Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin incensed Shiba Inu token holders by getting rid of his holdings.
The market for SHIB collapsed.
Now, one group wants to collapse the market for ETH.
The Telegram group War on Rugs hates rug pulls. So, naturally, it’s…trying to pull the rug out on Ethereum.
The watchdog group, which says it’s composed of developers and auditors, has created the Rug Ethereum (RETH) token in retaliation for Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s decision to transfer millions in Shiba Inu (SHIB) to charity while simultaneouslycrashing the marketfor the token.
“Vitalik rug pulled Shiba, innocent investors have been hurt,” War on Rugs toldDecryptvia direct message the day before launching the token. “He should never be shown as a hero for this.”
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, who agreed to list the token on Binance’s “Innovation Zone,” has called SHIB “super high risk.” And War on Rugs, which looked at the smart contract, noted earlier this year that Buterin had a very large stake in the token, which meant it could be vulnerable.
A rug pull is a type of scam in which developers abruptly leave a project and take investors’ money with them. They’re common in the Wild West of decentralized finance (DeFi), where people can go to get crypto loans, earn interest, and trade assets without the help of a financial intermediary—or the insurance such intermediaries provide.
Buterin, however, didn’t develop the token—he received it. The creators of the meme token sent trillions of the sub-penny asset to Buterin, who is revered among Ethereum acolytes for his intellectual prowess and his seeming lack of concern for the things money can buy. No Lambos here. Sending the funds to Buterin’s wallet lent the project the veneer of legitimacy while alsotheoreticallydecreasing the supply because Buterin wouldn’t touch the funds.
Theoretically. On Wednesday, Buterin did just that, removing the tokens from a liquidity pool in Uniswap and contributing to a crash in token price. As recently as Tuesday, the price of SHIB was $0.00003394. By Thursday, it had fallen by more than half, to $0.00001563.
“If you consider a ‘rug pull’ to be quickly, without notice, removing a damaging amount of liquidity from a pool, then I guess that’s what Vitalik did,” DeFi researcher Chris Blec told Decrypt. “The fact that he never asked for the liquidity in the first place definitely changes things though.
Blec continued: “The SHIB token project was originally deployed with a specific set of risks and a whole lot of inherent problems. Vitalik didn’t change any of that. He simply exposed the token for what it was.”
Buterin, meanwhile, was feted in some camps as a hero for shucking off a project he didn’t want to be associated with and giving the loot to charity. SHIB is run on the Ethereum blockchain, where its burgeoning popularity contributed to high transaction fees and network congestion, already a problem for the network. Buterin has yet to speak publicly about his motivations.
To War on Rugs, Buterin is the villain.
The RETH token, available on PancakeSwap, is its ironic revenge. Each transaction using the token incurs a 4% charge, half of which goes to holders and the other half of which goes toward borrowing ETH.
That ETH is then dumped on DeFi crypto lending marketplaceVenusProtocol in favor of Binance Coin. (Venus, unlike many other DeFi lending platforms, is built atop Binance Smart Chain, not Ethereum.) This, says War on Rugs in aMediumpost, will ultimately “create constant sell pressure on ETH pairs on BSC,” meaning the price of ETH will become depressed. (In a twist, it also sent Vitalik 50% of the 100 quadrillion supply, though it has banned his wallet from using it.)
RETH has more than 2,100 holders since going live this morning, according to blockchain tracker BscScan.
The move adds additional intrigue to a brewing cold war between Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain, a rival network for DeFi applications established by cryptocurrency exchange Binance. Some have argued that Binance benefits from congestion on Ethereum, providing it motivation for listing bulky speculative tokens such asSHIB on its own exchange.
And, now, it will literally be getting the benefits of RETH sales, whether it has the appetite for this rug pull or not.
Argentina has taken steps in recent months to regulate the crypto industry.
The moves come as the country tries to fight capital flight.
Argentina is updating its regulatory framework to include more controls on financial operations related to cryptocurrencies.
As a result, Argentina’s tax authority, AFIP, is demanding monthly reports on client data from crypto exchanges in the country, with the release ofForm 8126.
The regulation targets payment processors and non-bank entities that offer some financial services, including crypto exchanges. The mandated disclosure is extensive and includes a complete list of users, the movement of funds, and the available balances at the end of the month.
The formalization of this document comes after an initiative from the Central Bank of Argentina requiring all banking institutions domiciled in the country to provide personal information of clients known to have dealt with cryptocurrencies.
The Central Bank in April demanded any information that would identify customers who held crypto asset accounts or were engaged in the purchase, sale, and/or management of crypto payments. The Central Bank also asked for data of third parties authorized to move such funds.
AsDecryptpreviously reported, the government of current President Alberto Fernandez is trying to control capital outflows, the devaluation of the Argentine peso, and tax evasion. The Argentine peso lost 10% of its value between January and early April. Clamping down on cryptocurrency transactions is an obvious step. Cryptocurrencies are booming in Argentina not only because of their store of value properties but also because they have been off the radar of the traditional financial system.
Argentinian politicians are working to change that. Aproposalfrom the ruling party wants the AFIP to take charge of the ecosystem, whereas the opposition is proposing shared responsibility among the AFIP, the Central Bank, and the CNV (Argentina’s equivalent to the US Securities and Exchange Commission).
Within Latin America,Argentina has the seventh-highestBitcoin trading volume on P2P platforms. But, according toinformationfrom MakerDAO, the use of stablecoins such as DAI, is growing.
Popular analyst and trader Michaël van de Poppe is providing his take on the latest market correction while naming a set of altcoins that have caught his attention.
Although the market is down amid news that Tesla will stop accepting Bitcoin as payment until the cryptocurrency meets the company’s energy efficiency standards, Van de Poppe is telling his 288,000 followers not to fret.
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“It’s great to see the strength on altcoins. Yes, we’ve got some news regarding Bitcoin and Elon Musk (Tesla CEO), but essentially, not much has changed.
Markets are still bullish.”
In a new video the analyst tells traders that Bitcoin’s swing below $50,000 is a “normal corrective move,” which Van de Poppe anticipated would occur even without Musk’s recent tweets.
Van de Poppe notes that the altcoin market is holding up well, and that many assets appear especially strong against Bitcoin.
In particular, the trader is keeping an eye on four assets which he says are building exciting ecosystems.
The first of the set is Ethereum competitor Cardano (ADA), which is performing well amid the crash, up 15% on the day, while the rest of the market is down nearly 8%, at time of writing.
Van de Poppe is also bullish on deflationary blockchain Avalanche (AVAX), which is launching the first asset in its ecosystem, Avalaunch (XAVA) on Friday.
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Polkadot (DOT) is another asset Van de Poppe says is looking strong against Bitcoin amid the correction, acting as a signal that altcoins are still primed to advance upward.
“Some altcoins are doing well and I think they are just going to continue. One of them is DOT. DOT is showing that we have strength in the altcoins… Ethereum is also showing strength.”
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Major protocol upgrades are one of the most potent sources of price movement for cryptocurrency projects as community members and investors get excited about new features and traders rush in to “buy the rumor and sell the news”.
One protocol that has seen its price rise to new rights this week despite the overall bearish conditions affecting the market is Kusama (KSM), an experimental blockchain platform and a sister chain to the Polkadot’s platform. Kusama is designed to provide an interoperable and scalable framework for developers.
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that after dropping to a low of $378 on May 10, the price of Kusama rallied 55% to a new all-time high at $591.55 today thanks to a record $1.568 billion in 24-hour trading volume.
KSM/USDT 4-hour chart. Source:TradingView
Three reasons for the recent price appreciation for KSM include the upcoming launch of parachain auctions, recent integrations that helped enhance the interoperability of Kusama with other networks and increased opportunities to stake or lock up KSM to earn a yield.
Parachains are on the verge of launching
The most significant development for Kusama of late came on May 12 when the project announced that the most recent upgrade proposal was approved by the council and is now a public referendum.
BEAKING: Upgrade v0.9.1 passed council and is now a public referendum, fast-tracked to end Friday ~12pm CEST. This upgrade includes the code for parachains, auctions and crowdloans, reduces the min. vested transfer by 100x and reduces fees/deposits by 50x.
ₑₓₚₑcₜ cₕₐₒₛ.
— kusama (@kusamanetwork) May 12, 2021
This development provided token holders a three-day window between May 12 and May 14 to vote for the different parachains, crowd loans and auctions that they want to see on the Kusama network.
Since KSM tokens are required to be able to participate in voting, demand for the token immediately increased following the announcement and it continues to rise on May 14 despite an overall downturn in the cryptocurrency market.
VORTECS™ data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro began to detect a bullish outlook for KSM on May 11, prior to the recent price rise and before the announced passing of upgrade v0.9.1.
The VORTECS™ Score, exclusive to Cointelegraph, is an algorithmic comparison of historic and current market conditions derived from a combination of data points including market sentiment, trading volume, recent price movements and Twitter activity.
VORTECS™ Score (green) vs. KSM price. Source:Cointelegraph Markets Pro
As seen in the chart above, the VORTECS™ Score fluctuated in and out of the green zone over the previous week before climbing to a high of 70 on May 11 at roughly the same time that the price of KSM began to break out to a new all-time high over the next 32 hours.
Interoperability integration provides a spark
A second source for KSM’s price growth over the past month was the April 23 announcement that Chainlink awarded a grant to ChainSafe Systems to help expand support for Kusama on the Chainlink Oracle Pallet.
We’re excited to award a grant to @ChainSafeth for the expansion, improvement, & ongoing support of the #Chainlink Oracle Pallet, enabling devs to easily build hybrid smart contracts on @Polkadot & @kusamanetwork parachains as well as @substrate_io chains. https://t.co/wdXO6SwRKP
— Chainlink – Official Channel (@chainlink) April 23, 2021
As seen in the tweet, the expanded support enables developers to build hybrid smart contracts on DOT and KSM parachains along with other substrate chains, significantly enhancing their interoperability capability.
With one of the originally stated goals of the Polkadot network being increased interoperability across all blockchain networks, this development helped reassure community members that meaningful steps were being taken in regards to this goal by enlisting the most trusted and widespread oracle platform in the crypto ecosystem.
New staking and yield opportunities
A third motivating force behind demand for KSM is the attractive yield opportunities offered to token holders willing to stake their KSM tokens on the network or with new parachains.
Data from staking rewards shows that the average rate of return for staking and delegating KSM on the network is 13.72% while running a validator node earns 14.72%.
As part of the parachain auction process, projects like Karura have elected to conduct a crowd loan which involves community supporters bonding their KSM with that protocol for the duration of the parachain lease in return for the native token of the parachain.
Crowdloans and parachain auctions on @KusamaNetwork will start any day now!
We put together an overview of @KaruraNetwork, the DeFi Hub of Kusama, and the approach we’re taking with the community to win the first parachain slot on Kusama https://t.co/r1zrW5KOK9
— Acala – DeFi Hub of Polkadot (@AcalaNetwork) May 13, 2021
The crowd loan allows the project to meet the requirements to obtain a parachain lease for a specified period of time and all KSM tokens are returned to the contributors after the lease is up.
In return for locking their tokens for an extended period of time, community members are rewarded with the native token of the parachain in question but lose the ability to earn KSM staking rewards.
The crowd loan model is an innovative new fundraising design for crypto projects that has excited community members who are eager to obtain their favorite KSM-based tokens while also being able to retain ownership of their KSM.
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.
When Buckminster Fuller was asked by a 12-year-old boy how he would suggest solving international problems without violence, he answered:
“I always try to solve problems by some artifact, some toolor invention that makes what people are doing obsolete, sothat it makes this particular kind of problem no longerrelevant. My answer would be to develop a world energygrid, an electric grid where everybody is on the same grid.All of a sudden, there would be no problems anymore, nointernational troubles. Our new economic basis wouldn’t begold or dollars; it would be kilowatt hours.”
The above quote from the prescient Buckminster Fuller in 1983 was in reference to his now famous prognostication of the “Kilowatt dollar”, something he first discussed as far back as 1969 (three years before Nixon took us off the gold standard). While Mr. Fuller was referring to a theoretical energy-based unit of money, what he could not have realized at the time is that he was really talking about bitcoin.
Money: Our Most Fundamental Unit Of Social Information Technology
● In a free market society, the greatest network of information by far is price, which itself is, at its core, an intersubjective agreement of value. Money is the abstraction of that value.
● The “Schelling point” for participants in a society is whichever money exists that can best transmit that price information. This is where money “wants” to go.
● Money is, therefore, the facilitator of our communication and distribution of all economic resources. All innovation and societal progress flows from this communication. It is perhaps the most elementary and consequential social tool we have and has been essential to our species’ ability to successfully scale (i.e., dominate and hyper-exponentially populate the Earth).
● This principle of money, while simultaneously vague and grandiose, is perhaps so because it is taken for granted, abstracted away and obfuscated by technocrats, economists and politicians alike who are currently co-piloting our existing monetary system.
● Importantly, money is also the means to transfer uncertainty and risk to those willing to bear that uncertainty. This is one of the key manners in which money acts as information (beyond price itself), as monetary transfer of risk and uncertainty unveils invaluable morsels of information by way of successes and failures. It builds anti-fragility in the system with these increments of volatility throughout time. Without money, there would be no measure of volatility. No means to evaluate success or failure and no motivation for such risk-transferring behavior.
● More specifically, a medium of risk transmission is necessary for the accumulation of productive capital. Risk-takers and those with the appropriate skills to build new
productive capital are not always the same people. Those who already have accumulated wealth are not always those most fit to build new capital stock. Thus, a marketplace is needed to allow the swapping of risk in order to build the capital stock. Money is the medium for such transactions.
With these fundamental and philosophical logos as our background state, let us now explore how money as information technology is key to our grokking of money’s entanglement, with the harnessing of energy as a means to advance civilization. Not only does such an exploration help us to establish just how detrimental fiat forms of money are to the process of energy phase transitions, but it helps us realize just how invaluable bitcoin is as a means to extricate ourselves from the socioeconomic dilemma we currently face.
Above: The Kardashev Scale- A theory originating from Russian astrophysicist Nicolai Kardashev that touches upon the themes of this article, namely the relationship between technology and energy. The theory posits that to know a civilization’s capacity to advance, one must know the available energy it can harness. Unfortunately, Earth currently is defined as Type 0, unable to yet harness all the energy available on our planet, and not even on the above evolutionary map.
Image source
Energy, Monetary Entropy and Information Parity
For the purposes of the below discussion, let us define entropy in its simplest manner. High entropy is a state of high disorder, whereas low entropy is a state of high order.
An Entropy Equilibrium Hypothesis:
Thermodynamic entropy (TE) increases are always balanced by a commensurate decrease in information entropy (IE), so that:
TE = – IE
where a positive value indicates an increase in entropy and a negative value indicates a decrease in entropy.
This hypothesis is essentially an adaptation of the second law of thermodynamics, combining it with concepts from information theory, and using these observations to create a formula that is more comprehensively applicable to human economic activities. It is a restatement of this law so as to better understand the relationship between energy, money and information. It is simple and symmetrical.
The Power Of X
X ^ = technological innovation’s exponential order of scaling.
○ Human productivity involves taking our temporary and low entropy states — elegant organizations of double-helixed, organic and carbon-based existence — and transforming these arrangements into higher entropy states as we consume other low entropy energy matter to then produce higher entropy energy in the form of work.
○ Technological innovation enables us to do this work easier, faster, better and more abundantly with the same quantity of resources. This is also called productivity.
According to the renowned information theory of Claude Shannon:
In short,
Information = Reduced Entropy
Technology, in turn, is what allows information to scale.
Let us further unpack this concept of information, at least in the context of this article, as unstructured data manipulated into a structured and intentionally ordered format that reduces uncertainty.
Just as the first law of thermodynamics teaches us that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, likewise, the second law of thermodynamics states that thermodynamic entropy always increases over time. However, this law says nothing of entropy inherent to information or specific human systems such as market economies. Consequently, the second law of thermodynamics says nothing of the impact of human technological ingenuity on other forms of entropy, particularly related to information.
Given all this analysis, we can refine the above formula further as:
TEX = -IE
However, this equation, spartan as it is, is not complete, at least when applied to human social and economic systems. As previously discussed, given that money is perhaps the basest unit of information technology for social scaling, we must incorporate it into this formula, along with the general exponential order of technological scaling, so that:
(X-ME) ^
Whereby, ME= Monetary Entropy
We will define monetary entropy as the long-term inflation rate of that money. In truth, monetary entropy is influenced by much more than monetary inflation alone (discussed further below), but for the sake of parsimony, let us be content with this lean definition for the moment.
We can now write the hypothesis more comprehensively as:
The crucial realization as it concerns the important paradigm shift inherent to bitcoin is as follows: Fiat money involves a net increase in entropy.
This cannot be overstated and is imperative to this article’s thesis. Such a conclusion is reached despite money theoretically being a form of information that should reduce entropy when applied as intended. However, fiat, unfortunately, is not money as money was intended. Inflation, centralized and thus arbitrary control of the rules of supply (and attempts at also controlling demand via administered risk-free rates), global exchange rate volatility and competitive devaluations and mercantilism, subsidies, free debt-supporting zombie industries, opaque and uneven taxation enforcement, and many other behaviors, all conspire to create an aggregate equation of massive entropy in fiat money economies.
When money is denominated in fiat, ME is always > 0 (and is often well above this threshold, especially in the fullness of time).
When money is denominated in bitcoin, ME always = 0, period. No asterisks, no footnotes.
Another important observation teased out by the above formula is that as TE(X-ME) increases, a system’s inputs (energy resources) exhibit greater scarcity.
Kyle Baranko writes,
If money is not permitted its intrinsic capacity to absorb this scarcity, other resources will need to fill that void. This increases the cost of information production because there are fewer and fewer sources of increasing thermodynamic entropy from which to convert into decreasing informational entropy. Consequently, the system will experience a drag on productivity. Such an environment also manifests hidden costs like environmental externalities and systemic fragility which are easily cemented into chronic problems that become difficult to fix.
If an increase in TE^(X-ME) leads to greater thermodynamic or monetary scarcity, this implies that the equivalent decline in IE leads to a greater supply of structured, ordered information (decreasing informational entropy). Basic laws of supply and demand conclude this will tend to reduce the cost of information proportionally.
If, in the form of bitcoin, money is allowed to absorb thermodynamic entropy, money will accrue the incremental scarcity from increases in thermodynamic entropy values. This is how we arrive at another “mathematical” phenomenon, stated as NgU, or more colloquially known as “number go up.” Growth does NOT need to = gross domestic product (GDP); GDP growth = more consumption.
The largest contributing factor to GDP is consumption, and this has been growing materially as a percentage of GDP ever since the financialization of our economy via exponential growth in money and debt since the 1971 unraveling of Bretton Woods, the subsequent formation of the fiat standard and the USD petrodollar global reserve system. This trend only gets amplified further after each debt shock, forcing more and more consumption and leveraging to extricate ourselves from the newly indebted state we create with each cycle. This is clearly evidenced in the below chart, both at the starting point in the early 1970s, since the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) and more recently the COVID-19 pandemic.
Consumption in nominal U.S. dollars as a percentage of U.S. GDP.
Bloomberg Data
This is a recipe for disaster. It is definitionally unsustainable to grow in perpetuity by this measure given 1) limited thermodynamic resources and, more importantly perhaps, 2) the inefficient use and squandering of these very resources. This squandering is effectuated by inflationary monetary policies that do not allow the economy to transition naturally into a lower consumption society resulting from reduced informational entropy and the abundance this could create if we allow it. A sustainable path requires a redefinition of growth away from concepts requiring increased consumption (quantity of goods and services produced, wage growth, time worked, asset inflation/wealth effects, etc.), allowing the evolution of energy, information and money to virtuously improve our prosperity.
Growth = informational entropy = more time, lower time preference.
The above equation helps us visualize a framework for such a dynamic and demonstrates how bitcoin, as a base layer with a zero monetary entropy, can help propel us into this future.
Money does not = value.
Instead, it is a measure of value created in an economy. Good money, therefore, is information. It informs us of our progress. Bad money blinds us, causing us to veer off onto spindly and corroded dirt roads.
Inflation does not = the Consumer Price Index (CPI).
Inflation is not the cost of gas prices. It is not lumber prices going up. It is not the price of a Big Mac or your electricity bill. It is not even your house’s value appreciating.
The most encompassing definition for inflation is more fundamentally the depreciation of money versus the value otherwise created.
Inflationary monetary systems obfuscate the value created by societal productivity. This simple statement can not be overstated. Since the early decades of the 20th century, we have errantly accepted inflation as a first principle necessity in all free markets. But it is not the natural economic state, and in a broader historical context, it is actually a fairly recent experiment (see Gibson’s Paradox). Quite the opposite is true in terms of the natural state of human progress and free market capitalism. Once this problem is truly appreciated, the value of an absolute scarcity that is verifiable, immutable and censorship resilient across time and space, as well as stateless (belonging to the free market), we suddenly realize just how incredible an invention this truly is. That is the rabbit hole that is bitcoin. The notion is subtle, but once understood, the gravitational desire to dive headfirst down this rabbit hole of myriad societal revolutions becomes an inescapable journey.
Bitcoin = A Mirror
A deflationary monetary system of absolute hard money acts as a mirror for value creation. It is a compass to guide us toward a better economic path. Value is created through human ingenuity, environmental necessity and the compounding productivity driven by our accumulation of collective knowledge. These forces are often labeled generically as technology or innovation, and they always create value decreasing informational entropy. Said differently, all productivity is driven by technology and all technological innovation is deflationary at a fundamental level. That is, as long as money remains a constant in the equation.
If, however, money is inflating, we lose our measure of value. It would be like using the proverbial yardstick that constantly redefines what a yard is: A table is two yards; but then a yardstick creates more units and suddenly that table is four yards. The table did not grow. The measurement unit shrank. A store of value is just as it sounds. It stores all the productivity and work created. If more value is created than a sound money, then that money by definition has more purchasing power and stores greater and greater value. If instead value is being destroyed by money supply abuse, then people will without fail seek to store their value elsewhere. Money must always, therefore, start as a store of value before it becomes a medium of exchange. Deflation is a measure of success in creating economic value as innovation creates more for less. If prices decrease by 5% per year, that is a much greater expression of value creation than our current measures that are perversely inverted, such as “real GDP.” If you print dollars and then count the value created in those very dollars, what does that actually tell you? What if you could instead calculate the amount of goods and services created versus the dollars created. Would that not tell us more?
Conclusion
We live in a time of incredible technological advancements on increasingly exponential growth curves. This is taking information production to an unseen scale of abundance, but such abundance is diluted and often fully negated by fiat’s perversion of money’s potential to synergistically accommodate such plentitude.
If technological productivity has the potential to decrease informational entropy output for each thermodynamic unit of increased entropy input, this is the true definition of wealth creation and prosperity. More for less. Fiat not only robs us of this wealth, but it adds to the entropic dissipation polluting our ecosystem and making it ever more fragile. Yes, “ecosystem.” A word most often associated with environmental dialogues is not coincidentally built from the word “economy” itself (with its etymological roots in the Greek words for “distribution of the home”), as thermodynamic systems are inextricably linked to systems of human productivity (information).
Concluding with the trite axiom, “bitcoin fixes this,” does not even begin to do the solution that is bitcoin the justice it deserves. Bitcoin addresses this problem like Cinderella’s slipper. It is a perfect fit or a perfect solution in this case. Not only does the Bitcoin network inherently take highly disordered information and asymmetrically (through cryptography) make this information incredibly ordered, as eloquently stated by Bitcoiner Gigi in his article Bitcoin’s Eternal Struggle, but bitcoin (the money) with its properties of absolute scarcity, decentralized consensus, immutably programmed supply, rule-based and anti-fragile incentive structure, changes the game entirely. Each of these properties on their own would change the game, as they’re each intensely conducive to decreased informational entropy, especially when compared to fiat. But when combined, the synergistic reduction in entropy is perhaps even more exponential than the Cambrian explosion of information that is being produced by today’s technological abundance.
It will be a great day, perhaps a great filter of sorts, when the ships of money and other technology can sail along the same current.
This is a guest post by Aaron Segal. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC, Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.
The energy consumed by mining — the process that keeps Bitcoin’s blockchain running — has been an increasingly popular topic of discussion in recent weeks.
On Friday, CNBC posted an interview with SUKU CEO Yonathan Lapchik, during which he explained the Bitcoin mining scene as it relates to renewable energy. The interviewer noted Lapchik previously claimed that 75% of Bitcoin mining comes from renewable energy.
“We think that 75% is an actual figure,” Lapchik told CNBC, “The miners are truly incentivized to use renewable energy.” Turning his thoughts to electric car-maker Tesla, which recently announced it would no longer accept Bitcoin for purchases due to environmental concerns, Lapchik said “It’s surprising that Elon didn’t consider that before getting into the space, before accepting Bitcoin as a payment mechanism for Tesla.”
Tesla opened its doors to payments via Bitcoin by United States clientele back in March. The move went public following the car company’s purchase of $1.5 billion worth of BTC, announced in February.
Musk, however, recently stated disapproval of the fossil fuel energy Bitcoin mining calls on, via a Tweet on Wednesday. He also discontinued payments to Tesla in BTC, albeit seemingly a temporary move until Bitcoin mining reaches satisfactory energy usage levels.
“Really the data has been there forever,” Lapchik said of the 75% number. “We’ve been proving over and over and over that that’s a real case for miners in the Bitcoin network.”
Analysts weigh in on ether classic’s latest recovery. (Photo by Jaap Arriens/Sipa USA) (Photo by … [+]Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
NurPhoto via Getty Images
Ether classic prices have shown some strength lately, rallying more than 40% between yesterday afternoon and this morning as many digital currencies experienced gains.
The cryptocurrency, which is a digital sibling of the more prominent ether, reached $110.68 around 7 a.m. EDT, up 41.2% from yesterday’s low of $78.39, CoinDesk data reveals.
The digital asset experienced these gains after suffering a notable sell-off where it fell more than 50%, a retracement that took place after ether classic climbed to an all-time high above $175 on May 6, additional CoinDesk figures show.
[Ed note: Investing in cryptocoins or tokens is highly speculative and the market is largely unregulated. Anyone considering it should be prepared to lose their entire investment.]
When explaining these recent price movements, analysts pointed to several variables as potentially fueling this latest upside.
Investors Seeking ‘Quick Gains’
Some highlighted the desire of investors to select altcoins (cryptocurrencies other than bitcoin) that could provide them with some compelling upside.
“The boost is primarily motivated by investors looking for quick gains,” said Collin Plume, president & CEO of Noble Gold Investments.
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Michael Conn, who is the chairman, CEO and co-chief investment officer at Zilliqa Capital, offered a similar point of view, emphasizing that many investors have been on a “search for altcoins that can deliver outsize returns.”
Ethereum Classic Trust
Some analysts pointed to investors covering borrowed positions in the Grayscale Ethereum Classic Trust as placing upward pressure on prices.
The aforementioned trust, which is offered by Grayscale Investments, gives interested parties the opportunity to gain exposure to ether classic through a traditional investment vehicle.
Nick Mancini, research analyst at crypto sentiment data provider Trade The Chain, shed some light on the situation.
“Grayscale has had a ETCG Trust in the market that has a 1 year lock up. Many purchases were back in early 2020, so those shares are becoming available on the market, which forces those who own ETCG to buy spot ETC to cover their loans.”
Edward Woodford, cofounder and CEO of Zero Hash, also weighed in, citing “potential short covering by Ethereum Classic Trust (ETCG) holders who have a demand to cover borrowed positions” as helping propel ether classic higher.
Bullish Outlook
Plume provided an optimistic outlook for ether classic going forward.
He claimed that while the digital currency’s price will experience a correction in the near-term, it will benefit over the long-term from the anticipation surrounding key technological updates.
“There is another layer of investors and developers that are anticipating Ethereum’s move to 2.0,” he emphasized.
“That will push Ethereum Classic to becoming the only smart programmable blockchain with fixed supply on proof of work.”
“As Ethereum Classic gets used and tested, we can expect its reputation to build its own value the same way Ethereum has,” said Plume.
“This will pave the way for a steady climb to $500.”
Disclosure: I own some bitcoin, bitcoin cash, litecoin, ether and EOS.
The Binance Smart Chain continues to see some of the projects being built on it exploited. The latest was done by someone who had access to the PancakeSwap admin address.
The Exploit
It’s an age-old problem with smart contracts: randomness. Solidity has no native random function, and all sources of randomness have to be on-chain. Projects use things like block headers, transaction hashes, and more to create legitimate sources of randomness, but none are truly random – they are merely pseudorandom.
This issue has led to exploits in the past, such as the recent Meebits exploit. The PancakeSwap lottery numbers were generated based on certain predictable conditions. The exploiter could use this information to predict the numbers in advance, thus draining the entire pool.
Who Did It, and Why?
The author of this posthas provided detailed evidence proving that this may indeed have been foul play from the PancakeSwap admins, given that they created the contract, ‘found’ the exploit, and took the money using their own address.
While it’s true that the admin account did make use of the exploit and drain the funds, the author has a misconception: this was no foul play, and the funds weren’t stolen. While there has been no official statement from the PancakeSwap team on the matter, this event was clearly a white hat removal of funds from the contract, preventing a malicious actor from figuring out the bug and exploiting it.
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This is evident, first of all, from the fact that the PancakeSwap admins used their public known address to carry out the exploit. If they wished to drain the funds maliciously, they would have used an anonymous account. Secondly, the funds recovered from the lottery pool are being burned in batches by the admin address.
While an exploit is scary and never a good sign, the handling of this by the team instills some confidence, proving that PancakeSwap is willing to fix issues when necessary (even though they could have trivially taken the morally reprehensible path by stealing user funds).
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Ripple has filed a new legal memorandum in an attempt to counter previous motions from the SEC.
The memo claims that the SEC misquoted Ripple’s statements in its earlier attempts to dismiss Ripple’s defense.
This is the latest development in an ongoing lawsuit over whether Ripple’s XRP sales constitute unregistered securities.
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As part of an ongoing lawsuit, Ripple has countered the SEC’s previous legal motions by filing a new legal memo. This memo claims that the SEC misquoted key parts of Ripple’s defense.
Ripple Lawsuit Comntinues
In December, the SEC filed a lawsuit against Ripple, alleging that its sales of XRP constitute an unregistered securities offering.
As the case progressed, Ripple attempted to defend itself by arguing that there was a lack of due process and fair notice from the SEC. Ripple also requested a discovery of SEC documents.
In April, the SEC filed a motion to dismiss this, arguing that Ripple’s defense and demands would impose unfair obligations on it.
Now, in a new memorandum, Ripple has accused the SEC of omitting “key parts of discussions” in its motion to dismiss its claims.
Ripple Claims SEC Misquoted It
First, the SEC quoted Ripple as stating that its request for communications “[had] great relevance …to [its] fair notice defense.” However, Ripple says that its full statement implies that the request was relevant whether its defense was successful or not.
Ripple reiterated the statement in today’s memorandum, which reads: “The discovery is relevant “both” to the fair notice defense ‘and the same … applies to whether the individual defendants were reckless or had knowledge that XRP would be found to be a security.’ ”
Secondly, Ripple claims that the SEC misquoted a statement from the case’s judge. In its previous motion, the SEC claimed that the case’s judge said that discovery of internal communications “could conceivably be relevant to Ripple’s fair notice defense.”
However, Ripple says that this is incorrect; rather, the judge stated that the SEC’s charges merely open the door to such a discovery.
Will Ripple’s Argument Work?
It remains to be seen whether Ripple’s claims will be effective. The SEC previously stated that in the awareness, “no federal court has accepted a defendant’s argument” around lack of notice.
Given the case’s previous developments, it is nearly certain that the SEC will continue to oppose Ripple’s claims in the future.
It is still unclear when the case will come to a conclusion. Though it could conclude by the end of the year, each party’s resistance to the other means the case may last until 2023.
Disclaimer: At the time of writing this author held less than $75 of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and altcoins.
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The would-be class action suit claims Dapper Labs harmed NFT buyers by failing to let them cash out in a timely manner
A veteran crypto lawyer described the case as “goofy.”
A Virginia woman named Jeeun Friel is suing the maker of NBA Top Shots, a type of NFT marketplace that lets consumers own unique basketball highlights. According to Friel, the NFTs in question are actually securities and their creator, Dapper Labs, harmed her and other buyers by failing to register them with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In a lawsuit filed yesterday, Friel asks a New York state court to declare that Dappler Labs and its CEO, Roham Gharegozlou, violated securities law and to pay her and others who bought the NFTs an unspecified amount of damages.
For those unfamiliar with Top Shots, they have been around since late last year but really took off this February when Dapper Labs sold $2.6 million worth of the highlights in 30 minutes. Each one is nominally unique because it is registered as such on Dapper Labs’ blockchain, known as Flow. This tweet shows a sample Top Shot highlight:
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According to Friel, the company prevented customers from cashing out their NFTs in order to hold onto their money and build up hype around Top Shots.
“NBA Top Shot does offer these digital assets, known as Moments, to United States investors and in fact has sold over $500 million worth of them … By preventing investors from ‘cashing out,’ Defendants ensured that money stayed on the platform, propping up the market for Moments as well as the overall valuation of NBA Top Shot,” states the complaint in support of the allegation that Dapper Labs violated securities laws.
While the issue of whether cryptocurrencies are securities has sparked numerous lawsuits over the years, the issue is not clear-cut, and this appears to be the first time someone has alleged that NFTs should also be considered securities.
The Top Shot lawsuit, however, appears to be far from a slam dunk. Stephen Palley, a veteran crypto lawyer, sneered on Twitter that the case was “goofy” and almost certain to be thrown out of court for technical reasons but also because it was “idiotic” to suggest that anything that might appreciate in value should be considered an “investment contract,” which is a type of security.
He pointed out that buying himself nice shoes would technically be an investment in his feet—but that this is a far cry from making them a security under the law.
I buy nice shoes because they are “an investment in my feet” and a good pair of Aldens, well cared for, will last for ten years. But my wing tips are not an investment contract.
— Palley (@stephendpalley) May 14, 2021
Palley did, however, acknowledge that Friel and others may have a legitimate grievance if their allegations are true about Dapper Labs delaying customers’ ability to sell their NFTs. But he added that, if so, any legal case would have to based on consumer protection laws rather than securities law.
In response to Decrypt‘s request for comment, a Dapper Labs spokesperson said: “Our practice is not to comment on legal matters.”
