Date: 11/12/2021
“Inflation at 6.2% means that if we keep it steady for 10 years, your $100,000 will become $54,800 by then. Compounding is a powerful force. Satoshi is having somewhere right now.” — David Marcus
Weekly News Report:
1. Bitcoin (BTC) and altcoin investment firm Grayscale now have more assets under management (AUM) than the world’s biggest gold fund. Grayscale now controls over $60 billion — $1.7 billion more than the leading gold fund, SPDR Gold Shares (GLD). Grayscale’s flagship Bitcoin product, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), meanwhile, contains over 646,000 BTC, worth around $41.75 billion as of Nov. 11.
2. Loopring (LRC), an Ethereum-based project that allows developers to build their own decentralized exchanges, has jumped a stunning sevenfold in price just this month, nearing a market valuation of $4 billion. Analysts attributed the price jump to speculation ranging from GameStop-related rumors to the project’s potential usefulness in metaverse development.
3. The9 has signed a 32 megawatt (MW) mining capacity deal with Compute North to deploy 10,000 miners in the U.S. It also plans to add 14,000 miners with other hosting partners in countries including Canada, starting in December. The high-end S19j miners will be online in the second quarter of 2022.
4. Chia Network, the blockchain and smart transaction platform created by Bram Cohen, the founder of file-sharing platform BitTorrent, will provide technical services to Costa Rica’s national climate change metrics system (SINAMMEC), Chia said on Thursday.
5. The New England Patriots are partnering with Socios in the first NFL deal that could lead to the National Football League’s first fan token. Chiliz (CHZ), the crypto token that powers the Socios platform, jumped sharply on the news.
6. Binance-owned Indian cryptocurrency exchange WazirX said its user base has grown by over 10 times this year to 10 million. WazirX recorded a trading volume of over $38 billion year to date, equating to average monthly growth of 44%, the exchange announced on Friday.
7. The metaverse does exist but not yet in its “purest form,” equity strategist Edward Stanley said in the report published Thursday. Companies such as Roblox, Facebook and Naver are all currently building metaverses on their own company platforms, but a “true metaverse” would allow for “interoperability between experiences” across all these companies’ platforms. It will take some time and “cross-company collaboration to allow users to seamlessly move across millions of experiences.
8. FTX US’ average daily trading volume skyrocketed 512% in its third quarter versus the second quarter and hit a peak of $807 million during a 24-hour period on Sept. 7, the crypto derivatives exchange said Thursday. FTX US recorded an average daily volume of $360 million for the quarter.
9. The bitcoin miner plans to run approximately 6,200 Bitmain S19j Pro miners in the new hydro-powered facility, with a potential capacity of 620 PH/s mining power. Bitfarms said the 24MW capacity will increase the company’s total mining power to 106MW and is expected to cost 25% less than the company’s other power plants in Quebec.
10. Bitcoin (BTC) shook out leveraged traders in classic style this week, but new data suggests that the market is broadly healthier than earlier in the year. Highlighting findings from its latest weekly newsletter, data analysis firm Arcane Research showed how aligned futures markets have become in Q4 2021.
11. On Thursday, Universal Music Group (UMG) announced it had signed Kingship — not a musician, but a collection of four anthropomorphic non-fungible tokens (NFT). Billed as a “metaverse group,” Kingship is a partnership between UMG and the NFT investor Jimmy McNelis, who owns the four tokens in question.
12. Cryptocurrency values are up, but so is the price of everything else in the United States! Investor curiosity in BTC grows as data shows U.S. inflation rose to a 30-year high. The declining value of fiat currencies like the dollar has highlighted the power of Bitcoin and other altcoins as hedges against currency devaluation and inflation.
