CoinDesk Crypto

The Supreme People’s Court of China has said the country’s legal system should strengthen protections around digital currency ownership rights.

• Published Wednesday, a new guideline from the supreme court, under the section “Strengthening judicial protection for property and equity rights,” specifies that the legal system should enhance protections over new types of ownership rights such as digital currencies, online virtual assets and data.
• While the court did not elaborate on details or provide a definition of “digital currencies,” the guideline comes at a time when there are rising numbers of legal disputes in China over the ownership of digital assets, including major cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ether.
• Previously there have been legal decisions made by provincial and municipal courts in China in which digital currencies like bitcoin were treated as virtual properties.
• Until now, the country’s top judicial body has apparently not addressed the issue, however.
• The guideline was published by the Supreme People’s Court, together with the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).
• The NDRC is China’s top economy planning agency and is one of the 26 cabinet-level ministries that make up the central government, namely, the State Council.
• The opinion was issued in response to earlier guideline put out by the State Council in May calling for an acceleration of improvements to China’s socialist market economy.
• The supreme court’s guidance represents the legal system’s highest-level opinion regarding judicial services and protections.

Also read: China’s Blockchain Infrastructure to Extend Global Reach With Six Public Chains

Related Stories

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• DeFi Hype Has Sent Ethereum Fees Soaring to 2-Year High: Coin Metrics
• Latvian Police Seize Crypto Worth $126K in Bust of Suspected Cybercrime Ring
• Grayscale Moves to List Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin Trusts for OTC Traders

Latvian state police said they had dismantled an organized cybercrime ring, seizing over 110,000 euros ($126,926) in cryptocurrencies from the alleged perpetrators.

• Police said Monday they had confiscated 110,000 euros-worth of bitcoin, ether, XRP and tether from the group.
• Additionally, over 12 raids they seized 280,000 euros ($323,084) and $37,000 in cash, 11 properties and three cars.
• The gang is alleged to have engaged in “large-scale” money laundering from 2015 through 2020.
• Officials arrested and charged three suspects with committing cyber fraud, procuring reams of private account data on the dark web, laundering money through gold and cryptocurrency, and targeting at least 1,000 victims around the world.
• In a press statement, Latvian authorities declined to elaborate on the crime syndicate’s fraud tactics, saying that information was sensitive to the ongoing investigation.
• Criminal proceedings began in late February, they said.
• If convicted the suspects face three to 12 years in prison.

Also read: The DOJ Wants to Hire a Crypto Crime Attorney Adviser

Related Stories

• DeFi Hype Has Sent Ethereum Fees Soaring to 2-Year High: Coin Metrics
• China’s Supreme Court Calls for Better Protection of Digital Currency Rights
• Grayscale Moves to List Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin Trusts for OTC Traders
• Singapore May Extend Crypto Regulation to Include Overseas Activities

Grayscale Investments has announced that its digital asset funds Bitcoin Cash Trust and Litecoin Trust have cleared a regulatory hurdle in their march to begin being quoted on over-the-counter markets.

• The U.S. Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) on Monday verified that the trusts’ broker-dealer OTC Link LLC had completed its required diligence check. It’s one step in the security quoting process, but more lie ahead.
• Grayscale’s twin trusts still need to be deemed “eligible securities” by the Depository Trust Company (DTC) before they can begin trading. In a press release, Grayscale did not indicate when that ruling may come. (Grayscale is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, CoinDesk’s parent firm.)
• Bitcoin Cash Trust and Litecoin Trust will carry the tickers BCHG and LTCN once they commence OTC trading, the digital asset management firm said.
• Grayscale has taken to developing and offering crypto trusts as a way for retail investors to gain exposure to cryptocurrencies. It has already rolled out similar investment vehicles for bitcoin, ethereum and ethereum classic.

Nikhilesh De contributed reporting

Related Stories

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• BitMEX Owner Leads $3.4M Round for South African Crypto Exchange
• Alibaba’s Ant Group Plans Dual IPOs at Possible $200B Valuation
• UK Government Moving to Restrict Cryptocurrency Promotions

Bitcoin hit its highest price point in almost two weeks as stocks climbed.

• Bitcoin (BTC) trading around $9,371 as of 20:00 UTC (4 p.m. EDT). Gaining 2.2% over the previous 24 hours.
• Bitcoin’s 24-hour range: $9,149-$9,439
• BTC above 10-day and 50-day moving average, a bullish signal for market technicians.

Bitcoin stakeholders were delighted to see green flashes on their screens next to the world’s oldest cryptocurrency Tuesday. 

Prices on the world’s most valuable cryptocurrency went as high as $9,439 around 7:00 UTC (3 a.m. EDT), a price not seen since July 9. 

Related: Bitcoin Futures Pass $1B in Open Interest on BitMEX for First Time Since March Crash

“Bitcoin might be waking up,” said Rupert Douglas, head of institutional sales at London-based crypto brokerage Koine. “A close above $9,600 would be a strong sign.”  

Some are just happy to see prices go up in the bitcoin market, which has lacked activity for much of July. 

“Nice to finally see a bit of movement,” said Douglas Bilyk, a director at New York-based crypto brokerage Copper. “With lower volumes, it doesn’t take as much to push it, and looks like the initial move was up. Now we just need to see some follow-through.”

Major global equities are also showing positive gains today:

• The Nikkei 225 in Asia closed in the green 0.73% led by gains in tech stocks SoftBank Group, Nintendo and Sony.
• The FTSE 100 in Europe ended the day up 0.13% as the European Union agrees to a stimulus package worth €750 billion.
• The U.S. S&P 500 index climbed 0.20% as the banking and travel sectors made gains despite tech stocks mostly heading lower.

Related: Institutional Trading House ErisX Joins Silvergate Exchange Network

Read More: Bitcoin Futures Pass $1B on BitMEX for First Time Since March Crash

Gains in the equity markets appear to have been the catalyst for bitcoin’s positive trading day. “Bitcoin seems pretty correlated to equities at the moment,” Koine’s Douglas told CoinDesk. “The test will be whether BTC can hold up if equities sell off.”  

Stock indices have been outperforming bitcoin in July. However, Vishal Shah, an options trader and founder of derivatives exchange Alpha5, points out that flat markets for the oldest cryptocurrency sometimes can occur. 

“This lull isn’t uncharacteristic of bitcoin; it spent most of Q1 2019 in a sideways market,” he said. 

“Expectations are always running high for performance. And though it’s a well-run narrative by now, bitcoin has a tendency to exhibit a high volatility; things will move again,” Shah added.  

Read More: Bitcoin Shows Signs of Life But Ether (And Crew) Steal the Limelight

Curve DEX volumes up

The second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, ether (ETH), was up Tuesday, trading around $245 and and climbing 4.4% in 24 hours as of 20:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. EDT). 

Ethereum-powered decentralized exchange (DEX) Curve Finance is seeing huge growth in volumes this past week. Curve, at $70 million in volume over the past 24 hours, has overtaken bellwether DEX Uniswap as decentralized finance (DeFi) heats up. 

“It is probably a bit of interest picking up in non-bitcoin assets that are becoming multifunctional or yield-enhancing,” said Neil Van Huis, director of institutional trading for Chicago-based liquidity provider Blockfills.

Jake Brukhman, managing partner for New York-based crypto asset manager CoinFund, said Curve’s specialization in swapping stablecoins gives the DEX an edge in execution. 

When DeFi traders seeking opportunities need to arbitrage stable assets, Curve’s volume increases. 

“They are using a mathematical equation which makes slippage very low,” Brukhman said. 

Read More: Troll Token? Why DeFi Yield Farmers Are Now All About YFI

Other markets

Digital assets on the CoinDesk 20 are mostly green Tuesday. Notable winners as of 20:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. EDT): 

• zcash (ZEC) + 7.7%
• tezos (XTZ) + 7.3%
• neo (NEO) + 6.5%

Read More: China’s Blockchain Infrastructure to Extend Reach With Six Public Chains

Notable losers as of 20:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. EDT):

• chainlink (LINK) – 3.5%
• basic attention token (BAT) – 1%

Read More: Bitcoin Rises With Stocks as EU Agrees €750B in Coronavirus Stimulus

Commodities: 

• Oil is in the green 2.5%. Price per barrel of West Texas Intermediate crude: $41.80
• Gold is up 1.2% Tuesday, at $1,840 per ounce

Read More: Whale Alert Identifies 1.125 Million BTC as Satoshi’s Stash

Treasurys:

• U.S. Treasury bonds all slipped Tuesday. Yields, which move in the opposite direction as price, were down most on the 10-year, in the red 1.8%.

Read More: Crypto Exchange Group Eyes ‘Bulletin Board’ System for FATF Compliance

Related Stories

• Bitcoin Rises With Stocks as EU Agrees €750B in Coronavirus Stimulus
• Market Wrap: Bitcoin Clings to $9,200 While Ethereum Transactions Soar

Thailand’s Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) has issued a Digital Assets Exchange License to ERX, a trading platform launched by asset digitization firm Elevated Returns (ER), the company announced Tuesday.  

• ERX is one of six crypto exchanges to receive the license from the Thai SEC since it began regulating the space in 2018.
• While other licenced crypto exchanges in the country primarily trade cryptocurrencies, ERX only offers tokenized digital assets for exchange. 
• The ERX platform was built using New York-based crypto exchange technology provider AlphaPoint’s white label software.
• Elevated Returns specializes in digitizing traditional assets with a focus on real estate asset tokenization, and is best known for having tokenized the St Regis luxury resort in Aspen, Colorado.
• According to a statement, the group has a primary ICO portal license issued by the Thai SEC, as well as an asset management license and a secondary market license.
• This means the firm can now issue real estate backed investment tokens, trade them and “manage funds raised from the public to trade the investment tokens on behalf of investors” in Thailand.
• Through its Thai ecosystem, built on the Tezos Proof-of-Stake blockchain, the ER group said it intends to launch several real estate investment tokens to bring over $1 billion worth of assets to the blockchain.
• Stephane De Baets, ER’s founder and president, said the exchange license was the “last stepping stone” to completing the infrastructure the group had built over the last 18 months.

Related Stories

• Russia to Treat Crypto as a Taxable Property
• Singapore May Extend Crypto Regulation to Include Overseas Activities
• CoolBitX and Elliptic Team Up to Offer Crypto Firms Compliance Tools
• Crypto Exchange Group Eyes ‘Bulletin Board’ System for FATF Compliance: Coinbase Exec

Russia changed its draft bill regulating crypto and digital assets. You won’t go to jail for facilitating crypto deals in the country – at least, not just yet.  

Previously, the country’s lawmakers introduced a version of the law that would make any business issuing or trading crypto using Russia-based infrastructure illegal, provoking an outcry from the crypto community and criticism from several government branches.

The new draft is more neutral. It suggests that crypto is a kind of property that cannot be accepted as a means of payment. Any lawsuits related to the ownership of crypto can only be considered by the courts if plaintiffs report their crypto holdings and deals for tax purposes.  

Related: ERX Gets License to Launch Exchange in Thailand

This might change the currently inconsistent practice in the Russian courts, where there is no universal definition of cryptocurrency.

Read more: Russia Considering Draconian Rules for Illegal Crypto Operations

A digital currency, according to the bill, is a digital set of data, which can be used as a payment method or investment tool and has no central party responsible for it, “except for the operator and (or) the nodes of such systems, which are only responsible for maintaining the issuance of the digital data and upending such a system.”

The issuance and flow of crypto in Russia should be regulated by other laws, the bills says. The bill’s sponsor, Anatoly Aksakov, told Russian news agency RIA Novosti that more detailed regulations might be passed during the next parliamentary session in the fall. 

Related: Singapore May Extend Crypto Regulation to Include Overseas Activities

The bill passed the second hearing today, which is the most important one in the Russian lawmaking process. There are three rounds of hearings for any bill to pass, but after the second one, the text of a bill is considered final. The document, which was initially only dedicated to regulating digital securities, ultimately merely included a mention of digital currency and its basic definition.

The main part of the bill, however, outlines the regulations for assets like digital shares of a company, whether on a distributed ledger or in “another kind of system.” The issuers of such assets should register with the Bank of Russia, and have managers with experience in finance. The issuer of such a system should control it in a centralized way and should be able to amend the ledger in case a court rules so. 

Read more: Russian Courts Can’t Agree on Whether Crypto Is Property

The law is supposed to come into force in January 2021. It won’t change much for the cryptocurrency industry in Russia, says lawyer Mikhail Uspensky.

“The only thing outright prohibited is taking crypto as payment for goods and services, which was the Bank of Russia’s principal premise. But buying a cup of coffee for bitcoin is still a kind of exotic thing anyway,” Uspensky said.

He added that the current version of the bill is a compromise between the conservatively inclined Bank of Russia, other government bodies and the crypto community.

“They decided only to mention cryptocurrency in the bill so far and prohibit using it as a payment, but postpone deciding on more important issues, like the criminal cases [related to crypto], crypto OTC businesses, and so on,” he said.

Related Stories

• CoolBitX and Elliptic Team Up to Offer Crypto Firms Compliance Tools
• Crypto Exchange Group Eyes ‘Bulletin Board’ System for FATF Compliance: Coinbase Exec

Decentralized exchange volumes have already broken the all-time high set in June, according to data from Dune Analytics.

• Total traded volume for July passed $1.6 billion, as of Tuesday. 
• Four platforms – Uniswap, Curve, Balancer, and Bancor Network – have already surpassed their June volumes.
• Balancer, one of the newest decentralized trading platforms, is close to doubling its June volume at $160 million, up 72% from $93 million at the end of last month. 
• “For investors racing to get exposure to the newest decentralized finance (DeFi) projects, decentralized exchanges are the earliest and often only place to make those initial investments,” said Joseph Todaro, managing partner at Blocktown Capital. 

Update (July 21, 17:50 UTC): This article has been updated with a comment from Blocktown Capital.

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• With Token Uptick and Israeli Election Work, It’s Been a Busy Year for Bancor’s Founders

Crypto firms are cooking up ways to become “Travel Rule” compliant, Satoshi’s stash got a little bigger and one of Ethereum Classic’s top supporters is walking away from the project.

You’re reading Blockchain Bites, the daily roundup of the most pivotal stories in blockchain and crypto news, and why they’re significant. You can subscribe to this and all of CoinDesk’s newsletters here. 

Top shelf

Travel Rule
BitGo, Coinbase and other top exchanges are expected to release a white paper next month detailing a type of “bulletin board” meant to help exchanges comply with the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) “Travel Rule.” Participants would share addresses on the board and, if another member claims an address, the two entities could then share data P2P to keep personal information out of the reach of hackers. Gemini, Kraken, and Bittrex may also be participating in the Travel Rule working group, according to The Block. Separately, blockchain security firm CoolBitX and on-chain analytics company Elliptic are working together on another “Travel Rule” solution.

Related: First Mover: Bitcoin Shows Signs of Life But Ether (And Crew) Steal the Limelight

Satoshi’s Billions
Whale Alert found on-chain evidence that Bitcoin’s creator mined approximately 1,125,150 BTC (~$10.9 billion) as the network was getting off the ground. This is up from the 1 million BTC Sergio Demian Lerner initially attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto in 2013, by examining the “extra nonce” patterns thought to be caused by Nakamoto’s mining rig. In a Medium post, researchers describe how Satoshi continued mining with the same rig until at least May 2010, capturing 22,503 of the first 54,316 block rewards. 

FYI
YFI, the governance token for Yearn.Finance, is the latest DeFi project to capture the attention of yield farmers. The token’s creator Andre Cronje hasn’t set aside any of the tokens for himself and called it “a completely valueless 0 supply token,” in a Medium post. That all tokens are set aside for liquidity providers may have influenced a price run up to $2,374, though the project’s name (an unflattering acronym) and what appears to be a backdoor that could allow Cronje to print an infinite amount of YFI, have raised eyebrows. As of 13:00 UTC today, the price has collapsed to $821.07. 

Hard Fork Away
One of Ethereum Classic’s largest power providers has voted to abandon the project after an upcoming hard fork. OpenEthereum is the latest client to walk, citing concerns with the blockchain’s immutability, according to a GitHub vote Thursday. Of the 615 current Ethereum Classic nodes listed by ETC Nodes, 425 won’t update in the future as developers make changes via hard forks. OpenEthereum has chosen to shut down support for the original Ethereum mainnet to conserve developer energy for its Ethereum client, formerly known as Parity-Ethereum. 

Real-Time Alerts
CipherTrace, a blockchain analytics software firm, has deployed a predictive risk-scoring system that the company says provides real-time alerts on suspect crypto transactions for its exchange, investor and investigator clients. The tool will assign risk based on the on-chain histories of transacted funds, the Silicon Valley firm said. Inbound cryptos with unseemly ties (from sanctioned countries or a fraud campaign, for example) would get a “high risk” score under the system.

Quick bites

• Argentine telecom hackers opted for monero
• Samsung added Decentraland support on its mobile wallet app
• XRP investor Will Meade claimed he worked at Goldman Sachs. Goldman says there’s no record of his employment (Decrypt)
• DeFi got a robo-advisor (The Block)
• Dr. Seuss comes to the blockchain thanks to the maker of Cryptokitties (TechCrunch)

The big read

Related: Blockchain Bites: PayPal, Mastercard Inch Closer to Crypto

China’s Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN) took a great leap forward by integrating with six public blockchains. Beginning Aug 10, Tezos, NEO, Nervos, EOS, IRISnet and Ethereum developers will be able to build dapps and run nodes drawing on bandwidth from BSN’s data centers. 

The BSN is a toolbox for open source developers to build blockchain applications. Sometimes called the “digital belt and road initiative,” the BSN is an oxymoronic experiment in nation state-led decentralized tech development.

“This is part of China’s plan to be the one and only infrastructure provider for blockchain firms around the world,” CoinDesk’s David Pan reports. Evidence of President Xi Jinping’s commitment to “seize” the blockchain opportunity, the BSN reveals lingering contradictions in China’s approach to open source crypto projects. 

“The Chinese government and regulators are very cautious about decentralized public chains and try not to get involved in anything related to a public blockchain,” Hongfei Da, founder of NEO, said. “It is interesting to see BSN, which has a clear commercial purpose and is backed by entities with government background, is supporting such projects.” 

Market intel

Correlation Data Point
Bitcoin jumped from $9,190 to $9,360 in early morning trading, according to CoinDesk’s Bitcoin Price Index, after European Union leaders announced a €750 billion post-pandemic fiscal stimulus plan. This is another data point showing correlation between Bitcoin and traditional equities, as some major European equity indices are up at least 1.5% each, while Germany’s DAX index has nearly erased losses incurred during the coronavirus-led market tumble.

ETH’s Real Value?
Ether’s total market capitalization stands at about $26 billion, if you’re not taking into account all of the digital assets built atop the Ethereum blockchain. The combined value of ERC-20-standard tokens – which include stablecoins like tether, altcoins like Chainlink’s LINK and DeFi darlings like Kyber’s KNC – is around $26 billion, according to the data provider Messari. Including all these assets, the Ethereum ecosystem’s market cap is around $50 billion – closer to bitcoin’s $170 billion than if ether were considered alone. “The comparison shows how the rapid pace of development this year on Ethereum has brought the blockchain’s ecosystem closer to challenging Bitcoin. The value gap narrowed over the past month as bitcoin’s price stagnated, while demand for stablecoins and a flurry of activity in DeFi has ignited the value of Ethereum and the tokens that depend on it,” CoinDesk’s First Mover reports. You can get the full analysis in your inbox by subscribing here.

Ethereum at five

Five years
Five years ago, an unlikely project went live. It called itself “the world computer” and it promised to transform not just cryptocurrencies as we knew it, but the very idea of what could be done with cryptography and consensus. Ethereum had arrived.

From its technical aspirations to unicorns and memes, Ethereum is a culture on its own. It has spawned blockchain uses — from digital cats to yield farming — previously unimagined. 

Ethereum is at a crossroads. But it must complete an ambitious and fraught retooling of its foundations — the long awaited move to Ethereum 2.0 — to keep up with the market’s demands.

CoinDesk is marking the milestone with Ethereum at Five: a cross-platform series comprising a series of special coverage, a pop-up newsletter and live-streamed discussions. New issues and sessions launch daily from July 27-31. Register for CoinDesk Live and our pop-up newsletter.

Opinion

Surprise Attack?
Brenna Smith, an open source researcher and contributor for the investigative website Bellingcat, thinks no one should be surprised that Twitter was hacked last week, least of all Twitter. For years, celebrity impersonations and crypto scams have run rampant on the platform, without any meaningful redress. “Essentially since Bitcoin’s inception, cyber criminals and scammers have capitalized on the currency to funnel proceeds from emails scams, fake websites, and propositions on chat forums. Then, they began leveraging major social media platforms and impersonating celebrities. Mainstream social media platforms and celebrities provide two critical ingredients to a lucrative hack: a large audience and a semblance of credibility,” she writes.

Podcast

Singularity or Bust
The latest episode of The Breakdown looks at GPT-3, “the latest artificial intelligence tool to have you questioning the veracity of what you see online.” NWL gives an overview of the new language tool and asks whether we should be terrified. 

Who won #CryptoTwitter? Related Stories

• First Mover: Bitcoin Miners Find Upgrade Financing Aplenty, Even as Prices Languish
• Blockchain Bites: Binance’s Bitcoin Mining, ConsenSys’ Legal Trouble and Why Politicians Blame Twitter, Not Bitcoin

Bitbond, a Germany-based firm that provides blockchain enabled tokenization services, announced on Tuesday that it had become a member of the German bank association Bankenverband. 

• In an emailed announcement, the firm said that the bank association has already been working with initiatives like the digital euro, and BitBond would contribute its expertise in the tokenization and digital asset custody area through its membership. 
  
• Bankenverband, or the Association of German Banks, represents about 200 commercial banks in the country. 
  
• Back in February, BitBond said it had partnered with the Munich based bank, Bank von der Heydt, to help integrate blockchain technology with the bank’s established securitization services. 

Related Stories

• FATF Under Germany: Expand Digital AML/CTF Efforts
• German Regulator Had Just 1 Person Checking Wirecard’s $3.1B Books: Report
• Salesforce Co-Founder Launches Public Blockchain Network With Dollars Baked In
• Germany’s Neufund Shuts Down Security Token Platform, Saying BaFin Failed to Act

Five years ago, a wildly ambitious project went live. Its creators envisioned a “world computer” that would transform not just money but a vast range of social interactions, pushing the boundaries of what could be done with cryptography and distributed consensus. Ethereum had arrived.

From its technical aspirations to unicorn memes, Ethereum is a culture on its own. It has spawned inventions – from digital cats to yield farming – previously unimagined and now faces a major overhaul – Eth 2.0 – to keep up with the market’s demands.

CoinDesk is marking the milestone with Ethereum at Five: a cross-platform series featuring special coverage, a limited-run newsletter and live-streamed discussions on Twitter. New issues and sessions launch daily from July 27-31.

Related: First Mover: Bitcoin Shows Signs of Life But Ether (And Crew) Steal the Limelight

Oh, and watch out for the Easter eggs.

Ethereum at Five Newsletter

Each morning during the event, our editorial team will publish a newsletter that covers the waterfront from Ethereum’s culture and lifestyle to innovations like decentralized apps, DAOs, decentralized finance and enterprise solutions, and closes out by asking the big questions about the hotly anticipated Ethereum 2.0.

Don’t know what any of that means? Led by editors Marc Hochstein, Elaine Ramirez, Christie Harkin and Zack Seward, our limited-run newsletter will be packed with educational content that eases the newbie into Ethereum, while offering the thoughtful deep-dives loyal CoinDesk readers know and love.

CoinDesk reporters and analysts Ian Allison, Leigh Cuen, Brady Dale, Nate DiCamillo, Will Foxley, Christine Kim and Hoa Nguyen will guide readers through the five years of Ethereum’s evolution, including Ethereum’s efforts to upend the banking industry, its challenges in scalability and enterprise adoption, its Woodstock moment and its status as a global lifestyle brand.

Related: Troll Token? Why DeFi Yield Farmers Are Now All About YFI

Meanwhile, we’ll provide bite-sized lessons to ease readers into the concepts of smart contracts, enterprise blockchain, yield farming and more and offer recommended reading from the CoinDesk vault.

CoinDesk Live

Our live-streamed discussions welcome DeFi pioneers Hayden Adams and Robert Leshner, “The Infinite Machine” author Camila Russo and former ConsenSys exec Andrew Keys.

Sessions kick off daily at 4 p.m. ET and will be live-streamed on social media and the CoinDesk homepage. We’re hosting a Discord community to keep attendees engaged throughout the week.

On top of that, we set up a hotline at +1 (661) 4-UNICRN (+1-661-486-4276) to share tidbits of the Ethereum history and culture through untold stories. Go ahead, call us.

CoinDesk Live Agenda

Peace, Love and Unicorns: The Culture of Ethereum – Monday, July 27, 4 p.m. ET

• Speakers: Andrew Keys, Tonya M. Evans, Amanda Cassatt, Leigh Cuen

Ethereum prides itself on its inclusive, unicorns-and-rainbows vibe, which is a far cry from the libertarian, cypherpunk, mountain-man culture of Bitcoin. Come for a discussion about how this diverse, freewheeling and extremely social approach to software development made Ethereum what it is today. Stay for fun memories from a panel of veteran Ethereans from their nonstop global tour of conferences, meetups and festivals.

$55 Million Shockwave: How the DAO Hack Changed Ethereum – Tuesday, July 28, 4 p.m. ET

• Speakers: Taylor Monahan, Emin Gun Sirer, Griff Green, Matt Leising

The theft, the chain split, the legal aftermath – perhaps no single event shaped Ethereum’s trajectory as much as the DAO hack of 2016. Bloomberg’s Matt Leising sits down with the key protagonists to reflect on the events and their after-effects four years on.

Ethereum’s Bankless Bankers – Wednesday, July 29, 4 p.m. ET

• Speakers: Hayden Adams, Robert Leshner

Smart contracts were supposed to substitute signatures with software. These ideas have gone from science fiction to a $3 billion market, thanks to the boom in so-called decentralized finance built on Ethereum. An unlikely crew has emerged as the leading figures of this movement. We’ll talk to them about how we wound up here. 

Year Zero: From Those Who Were There – Thursday, July 30, 4 p.m. ET

• Speakers: Camila Russo, Anthony Di Iorio, Ken Seiff

Getting the “world computer” operational was no easy task. Hear about the 24/7 coding, the infighting and the instant millions minted in that process. Camila Russo, author of the new book “The Infinite Machine,” digs into Ethereum’s highs and lows with the programmers, entrepreneurs and investors who got in on the ground floor.

Inside the Hype Machine: Behind the Scenes of the ICO Boom – Friday, July 31, 4 p.m. ET

• Speakers: David Wachsman, Brad Laurie, Hartej Sawhney

Smart-contract auditors, PR pros, YouTube influencers: Meet the service class that was caught up in 2017’s ICO gold rush, selling metaphorical shovels to prospectors seeking billions in instant riches. We relive the good, the bad and the ugly of that era through their eyes.

Register for CoinDesk Live sessions July 27-31

Related Stories

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Investment platform Robinhood announced on Tuesday that it has decided to scrap the launch of its investment app in the U.K., according to a report by The Guardian. 

• In an email sent to about 250,000 people on Robinhood’s waiting list in the U.K., the firm said, “A lot has changed in the world over the past few months, and we’ve made the difficult decision to postpone our U.K. launch indefinitely.” 
  
• The firm’s email added that it would also close the waitlist and shutter its U.K. website shortly.
  
• Robinhood’s decision to scrap its U.K. launch was announced almost a year after it was granted a license to operate as a broker in the country. While the app managed to attract more users to its platform amid the pandemic, recent reports relating to the suicide of a 20-year old Robinhood trader have raised questions on whether it provides adequate consumer protection. 
  
• While Robinhood allows people to simply log on and make complex trades on its platform, a lack of understanding about the products traded can often put customers in a dire situation, as illustrated by a recent report by the New York Times. 

Related Stories

• Children’s Heart Charity Receives $48K in Crypto Donations
• Why the Robinhood Revolution Is the Future of Finance, Feat. Jill Carlson
• Crypto Exchanges Must Stop Acting Like Casinos in Wake of Robinhood Suicide: bitFlyer Exec
• PayPal, Venmo to Roll Out Crypto Buying and Selling: Sources

Open interest for bitcoin futures on BitMEX – the largest derivatives exchange by open interest – passed $1 billion Tuesday morning for the first time since the cryptocurrency market crash in March, a sign of life in a very quiet market.

• Open interest for bitcoin futures across all cryptocurrency exchanges broke above $4 billion for the first time since March, according to data from Skew.
• Before the March crash, open interest for bitcoin futures on BitMEX was about $1.2 billion.
• As open interest grew Tuesday morning, bitcoin gained more than 2%, breaking above $9,400, according to Bitstamp.
• “Open Interest on BitMEX has been climbing steadily, and we’re encouraged to see it surpass the symbolic $1 billion mark again,” said Greg Dwyer, head of business development at BitMEX.
• Bitcoin volatility and trading volumes remain low, however, as traders wait for decisive price movement in either direction.
• “During this current stretch of relatively low volatility, we’re seeing traders accumulate positions on our platform in readiness for what we believe is likely to be a significant uptick in volatility later in the year,” Dwyer told CoinDesk.

Update (July 21, 15:26 UTC): This article has been updated with a comment from BitMEX.

Related Stories

• Institutional Trading House ErisX Joins Silvergate Exchange Network
• Bitcoin Rises With Stocks as EU Agrees €750B in Coronavirus Stimulus
• BitMEX Owner Leads $3.4M Round for South African Crypto Exchange
• Market Wrap: Bitcoin Clings to $9,200 While Ethereum Transactions Soar

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) is seeking to extend its oversight to include cryptocurrency activities outside of its jurisdiction.

• A proposal from the city-state’s central bank would effectively extend the provisions set by the 2019 Payment Services Act (PSA) to include the overseas activities of locally based crypto companies or individuals.
• That means virtual asset service providers (VASPs) will be obliged to run their overseas activities to the same regulatory standards as their Singapore operations.
• Per the consultation paper, MAS argues the proposal would stop regulatory arbitrage – in which multinational VASPs cherry-pick the regulation that best suits their businesses.
• This would also align Singapore closer to the anti-money laundering recommendations set last year by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) – an international watchdog.
• VASPs affected will be those that work overseas but have a “meaningful presence” in Singapore – that is, if their offices and directors are based in the jurisdiction.
• Further, a company representative would have to be present and answerable to the Singapore regulator at all times.
• MAS originally floated the idea of extending PSA soon after it was ratified in December 2019.
• A public consultation period is open until Aug. 20, 2020.

See also: Singapore Begins Crackdown on Unlicensed Bitcoin Sellers

Related Stories

• CoolBitX and Elliptic Team Up to Offer Crypto Firms Compliance Tools
• BitMEX Owner Leads $3.4M Round for South African Crypto Exchange
• Crypto Exchange Group Eyes ‘Bulletin Board’ System for FATF Compliance: Coinbase Exec
• Alibaba’s Ant Group Plans Dual IPOs at Possible $200B Valuation

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commissioner (SEC) Hester Peirce on Tuesday criticized her colleagues’ decision to penalize Telegram’s ICO in remarks that underscored the maverick regulator’s open-arms approach to crypto.

• Peirce, whose liberal fintech stances have earned her the nickname “crypto mom,” told Blockchain Association Singapore that the SEC fundamentally erred in prosecuting and punishing Telegram’s Gram token sale, which raised $1.2 billion in now-forfeited funds for the messaging app as per a settlement last month.
• In her view, Telegram’s decision to sell Grams under a “Simple Agreement for Future Tokens” offering structure should have protected the project from securities violations. But as she pointed out, the SEC saw it differently, and worked to convince a court that the agreements for future Gram tokens counted as securities.
• “I do not support the message that distributing tokens inherently involves a securities transaction. What the SEC’s Telegram complaint cast as evidence of an illegal securities offering—that ‘the project would require ‘numerosity’: a widespread distribution and use of Grams across the globe,’ I see as a necessary prerequisite for any successful blockchain network,” she said.
• Peirce again called for a "safe harbor" that would give certain token projects three years to experiment while regulators retooled their frameworks for what is and is not an investment contract.

UPDATE: 7/20/2020 20:55 UTC: An earlier version of this article misspelled the SEC Commissioner’s last name as “Pierce.”

Related Stories

• Telegram’s Defeat Isn’t ‘Binding’ in Kik Case, Judge Tells SEC
• Mapping the Future of the SEC (There’s a Nonzero Chance Hester Peirce Takes Over)
• Telegram Agrees to Pay $18.5M Penalty in SEC Settlement Over Failed TON Offering
• Alleged Shopin ICO Fraudster Pays $450K Fine in Ether

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commissioner (SEC) Hester Pierce on Tuesday criticized her colleagues’ decision to penalize Telegram’s ICO in remarks that underscored the maverick regulator’s open-arms approach to crypto.

• Pierce, whose liberal fintech stances have earned her the nickname “crypto mom,” told Blockchain Association Singapore that the SEC fundamentally erred in prosecuting and punishing Telegram’s Gram token sale, which raised $1.2 billion in now-forfeited funds for the messaging app as per a settlement last month.
• In her view, Telegram’s decision to sell Grams under a “Simple Agreement for Future Tokens” offering structure should have protected the project from securities violations. But as she pointed out, the SEC saw it differently, and worked to convince a court that the agreements for future Gram tokens counted as securities.
• “I do not support the message that distributing tokens inherently involves a securities transaction. What the SEC’s Telegram complaint cast as evidence of an illegal securities offering—that ‘the project would require ‘numerosity’: a widespread distribution and use of Grams across the globe,’ I see as a necessary prerequisite for any successful blockchain network,” she said.
• She again called for a "safe harbor" that would give certain token projects three years to experiment while regulators retooled their frameworks for what is and is not an investment contract.

Related Stories

• Telegram’s Defeat Isn’t ‘Binding’ in Kik Case, Judge Tells SEC
• Mapping the Future of the SEC (There’s a Nonzero Chance Hester Peirce Takes Over)
• Telegram Agrees to Pay $18.5M Penalty in SEC Settlement Over Failed TON Offering
• Alleged Shopin ICO Fraudster Pays $450K Fine in Ether

The Takeaway:

• China’s state-backed Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN) has integrated with six public chains including Tezos, NEO, Nervos, EOS, IRISnet and Ethereum.
• Developers on these six blockchains will be able to build dapps and run nodes using data storage and bandwidth from BSN’s overseas data centers starting Aug 10.
• This is part of China’s plan to be the one and only infrastructure provider for blockchain firms around the world.
• Global users will have access to China’s enterprise chains and financial data via the network’s cross-chain structure and partnership with China UnionPay.

A blockchain infrastructure backed by the Chinese government will open its services to decentralized applications (dapp) developers on a global scale on August 10. 

The move is part of China’s plan to be the one and only infrastructure provider for blockchain firms across the world. That effort resembles the country’s aggressive international expansion in other major emerging technologies such as 5G and artificial intelligence. 

Related: Conflux Blockchain Announces Ecosystem Grants Program

This global expansion is notable, given that China’s attempts to lead in other technologies have been disrupted. The Trump administration issued a new rule in May to prevent Chinese tech conglomerate Huawei, a leader in 5G technology, and its suppliers from using U.S. technology and software. The U.K. has also barred Huawei from its 5G networks.

Yet China’s global blockchain ambitions have been a smooth sail.

The global version of Blockchain-Based Services Network (BSN) has integrated its data centers with six major decentralized blockchains: Tezos, NEO, Nervos, Cosmos’ IRISnet, Ethereum and EOS. The developers on these public chains can run nodes and applications using data storage, bandwidth and other resources provided by BSN. 

The public chains could benefit from BSN’s cheap services, interoperability with other Chinese enterprise blockchains and access to financial data from China UnionPay, which is otherwise difficult for foreign-based blockchain firms to obtain and process.   

Related: Crypto Long & Short: Why the Twitter Hack Was Good for Bitcoin (and It’s Not the Media Attention)

“The move is a milestone as BSN is the first state-backed blockchain infrastructure that is reaching developer communities outside China by integrating with major public chains,” said Yifan He, CEO of Beijing Red Date Technology, one of the founding companies behind BSN. 

Read More: Inside China’s Plan to Power Global Blockchain Adoption

The nationwide blockchain infrastructure project was launched in April. It is led by the State Information Center of China (SIC) and supported by state-owned tech conglomerates China Mobile and China UnionPay, and Red Date, which architects BSN’s technical framework. 

SIC is a public institution under the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the highest economic planning agency in the Chinese government. The institution has been one of the principal architects behind China’s national information security policies, and monitors and processes macroeconomic data for policymakers. 

The six blockchain projects are BSN’s first batch of decentralized public blockchains to run on the network across its three data centers in Paris, San Francisco and Hong Kong, He said. 

“We’ve taken a lot of thoughts about who would be the first public chains to be integrated,” He said. “Besides Ethereum and EOS we have disclosed in April, we decided to include another international public chain Tezos, and two prominent China-originated projects NEO and Nervos.”   

BSN aims to on-board more than 10 public chains by the end of this year based on their user bases, technical background and products, He said. 

Cloud services for blockchain

Guoning Lü, co-founder of Nervos, said BSN can support a tailored infrastructure service for blockchain developers, noting that projects need to be able to run nodes on such an infrastructure to operate.

“Essentially, blockchain firms are using standardized internet services from BSN as opposed to adjusting their own technical frameworks to use such services,” Lü said.  

The standardized development environment could save a lot of time and money for developers from building things from scratch, Lü said. 

“For example, validation nodes require a high level of security protection to prevent them from distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks (one of the most common cyber attacks that make a network unavailable to its users),” Harriet Cao, co-founder of IRISnet Foundation, said. 

BSN will hide the complexities of these security features in its operation support. In the future, a developer can use BSN to run a node like people use cloud services, and developers can just search the name of the blockchain and hold their private keys in order to build dapps or run a node, Cao said. 

Developers will enjoy free services on BSN if they have fewer than 2,000 daily connection requests to BSN’s nodes. Red Date Technology’s Yifan He claims that BSN will be much more cost-effective and stable than other networks for dapp developers. 

There are free nodes for blockchain projects but they tend to be unstable and hard to trace once a dapp loses connections to the nodes. Many dapps buy services from Amazon Web Services (AWS) and build their own nodes in the data centers. 

For one single node on a network like Alibaba Cloud, developers would have to pay tens of thousands of dollars per year plus the cost of human resources in order to maintain the node. In contrast, BSN will only charge several hundred dollars for the yearly resources and operational services needed to run nodes, He said. 

APIs

While there are only six public chains, users will have more than a dozen options to be connected with BSN’s nodes. 

All six chains will have nodes assigned to their mainnet and testnet respectively, where developers can first run their applications on testnets and find potential problems to ensure a frictionless experience on their mainnets. 

While all the chains will be able to be connected to the nodes via their native application programming interfaces (API), Ethereum and EOS developers can opt for API services provided by a third-party blockchain middleware firm dfuse. 

For Ethereum and EOS, there will be mainnet nodes, testnet nodes and dfuse nodes with their own special API infrastructure attached to the nodes.

“While dfuse could offer faster and more convenient connections with the nodes on BSN, we make sure the developers with privacy concerns can still opt for native APIs,” He said. 

Read More: How Chainlink and Cosmos Fit Into China’s Grand Blockchain Initiative

dfuse, Founded in 2018, is a Toronto, Canada-based firm that started off by providing API services to EOS-based applications. It later branched out to projects on Ethereum.  

“One of the main reasons that BSN chose us is we are very scalable,” Alexandre Bourget, dfuse co-founder and chief technology officer, said. “dfuse has been built and stress-tested on public chains processing 5,000 sustained/10,000 burst transactions per second, and is ready to support the next 10x and 100x in industry growth.”

The firm has been funded by Multicoin Capital and Intel Capital, which is the investing arm of Intel Corporation. 

One network, two systems

Developers can build dapps on the six public chains in BSN’s global version. Domestic users in mainland China, however, only have access to enterprise blockchains due to Chinese government’s restrictions on decentralized public chains that tend to have tokens.

“The Chinese government and regulators are very cautious about decentralized public chains and try not to get involved in anything related to a public blockchain,” Hongfei Da, founder of NEO, said. “It is interesting to see BSN, which has a clear commercial purpose and is backed by entities with government background, is supporting such projects.” 

“It is like ByteDance behind TikTok,” Da said. “The international version of the app does not necessarily comply with the Chinese regulation but the local regulations from the countries [where] it is used. BSN reflects a common pragmatic approach for Chinese companies to go global.” 

BSN can serve as a way for non-Chinese blockchain firms to tap into the Chinese blockchain community. 

Developers outside China can now use many major Chinese enterprise blockchains to build their dapps, such as Tencent’s consortium chain FISCO-BISCO used for its virtual bank WeBank, according to He. 

“We’re thrilled for Tezos to join a cohort of public blockchains that will provide the base layer for companies and software developers building blockchain-based applications in China and globally,” Hubertus Thonhauser, chairman of the Tezos Foundation Council, said. “Participating in the BSN is a momentous step forward on the path to wide-scale institutional adoption for the Tezos project.” 

Related Stories

• A Primer on the US and China’s ‘New Cold War’
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Chicago-based ErisX, a crypto exchange for institutional investors, has joined the payments network of bitcoin-friendly Silvergate Bank.

• The connection to the Silvergate Exchange Network will give ErisX clients access to U.S. dollar withdrawals and deposits during business hours. The Silvergate Exchange Network is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
• “If you think about the traditional means of moving fiat today, most institutional market participants would utilize the Fedwire system,” ErisX CEO Thomas Chippas said in an interview. “You’re talking about the availability of getting your money around 4:30 p.m. or 5 p.m. in the afternoon depending on the bank.” 
• ErisX is one of the few exchanges to have publicly announced its integration with the SEN. In November, Kraken announced that it had joined the SEN to enable real-time fund transfer.
• Chippas noted that the fee structure is no more expensive on SEN than what it would be for a typical Fedwire transfer.
• While ErisX is evaluating the SEN Leverage product, which allows proprietary traders to put up bitcoin as collateral for fiat loans, the exchange hasn’t yet decided to offer the service to its clients, Chippas said.
• In the first quarter of 2020, the SEN handled 31,405 transactions, according to the publicly-traded Silvergate’s most recent earnings report.

Read more: Silvergate Adds 46 More Crypto Clients in Q1 While Existing Customers Increase Deposit Levels

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• Bitcoin Rises With Stocks as EU Agrees €750B in Coronavirus Stimulus
• Market Wrap: Bitcoin Clings to $9,200 While Ethereum Transactions Soar
• Bitcoin Futures Trading Volume Slips to 3-Month Low on CME
• Crypto Long & Short: Why the Twitter Hack Was Good for Bitcoin (and It’s Not the Media Attention)

CipherTrace, a blockchain analytics software firm, has deployed a predictive risk-scoring system that the company says provides real-time alerts on suspect crypto transactions for its exchange, investor and investigator clients.

• The tool will assign risk based on the on-chain histories of transacted funds, the Silicon Valley firm said.
• Inbound cryptos with unseemly ties (from sanctioned countries or a fraud campaign, for example) would get a “high risk” score under the system.
• CipherTrace claims the score respects user privacy, saying in a press release that it does not process any personally identifiable information. 
• Coming days after a Twitter hacker scammed nearly $200,000 in bitcoin from hundreds of victims, the score could warn exchanges of incoming plunder, CipherTrace chief financial analyst John Jefferies told CoinDesk.
• All CipherTrace clients can use the tool from Tuesday’s launch at 13:00 UTC (9a.m. ET).
• Jefferies declined to state how large that customer base is, saying only that Binance is among them. CipherTrace firm has previously boasted 150 partners. 
• The blockchain intelligence sector is broadly deploying risk-based scoring against a problematic crypto trio: money launderers, sanctions violators and terrorist financiers.
• CipherTrace competitors Chainalysis and Elliptic already market similar tools.

Also read: Crypto Exchange Group Eyes ‘Bulletin Board’ System for FATF Compliance: Coinbase Exec

Related Stories

• Twitter Hack: Chainalysis and CipherTrace Confirm FBI Investigation
• $1.4B in ‘High-Risk’ Crypto Flowed Onto Exchanges in H1 2020, Analysis Firm Says
• Twitter Hack Used Bitcoin to Cash In: Here’s Why
• Promoters of Crypto Ponzi Scheme OneCoin Murdered in Mexico

In the race to become the dominant cryptocurrency platform, Ethereum is gaining on Bitcoin.

Take a look at the market capitalization of ether, the native token of the Ethereum blockchain. Currently, the value stands at about $26 billion. But that figure doesn’t include all of the digital assets built atop the Ethereum blockchain, including some of this year’s hottest tokens: stablecoins like tether and USDC and altcoins like Crypto.com’s CRO, Chainlink’s LINK, Compound’s COMP and Kyber’s KNC. 

You’re reading First Mover, CoinDesk’s daily markets newsletter. Assembled by the CoinDesk Markets Team, First Mover starts your day with the most up-to-date sentiment around crypto markets, which of course never close, putting in context every wild swing in bitcoin and more. We follow the money so you don’t have to. You can subscribe here.

Related: Blockchain Bites: China’s BSN Integrations and Satoshi’s Newfound Wealth

The combined value of those ERC-20-standard tokens is also around $26 billion, according to the data provider Messari. That puts the market capitalization of the Ethereum ecosystem at more than $50 billion – closer to bitcoin’s $170 billion than if ether were considered alone. 

The comparison shows how the rapid pace of development this year on Ethereum has brought the blockchain’s ecosystem closer to challenging Bitcoin. The value gap narrowed over the past month as bitcoin’s price stagnated, while demand for stablecoins and a flurry of activity in “decentralized finance,” known as DeFi, has ignited the value of Ethereum and the tokens that depend on it. 

“DeFi tokens continue their bull run,” cryptocurrency analysis firm TradeBlock wrote Monday in a weekly commentary.  

Messari, a digital-asset data firm, said in a report that the Ethereum blockchain’s daily settlement value recently surged to about $2.5 billion, surpassing Bitcoin’s for the first time since at least early 2019. 

Related: Ethereum Turns Five Next Week and We’re Producing a Special Series

“Ethereum has blown past Bitcoin,” Ryan Watkins, a Messari analyst, wrote in the post on Monday. “With the increasing amount of economic activity taking place on Ethereum, this trend is unlikely to reverse anytime soon, if ever.”

It’s the latest chapter in the competition among projects to attain critical mass in the cryptocurrency industry. For entrepreneurs and investors in the space, the goal is to establish networks and projects with enough name recognition, credibility and functionality to scale quickly if and when mass adoption comes.

Bitcoin, the oldest and largest cryptocurrency, attracted most of the hype early in 2020 as some analysts predicted a once-every-four-years event known as the blockchain’s “halving” could send prices to $90,000. Bitcoin got another bluster of endorsements as the spreading coronavirus slammed the global economy, sending traditional markets plunging and prompting the Federal Reserve and other big central banks to create trillions of dollars of fresh money.

Many investors predicted that the money injections would debase the dollar’s purchasing power, driving up the price of bitcoin. Yet over the past couple months, bitcoin’s price has stagnated below $10,000, and even its notorious volatility has withered – prompting fickle crypto traders to seek faster-moving action. 

Bitcoin has been stuck in a tight trading range for weeks,  boring for a market that used to be known for its thrills. However, there are signs Tuesday that an expected big move may be building.   

Still, Ether’s price is up 81% in 2020 to $237, almost three times bitcoin’s 30% year-to-date gain.  

Steve Ehrlich, CEO of publicly traded cryptocurrency brokerage firm Voyager Digital, says bitcoin has accounted for about 15% of trading volumes so far in July, down from about 60% prior to the May halving. 

“We’ve seen a tremendous change in our retail customer behaviors,” Ehrlich said Monday in a phone interview. “When bitcoin is extremely flat in the marketplace, people are looking at other tokens.”

In terms of name recognition and popularity outside of the crypto industry, Bitcoin still dominates. According to a report last week from the trading platform eToro and data provider The TIE, only four stories about DeFi appeared in June in “non-crypto news sources,” versus some 200 about bitcoin.   

“There is a growing realization though that the 2020 DeFi hype may be overdone,” Mati Greenspan, founder of the cryptocurrency and foreign-exchange analysis firm Quantum Economics, wrote Monday in an e-mail to subscribers. 

Denis Vinokourov, head of research at the London-based cryptocurrency prime broker Bequant, said that ethereum risks becoming a victim of its own success, activity in the tokens built atop the blockchain are driving up transaction fees. 

“This resurgence in the network performance has come with a raft of undesired consequences,” Vinokourov wrote in emailed remarks. 

And Jimmy Song, a well-known bitcoin developer and promoter, told the website CoinMarketCap in an interview published last week that he thinks many DeFi projects will fail to live up to their “decentralized” billing because “they almost always have to have some sort of back door in case something goes wrong.”   

“It’s really just a form of gambling with limited upside for people that aren’t in control of the protocol,” Song said. 

For now, though, the Ethereum ecosystem is edging closer.  

Jack Tan, of Taiwan-based quantitative firm Kronos Research, told CoinDesk’s Daniel Cawrey that he sees ether hitting $500 by the end of this year. That would more than double ether’s market capitalization, to say nothing of any potential increases in the value of ERC-20 tokens.    

“Ethereum the platform has done its job,” the cryptocurrency investment firm Arca wrote Monday in a weekly blog post. 

Traders are apparently doing their jobs too – following the action. 

Tweet of the day Bitcoin watch

BTC: Price: $9,347 (BPI) | 24-Hr High: $9,363 | 24-Hr Low: $9,152

Trend: Bitcoin is showing signs of life on Tuesday with prices trading above $9,340 at press time, representing a 1.9% gain on the day. Notably, the cryptocurrency hasn’t witnessed an over 1% move since July 9.

The 4-hour chart shows the cryptocurrency has broken higher from the four-week-long narrowing price range. The breakout is backed by an above-50 or bullish reading on the relative strength index. Meanwhile, the MACD histogram is printing higher bars above the zero line, a sign the upward move may gather pace. 

The immediate resistance at $9,480 – a lower high created on July 9 – could be put to test over the next few hours.

Acceptance above that level would confirm a Bollinger band (volatility indicator) breakout on the daily chart and may yield a rally to $10,000. 

The bias would turn bearish if the cryptocurrency finds acceptance under $9,000. However, sellers have failed multiple times in the last two months to establish a foothold below that psychological support. 

Related Stories

• Bitcoin Rises With Stocks as EU Agrees €750B in Coronavirus Stimulus
• Market Wrap: Bitcoin Clings to $9,200 While Ethereum Transactions Soar

In the race to become the dominant cryptocurrency platform, Ethereum is gaining on Bitcoin.

Take a look at the market capitalization of ether, the native token of the Ethereum blockchain. Currently, the value stands at about $26 billion. But that figure doesn’t include all of the digital assets built atop the Ethereum blockchain, including some of this year’s hottest tokens: stablecoins like tether and USDC and altcoins like Crypto.com’s CRO, Chainlink’s LINK, Compound’s COMP and Kyber’s KNC. 

You’re reading First Mover, CoinDesk’s daily markets newsletter. Assembled by the CoinDesk Markets Team, First Mover starts your day with the most up-to-date sentiment around crypto markets, which of course never close, putting in context every wild swing in bitcoin and more. We follow the money so you don’t have to. You can subscribe here.

Related: Bitcoin Rises With Stocks as EU Agrees €750B in Coronavirus Stimulus

The combined value of those ERC-20-standard tokens is also around $26 billion, according to the data provider Messari. That puts the market capitalization of the Ethereum ecosystem at more than $50 billion – closer to bitcoin’s $170 billion than if ether were considered alone. 

The comparison shows how the rapid pace of development this year on Ethereum has brought the blockchain’s ecosystem closer to challenging Bitcoin. The value gap narrowed over the past month as bitcoin’s price stagnated, while demand for stablecoins and a flurry of activity in “decentralized finance,” known as DeFi, has ignited the value of Ethereum and the tokens that depend on it. 

“DeFi tokens continue their bull run,” cryptocurrency analysis firm TradeBlock wrote Monday in a weekly commentary.  

Messari, a digital-asset data firm, said in a report that the Ethereum blockchain’s daily settlement value recently surged to about $2.5 billion, surpassing Bitcoin’s for the first time since at least early 2019. 

Related: Market Wrap: Bitcoin Clings to $9,200 While Ethereum Transactions Soar

“Ethereum has blown past Bitcoin,” Ryan Watkins, a Messari analyst, wrote in the post on Monday. “With the increasing amount of economic activity taking place on Ethereum, this trend is unlikely to reverse anytime soon, if ever.”

It’s the latest chapter in the competition among projects to attain critical mass in the cryptocurrency industry. For entrepreneurs and investors in the space, the goal is to establish networks and projects with enough name recognition, credibility and functionality to scale quickly if and when mass adoption comes.

Bitcoin, the oldest and largest cryptocurrency, attracted most of the hype early in 2020 as some analysts predicted a once-every-four-years event known as the blockchain’s “halving” could send prices to $90,000. Bitcoin got another bluster of endorsements as the spreading coronavirus slammed the global economy, sending traditional markets plunging and prompting the Federal Reserve and other big central banks to create trillions of dollars of fresh money.

Many investors predicted that the money injections would debase the dollar’s purchasing power, driving up the price of bitcoin. Yet over the past couple months, bitcoin’s price has stagnated below $10,000, and even its notorious volatility has withered – prompting fickle crypto traders to seek faster-moving action. 

Bitcoin has been stuck in a tight trading range for weeks,  boring for a market that used to be known for its thrills. However, there are signs Tuesday that an expected big move may be building.   

Still, Ether’s price is up 81% in 2020 to $237, almost three times bitcoin’s 30% year-to-date gain.  

Steve Ehrlich, CEO of publicly traded cryptocurrency brokerage firm Voyager Digital, says bitcoin has accounted for about 15% of trading volumes so far in July, down from about 60% prior to the May halving. 

“We’ve seen a tremendous change in our retail customer behaviors,” Ehrlich said Monday in a phone interview. “When bitcoin is extremely flat in the marketplace, people are looking at other tokens.”

In terms of name recognition and popularity outside of the crypto industry, Bitcoin still dominates. According to a report last week from the trading platform eToro and data provider The TIE, only four stories about DeFi appeared in June in “non-crypto news sources,” versus some 200 about bitcoin.   

“There is a growing realization though that the 2020 DeFi hype may be overdone,” Mati Greenspan, founder of the cryptocurrency and foreign-exchange analysis firm Quantum Economics, wrote Monday in an e-mail to subscribers. 

Denis Vinokourov, head of research at the London-based cryptocurrency prime broker Bequant, said that ethereum risks becoming a victim of its own success, activity in the tokens built atop the blockchain are driving up transaction fees. 

“This resurgence in the network performance has come with a raft of undesired consequences,” Vinokourov wrote in emailed remarks. 

And Jimmy Song, a well-known bitcoin developer and promoter, told the website CoinMarketCap in an interview published last week that he thinks many DeFi projects will fail to live up to their “decentralized” billing because “they almost always have to have some sort of back door in case something goes wrong.”   

“It’s really just a form of gambling with limited upside for people that aren’t in control of the protocol,” Song said. 

For now, though, the Ethereum ecosystem is edging closer.  

Jack Tan, of Taiwan-based quantitative firm Kronos Research, told CoinDesk’s Daniel Cawrey that he sees ether hitting $500 by the end of this year. That would more than double ether’s market capitalization, to say nothing of any potential increases in the value of ERC-20 tokens.    

“Ethereum the platform has done its job,” the cryptocurrency investment firm Arca wrote Monday in a weekly blog post. 

Traders are apparently doing their jobs too – following the action. 

Tweet of the day Bitcoin watch

BTC: Price: $9,347 (BPI) | 24-Hr High: $9,363 | 24-Hr Low: $9,152

Trend: Bitcoin is showing signs of life on Tuesday with prices trading above $9,340 at press time, representing a 1.9% gain on the day. Notably, the cryptocurrency hasn’t witnessed an over 1% move since July 9.

The 4-hour chart shows the cryptocurrency has broken higher from the four-week-long narrowing price range. The breakout is backed by an above-50 or bullish reading on the relative strength index. Meanwhile, the MACD histogram is printing higher bars above the zero line, a sign the upward move may gather pace. 

The immediate resistance at $9,480 – a lower high created on July 9 – could be put to test over the next few hours.

Acceptance above that level would confirm a Bollinger band (volatility indicator) breakout on the daily chart and may yield a rally to $10,000. 

The bias would turn bearish if the cryptocurrency finds acceptance under $9,000. However, sellers have failed multiple times in the last two months to establish a foothold below that psychological support. 

Related Stories

• Blockchain Bites: PayPal, Mastercard Inch Closer to Crypto
• First Mover: Bitcoin Miners Find Upgrade Financing Aplenty, Even as Prices Languish