 filing” and would represent “the next steps in bringing what could be the first U.S. bitcoin ETF to market.”; “Cboe believes that approval of a bitcoin ETF could provide investors access to bitcoin exposure through a transparent, regulated vehicle.”
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4
Stone Ridge, a New York-based, asset manager has added Bitcoin to its diversified alternatives fund; they hold over $13billion AUM; this addition will become effective on April 26th, 2021; the filling enables them to gain exposure to Bitcoin through put options on BTC futures contracts (these options allow investors to sell a certain amount at a pre-determined price in the future, but does not oblige them to do so);
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4

REGULATION

MoneyGram was hit with class action lawsuit over their Ripple Partnership; the lawsuit alleges that MoneyGram had “made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: XRP, the cryptocurrency that MoneyGram was utilizing as part of its Ripple partnership, was viewed as an unregistered and therefore unlawful security by the SEC.”;
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Arca, a digital asset management firm, has filed paperwork with the SEC to start a Bitcoin Trust; The Arca Accredited Investor Bitcoin Trust would accept investments of at least $25,000; Arca will compete with other Bitcoin Trusts out there — Grayscale, Bitwise, Crosstower, Osprey Fund and Blockfi
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4

DEVELOPMENT

Dogecoin has received a version update; it is the first significant update since July 2019; Dogecoin has been increasingly popular due to Elon Musk’s tweets; the update improves synchronization speed and reduces default mempool expiry time; the time that nodes can upload blocks is greatly reduced; “People say it’s a joke coin but we’re very careful to take care of the code. When it took off there was a resurgence in attention and we want to keep the currency operational,” commented one of the DOGE lead maintainers Ross Nicoll; DOGE can also be purchased at 1,800 ATM locations in the U.S. due to the ATM provider CoinFlip
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4
Cardano has underwent Mary hard fork; users will be able to create NFTs and transact them directly on Cardano platform; Cardano plans to introduce smart contracts later this year; “Because native tokens do not require smart contracts to transfer their value, users will be able to send, receive, and burn their tokens without paying the transaction fees required for a smart contract or adding event-handling logic to track transactions.”
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

GENERAL UPDATES

Someone tried to extort Tether for 500 BTC; Tether declined to pay; per the company “forged” documents were leaked by the blackmailer; “It is unclear whether this is a basic extortion scheme like those directed at other crypto companies or people looking to undermine Tether and the crypto community as a whole,” Tether says. “Either way, those seeking to harm Tether are getting increasingly desperate.” and that they “have reported the forged communications and the associated ransom demand to law enforcement. As always, we will fully support law enforcement in an investigation of this extortion scheme.”
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3
The first Bitcoin ETF in the world — the Canada’s Purpose Bitcoin ETF has already $624 million under management; they hold over 10,500 BTC; Evolve, another Canadian Bitcoin ETF issuers, has filed a preliminary prospectus with the Canadian securities regulator to create an Ethereum ETF;
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3
Bitfarms, a Canadian Bitcoin mining company, has purchased 48,000 new MicroBT miners; they expect to achieve hash rate of 8 EH/s by the end of 2022 (approximately 5% of the whole current hashing power on BTC) which would mean eightfold increase of their current hashing capacity of 1 EH/s
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3
PDAX, a Filipino crypto exchange, was selling Bitcoin for $6,000 (88% less than actual price) due to a technical glitch; exchange is compelling users to return the BTC back to them, as commented by one of the traders “After almost 24 hours, they sent me a demand letter and SMS, requesting me to transfer back the BTC, or they ‘may’ be compelled to take legal actions against me.”; “It’s very understandable that a lot of users will feel upset they were able to buy what they thought an order was there for Bitcoin at very low prices. But unfortunately, the underlying Bitcoins were never in the possession of the exchange, so there’s never really anything there to be bought or sold, unfortunately.” commented PDAX CEO Nichel Gaba
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4
Coinbase might be valued around $100 billion; they have filed their S-1 Form to the SEC on the February 25th; they have profited $322.3 million in 2020 up from $30 million loss in 2019; they plan a direct listing on NASDAQ under the ticker COIN; meanwhile Kraken is seeking a fresh round of funding that would value their business at about $10 billion, approximately 2.5x their valuation of $4 billion in 2019
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Dubai-based cryptocurrency fund FD7 Ventures might sell over $750 million of Bitcoin to invest into Ethereum Cardano and Polkadot; saying that “Aside from the fact that Bitcoin was first to market and society has given it meaning as a store of value, I think Bitcoin is actually pretty useless,”; they believe other cryptocurrencies will become more prominent
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4
Anchorage has raised $80 million in Series C funding round led by GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund; “This new capital will allow us to rapidly scale to meet the rising demand for participation in the digital asset space, particularly among corporations and traditional financial institutions,” said Anchorage President Diogo Mónica; Anchorage has received the federal banking charter from OCC and is the first national “digital asset bank” in the United States
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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.