Compiled by: Luan Peng, ChainCatcher
“What important events happened this week (7.29-8.4)”
1. Coingecko: The total number of bitcoins held by governments around the world exceeds 470,000, accounting for 2.6% of the total circulation
According to ChainCatcher, a Coingecko research report shows that governments around the world hold a total of 471,380.6 BTC, worth approximately US$32.7 billion, accounting for 2.6% of the total circulating supply of Bitcoin.
Among them, the US government holds the largest amount of Bitcoin among national governments, with 213,297 BTC, about $14.82 billion. A large part of the Bitcoin held by the US government comes from the seized dark web "Silk Road".
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2. Russia exchanged two prisoners for some Russians held by the United States and its allies, including BTC-e founder Vinnik
ChainCatcher reported that according to Protos, Russia used Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and a former US Marine Paul Whelan in exchange for some Russians held by the United States and its allies, including Alexander Vinnik, the founder of the BTC-e cryptocurrency exchange.
Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan were headed to locations outside of Russia yesterday. According to a report by Business Insider citing TASS, Vinnik and others will be sent in another direction and their names have been removed from the FBI's electronic database.
It is reported that in May this year, Vinnik pleaded guilty to conspiracy to launder money while working for BTC-e. He was responsible for the loss of approximately $121 million and encouraged criminals to use the platform to launder money and store illegal proceeds. Gershkovich and Whelan were arrested on espionage charges in March 2023 and December 2020, respectively, but the United States denied the charges.
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3. OKX Star criticized some Token projects for "harvesting users" and said that exchanges should not become accomplices of such projects
According to ChainCatcher, OKX CEO Star reposted @xiaomucrypto’s tweet “aevo project is happy with the sale” and said: “What is the original intention of cryptocurrency exchanges to list tokens? After some token projects are listed on exchanges, the only thing they do is release, reduce holdings and harvest users. Exchanges should not become accomplices of such projects, and OKX is not doing well in listing. Since there is no supervision on listing and reduction of holdings for the time being, how to protect this market? This is something that the entire industry should reflect on.”
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4. Forbes reporter: Harris campaign team and crypto industry leaders will attend a meeting in Washington next Monday
According to ChainCatcher, Forbes reporter Eleanor Terrett revealed on X that California Congressman Ro Khanna will host another meeting in Washington on Monday, which will be attended by crypto industry leaders, Democratic politicians, and representatives of the Harris campaign team.
Eleanor Terrett said the move represents an effort by pro-crypto Democrats to reconnect with the industry.
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5. Bitwise CIO: The market is "not optimistic enough", and investors need to rethink the potential upside of mainstream cryptocurrencies in the near future
According to ChainCatcher, Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan believes that the market is "not optimistic enough" about Bitcoin, and after the Bitcoin 2024 conference, investors need to rethink the potential upside of this mainstream cryptocurrency.
Hougan believes that the political support may be due to the growing popularity of cryptocurrencies among Americans. The industry’s strong lobbying influence in Washington has prompted many politicians to publicly support Bitcoin, even if their support has more to do with appealing to its growing popularity than a true belief in its value.
This shift in perspective and Bitcoin’s growing popularity has Hougan “rethinking what’s possible.” Hougan noted that ideas that were once considered far-fetched are becoming more and more likely: G20 countries adding Bitcoin to their balance sheets to preempt the U.S., sweeping crypto legislation passing quickly due to bipartisan support, and Wall Street’s mass acceptance of crypto.
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6. Governor of the Central Bank of Russia: Russia will launch international encrypted payments before the end of the year
ChainCatcher news: The head of the Russian Central Bank said that Russia plans to launch international cryptocurrency payments by the end of this year to counter Western sanctions. The central bank is ready to take flexible measures and is already discussing the conditions of this move with ministries, institutions and enterprises.
Additionally, Russia’s State Duma (lower house of parliament) has given preliminary approval to legislation that would allow businesses to use cryptocurrencies for international payments.
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7. Tancheng County Public Security Bureau cracked down on a criminal gang that used virtual currency to launder money and arrested four suspects
According to ChainCatcher, the public account of the Tancheng Brigade of the Traffic Police Detachment of the Linyi Public Security Bureau reported that the police station recently cracked down on a criminal gang that laundered money for fraudsters and arrested four suspects. On July 1, the police station received a clue that Ms. Li, a resident in the area, might have been the victim of investment and financial telecommunications fraud, and immediately contacted her. Ms. Li admitted that she was induced by a "successful man" to recharge more than 600,000 yuan on a fake investment platform a month ago.
The police locked in on the suspects and chased them for more than 1,500 kilometers overnight, successfully arresting two suspects, Li and Qiu, in Changning, Hunan. Later, on the outskirts of Tancheng, they successfully arrested Zeng and Miao who were counting cash.
Upon investigation, it was found that the criminal gang used virtual currency transactions to collude with overseas fraud suspects many times to transfer the defrauded funds and made an illegal profit of more than 50,000 yuan.
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8. Data: TRY’s trading volume exceeded US$10 billion for 8 consecutive months, the longest on record
According to ChainCatcher, according to Kaiko data, the Turkish Lira TRY trading volume has shown its resilience to cryptocurrency market fluctuations this year, with trading volume exceeding US$10 billion for eight consecutive months, the longest period on record.
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9. Qatar will implement an encryption framework by the end of 2024
According to ChainCatcher, Henk Jan Hoogendoorn, head of financial services at the Qatar Financial Center (QFC), said that Qatar has established a solid framework for tokenizing various real-world assets, including securities, debt capital market instruments, investments, Islamic bonds and other asset classes. The framework is expected to be completed and promulgated in the fourth quarter of this year.
Additionally, the QFC recently established a Digital Asset Lab to encourage innovation and research in the financial and digital asset sectors.
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10. ByBit Exchange suspends operations in France
According to ChainCatcher, ByBit announced in a press release on August 1 that it would cease operations in France and restrict account functions for French users.
ByBit said that from August 2, French users’ accounts will be restricted to a “closing only” configuration, preventing them from opening new positions or depositing new funds across its ByBit services and products.
From August 13, all open positions will be automatically liquidated and bank card services for French customers will be suspended. Customers can choose to withdraw the remaining funds in their ByBit accounts.
ByBit concluded the announcement by stating that it looks forward to returning to the French market in the future once it obtains the appropriate regulatory licenses required by French law.
(Source link)
“What are some interesting articles worth reading this week (7.29-8.24)”
1. "Exclusive Interview with Matrixport CEO Ge Yuesheng: In the next five years, we will create a super account connecting cryptocurrency and traditional finance"
From founding the mining giant Bitmain to Asia's largest crypto asset management platform Matrixport, Wu Jihan and Ge Yuesheng seem to follow a basic creed to avoid reinventing the wheel.
They prefer to focus on the blue ocean market, rely on original eye-catching products, and conquer the market in a high-profile manner to become the market leader.
In 2013, Bitmain, as one of the first manufacturers of Bitcoin mining machines, quickly dominated the market and at one point controlled more than 30% of the computing power of the entire network. Its founder Jihan Wu was also seen as the only person with the opportunity to control Bitcoin.
In just over five years, Bitmain has become the top crypto unicorn with a valuation of tens of billions of dollars.
At the end of 2018, Wu Jihan and Ge Yuesheng, who left Bitmain, set their sights on the still-developing field of Asian crypto asset management and founded Matrixport. They quickly made their first breakthrough in the market with a pioneering crypto wealth management product called “dual-currency wealth management.”
Two years after its establishment, Matrixport has successfully joined the ranks of unicorns. Today, with custody and asset management scale exceeding US$3 billion each, Matrixport has become one of the most important leaders in the crypto asset management market.
2. "Coinbase 2024 Q2 Financial Report Interpretation: Revenue of US$1.45 billion, net profit down 97% month-on-month"
Coinbase released its second quarter financial report today, with revenue of $1.45 billion, down 11% from the previous month and up more than 100% from the previous year, almost the same as analysts' expectations of $1.37 billion. Net income was $36 million, down 97% from the previous month. Adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) was $596 million. Coinbase has achieved positive revenue growth for four consecutive quarters.
Coinbase's total trading volume in the second quarter was $226 billion, down 28% from the first quarter, trading revenue was $781 million, down 27% from the previous quarter, and subscription and service revenue increased 17% to $599 million. Total operating expenses were $1.1 billion, up 26% from the previous quarter. Coinbase made good progress in diversifying its revenue in the second quarter, with subscription and service revenue reaching nearly $600 million. The balance sheet increased to $7.8 billion.
It is worth mentioning that Coinbase's custody fee income in the second quarter was US$35 million, a 7% increase from the previous quarter. The main driving force was that the average price of crypto assets in the second quarter was higher than that in the first quarter, and it also benefited from the related fund inflows as the custodian of BTC ETF products. In addition, Coinbase generated US$240 million in USDC stablecoin interest income in the second quarter, a 22% increase from the previous quarter.
3. "ZKX shutdown controversy: $7.6 million in financing conceals "word games", and the actual circulation of tokens TGE exceeds the official documents"
On July 31, Eduard, the founder of StarkNet's leading derivative product ZKX, announced that he had chosen to shut down the platform because he could not find a viable economic path, and all user funds would be returned to their trading accounts.
According to Coingecko data, ZKX tokens have fallen by more than 50% since the announcement of the closure and are currently priced at $0.01.
However, the news of ZKX’s closure continued to ferment in the crypto community. The project had just issued the token ZKX a few weeks ago and announced that it had received a large amount of financing of US$7.5 million supported by top institutions such as GCR, Amber Group, and Crypto.com. It was surprising that it chose to shut down at this time.
Investor @Ye Su posted on social media that when ZKX collapsed, he as an investor did not receive any advance news.
He added that the team claimed they were out of money, refused to provide any financial or expenditure details, and was unwilling to communicate with our investors. Most projects would consider how to transform and actively communicate during difficult times. On the contrary, Edward took money from early supporters without any communication, showing no moral standards and losing the right to start a business in the industry in the future.
4. "Dialogue with GaiaNet CEO: Challenging the giants and building a decentralized "ChatGPT""
In 2015, Matt Wright became involved in cryptocurrencies after helping Barclays, a leading British bank, organize a blockchain hackathon. Now, he has been in the crypto field for nearly 10 years.
Matt Wright worked at JPMorgan Chase and participated in the development of the open source blockchain platform Quorum. With the acquisition of Quorum by Consensys, Matt Wright joined Consensys and became the head of the community. He later took charge of Consensys's DAO organization and its accelerator Fellowship.
Matt Wright spends most of his time dealing with developers. As AI technology develops, more and more developers around Matt are investing in AI-related projects.
But Matt soon realized that today's AI field is dominated by a few centralized organizations in Silicon Valley, and there are many problems, such as censorship and bias of closed-source models, high model training costs, user privacy and IP ownership, etc.
Therefore, Matt decided to lead his team to create a truly democratic AI infrastructure that can solve these problems. Gaia came into being in May this year. As an open source distributed AI infrastructure project, Gaia attempts to become a decentralized alternative to AI giants. It aims to decentralize AI Agent software so that AI data content providers can have the ownership and compensation of data content they deserve.
GaiaNet's first use case was born in colleges and universities. Dr. Yang, director of the FHL Vive Center at the University of California, Berkeley, is using GaiaNet's distributed network to build decentralized teaching assistants for all of his courses, books, student communication feedback and other research and data.
In addition to building network infrastructure, GaiaNet is also seeking cooperation with academic institutions that have large amounts of valuable data, trying to enable them to have their own AI Agents.
When GaiaNet was first established, it received US$10 million in seed round funding. Its main strategic advisors include Lex Sokolin of Generative Ventures, Brian Johnson of Republic Capital, Shawn Ng of 7RIDGE, Kishore Bhatia, EVM Capital, Mantle EcoFund and ByteTrade Lab.
5. "Full text of the Federal Reserve's decision: maintaining interest rates unchanged, and not sending a signal of a rate cut"
The Federal Reserve kept the target range for the federal funds rate unchanged at 5.25%-5.50% for the eighth consecutive time, and reiterated that it would not cut interest rates until it had greater confidence in inflation, saying that the committee would pay attention to both inflation and employment risks.
6. "Revisiting the COMP $2,500 governance attack, why did the DeFi protocol repeatedly encounter DAO attacks?"
On July 29, “499,000 COMP tokens worth $25 million” were “legally” transferred from the Compound treasury to an unfamiliar and unmonitored multi-signature address by community vote, triggering a DAO governance attack.
After the COMP transfer proposal was passed, the COMP token price fell nearly 7% in 24 hours, from $50 to $46.6.
On July 30, Compound Growth Officer Bryan Colligan stated that after communicating with the whales behind this proposal, Stake COMP (stCOMP for short), a staking product of COMP tokens, was launched. This product will be controlled by Compound DAO. In the future, 30% of the new market reserves of the Compound protocol will be allocated to COMP stakers as a condition for canceling the proposal.
Currently, Proposal 289 of "COMP transfer worth US$24 million" has been cancelled. Affected by this news, the COMP token rose by more than 13% during the day and is currently quoted at US$51.4.
7. Vitalik Buterin EDCON 2024 Speech Highlights: Ethereum's Next Decade
Ethereum has been leading the innovation and development of blockchain technology since its inception. Since the official launch of the Ethereum blockchain on July 30, 2015, it has attracted the attention of developers around the world with its unique charm, and together they have drawn a blueprint for a decentralized future.
At EDCON 2024, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin once again stood in the spotlight and delivered a keynote speech on "The Next 10 Years of Ethereum", reviewing Ethereum's significant performance in terms of fees, transaction inclusion time, and wallet security. is making progress, and it is expected that smart contract wallets will be widely used in the next five years.
8. "Meme Carnival Night, Trump was "defeated" by a dog"
As an annual cryptocurrency conference, the Bitcoin Conference has always attracted much attention from all walks of life. In addition, as a prominent figure in the US presidential election, Trump has announced that he will give a speech, so this conference has naturally become the most popular event in recent times.
The popularity is often accompanied by the birth of memecoin. Coincidentally, Trump's speech spanning politics and encryption coincided with this Bitcoin conference, which naturally became the night of memecoin with the addition of Trump's buff.
However, the biggest meme winner of the night was not the Trump concept, but the new Shiba Inu owned by Kabosu, the prototype of Doge - Neiro.
9. "Politicians gather for ten years, and the Bitcoin Conference has evolved from a technical forum to a political stage"
On July 28th, Beijing time, the three-day Bitcoin 2024 (Nashville) came to an end.
Bitcoin 2024 is destined to leave the most significant mark in the history of cryptocurrencies. At a critical time in the 2024 US presidential election, this Bitcoin technology forum has become one of the biggest political stages.
Compared with previous years' attention to Bitcoin technological innovation, Bitcoin 2024 attracted many politicians, and the market focus was almost entirely on the politicians' encryption commitments.
US presidential candidates Trump, Robert Kennedy Jr., and several US senators participated in the meeting and proposed key strategies for Bitcoin and even the future direction of the crypto market.
After more than a decade of development, the Bitcoin Conference has grown from a forum that only technology geeks pay attention to to a political stage where politicians gather. Behind this is the continuous expansion of the influence of cryptocurrency, which has finally entered the mainstream.
Bitcoin may not need politicians, but politicians now need cryptocurrency.
10. "Compound governance attack: suspected "habitual offender" whale hoards a large amount of coins and forcibly passes a $24 million proposal"
Humpy, the main leader of Golden Boys, had previously launched “hijacking” through DAO on multiple DeFi protocols.
