Headlines

▌Opinion: Trump's stance on cryptocurrency has changed dramatically, but his promise remains in doubt

Michael Brescia, co-founder of Cerus Markets, said that former President Donald Trump announced his support for cryptocurrency at the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville, promising to replace the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, establish a cryptocurrency advisory committee, and reserve Bitcoin in the Federal Reserve System if re-elected. However, Trump criticized cryptocurrency many times during his first term, saying that it is "not money," based on "castles in the air," and "may promote illegal activities," and that Bitcoin is a "scam."

While Trump's about-face has excited cryptocurrency supporters, it remains to be seen whether he will deliver on those promises. His policies are more likely driven by donations than by deep conviction. What the cryptocurrency industry needs is not just rhetoric, but clear regulatory guidance and meaningful engagement from both sides.

▌The US government address still holds 50,000 ETH

As of this writing, the U.S. government still holds more than 183,000 Bitcoins, worth approximately $12 billion, making it the largest geopolitical owner of the decentralized currency. According to Arkham Intelligence, the U.S. government also holds 50,000 ETH, 121 million USDT, 40,000 BNB, and more than 10 million USDC.

Quotes

As of press time, according to Coingecko data:

The latest transaction price of BTC is $66,905.24, with a daily change of -1.6%;

The latest transaction price of ETH is 3334.31 yuan, with a daily increase or decrease of +1.9%;

BNB's latest transaction price is $576.09, with a daily change of -1.5%;

SOL's latest transaction price is $183.27, with a daily change of -0.6%;

DOGE’s latest trading price is $0.1288, with a daily change of -0.6%;

XPR recently traded at $0.6027, with a daily change of +0.4%.

policy

▌US Senator Debbie Stabenow's encryption bill vote was postponed and may resume in September

U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow has been working on an encryption bill and had scheduled a hearing for Wednesday, but a vote on the bill was delayed and is expected to resume in September.

Stabenow said her bill would give the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission authority over “digital commodities” and provide permanent funding for the CFTC to oversee that market. The bill would specifically require cryptocurrency companies to hold adequate capital reserves and establish strict cybersecurity standards. It also aims to protect retail customers by providing them with accurate information about their assets.

“The bill has gone through multiple iterations as industry leaders and committee members continue to provide input to Senator Stabenow’s team,” said Cody Carbone, chief policy officer at the Chamber of Digital Commerce, in a statement. “It now appears that consideration of the bill will be delayed until after the August recess to reach more consensus, and it is positive that Senator Stabenow continues to reach out to stakeholders for feedback.”

▌Harris is considering choosing Michigan Senator Peters as her running mate

U.S. presidential candidate Kamala Harris is reportedly considering choosing Michigan Senator Gary Peters as her running mate for 2024. Peters is interested in the position and is currently trying to gain support from fellow Democrats to run for vice president.

According to Stand With Crypto, a nonprofit political advocacy group, Peters is “vehemently opposed to cryptocurrency.” The nonprofit noted that Senator Peters co-sponsored the Digital Asset Money Laundering Act of 2023, but also mentioned that he supports repealing SAB-121, a bill that requires banks holding digital assets on behalf of customers to record those assets as liabilities on their balance sheets.

▌Two artists sued the US SEC over whether NFT is a security and its jurisdiction

Two NFT artists sued the US SEC over whether NFTs are securities and its jurisdiction. Law professor Brian Frye and "Song a Day Mann" songwriter Jonathan Mann filed a lawsuit against the US SEC and its five commissioners in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana on Monday.

Lawyers for the two artists accused the SEC of waging a “campaign to assert jurisdiction over the sale of digital art,” citing the Taylor Swift tickets as an example and citing the agency’s two recent cases focusing on NFTs. Both companies are preparing NFT projects and are seeking declaratory judgments from the court.

The SEC declined to comment on the complaint. Ashley Ebersole, general counsel at 0x Labs and a former SEC lawyer, said the SEC’s previous NFT enforcement actions had been settled, so courts rarely had a chance to consider whether NFTs were securities.

Blockchain Applications

▌Bitcoin L2 protocol is gaining adoption, but security still needs to be improved

At the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, dozens of protocols that drive innovation in the Bitcoin blockchain were showcased. Bitlayer co-founder Charlie Hu said Franklin Templeton is exploring unlocking benefits for customers through the Bitcoin network by supporting protocols such as Bitlayer. Build On Bitcoin co-founder Alexei Zamyatin talked about the security issues of Bitcoin L2 and introduced the research on the virtual machine BitVM. B2 Network co-founder Calvin believes that Bitcoin can be an entry point to the non-crypto world and emphasized the importance of continuing to build and expand Bitcoin infrastructure.

▌Aave DAO launches Lido custom market and opens it to third-party developers

Aave DAO launches a custom pool designed specifically for Lido Finance’s stETH and wstETH. The new Aave V3 ETH Lido pool paves the way for additional custom financial solutions in the future and is open to third-party developers, allowing them to build additional specialized pools optimized for specific use cases.

Lido will provide liquidity incentives to users and reward developers for innovating use cases using staked ETH to support further growth of the Lido ecosystem. Aave’s V3 flexible architecture allows for multiple custom deployments to meet unique risk profiles, such as segregated collateral markets or institutional use cases.

This new Lido pool is the first custom deployment on Aave V3, demonstrating the protocol’s versatility and ability to optimize specific use cases.

Cryptocurrency

▌US presidential candidate Kennedy: Only Bitcoin can guarantee the dollar's status as a reserve currency

U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. believes that U.S. policymakers are quickly realizing the “inevitability” of Bitcoin and are scrambling to develop a coherent digital asset strategy to preserve the country’s fiscal dominance. Kennedy said that only Bitcoin can guarantee the dollar’s ​​reserve currency status.

Solana-based PYUSD stablecoin reaches nearly $240 million in supply since launch in May

According to data from the Dune analytics dashboard cited by the Solana Foundation, the Solana-based PYUSD stablecoin currently has a supply of nearly $240 million since its launch in May, while the supply of the Ethereum-based PYUSD token is approximately $348 million. PYUSD on Ethereum was launched nearly a year ago.

“This rapid growth underscores the strength and efficiency of the Solana network,” said Sheraz Shere, General Manager of Payments at the Solana Foundation.

▌BlackRock: We expect to see crypto ETFs in model portfolios by the end of the year or next year

Samara Cohen, chief investment officer of ETFs and index investing at BlackRock, discussed the iShares Ethereum Trust ETF (ETHA) and expects to see allocations to crypto ETFs in model portfolios by the end of this year or in 2025.

▌WisdomTree founder: Cryptocurrency will become mainstream

Cryptocurrency will go mainstream as regulatory clarity, publicly traded crypto funds and tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs) spur adoption, Jonothan Steinberg, founder and CEO of asset manager WisdomTree, said in an interview July 29.

▌Bernstein: Cryptocurrency is no longer a "bipartisan issue", Bitcoin and related stocks will benefit

Donald Trump outlined six cryptocurrency commitments on Saturday, including establishing a national strategic bitcoin reserve if elected, while Kamala Harris appeared to extend an olive branch to the industry, cryptocurrency "is no longer a bipartisan issue" and bitcoin and related stocks will benefit from the "Trump deal," Bernstein analysts said in a report.

"We believe this olive branch from the Democrats is a little late, and the industry will seek more concrete actions (to reverse previous mistakes) before heading into the Democratic campaign," Bernstein analysts said.

The analyst added: "It seems clear to the crypto community and industry that crypto is no longer a bipartisan issue, with Bitcoin prices rising as the likelihood of a Trump presidency increased and trading in a range as President Biden endorsed Harris as a potential successor to the Democratic nomination. We believe that crypto markets will trade entirely based on political developments until the election results are known in early November."

▌Opinion: The market may need a bigger catalyst than Trump's speech to make a major breakthrough

QCP Capital posted on its official channel that although the price of Bitcoin fluctuated during Trump’s Bitcoin conference speech, the market did not fluctuate as drastically as expected. The price of Bitcoin remained between $67,000 and $70,000, and volatility dropped significantly.

Trump’s speech echoed industry expectations, but the market may need a bigger catalyst for a major breakthrough. This catalyst may come as the US election approaches, when promises and policies become clearer.

Bitcoin has failed to break out of its all-time high despite Trump’s optimistic comments, so Bitcoin may continue to trade in a range.

Important economic developments

▌The probability of the Federal Reserve keeping interest rates unchanged this week is 95.9%

According to CME's "Fed Watch", the probability of the Fed keeping interest rates unchanged this week is 95.9%, and the probability of a 25 basis point rate cut is 4.1%. The probability of the Fed keeping interest rates unchanged until September is 0%, the probability of a cumulative 25 basis point rate cut is 89.6%, the probability of a cumulative 50 basis point rate cut is 10.1%, and the probability of a cumulative 75 basis point rate cut is 0.3%.

▌The U.S. Treasury Department lowered its quarterly borrowing estimates and expects a decline in cash buffers at the end of the year

The U.S. Treasury Department cut its forecast for federal borrowing this quarter and expects the government's cash buffer to decline by the end of the year. The Treasury said in a statement on Monday that it now expects net borrowing of $740 billion from July to September, down from an April 29 estimate of $847 billion. Most bond traders had expected the decline. The agency's estimate for cash balances at the end of September remained at $850 billion. In addition, the Treasury Department expects a year-end cash balance of $700 billion, a forecast that is being closely watched by traders because of its potential impact on the upcoming debt ceiling battle. This reserve will be reduced after the debt limit required by law is restored early next year unless Congress agrees to increase it or suspend it again.

NVIDIA releases software and services to promote the rapid popularization of artificial intelligence

Nvidia, the world's most valuable chipmaker, announced a series of software updates designed to make generative artificial intelligence more accessible to more businesses. The chip company officially released Nvidia Inference Micro Services (NIMs), a software package that solves many of the logistical issues required to use AI for specific purposes. Generative AI is the technology behind chatbots, speech recognition and other automated human-computer interactions, which often requires coordinating a wide range of hardware, software and information retrieval. Many companies don't have the expertise in this area, so Nvidia is trying to provide services and charge for it. Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang demonstrated the company's latest products at the Siggraph conference in Denver on Monday. He was at the graphics technology conference to try to convince as many industries as possible to start using Nvidia's technology to popularize artificial intelligence in the economy.

▌Apple uses Google's custom chip to pre-train AI models, Nvidia's dominance is at risk

Apple (AAPL.O) said on Monday that the AI ​​models that underpin its artificial intelligence system, Apple Intelligence, were pre-trained on processors designed by Google (GOOG.O), a sign that big tech companies are looking for alternatives to Nvidia (NVDA.O) for training cutting-edge artificial intelligence. In a technical paper published by Apple, the company detailed its choice of Google's homegrown tensor processing units (TPUs) for training, and Apple released a preview of Apple Intelligence for some devices on Monday. Nvidia's expensive graphics processing units (GPUs) dominate the market for high-end AI training chips, and demand for Nvidia GPUs has been so high over the past few years that it has been difficult to procure the required quantities.

Golden Encyclopedia

What is Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS)?

DPoS is an evolution of the Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, designed to provide enhanced scalability, efficiency, and democratic governance. Daniel Larimer proposed the concept of DPoS in 2014 as an enhancement of the traditional PoS consensus mechanism, designed to improve efficiency and scalability. Larimer first shared his vision in a Bitcointalk forum post, which led to the actual implementation of DPoS and the launch of BitShares in 2015. This marked the beginning of DPoS in blockchain technology, laying the foundation for its adoption in other projects such as Steem and Eos. Eos, in particular, used the consensus mechanism to conduct one of the largest initial coin offerings (ICOs) in the cryptocurrency industry in 2017, which attracted a lot of attention to DPoS and highlighted its potential in achieving high performance and decentralized governance.

Disclaimer: As a blockchain information platform, Golden Finance publishes articles for information reference only and is not intended as actual investment advice. Please establish a correct investment philosophy and be sure to raise your risk awareness.