  What you need to know today in crypto and beyond May 7, 2021 Sponsored By:  If you were forwarded this newsletter and would like to receive it, sign up here.
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Today's must-reads Top Shelf  11-FOLD: Square's Cash App generated $3.51 billion in bitcoin revenue in the first quarter of 2021, according to a shareholder letter published Thursday, an 11-fold increase compared with this time last year. The fintech’s sizable BTC treasury holdings have also appreciated to $472 million (purchased at $50 million), though the company reported a $20 million impairment loss on those assets. OCC HEAD: U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will appoint Federal Reserve Associate Director Michael Hsu as acting comptroller at the nation’s top banking regulator, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). At the Fed, Hsu was part of the supervision and regulation division, meaning he oversaw major banks. His level of knowledge with cryptocurrencies, unlike his predecessor, is unclear. BETA AMBITIONS: Dfinity could potentially give Ethereum another layer of censorship resistance with the release of “The Internet Computer,” a system of smart contracts to move all DeFi apps off “traditional IT.” The protocol, which its chief scientist says could replace everything online but Bitcoin, launched today in beta. BANK BLOCK? India’s central bank-owned retail payments platform refused to ban crypto transactions, as the Reserve Bank of India punts the decision of whether to accept or block crypto currencies to the banks themselves.
– Daniel Kuhn
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Overheard on CoinDesk TV Sound Bite  "I haven’t lost faith in the dollar, but I do see that it is a depreciating asset. We need to be prepared."
– Scott Conger, the mayor of Jackson, Tenn., on CoinDesk TV's "First Mover."
A message from CoinDesk  CoinDesk Research: Does Bitcoin Have an Energy Problem? Is Bitcoin bad for the environment? This CoinDesk Research report looks at the data behind the most common critiques and shows that, while Bitcoin uses a lot of energy, the mix is evolving toward renewables. Bitcoin also incentivizes investment in clean energy sources, can convert pollution into value, and redistributes wasted power production. Download the free report.
What others are writing... Off-Chain Signals 
- D.K.
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 Introducing CoinDesk Indexes TradeBlock, the leader in providing crypto asset indexes to financial institutions, is taking the CoinDesk name.
Introducing CoinDesk Indexes, the industry standard for institutional-grade digital currency price references, with billions of dollars in monthly trading volume quoted against them.
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Read more about CoinDesk Indexes, the industry standard in crypto benchmarks.
Putting the news in perspective The Takeaway  The Anything-Can-Happen Days Uniswap is issuing non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to wallets that lend assets to its market-making services as part of its version 3.0, released this week.
 It's cute. I don't mean that condescendingly! It just is. The team didn't have to do this but they did, because they knew people would like it. We're in the fun era of this industry and it's not going to last forever.
In case the very top of this piece was a little baffling, let me explain a bit more: Uniswap is an automated market maker, a particular kind of exchange, which means it always has a buy price and a sell price for any token it lists. Not only that, it has a price for every token in every other token.
– Brady Dale
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