XRP Momentum Could Set Precedent for Bitcoin

Bitcoin spot ETFs could increase BTC demand to the tune of $30 billion, according to a report by NYDIG. The crypto trading firm estimates that there are $27.6 billion in spot-like products, compared with $210 billion invested in funds for gold, to which bitcoin is often compared. “Bitcoin is about 3.6x more volatile than gold, meaning that on a volatility equivalent basis, investors would require 3.6x less bitcoin than gold on a dollar basis to get as much risk exposure. Still, that would result in nearly $30B of incremental demand…

Reddit Engineer shares strategy behind NFT onboarding at EthCC Paris

Mirela Spasova, a Reddit senior engineer on the Collectible Avatars project, took to the master stage at the Ethereum Community Conference (EthCC) event in Paris to shed light on Reddit’s strategy for onboarding millions of users to its blockchain-backed digital collectibles. In her presentation, Spasova said that the primary motivation behind running Collectible Avatars on-chain is to empower users with freedom of use. By adopting an on-chain approach, users gain the ability to make their own choices, including the option to resell the avatars on popular non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces like…

SBF and FTX Get Spoofed in Animated Comedy Starring T.J. Miller

Announced at Comic-Con, “FORTUN3,” which premieres this fall, will serve as a kind of origin story for SBF and FTX – the products of an easy-money culture mixed with unbridled tech optimism, explains John Attanasio, co-founder and CEO of Toonstar. Besides the FTX parody, viewers can expect references to other business boondoggles driven by egomaniacs with a messiah complex (think: Theranos and WeWork). T.J. Miller of “Silicon Valley” fame will voice the SBF clone. Source

UK FCA Launches Permanent Digital Sandbox for Testing Financial Applications

A sandbox provides a secure setting in which developers can test and evaluate their products in the knowledge that any unintended side effects will be isolated from a live environment. The FCA’s offering can be configured to support a number of distributed ledgers and digital-asset use cases, like building interoperability between networks, according to a person familiar with the project. Source

UK government rejects lawmaker’s call to treat crypto like gambling

The United Kingdom government has rejected a proposal made by the House of Commons Treasury Committee to regulate crypto retail trading in the same way it oversees gambling, highlighting that it “firmly disagrees” with the committee’s stance.  A panel of British lawmakers called for regulating the U.K. crypto market similar to gambling in a May 17 committee report. The Treasury Committee said that crypto investment activity is consistent with the principle of “same risk, same regulatory outcome.” In a July 20 response to the committee, U.K. Economic Secretary to the Treasury Andrew Griffith…

Andreessen Horowitz exec sees ‘promising paths’ for Web3 social platforms — EthCC

An executive from venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) believes that Web3 has the solutions to the headaches and problems found on Web2-based social media platforms.  During a keynote speech at the Ethereum Community Conference (EthCC), a16z partner Sriram Krishnan shared a presentation explaining how Web3 can fix social media and consumer applications. Krishnan stressed that “the world of social media is stuck in a different era, and things need to change.” The executive said that his goal in the presentation was to convince the audience that “now is the…

Grayscale Bitcoin Trust among ARK’s top ETF performers in Q2 2023

Digital currency investment product, Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), was one of the best performers at Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest in the second quarter of 2023. According to ARK’s latest quarterly ETF report published on July 19, GBTC was one of the top contributors to the success of its ARK Next Generation Internet exchange-traded fund (ARKW) in Q2. According to the data, GBTC was one of the top five drivers of ARKW’s growth of more than 9% in Q2, alongside other top performers like Tesla, Shopify, Unity Software and Draftkings. Ranked…