Former Google CEO Becomes Strategic Advisor At Chainlink

Chainlink Labs – a smart-contract oracle service provider – recently signed on former Google CEO Eric Schmidt as a strategic advisor. Schmidt’s duty will be to help guide Chainlink in building “a world guided by truth.”

Schmidt Joins Chainlink

Chainlink announced its recruitment of the Ex-Google chief in a statement this Tuesday. The team is focused on aggregating and implementing real-world data to be used as smart contracts built on various blockchains. This is accomplished by using oracle networks, which connect web 3.0 systems with legacy databases.

In aggregate, Chainlink has helped secure over $80 billion in total value locked across multiple smart-contract chains.

“Blockchain networks and Chainlink oracles are at a crucial inflection point in terms of growth and adoption,” said Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov. “ Eric’s experience and insights around building global software platforms for next-generation innovation will be invaluable as we help developers and institutions usher in a new age of economic fairness and transparency.”

Eric Schmidt helped Google scale its infrastructure, including a $23 billion IPO, while presiding over the launch of Gmail, Google Maps, Chrome, Adsense, and Fiber. He was also chairman of the Department of Defence’s innovation board, and National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence. Today, he is the co-founder of Schmidt Futures and chairman of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

Schmidt believes blockchain’s lack of connection to the physical world is one of its glaring weaknesses, which Chainlink helps alleviate:

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“Chainlink is a secret ingredient to unlocking the potential of smart contract platforms and revolutionising business and society. I am excited to be helping the Chainlink Labs team build a world powered by truth.”

Eric Schmidt. Source: Vox

Chainlink’s Connections

Chainlink is focused on building a multi-blockchain ecosystem and has proven successful in expanding its network thus far. In October, the company partnered with Cardano – a top ten blockchain ecosystem – to bring oracle systems to Cardano’s smart contracts. This was remarkable timing, given that Cardano had only recently implemented smart contracts onto their chain.

More recently, the Associated Press announced that it will run a Chainlink node, used to provide smart contract developers with verifiable data from a highly reputable source.

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Stablecoins Empower the U.S. Dollar, CEOs Tell Congress

Key Takeaways

  • CEOs and executives from several leading crypto firms testified on stablecoins in front of U.S. Congress today.
  • Those executives told the House Committee on Financial Services that stablecoins will strengthen the U.S. dollar.
  • Representatives from Coinbase, FTX, Circle, Stellar and other companies appeared during the hearing.


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U.S. Congress conducted a hearing on crypto assets today, hearing testimonies from the industry’s most notable executives.

Crypto Executives Defend Stablecoins

The hearing was held by the House Committee on Financial Services in the U.S. Congress. Chairwoman Maxine Waters hosted a hearing on the topic of “Digital Assets and the Future of Finance.”

During the congressional hearing live-streamed on YouTube, executives from leading crypto firms gave their testimonies. Witnesses included Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire, Bitfury CEO Brian Brooks, Paxos CEO Charles Cascarilla, Coinbase CFO Alesia Haas, FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, and Stellar CEO Denelle Dixon.

One topic extensively discussed was stablecoins, or tokens are that are price pegged to traditional currencies such as the U.S. dollar. 

The topic is relevant to several of the executives: Circle and Coinbase are responsible for the USD Coin stablecoin (USDC), while Paxos is responsible for its own Paxos dollar (USDP).

Allaire and Brooks Emphasize Competition

Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire argued that rather than causing harm, stablecoins may help the global dominance of the U.S. dollar.

Allaire argued independent U.S. stablecoins will continue to dominate the crypto market even as competing alternatives such as China’s digital yuan, issued by its central bank, emerge on the market.



Whereas dollar stablecoins have carried out “trillions of dollars of transactions,” China’s digital yuan has done “only $10 billion worth of transactions so far,” Allaire observed.

He explained that the U.S. crypto industry wants the dollar to play a critical and strategic role, and as such, supporting U.S. stablecoins should be a “national security priority” for regulators.

Bitfury CEO and ex-OCC chair Brian Brooks agreed with Allaire in his testimony. Brooks said that., at a time when inflation is rising, stablecoins can help the U.S. dollar become utility-driven and “not just a monetary system created after World War II.”

Brooks endorsed U.S. stablecoins, arguing that their online nature will allow the dollar to “compete on features, not only on history.”

Others Discuss Stablecoin Security

Allaire went on to argue that stablecoins provide security. He noted that the assets backing stablecoins “are safer than dollars in bank accounts because [the latter] are fractionally reserved and lent out.” This, he said, poses more risk to the U.S. economy than stablecoins.

Paxos CEO Charles Cascarilla also testified to the security of stablecoins. Addressing concerns of a bank run caused by stablecoins, Cascarilla affirmed that stablecoins are “backed by money sitting in FDIC-insured bank accounts or money sitting in Treasury bills.”

This, he said, means there is “no risk of a run.” Cascarilla explained further: “It’s liquid cash, and you have tokenized a dollar. There is very good utility for such assets.”


Responding to criticism that stablecoins could be ripe for illicit activities, FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried said that “advanced policies are already in place” and that the “digital asset industry has a pretty strong standard” for KYC/AML procedures.

The other witnesses, Coinbase CFO Alesia Haas and Stellar CEO Denelle Dixon, discussed how stablecoins can help the unbanked.

They also suggested that greater clarity is needed from regulators, a point that is in line with Coinbase’s recent policy proposal, which suggests that a new regulatory framework should be created.

Reception to Hearing Was Positive

The majority of the committee members who spoke during the hearing supported the idea of not stifling innovation in the crypto sector. While several questions were posed as to how regulators can ensure investor protections, the general outcome of the discussion was positive and encouraging for the cryptocurrency space.

Jake Chervinsky, a notable crypto lawyer and the head of the Blockchain Association, commented on the hearing by calling it “the most positive, constructive, and bipartisan public event on crypto.”

Committee ranking member Patrick McHenry has called the cryptocurrency sector the “next generation of the internet.” He added that U.S. Congress must collaborate in a non-partisan way to regulate the burgeoning sector. 

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Despite Red Bitcoin, On-Chain Signals Flip Green

Bitcoin on-chain signals have remained green despite the recent red week. Bitcoin’s price had taken a plunge towards $40K and had brought a lot of losses with it as billions of dollars in long positions were liquidated on December 4th in one of the sharpest declines of the year. Mostly this has brought down a number of metrics associated with the asset but on-chain signals remain resistant.

On-chain data all ranging from miner revenues, transaction fees, hashrate, and daily transaction volumes have all shown positive trends for bitcoin. None of this has been affected by the price decline.

Related Reading | Number Of Bitcoin Lightning Network Nodes Jumps 23% In Three Months

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Hashrate Continues Recovery Trend

Bitcoin hashrate had taken a big heat with the China crackdown on mining that took place earlier in the year. The region had gone from providing about 70% of the mining power to almost zero in a matter of weeks, leaving the hashrate to suffer greatly. This has since been rectified as bitcoin miners have found new locations to resume their mining activities.

Chart showing bitcoin hashrate increase

BTC hashrate recovers post-market crash | Source: Arcane Research

Since then, hashrate has been gradually picking back up and in the past week saw a significant increase. Bitcoin hashrate is up for the past seven days after the first difficulty reduction following ten difficulty adjustments. As the difficulty has dropped, so has the profitability of mining activities increased. Given this, more miners have gotten back in the game and set up their mining rigs once more, leading to a rise in hashrate.

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Arcane Research also reported that this increased hashrate has led to an increase in block production rate. As more miners come back on board, an average of 6.46 blocks have been created each hour in the past week. This represents a significant increase of 11% in the same time frame.

Bitcoin price chart from TradingView.com

BTC loses footing at $50,000 | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com

Bitcoin Transaction Fees Rise

Bitcoin transactions fees have remained low through the past weeks, but there was a recorded increase in fees in the past seven days. On average, bitcoin transaction fees grew by 33%. This growth however does not do much for miner revenue. Even though fees are up, they are still relatively meager and only bring in about 1.7% of the total miner revenues.

Related Reading | Majority Of Bitcoin Investors Got In This Year, Says Grayscale

Average transaction value also jumped in the past week. As investors rushed to sell their holdings during the crash, the average transaction volume climbed by 8.3%. This was mostly due to holders who hold larger volumes moving their BTC to exchanges to sell, not only increasing average transaction volume, but also transaction fees at the same time.

Bitcoin daily miner revenues in the first week of December was $52,271,223 compared to daily revenues of $49,975,895 from the previous week. Fees per day, as well as transactions per day, were up at $891,499 and 276,680 respectively.

Featured image from PSU Watch, charts from Arcane Research and TradingView.com

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3 reasons why DeFiChain (DFI) price has gained 60% in December

Decentralized finance (DeFi) offers one of the most widely applicable use-cases for distributed ledger technology and today it is one of the main avenues for the wider adoption of blockchain technology.

Last week, as the wider crypto market corrected and Bitcoin (BTC) dropped by 22%, DeFiChain (DFI) bucked the trend and rallied 76% to establish a new high at $5.70 on Dec. 6 as its 24-hour trading volume surged from an average of $3.6 million to $24.3 million.

DFI/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView

Three reasons for the price breakout for DFI include the launch of decentralized assets on the DFI mainnet, a surge in transactions and users on the network and an increase in the total value locked on the protocol.

Traders pile into decentralized stocks and cryptocurrencies

The biggest source of momentum for DFI in recent weeks has been the launch of decentralized assets on the DeFiChain network and staking options for holders.

Users of the platform now have access to multiple pools that include large-cap cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ether, as well as synthetic versions of popular stocks and indices, including pairs for Tesla (TSLA), Apple (APPL) and the S&P 500 (SPY). In addition to having exposure to these assets, stakers also benefit from the higher-than-average yields available on the platform.

DeFiChain DEX pool pairs. Source: DeFi Scan

Other d-asset options available to users include Gold (GLD), Silver (SLV), the ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK) and the iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT).

Transaction volumes surge

Another reason for the strong performance seen from DFI has been an increase in transactions on the network following the release of decentralized assets.

Daily DeFiChain transaction count. Source: DeFiChain Analytics

The surge in network activity is largely the result of the new use cases made possible by the launch of decentralized assets, including the creation of assets, liquidity mining and arbitrage trading.

The added features have also helped to attract new users to the DFiChain ecosystem, with the number of unique wallets holding DFI reaching a new record high of 42,555 on Dec. 8.

Unique addresses holding DFI. Source: DeFiChain Analytics

Related: Nasdaq to provide price feeds for tokenized stock trades on DeFiChain

Total value locked hits a new all-time high

DFI has also seen a steady increase in total value locked on the DeFiChain protocol, which is now at an all-time high of $1.83 billion according to data from Defi Llama.

Total value locked on DeFiChain. Source: Defi Llama

The spike in value locked coincides with the launch of decentralized assets on the network and it’s claer that users rushed to deposit funds to gain access to the high yield opportunities available to liquidity providers.

Aside from the staking features offered on the DeFiChain DEX, larger DFI holders with at least 20,000 DFI also have the option of locking their DFI tokens up in order to run a masternode on the network and earn rewards in return for helping to verify transactions and secure the blockchain.

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.