CoinDesk Crypto

Uniswap’s latest plans may be public, but that isn’t stopping rivals from building alternatives.

Integral, a new automated market maker (AMM) designed with a baked-in order book, went live early Monday. The protocol’s asset pools have attracted $239 million as of press time as savvy decentralized finance (DeFi) traders race for early token rewards.

The project – built by four Harvard friends and a cast of industry bigwigs – is hoping to syphon liquidity away from decentralized exchanges like Uniswap with its approach to impermanent loss and order book mirroring. Integral’s team members think their design can not only quote better prices but provide fairer returns for liquidity providers (LPs).

Related: Market Wrap: Bitcoin Trades Near $58K; Stocks Struggle After Archegos Margin Call

“Our primary research question was: ‘What would be the final form of AMMs?’ And the answer: ‘One that eats other exchanges’ liquidity,’” Integral wrote in documents shared with CoinDesk, adding:

“Whenever another exchange tries to beat us with better liquidity, we mirror this liquidity onto ourselves until we regain the world’s best liquidity again. This process can be thought of as a continuous vampire attack until all world liquidity is integrated by us.”

Vampire attacks were made famous by SushiSwap, a clone of Uniswap created by the pseudonymous developer Chef Nomi. During that time, the platform offered token rewards for liquidity moved from Uniswap to SushiSwap. It now seems Integral is taking the idea one step farther by “mirroring” liquidity onto itself to gain adoption.

The founding team of nine, which has requested to remain nameless, is being advised by Polychain Capital founder Olaf Carlson-Wee, Gauntlet founder Tarun Chitra, Compound Finance founder Robert Leshner and Framework Ventures co-founders Michael Anderson and Vance Spencer.

Integral’s scheme

Related: Cryptocurrency Fund Flows Now at Lowest Since October 2020

Integral relies on two features to market itself as a competitor to Uniswap, whose latest version typically does $1.25 billion in 24-hour trading volume.

First, Integral uses Uniswap’s own price oracles, but with a five-minute delay. The team thinks the time delay will decrease instances of impermanent loss, where assets contributed to a DEX’s pool bleed out value. That bleeding is the result of how AMMs quote prices – by balancing asset reserves against one another and having arbitrage traders add or remove assets based on price movements off the exchange. 

This rebalancing, in certain situations, can lead to LPs losing value instead of gaining it. It’s thought a time delay will force traders to other platforms while still offering competitive prices.

Second, Integral will mirror snapshots of Binance’s order book onto the AMM to artificially create depth accompanied by Uniswap’s (delayed) prices. By doing so, Integral can experiment with different price curves relative to other AMMs.

Integral expects to be a home for whales, at least for the time being, given the need for liquidity to on-board to the exchange. Four pools will be supported: ETH/DAI, ETH/WBTC, ETH/USDC and ETH/USDT.

To this end, the Integral team raised 11 ETH in a Gitcoin grant to deploy the project on the Ethereum blockchain. 

Related Stories

• Don’t Follow the Suits, Follow the Weirdos
• Bitcoin + Ether: Risks and Rewards

Over the past couple of months, Non-Fungible Tokens, also known as NFTs, have burst into the public consciousness, expanding and even challenging our collective understanding of digital scarcity and ownership.

Behavioral finance and economics have long held that asset prices tend to overshoot during short-term directional moves, even those driven by fundamental factors

Former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Jay Clayton has taken on an advisory role at hedge fund One River Digital Asset Management the parent company of the newly launched digital asset fund One River Digital.

In a press release on Monday, One River Digital Asset Management which manages over $2.5 billion in institutional assets, announced Clayton will join the firm’s newly formed Academic and Regulatory Advisory Council along with economist Jon Orszag, and former White House adviser Kevin Hassett.

Clayton led the SEC during its crackdown on unregistered and fraudulent initial coin offerings. During that time the commission also refused to approve the application of any bitcoin exchange-traded funds and sued Ripple Labs.

Related: Visa Just Supercharged Stablecoin Legitimacy

Institutional bitcoin firm One River Digital is backed by billionaire hedge fund manager Alan Howard and has invested $600 million in bitcoin and ether for institutional clients.

The new advisory council will be tasked with assisting One River Asset Management to navigate existing policies concerning digital assets.

“The One River Academic and Regulatory Advisory Council will help us consider how these new digital systems and the investment opportunities they present will best fit within existing policy, while also helping us think through how to advance these frameworks in ways that ensure the US continues to lead the world in financial innovation and asset management,” said Eric Peters, CEO of One River Asset Management.

Earlier this month, Clayton was named non-executive chairman of Apollo Global Management’s board of directors.

Related: Blockchain Sleuth Kim Nilsson on the Mt. Gox Saga

Read more: Former SEC Chief Clayton to Chair Investment Giant Apollo

Related Stories

• What’s the Outlook for Crypto Under Gary Gensler?
• What’s Happening in the Asian Crypto Markets?

Cryptocurrency traders might be shifting their primary focus back to bitcoin after several weeks focused on ether, alternative digital assets and even non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

That might be one takeaway from an obscure data point pulled from the market for cryptocurrency options: the spread between the one-month implied volatility (IV) for ether (ETH) and bitcoin (BTC). It’s a measure of expected relative price turbulence between the two, and it has dropped to 8%, the lowest since Dec. 8, according to the data provider Skew. 

Historically, the implied volatility spread has proven a reliable indicator of upcoming shifts in market leadership. In September the ether-bitcoin implied volatility spread fell to multi-month lows, signaling a change in traders’ focus to bitcoin from ether and decentralized finance (DeFi); some even called it the end of the “Summer of DeFi.” Then, during the final three months of 2020, bitcoin surged 168%, outperforming ether and other major cryptocurrencies. 

Related: Visa Just Supercharged Stablecoin Legitimacy

Implied volatility is investors’ expectation of how risky or volatile an asset would be over a specific period, and is driven by net buying pressure for options and historical price volatility. In this case, the focus is on the difference, or spread, between the implied volatilities of the two crypto assets.  

At the most basic level, the drop in the spread to three-month lows indicates that options traders foresee ether and other coins trading in line with bitcoin, the biggest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. 

So cryptocurrency markets in the coming months might trade more in line with bitcoin’s fundamental drivers, which last year became more closely tied with economic data, because a growing number of large investors and institutions started buying the largest cryptocurrency as a hedge against inflation. Analysts say bitcoin has matured as a macro asset, with several public-listed companies such as Tesla adding it to their balance sheets. 

Factors such as monetary and fiscal policy expectations, news flow related to institutional adoption and traditional market action could have a bigger sway in determining prices for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, at least over the next four weeks. 

Related: Former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton to Advise One River Asset Management on Crypto

Ether is the second-largest cryptocurrency by market value, and many other so-called altcoins are built atop Ethereum’s blockchain technology. As such, many alternative cryptocurrencies tend to trade in line with ether.

The volatility spread climbed to record highs in January, suggesting scope for bigger percentage moves in ether and other alternative cryptocurrencies.

The volatility gauge peaked at a record high of 58% on Jan. 20 and has been falling ever since. Three- and six-month spreads are also on a declining trend.

While bitcoin has gained 100% this quarter, names like ether, XRP and chainlink (LINK) have chalked out more significant gains. 

One giant caveat: While the compression of the ether-bitcoin implied volatility spread suggests low expectations for ether price turbulence relative to bitcoin, it doesn’t necessarily say anything about the direction of impending moves. 

So bitcoin could go higher or lower, with ether and other coins likely to follow suit, and possibly charting smaller percentage moves than the crypto market leader.

Also read: Bitcoin Breaks Out, Near $58K, After Visa Adds Support for Stablecoin USDC

That said, April is a historically bullish month for bitcoin, and some options traders are buying $80,000 call options expiring April 30 in anticipation of a price rally. 

Bitcoin is already on the offensive heading into the seasonally bullish period. The cryptocurrency jumped to $58,000 on Monday, breaking out of a two-week-long bearish trend, after payments giant Visa added support for the stablecoin USDC. The announcement was seen as  a sign of growing mainstream adoption of digital assets. 

Related Stories

• Blockchain Sleuth Kim Nilsson on the Mt. Gox Saga
• What’s the Outlook for Crypto Under Gary Gensler?

Mogo Finance Technology Inc., a Canadian fintech firm listed on Nasdaq (NASDAQ:MOGO) and Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX:MOGO), is now giving its members who take out a new mortgage or refinance an existing one the chance to earn cash to buy bitcoin using its bitcoin rewards account. 

In an announcement on Monday, Vancouver-based Mogo said the cashback rewards program now includes “MogoMortgage” and will give users up to C$3,100 (US$2,461) in cashback rewards. The rewards are distributed in dollars into clients’ accounts which, in turn, allows clients to buy bitcoin through the MogoCrypto program within the Mogo app. 

Canada’s residential mortgage market is estimated at C$1.7 trillion (US$1.35 trillion). According to the company, this new scheme allows Canadians to get a mortgage while earning a cash reward to purchase bitcoin.

Related: Visa Just Supercharged Stablecoin Legitimacy

“Given the volatility and speculative nature of bitcoin, there’s an increasing number of Canadians who are looking for ways to participate without risking their own money, and our bitcoin rewards program meets this demand,” said David Feller, CEO of Mogo.

MogoMortgage is currently available to Mogo Members in a number of selected provinces including Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador.

The rewards program already applies to the Mogo Visa Platinum prepaid cardholders, allowing users to earn 1% cashback on purchases in Canada and 2% for foreign transactions, which can then be exchanged for bitcoin within the app. 

In February, Mogo announced it would acquire a 19.99% stake in the Canadian cryptocurrency exchange Coinsquare with the rights to increase ownership up to 40%.

Related: Former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton to Advise One River Asset Management on Crypto

Mogo was founded in 2003 and had an initial public offering on the TSX in June 2015 and has a market cap capitalization of over CA$500 million.

In December, the company announced its plan to make a corporate investment of up to CA$1.5 million (US$1.19 million) in bitcoin and said it will consider additional purchases throughout 2021.

At the time of publication, Mogo shares listed on the Nasdaq were trading up 4% at US$8.82 and up 2.63% at CA$10.91 on the TSX. 

Related Stories

• Blockchain Sleuth Kim Nilsson on the Mt. Gox Saga
• What’s the Outlook for Crypto Under Gary Gensler?

Why did cryptocurrency derivatives exchange FTX agree to pay $135 million for the naming rights to a Miami stadium? For the good of humanity, says CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. (Well, in part.)

In an appearance Monday on CoinDesk TV’s “First Mover,” Bankman-Fried said he wants to make as much money as possible in crypto and give it away through the practice of effective altruism. 

This was one motivation for FTX’s deal with the Miami-Dade, Fla., venue, home to National Basketball Association team Miami Heat, he said. To his mind, it’s partly an investment in the community.

Related: Visa Just Supercharged Stablecoin Legitimacy

“I’m looking at what role I can be playing in the world,” Bankman-Fried said. “Frankly, I hope we did a lot of good with some of the money that’s going to be spent there on this, and help a lot of residents in the county.” 

Disruptive technologies have birthed a long line of billionaires that go on to print their names on the side of arenas and team jerseys. Amid a booming period in the cryptocurrency industry, Bankman-Fried said he’s looking at what his legacy will be.

Internet legends Chamath Palihapitiya is a minority stakeholder of the Golden State Warriors and Mark Cuban bought the Dallas Mavericks in January 2000. If the NBA approves FTX’s deal, Bankman-Fried would become the first crypto chief executive whose name could be synonymous with a sports franchise. 

To be clear: This is still a business transaction. Bankman-Fried acknowledged there’s no “well-understood conversion break” to determine how much to pay for the naming rights and whether it’s a good deal. In some sense, the $135 million spent could be considered an advertising expense. 

Related: Former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton to Advise One River Asset Management on Crypto

“We feel like we’ve built a really great product … and we’d really love to see a lot of people get exposed to it and try it out and see what they think,” Bankman-Fried said. Miami is a growing hub for crypto businesses, and the headline-grabbing deal could lure in a new set of users who have never played around with crypto, he said.

“You see reverberations from what happens in the states,” Bankman-Fried said.

The line between making money and doing good is frequently blurred in crypto. Non-fungible tokens, for instance, touted for the ability to democratize ownership of digital goods, are becoming an arena for scams, Bankman-Fried said. 

“I worry that a lot of what’s going on in NFTs is not …  someone taking a product with intense demand and finding a way to use blockchain to make it that much better,” he said. “The worry here is this ends up like 2017, 2018 with [initial coin offerings] and ends up giving a bad name to some of the space.”

Related Stories

• Blockchain Sleuth Kim Nilsson on the Mt. Gox Saga
• What’s the Outlook for Crypto Under Gary Gensler?

Silvergate Bank will be the second lender to extend bitcoin-backed loans to investors who custody their crypto with Fidelity.

Fidelity began accepting bitcoin as collateral for cash loans in December after partnering with crypto lender BlockFi. The product targets investors who are interested in using their bitcoin without selling it, hedge funds, miners and over-the-counter trading desks.

Silvergate has been offering bitcoin-backed loans since June through its Silvergate Exchange Network, which allows customers to instantly move dollars between different crypto exchanges and is open even on weekends.

Related: Visa Just Supercharged Stablecoin Legitimacy

“Like Silvergate, we recognize the opportunity to create a more seamless investor experience by helping institutions maximize capital efficiency, as well as the opportunity to strengthen the digital assets ecosystem through greater integration and collaborations like this,” Christine Sandler, head of sales and marketing at Fidelity Digital Assets, said in a press release.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Related Stories

• Former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton to Advise One River Asset Management on Crypto
• Blockchain Sleuth Kim Nilsson on the Mt. Gox Saga
• What’s the Outlook for Crypto Under Gary Gensler?

As Cosmos enters its next chapter, one of the leading firms behind the interoperability network is rolling out a $20 million fund to support promising projects.

“We’re trying to lay the foundations for decentralized networks to flourish as part of Cosmos,” Tendermint CEO Peng Zhong told CoinDesk in an interview. “So, just providing another source of liquidity for people that want to build on our stack.”

The fund’s announcement is timed to the activation of Cosmos’ inter-blockchain communication protocol (IBC), a major milestone that went live earlier today. IBC enables distinct blockchains built on Tendermint Core to work together. The cross-chain flow of tokens could be a catalytic step for making financial products in the Cosmos network more widely used.

Related: Visa Just Supercharged Stablecoin Legitimacy

The company says the Tendermint Ventures fund, denominated in ATOM and IRIS tokens, will be the largest in the Cosmos ecosystem. 

“Tendermint Ventures is similar to ConsenSys Ventures,” Peng said, referring to the investments wing of Joe Lubin’s Ethereum workshop. “We’re going to identify promising projects, building using Cosmos tech and provide venture capital to accelerate their growth.”

The fund is meant to complement other efforts in the ecosystem, such as the $10 million Terraform Capital fund announced in February. But where Terraform focuses on decentralized finance (DeFi) on just the Terra blockchain, Tendermint Ventures seeks broader reach.

“In the near term, we are focusing on creating a really robust DeFi ecosystem within Cosmos,” explained Jin Kwon, the Tendermint chief of staff leading the new venture fund. “Our goal at the end of the day is that these projects that we bring in will be complementary to each other. So one may be doing something in one aspect of DeFi and another project will be to leverage that project.”

Related: Former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton to Advise One River Asset Management on Crypto

Indeed, Terra, which recently launched a high-yield savings account known as Anchor, is among the early investments by Tendermint Ventures. To date, the fund has also invested in Regen, IRIS, B-Harvest and Tgrade.

Related Stories

• Blockchain Sleuth Kim Nilsson on the Mt. Gox Saga
• What’s the Outlook for Crypto Under Gary Gensler?

The Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA) has requested feedback on its proposed regulations of security tokens, including derivatives.

• In an announcement made on Monday, the DFSA said it has published its framework for regulating the space and is giving the public 30 days to comment.
• The regulatory body is proposing updating its regulations to facilitate activities based on distributed ledger technology (DLT). The update will focus on public access to buying and trading security tokens and on issues related to the provision of custody.
• The key changes include allowing those facilities that trade security tokens to have direct access members, including retail clients, said DFSA.
• The agency said it will issue proposals for other types of tokens such as “exchange tokens” and “utility tokens” later in 2021.
• “The proposal for regulation of Security Tokens is a key milestone in paving a clear and certain path for those issuers who wish to raise capital in or from the DIFC using DLT and similar technology, and for those firms who intend to be involved in this market, by conducting or providing financial services,” said Bryan Stirewalt, the chief executive of the DFSA.
• Stirewalt said the DFSA has drawn on the experience of other regulators who have taken cautious steps in the rapidly developing area.

Read more: Dubai Free Zone Becomes First UAE Government Entity to Accept Bitcoin

Related Stories

• Visa Just Supercharged Stablecoin Legitimacy
• Former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton to Advise One River Asset Management on Crypto
• Blockchain Sleuth Kim Nilsson on the Mt. Gox Saga
• What’s the Outlook for Crypto Under Gary Gensler?

Digital asset custodian Hex Trust has completed a multimillion-dollar raise from prominent cryptocurrency and traditional investors to further its products and scale its operations.

According to a press release shared with CoinDesk on Monday, the custodian, which is licensed as a trust company in Hong Kong, has raised $6 million in a Series A funding round led by QBN Capital.

Other investors included Cell Rising, Radiant Tech Ventures, Kenetic Capital, HashKey, MD Labs, Fenbushi Capital, Borderless Capital, Genesis Block Ventures and Henri Arslanian.

Related: Visa Just Supercharged Stablecoin Legitimacy

The investment, Hex Trust said, will allow the company to hire “key talents” based in Hong Kong and Singapore in order to meet what it called “Asia’s soaring institutional interest in digital assets.”

“We are past the inflection point as blockchain has established itself as the next financial markets infrastructure,” said Hex Trust’s CEO, Alessio Quaglini. “The next 12 months will be critical to define the structure of the overall market.”

See also: Hex Trust Launches Licensed Custody Service for Non-Fungible Tokens

Earlier this month the platform launched a secure way of storing non-fungible tokens (NFTs) via its NFT Safe service. The service provides custody support to NFT collectors and investors within its Hex Safe platform.

Related: Former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton to Advise One River Asset Management on Crypto

The funds coming from the raise will also be used to flesh out the Hex Safe offering while building out the platform’s compliance module in order to move in lockstep with regulatory developments, according to the release.

Related Stories

• Blockchain Sleuth Kim Nilsson on the Mt. Gox Saga
• What’s the Outlook for Crypto Under Gary Gensler?

Bitcoin (BTC) held support around $50,000 after registering an oversold signal on the four-hour relative strength index (RSI). The next level of resistance is seen around $60,000.

• The four-hour RSI is not yet overbought, which could keep buyers active above the $54,000 support level.
• BTC is now breaking above a series of lower price highs from March 13, which suggests the short-term trend is recovering.
• The daily RSI is back in neutral territory, which previously supported strong price rallies.
• However, traders should continue to monitor intraday resistance levels as the broader uptrend from January slows.  

Related Stories

• Visa Just Supercharged Stablecoin Legitimacy
• Former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton to Advise One River Asset Management on Crypto
• Blockchain Sleuth Kim Nilsson on the Mt. Gox Saga
• What’s the Outlook for Crypto Under Gary Gensler?

Bitcoin (BTC) is rising in the wake of payments giant Visa announcing support for USD coin (USDC), a stablecoin whose value is pegged to the U.S. dollar.

• The biggest cryptocurrency by market value is trading higher on the day, near $58,000 at press time, with the daily chart showing a bullish breakout out from a two-week-long descending channel identified by trendlines connecting March 14 and March 20 highs and March 16 and March 25 highs.
• Prices have risen by nearly $2,000 since Reuters reported earlier Monday Visa’s decision to allow the use of stablecoin USDC to settle transactions on its payment network.
• USDC is the second-biggest stablecoin, with a market capitalization of about $11 billion, as per data source CoinGecko.
• According to Reuters, by adding support for the stablecoin, Visa has stripped out the need to convert the cryptocurrencies into traditional money for settling transactions on its network.
• The latest Visa news comes five days after Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk tweeted that the electric maker would accept bitcoin as payment for its cars. Bitcoin jumped from $54,700 to above $56,000 after Tesla’s announcement only to surrender gains amid heightened uncertainty ahead of Friday’s monthly options expiry.
• With the options expiry now out of the way, bitcoin’s price gains seen at press time look sustainable in the near term – especially with blockchain data indicating the market sentiment is bullish.

• With the channel resistance flipped into support, the focus is now on the psychological level of $60,000.

Also read: Elon Musk’s Bitcoin Marketing Coup

Related Stories

• Visa Just Supercharged Stablecoin Legitimacy
• Former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton to Advise One River Asset Management on Crypto
• Blockchain Sleuth Kim Nilsson on the Mt. Gox Saga
• What’s the Outlook for Crypto Under Gary Gensler?

The value of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the crypto sector more than doubled to $1.1 billion in 2020, according to a new report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

• The average deal size went from $19.2 million in 2019 to $52.7 million in 2020, according to PwC, with a greater share of activity taking place in Europe and Asia.
• Furthermore, 2021 is “already on track to significantly surpass it from every single metric,” Henri Arslanian, PwC’s global crypto leader, said.
• This will be driven by institutional players, large investors and cash-rich crypto platforms, he said.
• PwC’s report predicts institutional investment in the crypto industry will continue to increase, thanks to the interest in non-fungible tokens (NFTs), decentralized finance (DeFi), central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and stablecoins.

See also: PayPal to Buy Crypto Custody Firm Curv: Sources

Related Stories

• Visa Just Supercharged Stablecoin Legitimacy
• Former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton to Advise One River Asset Management on Crypto
• Blockchain Sleuth Kim Nilsson on the Mt. Gox Saga
• What’s the Outlook for Crypto Under Gary Gensler?

Justin Sun, founder of Tron, has showed his continued interest in non-fungible tokens with the announcement of a JUST NFT Fund for artwork priced at least $1 million.

• The fund will only accept non-fungible token art pieces with a price tag of at least $1 million and will seek to have works with a median value of $10 million.
• JUST NFT’s first work will be the Ocean Front NFT artwork by Beeple, which Sun bought for $6 million on March 23.
• The cryptocurrency entrepreneur tweeted Monday that the JUST NFT Fund “aims to be the ARK Funds in the NFT space to register world-class artworks on the blockchain.”
• Sun has been particularly active in the NFT artwork space of late, beaten by MetaKovan to the purchase of the Beeple NFT listed by Christie’s earlier this month.

See also: Jack Dorsey’s First Tweet Sells for $2.9M

Related Stories

• Visa Just Supercharged Stablecoin Legitimacy
• Former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton to Advise One River Asset Management on Crypto
• Blockchain Sleuth Kim Nilsson on the Mt. Gox Saga
• What’s the Outlook for Crypto Under Gary Gensler?

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez says the city should become a “clean energy” bitcoin mining hub.

• The mayor of Miami said in an interview with Laura Shin that part of bitcoin mining’s problem is its reputation as a “dirty activity” because “90% of it is done in countries that have dirty energy.”
• Suarez said he would love for Miami to become a bitcoin mining hub to harness the city’s nuclear power capability, “a clean energy supply that’s essentially unlimited.”
• Solar and hydrogen-powered technology could also enter this mix in the future, Suarez said.
• He also cited national security reasons as a motivation because there is an unease about 90% of mining being done outside of the U.S.
• Suarez had been asked by Shin how he reconciles his interest in bitcoin with the environmental impact of mining and fighting the effects of climate change on Miami.
• The Miami mayor proposed in February that residents be able to pay for services in bitcoin and that city employees be given the option of getting paid in it.
• The city’s commissioners voted to study the use of crypto before proceeding.

See also: Miami Mayor Previews ‘Favorable’ Crypto Policy

Related Stories

• Visa Just Supercharged Stablecoin Legitimacy
• Former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton to Advise One River Asset Management on Crypto
• Blockchain Sleuth Kim Nilsson on the Mt. Gox Saga
• What’s the Outlook for Crypto Under Gary Gensler?

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced its IBM’s blockchain-based digital health app for proving COVID-19 vaccination and test results is now live.

• According to a release by the governor’s office, individuals will be able to either print out their pass or store it on their smartphones using the Excelsior Pass Wallet app much like a mobile airline boarding pass,. 
• The pass will be used to confirm an individual’s recent negative PCR or antigen test result or proof of vaccination to help fast-track the reopening of businesses and event venues.
• Madison Square Garden and Times Union Center will said they will implement the pass. Other locations will be added as the program expands.

Related Stories

• NFTs Make It to SNL. Sign of a Market Peak or the End of Times? You Decide
• Can Crypto Create Cultural Revolutions?
• Soros Breaks Into Bitcoin
• Sentinel’s Decentralized VPN Protocol Launches on Cosmos Mainnet

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs), the buzziest segment of the cryptocurrency universe, made it to Saturday Night Live last night in an explainer skit featuring Kate McKinnon as U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen as well as the rapper Eminem.

• While the skit clearly shows how NFTs have captured the public’s imagination as stars like the NFL’s Patrick Mahomes, Rob Gronkowski and others have created and sold the tokens, sometimes for staggering amounts, it also could be a sign of a market top, or simply the approach of one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Still, there’s no doubt NFTs have gone mainstream.
• If after viewing SNL’s explainer, you find yourself wanting to know even more about the latest crypto craze, please check out a few of the many articles CoinDesk has written on the topic:

What Are NFTs and How Do They Work?

It’s an NFT Boom. Do You Know Where Your Digital Art Lives?

Related: NY’s Blockchain-Based COVID-19 Passport Is Now Live

How to Create, Buy and Sell NFTs

How NFTs Became Art, and Everything Became an NFT

Why the NFT Frenzy Won’t Drive Up Prices for Bitcoin Just Yet

• Or the following videos from CoinDesk TV:

• I think I hear hoofbeats.

Related Stories

• Can Crypto Create Cultural Revolutions?
• Soros Breaks Into Bitcoin
• Sentinel’s Decentralized VPN Protocol Launches on Cosmos Mainnet

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs), the buzziest segment of the cryptocurrency universe, made it to Saturday Night Live yesterday in an explainer skit featuring Kate McKinnon as U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

• While the skit clearly shows how NFTs have captured the public’s imagination as stars like the NFL’s Patrick Mahomes, Rob Gronkowski and others have created and sold the tokens, sometimes for staggering amounts, it also could be a sign of a market top, or simply the approach of one of the four horsemen. Still, there’s no doubt NFTs have gone mainstream.
• If after viewing SNL’s explainer, you find yourself wanting to know even more about the latest crypto craze, feel free to check out a few of the many articles CoinDesk has written on the topic:

What Are NFTs and How Do They Work?

It’s an NFT Boom. Do You Know Where Your Digital Art Lives?

Related: Can Crypto Create Cultural Revolutions?

How to Create, Buy and Sell NFTs

How NFTs Became Art, and Everything Became an NFT

Why the NFT Frenzy Won’t Drive Up Prices for Bitcoin Just Yet

• Or the following videos from CoinDesk TV:

• I think I hear hoofbeats.

Related Stories

• Soros Breaks Into Bitcoin
• Sentinel’s Decentralized VPN Protocol Launches on Cosmos Mainnet
• UK Man Ordered to Pay More Than $571M for Fraudulent Bitcoin Trading Scheme: CFTC

The Sentinel Network, a decentralized p2p bandwidth marketplace that supports the Sentinel dVPN application, is now live on the Cosmos mainnet. 

“Sentinel is the first project that focuses on offering privacy at the network level to any blockchain or dApp,” said Dan Edlebeck, co-founder of Exidio, which contributed to development of the Sentinel dVPN protocol. “Once integrated, these blockchains or applications will be able to provide their users with both privacy and censorship resistance. Simply, the purpose of the Sentinel ecosystem is to empower universal access to the internet in a trusted and provable manner.”

Sentinel Network allows anyone to be able to sell their bandwidth on its marketplace. Developers can utilize the Sentinel Protocol, built with Cosmos SDK, to build applications, both public and private, that use the Sentinel Network’s bandwidth marketplace for dVPN applications.

Related: Soros Breaks Into Bitcoin

Users will be able to sell their bandwidth to power the Sentinel Network and be rewarded in $SENT for doing so. As Sentinel’s testnet was originally built on Ethereum, a token swap will be launched Saturday to convert holders’ ERC-20 $SENT tokens to Sentinel’s native Cosmos-based $DVPN. $DVPN will be used to secure the network, participate in on-chain governance, pay node holders and rent bandwidth. 

In February, Sentinel completed a $3.5M strategic capital raise.

dVPN vs VPN

Generally, a virtual private network (VPN) lets its users create a secure connection to another network. It is often used to access restricted websites and content, shield browsing activity from public WiFi and provide a degree of anonymity by hiding locations.

VPN applications mask a user’s IP address, which is like a fingerprint of your device. VPNs generally help obfuscate that fingerprint. A VPN server will create an encrypted tunnel for your internet traffic that shields it from governments, ISPs and others.

Related: UK Man Ordered to Pay More Than $571M for Fraudulent Bitcoin Trading Scheme: CFTC

Some governments block certain websites, like Google or Wikipedia, based on geo-fencing, which means they can block it for people within different geographic regions. VPNs help evade this by letting people connect to servers in areas outside of the geo-fenced one. 

As Top 10 VPN has regularly reported, nearly three-quarters of free VPNs on the market have some level of vulnerability, share or expose customer data, or even contain malware.

A decentralized VPN (dVPN) takes these privacy measures a few steps further in that it can’t be compromised by a central actor or shut down by shutting down the company or server running it. In this way, it’s more resilient than a centralized VPN. Additionally, since all the code is open sourced, there isn’t a need to trust a third party – users can just check themselves. 

The initial focus of the Sentinel ecosystem is to provide a framework for the construction of dVPNs, according to Peter Mancuso, COO of Exidio.  

Read more: Decentralized VPN Sees Increased Use in Nigeria Amid #EndSars Protests

“Whether the purpose is to access restricted content or to increase the security of their transmission of data over the internet, individuals all over the world are demanding these types of security measures.”

As Freedom House notes in their latest annual Freedom of the Net report, the pandemic is “accelerating a dramatic decline in global internet freedom.” For the tenth year in a row, users of the internet have “experienced an overall deterioration in their rights, and the phenomenon is contributing to a broader crisis for democracy worldwide.”

Users of Sentinel use it for everything from browsing Netflix to limiting surveillance of their IP address, and stopping Internet Service Providers (ISPs) from logging their data and selling it.

“More extreme use cases relate to people in MENA using the platform to engage in pro-democracy movements, or simply organising against the will of an authoritarian government,” said Edlebeck. 

Sentinel has been used by Iraqi activists, for example, as an alternative to centralized VPNs, which can be hacked. 

The tech

Sentinel enables end-to-end encryption between users and the servers they’re accessing, all with open-source transparency. The dVPN protocol has a “system of bandwidth provability,” which lets the person provide their bandwidth in exchange for some agreed-upon compensation from the user. 

Sentinel gathers no logs pertaining to the user’s browsing or data history and uses a robust relay network with exit nodes (where the encrypted traffic hits the normal internet) whose ownership is distributed across many participating nodes, so users’ identities cannot be identified. Traditionally, exit nodes can be monitored to observe network traffic and potentially identify users. 

Read more: Brave Acquires Tailcat to Create Private Search Engine Competitor to Google

That being said, using a dVPN doesn’t mean you will ultimately stay fully anonymous. The ever-lurking user error, downloading malware and other factors could compromise anonymity. 

“Importantly, ISPs could be ordered by a particular government to turn the internet off completely,” said Mancuso. “While this sounds drastic, this is certainly possible and has happened in the past. However, technology such as Starlink, developed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, will literally beam the internet from space. Combining such a solution with Sentinel could prove to be a massive win for an individual’s sovereign right to security and importantly, privacy, when using the internet.”

Related Stories

• Bitcoin ETFs, April Options and Excitement Over Sphinx: The Week Ahead for Bitcoin
• Bitcoin Up After A Week of ‘Duds’