FreeCryptoCurrency.Me

Ether (ETH) clocked a new all-time high on Friday as blockchain data showed that smart contract blockchain Ethereum burned more tokens than it emitted in the last 24 hours, thanks partly to strong action in Shiba Inu (SHIB).

The native token of Ethereum’s blockchain rose to $4,402 during Asian hours, topping the previous record high of $4,379 reached in May, according to CoinDesk data.

At the going price of $4,370, the cryptocurrency is up 45% on a month-to-date basis versus bitcoin’s 40% gain. The ether-bitcoin implied volatility spread is rising in a sign that the market expects ether to continue leading the price action in the coming weeks, as Thursday’s First Mover newsletter mentioned.

Data tracked by Tokenview shows Ethereum produced 15,109.34 ETH and burned 16,710.2 ETH in the past 24 hours. That’s a net supply reduction of 1,600 ETH.

SHIB, the self-proclaimed dogecoin killer, burnt 770.12 ETH, becoming the third-largest ETH destroyer. Uniswap V2 and Tether destroyed 2729.22 and 1248.72 ETH, respectively.

SHIB has rallied a staggering 800% this month, hitting a record high of $0.00008870. According to Defi Llama, the total value locked in ShibaSwap, a decentralized exchange that allows users to stake SHIB, has doubled to $512 million this month.

Coin burning refers to the process of removing tokens from circulation and is the crypto market’s equivalent of a stock buyback.

The Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) – 1559 implemented on Aug. 5 EIP 1559, burns a portion of fees paid to the miners, removing a notable chunk of coins from circulation. The upgrade has tied the amount of ether burned with the network usage.

Since activation, the upgrade has destroyed 668,339 ETH, representing over 50% of the new coins issued over the same period.

Some options traders are betting that U.S. regulators would soon approve a futures-based exchange-traded fund (ETF) and are buying cheap out-of-the-money calls in anticipation of a price rally. Data tracked by Laevitas shows the ETH $15,000 call expiring in March has drawn strong demand in recent days.

Red Date Technology, the firm behind the Blockchain Services Network, will launch infrastructure to support the deployment of non-fungible tokens in China.

• The project, dubbed the BSN-Distributed Digital Certificate (DDC), was announced at the BSN Open Permissioned Summit on Friday.
• Red Date CEO Yifan He said that NFTs will be widely used in China in the next five years, but that the government doesn’t want the technology to be associated with crypto or running on public, permissionless chains.
• “If we look at the environment in China, this is the only way to launch NFTs,” He said.
• On the BSN-DDC, developers will have access to 10 “open permissioned” chains on the BSN to build their NFT platforms. He called for more public chains to join the project.
• The infrastructure can also be deployed on nodes outside the BSN, He said.
• “What I see here is that every company that has copyright and IP (intellectual property) is considering NFTs,” the CEO said, adding that they are working with a major company in the film industry.
• The project will launch by the end of January 2022, He said.
• Last week, Chinese media reported that China’s big tech giants Ant Group and Tencent changed references to NFTs on their sites and platforms names to “digital collectibles.”
• He said that they changed the name of NFTs to DDC, “like everyone.”

Read more: China’s BSN Builder Is Registering a Nonprofit in Singapore to Manage International Arm

Quick Take

• The financial value of NFT fraction (or shard) holders derives from the payout upon eventual reconstitution of the underlying NFTs
• Inflationary shard mechanisms provide cash flow to existing shard holders via periodic shard auctions
• Lottery-like mechanisms are the only approaches that enable shards to mathematically reflect the NFT valuation

This research piece is available to
members of The Block Genesis.
You can continue reading
this Genesis research on The Block.

The price of ether (ETH), the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network, has hit a new all-time high.

As of press time, ETH is trading hands at $4388.19 on Coinbase. The previous all-time high was $4,384.43 on Coinbase in May.

As previously reported, bitcoin hit a new all-time high above $66,000 in mid-October. 

© 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 price of ether (ETH), the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network, has hit a new all-time high.

As of press time, ETH is trading hands at $4388.19 on Coinbase. The previous all-time high was $4,384.43 on Coinbase in May.

As previously reported, bitcoin hit a new all-time high above $66,000 in mid-October. 

© 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.

Crypto Twitter was briefly set ablaze Thursday night as a CryptoPunk non-fungible token (NFT) was purchased for a staggering half-billion dollars – a figure that would have made the sale one of the largest ever not just in NFT-land, but in all of art history.

However, on-chain analysts were quick to point out that the sale may have just been an elaborate publicity stunt.

A Twitter bot that tracks the sales of CryptoPunks first flagged the transaction shortly before 8 p.m. ET. If real, the 124,457.07 ETH sale worth over $530 million would have easily eclipsed the 4,200 ETH sale of an ultra-rare alien punk in March.

Punk 9998 bought for 124,457.07 ETH ($532,414,877.01 USD) by 0x9b5a5c from 0x8e3983. https://t.co/dmT6jDRC1W #cryptopunks #ethereum pic.twitter.com/UQlmm1oqkj

— CryptoPunks Bot (@cryptopunksbot) October 28, 2021

CryptoPunks have a floor price – a term referring to the lowest price at which a piece from a particular NFT collection can be bought – of 100 ETH, and the punk in question, #9998, lacks desirable features from a collector’s perspective, leading some to believe the purchase was a “fat finger,” a term referring to the immutable, irreversible errors endemic in blockchain.

A look at the chain, however, reveals that the purchase was just a clever bit of smart contract magic.

The purchase was made by a flash loan contract deployed by an address flagged by wallet profiler Nansen as a prolific DeFi user, NFT collector and smart contract deployer who also owns the blurr.eth Ethereum Name Service NFT.

you can see it here:

0x9b5a flash loans 124,457 ETH from many sources
0x9b5a pays 124,457 ETH to the punk contract
punk contract sends it to 0x8e39
0x8e39 sends back to 0x9b5a
0x9b5a repays loan

genius 😄https://t.co/nlo24twyEx pic.twitter.com/suPOMHRV7O

— mariano.eth ✨ᕙ༼💦༽ᕗ✨ | 🦇🔊 (@nanexcool) October 29, 2021

Banterlytics, a contributor to on-chain analysis publication OurNetwork, told CoinDesk that the transaction was likely conducted solely “for the bantz.”

The transaction cost 0.19 ETH, or roughly $800, and the address included a message in the metadata of the transaction, saying “looks rare.”

A similar flash loan transaction was conducted in February to purchase a HashMask NFT for 139,000 ETH, currently the largest NFT sale on record – even if on a technicality.

Read more: What Is a Flash Loan?

On October 28, the New Jersey Attorney General and the New Jersey Bureau of Securities announced cease and desist orders against five websites running cryptocurrency-related frauds. 

Bulk Investments, Forte Trade, Dilna Investments d/b/a Fidelity Revenue, RealBitcore Mining and FilefxOption all, according to authorities, advertise to investors using some combination of hazy promises of returns, false claims of registration or licensing, and fake testimonials. 

The announcement cites three New Jersey residents scammed out of nearly $90,000 by the first three firms, which failed to return bitcoin investments that investors had come to withdraw, or demanded exorbitant and hitherto hidden feeds in order to do so.

The orders in question further claim — with some variation — that the firms are “offering securities that are neither registered with the Bureau, nor ‘federally covered,’ nor exempt from registration, in violation of N.J.S.A. 49:3-60.”

In other words, the “investment strategies” that these firms tout are not only scams but also securities offerings. Regardless of their status as scams, and the involvement of the state attorney general, these orders did not include criminal charges. 

The New Jersey Bureau of Securities has been increasingly active in regulating cryptocurrency investments. Most notably, the state has been at the tip of the spear when it comes to crypto interest accounts. New Jersey began the charge against first the Jersey City-based BlockFi, and then Celsius, both of whom offer what they equate to high-interest savings accounts without FDIC insurance. The Bureau of Securities is calling those securities.

This more recent action is less involved, however, as the five firms named were not returning user investments, which is a charge neither New Jersey nor any other state agency has leveled against BlockFi or Celsius. 

© 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.

Mastercard bought the crypto analytics firm CipherTrace in September, a purchase the payments giant’s chief executive framed as a “massive services opportunity” during a third-quarter earnings call Thursday.

Asked about Mastercard’s strategy around crypto and digital assets, CEO Michael Miebach highlighted several areas, including preparations for central bank digital currencies as well as the purchase of CipherTrace. 

On the latter point, Miebach said:

“Now let me talk about CipherTrace for a moment, because this space is a really interesting space in so many ways. Questions on data privacy, question authentication. We just touched on that in the context of Europe and strong customer authentication. You have to expect the Europeans will say, well, strong customer authentication will of course play a role in crypto transactions as well, which is where we always lead with security and trust. I mean that is really synonymous with the name of MasterCard when it comes to payments, that we have to do the same role.”

“So it’s massive services opportunity,” Miebach continued. “CipherTrace, 900 cryptocurrencies. What does CipherTrace actually do? They drive compliance and AML checks into crypto transactions. We can’t run fast enough right now to get into the space, because a lot of other people are deep into crypto, and these questions are not resolved.”

On the CBDC front, Miebach reiterated past remarks in the sense that major governments in Europe or North America have yet to move beyond research and development. But should a digital dollar or euro become a reality, Mastercard is positioning itself to be a service provider — and capture a piece of the revenue potential as well.

“We’re saying at this point in time, the most likely chance of this kind of technology to work for payments issued through a government in the form of central bank digital currency,” he remarked. “We’ve said that on a couple of calls before. And we said we will make our network ready to do that as and when a government is ready to put out a central bank digital currency.”

Earlier this week, Mastercard announced a deal with Bakkt aimed at expanding access to crypto purchase and investment tools. 

© 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.

MicroStrategy (Nasdaq: MSTR), the business-intelligence software company that holds so much bitcoin on its balance sheet that it has become something of a proxy for the world’s biggest cryptocurrency, said it added almost 9,000 bitcoins to its holdings in the the third quarter, bringing its total to 114,042.

• The company said it purchased the bitcoin by “successfully raising capital in the quarter through our at-the-market equity offering.”
• At current prices, the value of its bitcoin holdings is just over $7 billion; MicroStrategy’s entire market capitalization is roughly $7.4 billion.
• The carrying value of MicroStrategy’s bitcoin was $2.406 billion, which reflects cumulative impairment losses of $754.7 million. Under accounting rules for digital assets, companies must report an impairment if the asset’s price goes below the company’s purchase price at any time during the quarter.
• The company said it will “continue to evaluate opportunities to raise additional capital to execute on our bitcoin strategy.”
• CEO Michael Saylor said on MicroStrategy’s earnings conference call that the company is committed to buying bitcoin and doesn’t have plans to sell. Saylor called bitcoin a “great” long-term investment for shareholders.
• Saylor is open to partnerships that may allow MicroStrategy to buy more bitcoin.
• Saylor said that the last three months have displayed “extremely dramatic” developments for bitcoin, including more institutional adoption and continuing regulatory discussions. Bitcoin-linked ETF’s are another “checkbox” for institutional investors, Saylor said.
• Saylor added there’s a “profound game-changing dynamic here with big tech and bitcoin,” touting such examples as Square’s Cash App and Twitter’s tip option.
• Overall, MicroStrategy reported adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $1.86 on revenues of $128.0 million for the quarter, beating analyst estimates for adjusted EPS of $0.64 and revenues of $127.5 million, according to FactSet.
• Shares of MicroStrategy were rising 1.3% postmarket to about $727 on Thursday.
• On Thursday, Saylor also retweeted a previous tweet of his from Oct. 28, 2020, revealing that he personally owned 17,732 bitcoin that he purchased for an average price of just under $10,000. He added the comment that “you do not sell your #bitcoin,” implying that he still owned all those coins. At current prices, they would be worth roughly $1.1 billion.

You do not sell your #bitcoin. https://t.co/zMGyYU1iRp

— Michael Saylor⚡️ (@saylor) October 28, 2021

UPDATE (Oct. 28, 22:23 UTC): Adds commentary from earnings conference call.

UPDATE (Oct. 29, 12:42 UTC): Adds information about Saylor’s bitcoin holdings.

At a time when non-fungible tokens face scrutiny for environmental damage, 14-year-old Abigail is using NFTs for conservation.

Her project, “Belugies,” is a collection of 8,000 cartoon beluga whale NFTs created on the Solana blockchain. Abigail made the artwork for the project by hand, with plans to donate a portion of the profits to beluga conservation efforts and a children’s hospital program.

The high school freshman says she learned about cryptocurrency when she was nine years old during bicycle rides with her older brother Adam. Adam, now 25 years old and heavily into crypto since 2016, said he and his fianceé Briana helped with the tech.

“When we started, we didn’t really think it would work out,” Adam, who declined to provide his last name, told CoinDesk. “I told my sister, ‘Hey, if it doesn’t work at least we tried, at least we had fun. That’s all that matters.’”

Within 10 hours of the project’s Oct. 17 launch, all 8,000 NFTs had been minted, earning the siblings over $1 million in SOL tokens.

WE DID IT!!!! pic.twitter.com/QWEcRJnzaw

— Belugies (@belugiesNFT) October 17, 2021

Abigail is also set to receive 5% of all future Belugie sales. The current floor price for a Belugie on the resale market is 0.32 SOL, and the project’s total trade volume has exceeded 7,159 SOL, or $1,409,700, at press time.

The inspiration for the artwork came from Abigail’s childhood adoration of beluga whales after she saw them at a Georgia aquarium near where she grew up.

With the global beluga whale population in decline – Alaska’s Cook Inlet subpopulation has crashed 75% since 2008 and now hovers around 280 – she said she wants to raise awareness as well as some cash.

She’s donated $100,000 of the Belugies NFT proceeds to beluga conservation efforts. Half went to the Beluga Whale Alliance, an Alaskan-based group that advocates for and studies the Cook Inlet pod. The other half went to the Ocean Defenders Alliance, which works to remove fishing nets and plastic that threaten underwater habitats.

After getting word of the donation, Beluga Whale Alliance flew Abigail, Adam and Briana out to Alaska to see the belugas up close and personal in their natural habitat.

The project’s emphasis on conservation contrasts with popular criticisms of the NFT industry.

Ethereum, the blockchain underlying the majority of NFT projects, currently uses an energy-intensive proof-of-work consensus mechanism. (When upgraded, Ethereum 2.0 will switch to a proof-of-stake system.) While some blockchains including Solana use the more efficient proof-of-stake, the overall impact NFTs have on the environment remains harmful.

Abigail credits much of the project’s success to the belugas themselves for being so “wholesome and adorable,” which she attempted to convey in her artwork.

In addition, she made a $100,000 donation to Sunshine Kids, an organization that supports children’s hospital programs across the country. Abigail cited a personal connection to her local children’s hospital as the reason for the donation.