“reHash” — Your Weekly Summary of Everything Important in the Crypto World — issue no. 28

Published in

Wanchain

6 min readMar 31, 2021

reHash issued for March 25th to March 31st

You can learn about NFTs here (click). There is now a bot that buys Bitcoin/Dogecoin whenever Elon Musk tweets about Bitcoin/Dogecoin, it is probably pretty profitable (click). Wanchain gets mentioned in Wanchain’s reHash. Someone got their original Game Boy to mine Bitcoin. This will be the last issue of reHash. Thank you to each and every reader of reHash both this and past issues, I appreciate your support and hope you enjoy reHash this one last time!

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 were always linked and credited. Thanks!

ADOPTION

Visa has completed their first cryptocurrency transaction on Ethereum; they will use USDC to settle transactions on their payments network; “We see increasing demand from consumers across the world to be able to access, hold and use digital currencies and we’re seeing demand from our clients to be able to build products that provide that access for consumers,” commented Cuy Sheffield, head of crypto division at Visa;
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
New York has launched a blockchain-powered COVID-19 passport; it was designed in partnership with IBM; “the innovative Excelsior Pass is another tool in our new toolbox to fight the virus while allowing more sectors of the economy to reopen safely and keeping personal information secure.”; “Secure technologies, like blockchain and encryption, are woven throughout Excelsior Pass to help protect the data, making it verifiable and trusted,”; “No private health data is stored or tracked within the apps.”; the application is free and voluntary;
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Six Chinese banks are now accepting applications for digital yuan wallets; the banks are: Bank of Communications, Postal Savings Bank of China, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Construction Bank, Agricultural Bank of China, and the Bank of China; digital yuan will be used (amongst other) as a means of redundancy for the retail payment system, and to be a back-up to Alipay and WeChat Pay (which together make up 98% of the mobile payments market in China); “If there is something bad happens to them [Alipay and WeChat], financially or technically, that could bring negative impact on the financial system’s stability in China,” commented Mu Changchun, director of the People’s Bank of China
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
PayPal has launched a “Checkout with Crypto”; this will enable PayPal customers in the U.S. to pay merchants with cryptocurrency; “This is the first time you can seamlessly use cryptocurrencies in the same way as a credit card or a debit card inside your PayPal wallet,” said PayPal CEO Dan Schulman; “Enabling cryptocurrencies to make purchases at businesses around the world is the next chapter in driving the ubiquity and mass acceptance of digital currencies.”; “We think it is a transitional point where cryptocurrencies (…) now become a legitimate funding source to make transactions in the real world at millions of merchants,”
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
State Grid Corporation of China (“State Grid”) has partnered with Wanglu Tech Ltd. (“Wanchain”); the study that both entities carried out has “analyzed the impact of integrating blockchain technology into State Grid’s national data management system concluded that Wanchain’s blockchain technology is ideal to upgrade the world’s largest utility company’s national data management system.”; “State Grid will also use smart contracts to automate and streamline data management systems. Combined with other emerging technologies, such as 5G, State Grid is designing a new, integrated data management system using Wanchain’s blockchain technology.”; State Grid is the third-largest company in the world by revenue;
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

REGULATION

Fidelity is seeking approval from the SEC to launch a Bitcoin ETF; ETF would be called Wise Origin Bitcoin Trust will follow prices from various bitcoin markets, including popular exchanges; Fidelity Digital Assets would serve as the fund’s custodian; “The digital assets ecosystem has grown significantly in recent years, creating an even more robust marketplace for investors and accelerating demand among institutions. An increasingly wide range of investors seeking access to bitcoin has underscored the need for a more diversified set of products offering exposure to digital assets,” commented a source from Fidelity;
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
SEC has sued LBRY over $11 million unregistered securities sale; LBRY is a decentralized publishing platform that claims 10 million users; SEC alleges that LBRY sold the tokens as investment contracts and that “LBRY received more than $11 million in U.S. dollars, Bitcoin, and services from purchasers who participated in its offering.”; “LBRY used the capital it raised from sales of LBC to pay for the operational costs to grow the LBRY Network, which, as LBRY publicly represented, would cause the price of LBC held by investors to appreciate,” and “because LBRY was the largest holder of LBC, it also expected to profit from any appreciation in value of LBC.”
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3
Goldman Sachs has applied for a Bitcoin-related investment product; product would be a linked note — that would track the ARK innovation ETF; ARK is invested in Grayscale and that in turn would mean that Goldman Sachs clients would be indirectly exposed to Bitcoin;
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

GENERAL UPDATES

Stacksmashing, a youtube content creator, has converted the original Game Boy Console into a Bitcoin mining machine; the console is able to produce 0.8 hashes per second; it would take only a couple of quadrillion years to mine a Bitcoin;
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4
TIME magazine has sold the “Is Fiat Dead?” NFT cover for $130,000; total for 3 covers came up to 276 ETH (nearly $500 as of writing); meanwhile The New York Times column NFT titled “Buy This Column on the Blockchain!” has sold for 350 ETH or approximately $633.5 thousand
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Chainalysis has announced a $100 million Series D funding round at $2 billion valuation; “What we see right now is that the market is growing and that some often traditional players are embracing crypto in a way that we haven’t seen before,” commented Chainalysis CEO Michael Gronager “At Chainalysis we believe that eventually every company will use the blockchain to conduct their business” he added;
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Dragonfly has announced a “Dragonfly Fund II”; a $225 million venture fund that will back the “next generation of crypto entrepreneurs and projects”; it aims to bring Chinese market insight to global projects and to help projects that rely on Eastern audiences have an Asia-focused investors; “Together with many of the technology and cultural leaders from US technology firms and VCs, we’re in an incredible position to help unite and push the crypto movement forward,” commented Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at Dragonfly Capital;
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4
Digital assets bank Avanti has raised $37 million in a Series A funding round; they expect to launch this year, they are a fully compliant digital assets bank; they have raised a total of $44 million so far; “We thank our investors for helping Avanti build a new breed of bank that services Bitcoin and also offers meaningful API capabilities for U.S. dollar transactions to tech-savvy customers,” commented Caitlin Long, Avanti’s founder and CEO and added “Our roadmap includes offering API-based U.S. dollar payment services for wires, ACH and SWIFT; issuance of our tokenized, programmable U.S. dollar called Avit; and custody and on-/off-ramp services for bitcoin and other digital assets. (…) we look forward to being able to service customers later this year. We expect to provide more details about our launch soon.”
SOURCE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Thank you, as always, for reading, and thank you for accompanying me on this journey. We will not have more news next week!

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.