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Crypto mining hosting company Enegix plans to achieve energy self-sufficiency by building its own hydropower plants, CEO Yerbolsyn Sarsenov and sales director Dmitriy Ivanov revealed at the World Digital Mining Summit held in Dubai on Tuesday.

• Kazakhstan is facing severe electricity shortages, in part due to the swarm of crypto miners in the wake of China’s crackdown on the industry. Miners in the country have been facing power rationing since September, an Enegix spokesperson said prior to the event.
• The government has also drafted a bill to limit the total energy supply from the national grid to new mining centers to 100MW.
• The company said it will start building the hydropower stations in the first quarter of next year as part of a pilot. It plans to expand its hydropower capacity to 150MW in the next five years.
• Enegix is one of the largest hosting firms in Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is the world’s second-largest bitcoin miner, according to data from the Center for Alternative Finance at the University of Cambridge.
• The company’s initial plan is to build small generators of 1MW-3MW in close proximity, the company representatives said, adding that this model is scalable.
• Enegix has already conducted surveys on Kazakhstan’s rivers to identify locations suitable for hydroelectric stations.

Read more: Kazakhstan to Limit Power for Crypto Mining to 100 MW Nationwide

Solana’s growth strategy is going mobile.

At least two wallet projects are moving to get their crypto apps in people’s pockets: Fund management protocol Solrise Finance launched its Solflare mobile app last week and Phantom, a popular browser-based wallet, is working on an iPhone and Android offering of its own.

The move highlights crypto developers’ increasing belief that mobile is essential to crypto mass adoption. Just as traditional financial services – from cashing checks to swiping cards – have migrated to phones, crypto, the thinking goes, must readily do the same.

That, at least, is Solana’s party line. In the past week, top brass at Solana Labs, which builds on the proof-of-stake ecosystem, waxed bullish on mobile wallet integrations. Head of Growth Matty Tay said Phantom’s yet-to-launch mobile wallet could “open the floodgates” to millions of new users.

The project’s browser-linked wallet has more than 1 million weekly users, according to project statistics. Meanwhile, Solflare, the new wallet from Solrise protocol, said it already services staking for $16 billion in SOL.

The announcements were pegged to Solana’s Breakpoint conference in Lisbon. Slope Finance launched its mobile-friendly web wallet last month.

SOL phones

Mobile wallets are not completely new for Solana, one of the low-cost, high-speed blockchain networks competing with Ethereum on decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). A number of crypto exchanges already let users send, stake and store SOL from their phones.

Both newcomer apps differ by being “non-custodial” wallets that leave users in direct control of their coins (similar to a slew of Ethereum-based wallets on the market). They also provide staking and token swapping services that many exchange mobile products lack.

It may have to do with But their biggest contribution to Solana’s mobile growth could come from a different corner of crypto: NFTs. Solana’s been flooded for months by fresh NFT projects looking to mint on a low-cost chain; a flood of new users have followed.

“A really big pain point is NFT drops,” Phantom CEO Brandon Millman told CoinDesk in an interview. “They happen at all times of day and so if someone’s at work they can’t participate if they don’t have their laptop. That’s actually been one of the primary drivers for mobile.”

Solrise co-founder Filip Dragoslavic shared a similar perspective.

“More and more crypto users are becoming mobile-first every year, and we believe that making the Solana experience easy for these users is key to continuing its explosive growth,” he said in a statement.

Neon Labs, a crypto startup building an Ethereum virtual machine (EVM) on Solana, has raised $40 million in a private token sale round.

Jump Capital led the round, with Three Arrows Capital, Solana Capital, Rockaway Blockchain Fund, Ethereal Ventures, IDEO CoLab Ventures, and others participating.

With fresh capital at hand, Neon Labs plans to scale its current team of 15 to over 30 in the next few months, CEO Marina Guryeva told The Block. The firm is looking for developers as well as marketing and business development talent to continue building its offerings.

Neon Labs’ EVM is currently live on Solana testnet and devnet and will be launched on mainnet “soon,” said Guryeva. It will allow decentralized applications (dapps) to execute Ethereum-like transactions on Solana.

“Sushi, Aave and several more dApps have confirmed their interest in deploying on Neon EVM, but they need us to enable integrations with the infrastructure providers to be able to do so. This is our first priority in parallel to the mainnet launch,” said Guryeva.

Aave and other dapps, for instance, will be able to deploy on Solana through Neon EVM without needing to know Solana’s Rust programming language. “The ability to finally use Solidity [Ethereum’s programming language] smart contracts to access the Solana ecosystem is a game-changer for us, and will drastically improve time to deployment,” said Aave founder Stani Kulechov.

Neon Labs is looking to onboard more dapps and their users through liquidity mining incentive programs, said Guryeva.

The project was founded earlier this year and raised 797,000 from the Solana Foundation via convertible notes in May, said Guryeva, adding that more funds could be raised in the near future.

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

While bitcoin appears to be pulling the broader market higher right now, ether may take the lead in the coming weeks.

Ether-bitcoin’s (ETH/BTC) weekly chart shows a bull pennant – a technical pattern marked by converging trendlines, indicating an impending continuation of the ether-bitcoin ratio’s upward move from 0.023 to 0.08 seen early this year.

A move above the upper trendline would confirm a breakout or shift in market leadership toward ether.

“It does look like a bull pennant,” Daniel Kukan, senior cryptocurrency trader at Swiss-based Crypto Finance AG, told CoinDesk in a Telegram chat. “I believe ether can take the lead towards the year-end against BTC.”

“We see levels of 0.08 in the near term,” Kukan added. The ratio was trading near 0.0705 at press time on Binance.

A bull pennant is formed when an initial higher move is followed by a narrowing price range or a consolidation phase. This consolidation is usually resolved to the higher side, allowing for an extension of the price rally.

The pattern is negated if the consolidation ends with a downside break. Recent flows in both the spot and options market support the bullish case in ether.

Bitcoin was trading at record highs near $68,200 at press time, while ether was changing hands at $4,800.

“ETH was dragged up to an all-time high at $4,740 [last week], but it was actually BTC flow driving the move,” Adam Farthing, chief risk officer at crypto liquidity provider and over-the-counter trader B2C2 Japan, said in a weekly note published Monday.

Also read: Open Positions in Ether ‘Calls’ Hits 1 Million Mark as Traders Pile Onto Higher Strike Options

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) is laying the technological foundations for a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in case it decides to issue one, managing director Ravi Menon said at the Singapore Fintech Festival.

• However, the case for a retail CBDC is not urgent, Menon said according to a report by the Straits Times Tuesday.
• Menon said the benefits of a digital Singaporean dollar from a financial inclusionary perspective are “not compelling.”
• A desire to address the decline in cash usage is one of the major motivations by some of central banks with more advanced CBDC plans, such as China and Sweden, something Menon said does not apply in Singapore.
• “A high proportion of Singaporeans have bank accounts, and electronic payments in Singapore are pervasive, highly efficient and competitive,” he said.
• Nonetheless, Singapore’s central bank and private-sector companies are building the technological infrastructure necessary to launch a CBDC, should the island city-state decide to introduce one, Menon added. This is known as “Project Orchid.”

Read more: JPMorgan Report Says CBDCs Can Save Firms $100B a Year in Cross-Border Costs

Major investors see an opportunity to make Solana the social chain.

Announced Tuesday at the Solana conference in Lisbon, Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six and Solana Ventures are committing $50 million to grow decentralized social media projects on Solana.

A key ingredient: Ohanian’s early work in building Reddit from the ground up.

“With a high performance blockchain like Solana, there is an unprecedented opportunity to fuse social and crypto in a way that feels like a web2 social product but with the added incentive of empowering users with real ownership,” Ohanian said in a statement.

The announcement comes a day after FTX CEO and vocal Solana backer Sam Bankman-Fried signaled his support for social on Solana.

“Social media on the blockchain,” Bankman-Fried said in an interview with this reporter, “I continue to think this could be absolutely huge.”

Decentralized social media platforms exist on a number of other blockchains, including Twetch on BSV and DLive on Tron-owned BitTorrent.

“Web3 turns users and creators into owners and stakeholders, a change that can’t come soon enough to social media,” Solana Labs COO Raj Gokal said in a statement.

Oddly enough, the announcement comes a day after Gokal was suspended from Twitter. “Twitter suspends accounts which violate the Twitter Rules,” a banner on the blanked-out @rajgokal account read Monday.

Twitter sleuths indicated it could have stemmed from a presumably tongue-in-cheek death threat over the “gm” greeting meme.

Major investors see an opportunity to make Solana the social chain.

Announced Tuesday at the Solana conference in Lisbon, Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six and Solana Ventures are committing $50 million to grow decentralized social media projects on Solana.

A key ingredient: Ohanian’s early work in building Reddit from the ground up.

“With a high performance blockchain like Solana, there is an unprecedented opportunity to fuse social and crypto in a way that feels like a web2 social product but with the added incentive of empowering users with real ownership,” Ohanian said in a statement.

The announcement comes a day after FTX CEO and vocal Solana backer Sam Bankman-Fried signaled his support for social on Solana.

“Social media on the blockchain,” Bankman-Fried said in an interview with this reporter, “I continue to think this could be absolutely huge.”

Decentralized social media platforms exist on a number of other blockchains, including Twetch on BSV and DLive on Tron-owned BitTorrent.

“Web3 turns users and creators into owners and stakeholders, a change that can’t come soon enough to social media,” Solana Labs COO Raj Gokal said in a statement.

Oddly enough, the fund announcement comes a day after Gokal was suspended from Twitter. “Twitter suspends accounts which violate the Twitter Rules,” a banner on the blanked-out @rajgokal account read Monday.

Twitter sleuths indicated it could have stemmed from a presumably tongue-in-cheek death threat over the “gm” greeting meme.

Crypto exchange Bitmart is in talks to raise about $20 million at a $300 million valuation in a funding round led by a backer of Spotify and Airbnb.

• New York-based private equity firm Alexander Capital Ventures is in talks with BitMart to lead the Series B funding round, according to people familiar with the matter, Tech Crunch reported Tuesday.
• BitMart, which has a 24-hour trading volume of over $1.5 billion according to CoinGecko, has raised a total of $10 million in previous funding rounds.
• The exchange is registered in the Cayman Islands and has offices in New York, Singapore, Seoul and Hong Kong. At the end of September it said it would be clearing out all user accounts registered in mainland China by Nov. 30, after which it would cease providing services to any users there.
• BitMart did not respond to CoinDesk’s request for comment.

Read more: China Crypto Bans: A Complete History

Crypto mining should be legalized and regulated as an entrepreneurial activity, Russia’s Ministry of Economic Development, the Ministry of Energy, and the State Duma, according to a report from local site Izvestia.

• The Ministries and the Duma, Russia’s lower house of representatives, want crypto miners to be recognized as entrepreneurs, Izvestia says. However, the Russian central bank does not support this initiative, citing the risks associated with crypto, according to the report from Monday.
• As of August, Russia is the world’s third-largest bitcoin mining country, after the U.S. and Kazakhstan, according to the Center of Alternative Finance at the University of Cambridge.
• The economic ministry thinks regulation will be beneficial to the country and the crypto industry, and that crypto mining fits well within the definition of entrepreneurship in Russia’s civil code, the report said.
• The institutions want to set up a new classifying code for the industry, which mining firms could use to register their companies.
• The head of the Duma’s finance committee, Anatoly Aksakov, noted that crypto mining is not banned in Russia, but the rules around taxation are unclear. It is necessary to assign a classifying number to the industry and determine procedures for taxation, he said, according to Izvestia.
• Aksakov also suggested the possibility of charging miners higher electricity tariffs than other types of consumers, the report said.

Read more: Russia to Treat Crypto as a Taxable Property

Ether’s options market flows appear more bullish than ever, with the cryptocurrency eyeing the psychological level of $5,000.

Data tracked by Swiss-based analytics firm Laevitas shows there are currently 1.02 million call option contracts ($4.8 billion) open on the Deribit exchange – perhaps a record figure and twice more than the put option tally of 426,950 ($2 billion).

The big gap reflects top side bias. “[That’s] pretty bullish positioning,” Amber Group said in a Telegram chat. “skew is favouring topside as well.” Traders buy call options to bet on price increases and seek downside protection via puts when anticipating a correction.

Both short-term and longer duration calls are drawing higher prices than puts at press time, as evident from the negative one-week, one-, three- and six-month put-call skews. Put-call skews measure the cost of puts relative to calls.

As seen below, the majority of open interest is concentrated in the so-called out-of-the-money or higher strike call options. On Deribit, the world’s largest crypto options exchange by volume and open interest, one ether options contract represents 1 ETH.

Call options at $5,000, $10,000, and $15,000 account for nearly 300,000 in open positions.

According to QCP Capital, increased buying in the $15,000 call has been driven by last month’s high conviction recommendation by Real Vision Founder Raoul Pal.

“On Deribit, you can buy the March 2022 [expiry] $15,000 calls for around $167 [premium paid to purchase call],” Pal said in a note to clients, according to QCP Capital’s Telegram broadcast dated Oct. 28.

Pal called the trade a lottery ticket, meaning the maximum loss a buyer would suffer is limited to the extent of the premium paid for a single contract, i.e., $167. At the same time, profit can be huge if ether rallies to $15,000 or more.

“If it goes to $20,000, you make 28x. If it goes to $40,000, you make 85x,” Pal said.

Traders have been buying cheap out-of-the-money call options since the first quarter in a bid to make millions on a relatively small investment.

Ether, the native token of Ethereum’s blockchain, is currently trading at record highs near $4,800, representing a 550% year-to-date gain versus bitcoin’s 134% rally.

Investors have been snapping up ether in recent weeks on expectations that U.S. regulators would approve an ETH futures-based exchange-traded fund (ETF).

“Our flow report again shows a stronger bid [bullish] side bias for ETH (55.6% buying) over BTC (51.7% buying),” Adam Farthing, chief risk officer at crypto liquidity provider and over-the-counter trader B2C2 Japan, said in a weekly note published Monday.