Date: 07/16/2021
“I think the underlying technology of blockchain is really incredible and has lots of different things, particularly in fintech and finance.” — Steven Mnuchin
Weekly News Report:
1. Authorities in Malaysia destroyed more than $1.2 million worth of Bitcoin mining rigs after they were confiscated for operating illegally. Police in the city of Miri on the island of Borneo and the Sarawak Energy company arranged for a steamroller to run over 1,069 Bitcoin miners.
2. Bank of America approves bitcoin futures trading for some clients. Due to a large amount of margin required to trade the futures, it is now allowing some clients to access the crypto market, one of the sources said. Some clients are setting up to trade bitcoin futures, which are cash-settled, and one or two may have already gone live, the other source said.
3. Bitcoin bounces off $31K after Bank of America reportedly greenlights BTC futures trading. Bitcoin continued to bounce off $31,000 support during Friday as fresh data reinforced the importance of current price levels.
4. Trump ex-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says “It’s fine” to buy Bitcoin as a gold substitute. Speaking to CNBC on Wednesday, Steven Mnuchin confirmed that his perspective on Bitcoin had “evolved.”
5. The US President’s Working Group on Financial Markets plans to discuss stablecoins at a meeting on July 19, the U.S. Treasury Department announced Friday. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is convening the working group, which consists of major financial regulatory agency heads, to examine stablecoin regulation and risks, and to find suggestions for future work around this issue.
6. Out of China’s 34 provinces and province-level cities, 33 have enacted policies to accelerate blockchain innovation, local media reported, citing research from Chinese blockchain news site ChainNews.
7. China’s central bank says crypto gave impetus to the creation of its CBDC. A working paper released in English by the People’s Bank of China cites cryptocurrencies as an important context for the digital yuan’s development and reveals that the digital currency will use smart contracts to allow for programmability.
8. Shares in Picasso painting go up for grabs at $6,000 in blockchain sale. This marks the first time the ownership rights in a Picasso, or any artwork, are being broadcast onto the public blockchain by a regulated bank.
9. While the roughly 30% decline in TVL (Total Value Locked) of DeFi over the past two months looks bad, the year-over-year growth from $2.02 billion to $110 billion represents an increase of 5,500% for the sector as a whole. This represented an 11,751% increase from Q2 of 2020, demonstrating the significant amount of growth seen in DeFi over the past year.
10. Brian Armstrong, co-founder and CEO of Nasdaq-listed cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, took to Twitter to respond to a recent attack on crypto by Dogecoin co-creator Jackson Palmer. Crypto is a “much-needed breath of fresh air” for those who believe that government solutions are often “inefficient, overpromise or underdeliver,” Armstrong noted.
11. In an announcement published on Friday, the crypto exchange Binance announced that “effective immediately,” stock tokens are unavailable for purchase on Binance.com. As of October 14, 2021, at 7:55 pm UTC, the exchange will no longer support stock tokens at all.
12. A major cryptocurrency and blockchain association in Russia is launching a project to bring global crypto mining operations to the country amid a Chinese crypto mining crackdown. The Russian Association of Cryptoeconomics, Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain, or RACIB, announced an initiative aimed at transferring global computing resources for crypto mining to the Russian Federation.
