The biggest crypto news and ideas of the day |
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South Korea Asks Interpol to Issue Red Notice for Terra Co-Founder Do Kwon: Authorities in South Korea asked the international police agency to issue a "red notice" for Do Kwon, the co-founder of Terraform Labs that built the (once) $45 billion LUNA/UST ecosystem, as his current location is unknown. The Singapore Police Force confirmed that Kwon was no longer in the city-state, one of Terra’s former bases alongside South Korea. This comes after Kwon tweeted Saturday that, “I am not ‘on the run’ or anything similar,” and claimed himself to be in “full cooperation” with authorities and has “nothing to hide.” SEC, Ripple Call for Immediate Ruling Over Whether XRP Sales Violated Securities Laws: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Ripple Labs each want a federal judge to finally decide either that the crypto company affiliated with the XRP cryptocurrency violated federal securities laws or otherwise dismiss the lawsuit without requiring a lengthy trial. The SEC sued Ripple Labs last year on allegations that it had raised over $1.3 billion by selling XRP in unregistered securities transactions. Ripple has denied those claims. Australian Senator Proposes Crypto Bill Targeting China's Digital Yuan: An Australian senator has introduced a draft bill that would “prepare the country” for China's digital yuan, setting strict disclosure requirements for banks that would use China's central bank digital currency. The proposed "Digital Assets (Market Regulation) Bill" identifies seven Chinese banks that have branches in Australia, which may become part of China’s cross-border digital yuan pilot. Separately, the European Central Bank chose five organizations, including tech giant Amazon and Italian bank Nexi, to help develop user interfaces for a potential digital euro. National Security Concerns Plague Binance’s Plan to Buy Voyager Digital’s Assets: Crypto exchange Binance’s bid to purchase crypto lender Voyager Digital’s assets through a bankruptcy auction this week has been complicated by concerns the U.S. government would reject the transaction, a move a Binance spokesperson called potentially xenophobic. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which would likely review the deal, has cited national security risks in the past for blocking takeovers by Chinese companies – prompting Voyager to ask for more money as “insurance,” according to people familiar with the matter. Interestingly, a Binance spokesperson said the exchange was Canada-based amid the controversy, giving insight into the exchange’s location after years of claiming it had no headquarters. Another Binance spokesperson clarified that the exchange is indeed “global.” CoinDesk reported Thursday that FTX currently made the highest bid for Voyager, though additional offers could come in soon. The contest to acquire Voyager’s assets is not officially decided until the end of this month, giving time for Binance or someone else to potentially top FTX. Separately, an accounting bug at Binance over the Helium Network’s two native tokens was a multimillion-dollar windfall for some users. Eth.link Restored After Ethereum Name Service Wins Injunction Against GoDaddy: The website for the Ethereum Name Service (ENS), which is behind all wallet addresses that end with .eth used across the Ethereum community, is back online after losing its domain name eth.link to a third party earlier this year. The company behind the Web3 domain service sued GoDaddy earlier this month, alleging the domain registration business falsely announced eth.link had expired, and then auctioned it. – Xinyi Luo |
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Putting the news into perspective |
Did the Ethereum Merge Drop ‘Worldwide Electricity Consumption’ by 0.2%? Last week, hot off the heels of the Merge, a complicated plan to swap Ethereum’s infrastructure without interrupting the multibillion-dollar cryptocurrency network, Ethereum’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin reshared data suggesting “worldwide electricity consumption” could be reduced by 0.2% as a result. This talking point, originally discussed by Ethereum researcher Justin Drake, was picked up by U.S. congressmen, technologists and Ethereum’s community, who are right to celebrate the network’s vastly smaller carbon footprint. Proof-of-stake, Ethereum’s new algorithm for processing transactions, would use approximately 99% less power than the proof-of-work (PoW) system Ethereum used to run. Drake estimated that Ethereum’s total energy consumption before the Merge was around 0.34% of the world’s total. It would be incorrect to say the Merge itself would reduce “worldwide electricity consumption” by that total amount, seeing as many mining machines that once supplied hash power to Ethereum were immediately pointed to alternative PoW blockchains. Ethereum may be vastly more energy-efficient than it was just a week ago, but the question now becomes whether its PoW-based competitors will grow as large. |
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(Photo by David McNew/Newsmakers/Getty Images) Several blockchains saw their contributed hash power (and thus energy consumption) increase in the lead up to the Merge, and vast bumps in that direction after the event. But judging by the figures shortly after the Merge, it seems these chains – including Ethereum Classic, Ravencoin and the newly forked Ethereum Proof-of-Work – will not be profitable enough to continue paying for their record high security/energy bills. There are reports of crypto miners powering down less powerful and less efficient GPUs as competition to add blocks to those chains increased. But it’s premature to say that all the specialized EtHash ASIC hardware that once mined ether (ETH) will be turned off forever. Proof-of-work mining is an activity driven by pretty simple supply-and-demand curves: the inputs are the cost of electricity (and hardware) and the price of a network’s token. Many miners paid upfront for these specially designed computer chips, and thus have an economic incentive to keep them plugged in so long as they’re profitable. That said, it’s unlikely the recent price appreciation in ETC, RVN and ETHW, coextensive with their networks’ increased hash power, is stable in the long term without meaningful user activity and development of those chains. Ethan Vera, chief operations officer of mining services firm Luxor Technologies, tweeted last week that “20%-30% of ETH miners have found a temporary new home amongst other blockchains, the rest are shut down.” This is a figure that could go in either direction, as the market finds price stability after the Merge. It’s likely that after this weekend’s crypto market rout even more machines were turned off. In fact, Chandler Guo, the primer backer of the ETHW fork, predicted last week 90% of PoW miners will likely go “bankrupt,” on CoinDesk TV’s “First Mover” show. – D.K. |
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How crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried survived the market wreckage and still expanded his empire (CNBC) Bitcoin's energy consumption (Protos)The lawless world of crypto scams (FT) Gensler Rattles DeFi With Suggestion PoS Coins are Securities (Decrypt) |
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