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The biggest crypto news and ideas of the day |
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Circle became the first global stablecoin issuer to secure an Electronic Money Institution license, a prerequisite to offering dollar- and euro-pegged crypto tokens in the European Union (EU) under the Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) regulatory framework. The license gives the company, whose USDC trails behind rival Tether's market-leading USDT, pole position in grabbing market share among the 27-nation trading bloc's 450 million people. Stablecoins are a key piece of infrastructure in the digital asset market, facilitating trading on exchanges and, increasingly, used for transactions and remittances. Circle's $32 billion USDC is the second-largest stablecoin and the gap to market leader Tether's $110 billion USDT has been widening. |
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Will He Stay or Will He Go? |
Following President Biden's disastrous performance in last week's debate, a Polymarket contract about the possibility of him dropping out of the race entirely rocketed off in trading volume post-debate, with "yes" shares hitting 44 cents in the hours after, up from 19 cents prior. Each share pays out $1 (in USDC) if the prediction comes true and zero if not, so the 44 cent price indicated a 44% probability Biden would bow out. A story from NBC that Biden was to spend the weekend with his family at the Mount David Presidential retreat to discuss the future of his campaign pushed the odds up to 50%. Those odds leveled out to just over 40% as of Monday morning U.S. time as over the weekend the White House pushed back on reports, saying the trip was pre-planned. |
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| Sony is planning to restart the crypto exchange Whalefin, which it bought from crypto lender Amber Group last year. The deal was reported earlier by Wu Blockchain, and the details were later revealed by the Block. On Monday, Whalefin put out a notice that parent company Amber Japan was rebranding to S.BLOX. The notice added that the company was bought by Quetta Web, a unit of Sony, in August 2023. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Amber Japan, formerly known as DeCurret, was taken over by crypto finance firm Amber Group in 2022. Sony plans to restart the crypto exchange soon with a new app, the firm said in a release on the PR Times. |
Paging the Next MicroStrategy... |
Abra, the digital asset prime services and wealth management platform, has introduced Abra Treasury, a service for corporates that want to hold crypto on their balance sheet as a reserve asset, the company said Monday. The service will be operated by Abra Capital Management, which is an SEC-registered investment advisor, and will provide corporates, family offices, and non-profits with a range of digital asset treasury management solutions. Abra Treasury’s offering combines custody, trading, borrowing, and yield services and clients can hold their crypto in separately managed clients, allowing them to retain title and ownership over their digital assets, the company said. The current uncertain macro environment, characterized by higher inflationary pressures and rising geopolitical tension, has forced some corporate treasurers to consider adding bitcoin as a reserve asset to their balance sheets. |
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'I Know Nothing'–But I Can Still Verify Claims |
"I really think and I hope that we are moving to a place where everything where we care about security and safety is something that we actually verify with proofs," says cryptographer Jens Groth. Zero-knowledge proofs, that is. This cryptographic technique allows people to prove something is true about a set of data without divulging the data itself. Thanks in no small part to investment by the cryptocurrency industry, ZK proofs have come a long way from their humble origins in the 1980s. At Consensus 2024 in May, Groth, chief scientist at stealth startup Nexus Laboratories, gave a tantalizing talk about why, after years of research and development, now is "the ZK moment." Watch the replay. – M.H. |
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