Selected articles of the week:
Last week, BlackRock announced a comprehensive partnership with crypto exchange Coinbase that would allow institutional customers easy access to cryptocurrency trading. Just seven days later, the world’s largest asset manager is upping the ante. A Bitcoin trust, similar to Grayscale’s successful GBTC investment vehicle, is set to become BlackRock’s first physically backed cryptocurrency product for institutional investors. The trust is likely to be seen as a sign that the trillion-dollar asset manager is looking to enter the race for the first US-based spot-bitcoin ETF.
BlackRock ventures into crypto markets with a bitcoin trust; race accelerates for first spot bitcoin ETF.
Permissionless blockchain networks like Bitcoin are characterized by unrestricted access and unprecedented transparency. In this context, every transaction is publicly visible which compromises privacy. The Ethereum protocol “Tornado Cash” was launched in 2019 for privacy protection and became known for its mix of transactions to obscure blockchain transactions on the Network. In addition to regular users, criminals also took advantage of this feature. Now, the US Treasury Department is setting a precedent: The immutable smart contract has been added to the official sanctions list, with any interaction considered a crime. In addition, the developer Alexey Pertsev was arrested in the Netherlands.
In updating the sanctions list, the U.S. Treasury Department included a smart contract for the very first time.
Ethereum has long suffered from capacity issues, leading to massively increased transaction costs at times. Several network scaling approaches have been developed over time. Layer-2 rollups like Optimism and Arbitrum are a key part of Ethereum’s short- and medium-term scaling strategy. An overview of the main types of rollups and the general state of Ethereum scaling solutions.
Ethereum is in dire need for scaling solutions, with optimistic and zero knowledge (zk) rollups aiming to fill that gap quickly.
Swissquote, Switzerland’s largest online bank, is betting on crypto. Customers have been able to purchase cryptocurrencies via the financial services provider since 2017. A good six months ago, the company announced its own crypto trading platform. The company now stated that users will be able to trade via the platform’s own order book at the end of September.
Swiss financial services provider Swissquote is looking to expand its crypto offering with a comprehensive trading platform by the end of September.
In addition: Since last winter, the capital markets have been reacting intensely to the increased macroeconomic uncertainty. Digital assets in particular came under heavy pressure in this market environment. After the prolonged downward trend of cryptocurrency prices, July turned out to be a period of recovery. But how is the new asset class doing in general? Yves Longchamp takes a look at fundamental factors in the field.
After several months of decline, the crypto markets recovered for the first time in July, led by Ether (ETH) and the Merge narrative.
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