Blackrock Settles on Blockchain, Russia Reconsiders its Crypto Ban, and McDonalds Laughs at Crypto Investors. These stories and more this week in crypto.
Asset management giant, BlackRock, has filed for an exchange-traded fund that would focus on blockchain technology. The iShares Blockchain and Tech ETF would allow investment in a number of companies involved in the “development, innovation and use of blockchain and crypto technologies”. BlackRock currently has over $10 trillion under management.
“Crypto is Happening” and Regulators Should “Hyperventilate” on Its Rise, Says Former Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein. Speaking on CNBC this week, Blankfein explained that his view of cryptocurrency has changed after seeing large ecosystems form around cryptocurrency over the past few years. As for the investment, Blankfein said he would “definitely want to have an oar in that water.”
Facebook founder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears to be abandoning digital currency plans amid growing regulatory pressure. The company will sell its stablecoin technology to Silicon Valley-based Silvergate Capital for $200 million. The departure of David Marcus, the Meta force behind Diem and the Novi wallet, was the most recent blow to the project.
After the Bank of Russia proposed a sweeping ban on the use and mining of crypto last week, President Putin appeared to keep the nation’s options open. Speaking on a videoconference, he spoke of ‘competitive advantages’ in crypto mining, referring to Russia’s excess energy and what he called mining professionals. “well trained”.
Visa revealed that its customers made $2.5 billion in payments with its crypto-related cards in its first fiscal quarter of 2022. This number is equal to 70% of the company’s crypto volume for the whole for fiscal year 2021. Cards are usually tied to a user’s account. crypto exchange account and allows them to instantly spend those funds online and in-store.
The International Monetary Fund has urged El Salvador to reverse its decision to make bitcoin legal tender, noting the risk to financial stability associated with bitcoin. However, Salvadoran President Bukele shows no signs of backing down, brushing off the warning with a mocking tweet that portrays the IMF as Homer Simpson desperate for attention while being ignored.
Worries about quantum computing – an emerging technology considered so powerful that it could threaten the security of the Bitcoin network – seem greatly exaggerated. In a recent study, the University of Sussex in the UK found that quantum computers would need to be around a million times larger than they are today to crack the algorithm that secures Bitcoin.
McDonalds took to Twitter to playfully poke fun at how crypto investors are handling recent price drops, playing to a long-running joke that when prices drop investors resort to a job in a McDonalds. MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor responded by posting a photo of himself in a McDonald’s hat while Gemini CEO Tyler Winklevoss tweeted about buying “The Big McDip”.
Grab your 4-character NFT domain and use it on 90 in-app dapps, wallets, and exchanges with this limited offer from Unstoppable Domains, our sponsor of the week. Send and receive cryptos and NFTs or login to apps with a simple human-readable domain name. Your domain, your choice, own it forever with no renewal fees with the link below.
That’s what happened this week in crypto, see you next week.