Business

The last-minute cryptocurrency provisions added to the U.S. infrastructure bill sought to “capture DeFi,” argues Compound’s general counsel Jake Chervinsky. Appearing on the Bankless State of the Network podcast on August 17, Chervinsky — who is also DeFi Chair of the Blockchain Association — said the industry had been “blindsided” by the infrastructure bill’s crypto tax provisions which were announced just nine days prior to when it was expected to pass through the senate. While Chervinsky seemed willing to give most elected officials the benefit of the doubt, noting that previous discussions surrounding the infrastructure bill had “nothing to do with crypto,” he attributed more sinister motives to the Treasury Department’s role in influencing the legislative process. Conceding he may hav...

Creator of the beloved, sometimes controversial Pepe the Frog meme, Matt Furie requested that a frog-themed NFT project worth $4M be removed from OperSea fo copyright infringement. The “Sad Frogs District” is an NFT project containing 7000 programmatically generated Sad Frog NFTs from a selection of around 200 traits. The artwork depicted in the NFTs may draw some inspiration from Furie’s character Pepe. According to OpenSea’s Community-help Discord channel on Aug. 17, numerous members had asked why the verified NFT project had been delisted as they could no longer access the Sad Frog NFTs on the platform. An OpenSea moderator later confirmed the delisting, noting that “Pepe items have been delisted due to a DMCA takedown request by the creator of Pepe, Matt Furie.” The Sad Frogs District ...

Michael Burry, the investor made famous by The Big Short movie, has taken out a major short position against Cathie Woods’ ARK Innovation ETF According to second-quarter 13f filings, Burry’s hedge fund Scion Asset Management has purchased $31 million worth of bearish put options against 235,000 shares of the ETF. Put options are a way of profiting from the decline in value of a stock or fund. The Innovation ETF is the largest ARK fund with $22.62B in assets. It invests in a range of disruptive tech companies including Tesla, Square, Coinbase, as well as the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust. Burry wasn’t the only firm to short ARK’s flagship fund according to the filings. Laurion Capital Management held roughly $171 million worth of put options against 1.3 million shares an GoldenTree Asset Manageme...

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has taken a deep dive into token-based decentralized governance, suggesting that existing voting mechanisms are flawed and may be holding the DeFi sector back from realizing its full potential. In a lengthy blog post published Aug. 16, Buterin stated the crypto community needs to “move beyond coin voting as it exists in its present form.” Currently, the majority of decentralized finance (DeFi) projects manage their protocol upgrades, reward issuance, and other facets of governance elections where votes are distributed among token holders according to the size of their holdings. However, many projects have come under fire for allowing their voting process to be dominated by whales holding vast swathes of the governance tokens, allowing them to vote ...

Fidelity’s plan to corner the cryptocurrency market appears to be more ambitious than previously imagined, as the asset manager looks to provide more institutional pathways to digital assets.  In a recent interview with the Boston Globe, Chrstine Sandler, the head of sales and marketing for Fidelity Digital Assets, said institutional interest in crypto is growing. For most investors, the primary entry into crypto has been Bitcoin (BTC) and, to a lesser extent, Ether (ETH). Tom Jessop, who heads Fidelity Digital Assets, said the pandemic was a major motivator for investors to finally get into crypto: “What really got people off the fence was the pandemic, because you’ve got this scarce asset class — there will only ever be 21 million bitcoin created — and an environment where our curre...

After several years of nearly total media silence, the Dogecoin Foundation is coming back to support core developers and projects benefiting the meme-based cryptocurrency. In a Tuesday announcement, the Dogecoin Foundation said it would be reestablishing itself in an effort to support the Dogecoin (DOGE) community as well as promote the future of the blockchain. The foundation said it would be announcing new projects in the coming weeks encouraging the adoption and utility of DOGE “that increase Dogecoin uptake at a grassroots level.” “The Foundation holds the Dogecoin mark and the Dogecoin Logo and will maintain them for the community,” said the announcement. “This will mean the Foundation can continue to protect the Dogecoin Brand and allow (under a very liberal license) the ability to u...

Bitcoin’s (BTC) 65% recovery from sub-$29,500 on July 20 to a swing high of $48,200 on Aug. 14 took less than a month and helped bring fresh bullish momentum back to the crypto market and to traders who were dreading the prospect of another prolonged bear market. Currently, the BTC rally has stalled out near the $46,000 price level, and this phase of sideways trading is giving altcoins an opportunity to step forward. As shown in the chart below, the total market capitalization of the altcoin market has risen 80% since July 20. Meanwhile, the Bitcoin dominance rate is down 10% since July 30. Bitcoin dominance vs. total altcoin market capitalization,1-day chart. Source: TradingView Data from TradingView shows that the dominance rate of Bitcoin had been on the rise in recent weeks, but this t...

A bull trend is formed when demand exceeds supply and a bear trend occurs when sellers overpower the buyers. When the bulls and bears hold their ground without budging, it results in the formation of a trading range. Sometimes, this leads to the formation of a rectangle pattern, which can also be described as a consolidation zone or a congestion zone. Bearish and bullish rectangles are generally considered to be a continuation pattern but on many occasions, they act as a reversal pattern that signals the completion of a major top or bottom. Before diving in to learn more about the bullish and bearish rectangle patterns, let’s first discuss how to identify them. Basics of the rectangle pattern A rectangle is formed when an asset forms at least two comparable tops and two bottoms that are al...