FreeCryptoCurrency.Me

Crypto exchange Coinbase is testing a new subscription-based service that would give users access to enhanced features, according to materials reviewed by The Block. 

Dubbed Coinbase One, the subscription product will be offered to a small number of users to start. Benefits include zero-fee trading and prioritized phone support “even on holidays and weekends.”

The launch of a subscription service could help Coinbase diversify its retail business, which derives most of its revenue from transaction fees. It’s not clear at this time how much Coinbase will charge for the new service.

Coinbase is also planning to include added account protection, according to a screenshot of the page that outlines the types of benefits being offered.

“If any funds in your Coinbase account are stolen by someone you don’t know due to an account takeover, you may be eligible for a reimbursement of up to $1 million in losses,” the exchange noted.

“Coinbase has started testing a subscription product for our customers,” a spokesperson at the firm said in a statement. “Customers in the test group will have the ability to buy, sell, and convert digital currencies on the Coinbase platform without a Coinbase fee for each trade (spread fees still apply). We’re always looking to learn more about how we can best serve our customers in different ways. Right now we are still in early stages so everything about the future product experience will be shaped by the feedback we receive from our users.”

In a sense, Coinbase is taking a leaf from the playbook of other retail-oriented brokerage firms. For example, Robinhood offers a service dubbed Robinhood Gold, a monthly subscription service that gives users access to higher-quality market data and margin investing. 

The plan also fits into a broader effort at Coinbase to diversify its business lines, something that chief financial officer Alesia Haas discussed in an interview with The Block while the firm was undertaking a direct stock listing.

“We are focused on the long-term where we will continue to diversify our offerings,” Haas said at the time. “Today we are primarily investing, but interestingly enough, we’re seeing over 20% of users engaging with multiple products – from staking to earning, and borrowing/lending.”

© 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.

The number of users of China’s digital yuan, also known as the e-CNY, has increased by more than six times over the past four months.

That’s according to Mu Changchun, head of the Digital Currency Research Institute at the People’s Bank of China, who said in the Hong Kong Fintech Week conference that 140 million individuals in China have activated their e-CNY wallets.

That number is about 10% of China’s total population and has sharply increased since July when the PBoC said in its first-ever e-CNY white-paper that 20 million retail digital yuan wallets were opened as of June 30.

In addition, Mu said the number of corporate e-CNY wallets has nearly tripled to 10 million from 3.5 million four months ago. The volume of transactions made through the e-CNY has jumped to 150 million with the total worth amounting to 62 billion yuan, or $9.7 billion, he added during the conference. 

Since late last year, China has been making a wider push to roll out the usage of the e-CNY in major cities through lucky draws initially and then more widely available giveaways.

The Block reported that through a recent partnership with Chinese food-delivery and ride-hailing app Meituan, the PBoC effectively made the download for the standalone e-CNY wallets available to any of the 120 million residents in nine major cities in the country.

The standalone e-CNY wallet also offered a look into how China’s central bank digital currency is designed to be programmable via smart contracts so that the digital money can be confined to limited utility purposes.

© 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.

Chinese blockchain company Huobi Global has kicked off a month-long eighth anniversary celebration that will include a series of events and prizes, including a trip to space for one winner. The celebration comes as Huobi’s cryptocurrency exchange winds down operations in mainland China after a government crypto ban.

In the flagship campaign for the anniversary, Huobi will offer one winner a trip to the “outer perimeters of Earth.” The company says the contest is open to all Huobi Global users.

Huobi didn’t specify the name of the company that would facilitate the space trip. Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and SpaceX are companies that are leading the race to put paying passengers in space. Last month, Huobi sent two crypto experts to the environment-focused Oceans 4.4 retreat in the British Virgin Islands at the home of Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson.

Back on Earth, Huobi will host its annual online industry forum on Nov. 8, which features panels with economists, government officials and crypto business leaders. The list of speakers this year includes former U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan.

Global expansion will be a unifying theme to the anniversary celebration in the wake of China’s crypto ban. Huobi stopped accepting new user registrations in mainland China in late September. The company will gradually retire existing accounts by the end of the year.

Huobi Global has said it already derives 70% of its overall revenue outside of China, and its global expansion has targeted emerging markets such as Turkey, Brazil and Indonesia. Huobi gauges expansion success in terms of user growth and said it has started seeing strength in new markets it’s entering.

“In terms of user growth, we’re seeing increasing activity across Southeast Asia and the CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States] region. We only recently launched operations in Latin America, but the region is also showing a lot of promise,” Jeff Mei, Director of Global Strategy at Huobi Group, told CoinDesk.

Huobi continues to work toward its goal of increasing its global headcount to 3,000 by the end of the year, up from 2,300 in early October.

“We’re continuing to ramp up our global talent acquisition efforts but it’s also critical that we find the right people in each market. We’ve made some progress, but it’s still too early to say where we’ll land by the end of the year,” said Mei.

Read More: Ahead of Crackdown, Huobi Scrambled to Move Staff Out of China, Insiders Say

This article originally appeared in Valid Points, CoinDesk’s weekly newsletter breaking down Ethereum 2.0 and its sweeping impact on crypto markets. Subscribe to Valid Points here.

While weeks and months in crypto often feel like years, it has only been 60 days since the hard fork that contained EIP 1559 was implemented on Ethereum’s mainnet. A world of data regarding EIP 1559 has surfaced, but ultimately the upgrade is still in its infancy.

In fact, a few weeks ago, I wrote about Nic Carter’s somewhat overly eager Ethereum takeaways and how it was probably too early to estimate EIP 1559′s impact on the network. However, this week I am changing my tone a bit and looking at the potential implications of the upgrade’s base fee burn and its effect on the longevity of Ethereum.

At a very high level, under proof-of-work (PoW) and proof-of-stake (PoS), Ethereum uses block rewards to incentivize miners and validators of the chain. This incentive helps properly secure the network by paying those that are beneficial for confirming transactions and logging the state of the chain, which in turn encourages competition to grow a large and distributed base of miners/validators.

Reward issuance: Bitcoin vs Ethereum

Bitcoin uses a similar model, but every four years the amount paid in block rewards decreases until the reward is extremely negligible and the bitcoin supply tops at 21 million. As block rewards become negligible, bitcoin miners will be forced to rely on transaction fees in order to remain profitable. Reasonably, the network will have to maintain a level of activity high enough to pay miners for their services.

Ethereum and EIP 1559, on the other hand, now take a reverse approach to Bitcoin’s security budget. EIP 1559 took away the vast majority of transaction fee revenue that miners previously received, but Ethereum will continue to emit block rewards to miners (and eventually validators), indefinitely. While Ethereum takes an uncapped supply approach, the newly introduced fee burn will help counteract ether’s inflation.

Bitcoin’s role as a hedge against inflation has certainly been a huge part of the asset’s success. However, its “digital gold” narrative leads to lower network activity as the asset is considered a store of value rather than a medium of exchange, at least for the time being. This issue has left some wondering if transaction fees will be enough to keep miners interested, if miners will adapt or if the network will have to pivot to an updated compensation model.

It’s likely wrong to say that EIP 1559 “solved” this issue of paying miners into perpetuity, because again bitcoin’s fixed supply is what makes investing in the asset so attractive. Ether’s supply, on the other hand, will be extremely dependent on network activity and the demand for blockspace. The Bitcoin network is years away from the concern becoming a reality and will likely surprise me with its ability to adapt and survive.

My comparison between the two networks is strictly how they approach miner incentives, something I believe EIP 1559 possibly addressed with its fee burn mechanism. A future in which Ethereum can continue to subsidize validators without diluting those that hold ether is very promising for the network.

Pulse check

The following is an overview of network activity on the Ethereum 2.0 Beacon Chain over the past week. For more information about the metrics featured in this section, check out our 101 explainer on Eth 2.0 metrics.

Disclaimer: All profits made from CoinDesk’s Eth 2.0 staking venture will be donated to a charity of the company’s choosing once transfers are enabled on the network.

Validated takes

• The Altair upgrade shifted validator rewards toward newly created “sync committees” of 512 randomly selected validators. BACKGROUND: Sync committees are responsible for providing support for light clients and signing the newest block header. The odds of a validator getting chosen to the committee are currently 1/489 and attestation rewards/penalties are amplified for the 24-hour period that they are part of the sync committee.
• A CryptoPunk NFT appeared to sell for $530 million after an on-chain transaction caused price bot alerts last Thursday. BACKGROUND: While CryptoPunks have sold for as much as 4,200 ETH in the past, the fake sale would have been the largest by orders of magnitude. It appears the owner used a flash loan to make the fake purchase of the Punk, borrowing and repaying 124k ETH. The move was likely a marketing stunt.
• Cream Finance was exploited by a flash loan for over $260 million in depositor assets. BACKGROUND: Cream is a prominent peer-to-peer decentralized finance (DeFi) lending platform with a history of exploits. The flash loan manipulated the price of Cream’s faulty collateral “yUSD,” making the price artificially high and allowing the exploiter significant borrowing power. The exploiters showed significant DeFi knowledge, maximizing the return of their loot and hiding their tracks with the Ren Bitcoin bridge.
• Aave was rumored to be susceptible to an exploit similar to the one that targeted Cream, prompting Justin Sun to remove over $4 million in collateral. BACKGROUND: A vulnerability with xSushi collateral scared Aave depositors and led to a ~20% decrease in total value locked (TVL). The governance process held the team back from making an immediate fix and the bug is still exploitable as of today. The Aave team’s analysis showed that the manipulation would not be profitable for a hacker.

Factoid of the week

Open comms

Valid Points incorporates information and data about CoinDesk’s own Eth 2.0 validator in weekly analysis. All profits made from this staking venture will be donated to a charity of our choosing once transfers are enabled on the network. For a full overview of the project, check out our announcement post.

You can verify the activity of the CoinDesk Eth 2.0 validator in real time through our public validator key, which is:

0xad7fef3b2350d220de3ae360c70d7f488926b6117e5f785a8995487c46d323ddad0f574fdcc50eeefec34ed9d2039ecb.

Search for it on any Eth 2.0 block explorer site.

Rising costs on Ethereum, the world’s largest smart-contract blockchain, appear to be driving investors to coins associated with Layer 2 products facilitating faster and cheaper transactions and rival programmable blockchains.

The average fee on Ethereum, known as gas, has risen by a staggering 2,300% since late June. It has more than doubled to $56 in the past two weeks alone, according to data provided by the blockchain analytics firm Glassnode, and the seven-day moving average of the mean transaction fee has hit a record high of $52.

Surging costs are drawing the ire of the investor community and forcing the retail crowd to search for relatively cheaper options like Layer 2 solution Loopring and rivals Solana and polkadot.

“Ethereum is a beast (ETH bull here) which is the future of cryptocurrency – but the Gas fees really can affect us,” a Redditor complained in a blog post published Tuesday, explaining the rationale behind purchasing Loopring. “We are tired of paying $150+ in Gas fees just to transfer or buy $100 worth of a cryptocurrency.”

CoinDesk data show LRC, the native token of Loopring, a Layer 2 scaling protocol for Ethereum-based decentralized exchanges (DEXs), has increased 242% from $0.42 to $1.44 in the past seven days, with the price surging by nearly 40% over 24 hours. Rumors that video game store GameStop may team up with Loopring for a non-fungible tokens (NFT) marketplace could be adding fuel to LRC’s price rally.

Programmable blockchain Solana’s SOL token has risen by 13% in the past 24 hours to a record high of $234. The cryptocurrency has gained 25% in the past seven days, pushing Solana’s market capitalization to $70 billion – the fifth-largest globally and ahead of another Ethereum rival Cardano’s $67 billion, CoinGecko data show.

According to Messari’s Mason Nystrom, Solana is also expanding its footprint into Ethereum-dominant crypto market sub-sectors like NFTs.

“As the Solana ecosystem continues to expand, NFTs on Solana have similarly witnessed formidable growth as a category,” Nystrom said in a blog post published Wednesday. “Total NFT secondary sales volume on Solana has officially reached $500 million.”

Smart-contract blockchain Polkadot’s DOT token also rallied to a lifetime high, touching $53.37 early today and surpassing the previous peak of $49.74 reached in May.

Most coins linked to smart-contract blockchains have outperformed ether in the past 24 hours. Ether was trading near $4,600 at press time, representing a 3.5% gain.

According to Delphi Digital, a continued rise in Ethereum’s transaction fees would crowd out retail investors, leading to a drop in network usage and the cryptocurrency’s price.

“It is critical that Ethereum scaling solutions like StarkNet, zkSync, Arbitrum, and Optimism gain traction soon, otherwise steep transaction costs will increase activity on alternate L1s such as Solana, Avalanche, Fantom, and Polygon (to name a few),” analysts at Delphi Digital said in the market updated published Tuesday.

Tiger Global led a $17.4 million seed round for Faze Technologies, the company announced Wednesday.

Faze also announced its partnership with the International Cricket Council (ICC) to launch a cricket non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace on the Flow blockchain, where NBA Top Shot captured mainstream attention earlier this year.

Faze CEO Anshum Bhambri said in a press release he hopes to use the partnership “to build the metaverse for cricket.”

Flow builder Dapper Labs, major Dapper backer Coatue, Sequoia Capital India, SamsungNext, Courtside Ventures and Sacramento Kings owner Vivek Ranadive also invested.

Faze’s cricket marketplace will mimic Top Shot’s use of present-day and historical moments, the company said in a press release. It also plans to build a “play-to-earn universe” involving the “battling of NFTs.”

It’s not the first cricket NFT platform to hit the market. Polygon-based Rario launched in August with a pair of cricket leagues signed on.

Through an earlier project, Round Labs, Bhambri appears to have rolled out a minimum viable product of sorts involving cricket NFTs, but on the Ethereum blockchain.

“We’re excited to be partnering with Faze to launch the ultimate cricket fan experience with the ICC on Flow,” Dapper Labs CEO Roham Gharegozlou said in a press release. “With over one billion cricket fans across ICC’s 105 member nations, Faze is revolutionizing how cricket fans everywhere connect and engage with some of the greatest moments in cricket history.”

Dapper Labs announced a $250 million funding round in September at a $7.6 billion valuation.

China’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) has been used to conduct 62 billion yuan ($9.7 billion) of transactions as of end-October.

• A People’s Bank of China (PBOC) official said Wednesday that 140 million people had opened wallets for the digital yuan, or “eCNY,” according to a report by Reuters.
• Mu Changchun, director-general of the digital currency institute of China’s central bank, told Hong Kong’s Fintech Week conference that over 1.5 million merchants could accept payments using eCNY wallets.
• There is no official launch date for the CBDC, Mu said.
• The eCNY has been undergoing trials in cities across China over the last year. Yesterday’s update appears to be the first of its kind related to how widely the digital currency is being used.

Read more: Nigeria’s eNaira CBDC Goes Live

Exchange-traded fund (ETF) issuer Direxion has withdrawn its application to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to list a short bitcoin futures fund.

• On Tuesday, Direxion requested the SEC to withdraw the ETF application it made on Oct. 26.
• SEC staff had asked for the filing be withdrawn on the day it was filed.
• The Direxion Bitcoin Strategy Bear ETF would have maintained short exposure to bitcoin futures contracts – in essence, betting that the price of the cryptocurrency would fall.
• Shorting is a way of betting that a price will decline. An investor borrows a security and sells it in the hope the price will have dropped by the time it has to repurchase the security and return it to the lender. The borrower can then pocket the difference.

Read more: SEC Delays Decision on Valkyrie Bitcoin ETF Until Next Year

A central bank digital currency (CBDC) network could save global corporates over $100 billion a year in transaction costs when it comes to cross-border payments.

So says a report published Wednesday by consulting firm Oliver Wyman and megabank JPMorgan called “Unlocking $120 Billion Value in Cross-Border Payments.”

The report estimates that of the nearly $24 trillion in wholesale payments that move across borders each year, banks incur more than $120 billion in total transaction costs; this excludes potential hidden costs in trapped liquidity and delayed settlements.

“The case for CBDCs to address pain points in cross-border payments is very compelling,” said Oliver Wyman partner Jason Ekberg said in a statement. “The bulk of today’s wholesale cross-border payments process remains sub-optimal due to multiple intermediaries between the sending and receiving banks, often resulting in high transaction costs, long settlement times, and lack of transparency on the status of the payments.”

Conversations around CBDCs, driven by the march of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology, can be about either retail issuance or the type of wholesale transactions this report is focused on.

Read more: France Tests CBDC Flows With Singapore Using Automated Liquidity Pool

There have been several wholesale banking initiatives in recent years led by private firms, commercial banks, and central banks, the report points out, but nothing like a full-scale, multiple central bank digital currency (mCBDC) network.

The report uses the ASEAN region and its corridors as an example, comprising Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, which operates across a diverse set of 10 currencies and contributes 7% of global cross-border trade.

JPMorgan and Oliver Wyman suggest a model for the ideal mCBDC that considers the process from minting and redeeming of CBDCs to FX conversion and settlement. The report also cites new opportunities for players in the correspondent banking world who might be disrupted by a full-scale CBDC rollout.

“The development of CBDCs brings new, tangible opportunities such as subscription-based mCBDC corridor access or smart contract-enabled cash management services,” said JPMorgan Global Head of Coin Systems Naveen Mallela.

Indeed, Mallela’s Onyx division was involved in one such trial connecting France and Singapore.

UPDATE (Nov. 3, 07:50 UTC): Updates headline and first paragraph to indicate report refers to global corporations.

The Economic Times, one of India’s top finance newspaper, dedicated its entire front page to call on the government to provide regulatory guidance to the crypto industry.

• The Indian government has been sitting on a crypto regulation bill for at least a year. Meanwhile, since the Supreme Court lifted the Reserve Bank of India’s two-year banking ban on crypto exchanges in March 2020, investment in crypto has soared.
• Tens of millions of Indians have invested $80 billion (INR 6 trillion) in crypto, the newspaper wrote. Given these “staggering” numbers and “massive” growth potential, India needs a “transparent and regulated environment,” the newspaper wrote on its front page.
• “The huge amount of Indian investor exposure to cryptocurrencies warrants quick action by the government on the regulatory front,” Prasad Rane, partner at Legaligence Strategic Consulting LLP, told Coindesk.
• “The global anti-money laundering agency the Financial Action Task Force [FATF] has already identified crypto assets as a source of risk and recently published guidance to regulate the industry like banks. Our government is behind the curve.”
• Rane stressed that most terrorist organisations accept donations and process funding through crypto assets, and it is challenging to keep track of their flow. Hence, regulation is the need of the hour.
• Lacking any regulatory guidance, Indian crypto exchanges have committed to comply by a code of conduct drafted by the Blockchain and Crypto Assets Council (BACC) of the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), an industry association, the ET wrote.
• The code of conduct includes know-your-customer verification for all customers, checking for fraud and market manipulation, providing an audit trail for transactions, total compliance with tax and law enforcement requirements, investor education, and matrix for addressing user grievances, ET wrote.
• Indian investment in crypto has ballooned to $6.6 billion this year from $923 million last year, intelligence firm Chainalysis found in July.

Read more: This Diwali Season Indians FOMO Over Shiba Inu