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Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao expressed surprise that dogecoin had not yet faded away and said Tesla boss Elon Musk might have played a role in extending the memecoin’s lifespan.

“One memecoin that really surprised me was actually dogecoin. It has had a super long-lasting power. I thought it would have disappeared a long time ago. But Elon Musk latched onto it and extended its life maybe,” Zhao, commonly known as CZ, said in a Twitter Spaces “ask me anything” session on Wednesday.

Crypto markets have been hit by a renewed bout of memecoin speculation in recent weeks, led by the likes of pepe and ladys. The exchange boss said he doesn’t understand the appeal and is not a memecoin or NFT holder as he prefers tokens with utility. 

“It is what it is,” Zhao said. “Right now it seems to be popular. But having said that I do think there’s very high risk.”

Still, Zhao said he’s not against memecoins. Binance, in fact, lists them, having recently supported pepe, he added. “We tend to follow what our users are active at,” Zhao said.

Elon Musk endorsing and pumping Dogecoin

Dogecoin was one of the first ever memecoins, created in 2013. It was initially developed as a joke by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer. The token is styled on the popular “doge” internet meme, which features a shiba inu dog with captions written in broken English.

Musk has been a vocal supporter of dogecoin and continues to tweet about the memecoin. He first tweeted about the token in 2019, saying: “Dogecoin might be my fav cryptocurrency. It’s pretty cool.” In 2021, Musk posted a picture based on the movie “Lion King” which showed him holding up a shiba inu.

The billionaire owns dogecoin, along with bitcoin and ether, according to his tweets from last year. Musk even bought some dogecoin for his youngest son, X Æ A-Xii, in 2021. Last year, Tesla began allowing customers to buy select merchandise items using dogecoin. The carmaker also holds the memecoin along with bitcoin. As recently as last month, Musk temporarily replaced the blue Twitter bird icon with an image of the doge dog.

Musk’s tweets about dogecoin have sent the token’s price jumping on many occasions. Dogecoin is currently the ninth largest cryptocurrency in the world, with a market capitalization of over $10 billion, according to CoinGecko data. It is currently trading at around $0.07.

Binance’s Zhao, however, personally prefers “tokens with a utility,” he said in the AMA session. He said a token’s “utility value is probably the strongest value.” Zhao only holds bitcoin and Binance’s native token BNB, according to his Twitter bio.

© 2023 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 raise was led by investment firm 1kx and included contributions from Maven11, Lattice Fund, CMT Digital, Daedalus Angels.

Roughly 15,000 attendees are expected at the Bitcoin 2023 event, versus 35,000 last year – likely a result of the downturn known as “crypto winter.” Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. presidential candidate, is among scheduled speakers.

Litecoin has chalked out a double-digit price rally to hit the highest since April 19.

Osmosis, the largest decentralized finance network in the Cosmos ecosystem, is spearheading the development of a novel cross-chain security model termed “mesh security.” This model aims to combine staked assets from two or more blockchains, thereby bolstering the security of the Cosmos ecosystem against potential security breaches or validator staking takeovers.

The development of mesh security is being funded by Osmosis, in collaboration with Axelar, Akash Network, and ATOM Accelerator DAO. According to a note shared with The Block, the necessary funds for this initiative will be provided to Cosmos developers through grants.

Mesh security allows Cosmos chains to consolidate their token security. This leads to significantly higher economic security than what a single chain can offer. “With the introduction of mesh security, we can approach security bidirectionally, meaning that two chains, like Osmosis and Juno for example, can provide security to each other,” Sunny Aggarwal, co-founder of Osmosis Labs said.

In the mesh security framework, validators of a particular blockchain will have the option to re-stake their bonded tokens to validators of their choice on a partnering chain — a concept that echoes the Eigen Layer‘s model on Ethereum.

The mesh security initiative is projected to be completed over three phases, with each phase estimated to last around three months. Development and funding will proceed, with contributions from teams across the Cosmos ecosystem. The final launch is anticipated to occur in the first quarter of 2024.

Mesh security versus replicated security

Cosmos developers recently launched a similar model called replicated security (originally called interchain security), which allows Cosmos blockchains to derive their security from the main, central chain known as the Cosmos Hub. Replicated security is tailored for chains that choose to rely entirely on the Cosmos Hub’s set of validators. The first blockchain to go live recently with this mechanism was Neutron, a smart contract platform. 

Unlike replicated security, which operates with a top-down security flow from a central chain, mesh security will be designed for already established application-specific chains who secure themselves by combining the value of their validator stakes, the Osmosis team explained.

“Mesh Security primarily targets app chains that already have their stakeholder sets and possess a sufficiently high market cap to secure themselves. Mesh merely provides additional security for them,” explained Aggarwal.

© 2023 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.

Among the other investors are Jump Crypto, Arrington Capital, the Solana Foundation and Aptos Labs.

Telecoms giants Swisscom, Deutsche Telekom and news provider Associated Press are also Chainlink node operators.

“Technically speaking it is and always has been possible to write firmware that facilitates key extraction. You have always trusted Ledger not to deploy such firmware whether you knew it or not,” Ledger said on Twitter.

Not even pepe mania can provide relief for beleaguered crypto exchange volumes. 

Daily trading volumes are lower across the board as crypto finds itself stuck in a relatively sleepy market. The Block’s data dashboard indicates that the 7-day-moving average for crypto exchange volumes has hit its lowest level since the beginning of the year, clocking in at $12.84 billion on May 17 — down steeply from March’s peak of over $46 billion. 

The decline in trading volumes has been underpinned by a surge in bitcoin’s dominance in the market, which currently stands at about 45%. That’s an increase from a low of 37.5% at the beginning of the year. 

Volatility has also compressed, with the Bitcoin Volatility Index (BVIN) declining from 96 on April 14 to 58.5 on May 17. 

Jump and Jane Street get the jitters

The decline in volumes follows news that major trading firms are scaling back their activity in the market. On May 9, Bloomberg reported that Jump and Jane Street have pulled back from crypto trading because of regulatory uncertainty in the U.S. Jane Street, for its part, is scaling back globally, according to the report. 

“Options implied volatility is extremely compressed, falling to around 40% for both BTC and ETH, which is the lowest we have seen in many years,” said Jason Atkins, head of business development and partnerships at Auros. 

“Far from being a reflection of maturation and stability, this fall in implied volatility is largely the combined result of the abrupt reduction in the number of large, sophisticated market participants and the increased hurdles to fiat on/off-ramps, leading to significantly lower volumes and higher volatility across all major coins.”

Still, the decline in the number of market participants presents an opportunity for players sticking around. 

“For participants that remain, the inefficiencies created by the retreat of some of the larger players might offer more opportunities to fill the vacuum, which is a small silver lining amidst the drastic reduction in volumes and heightened volatility,” Atkins added. 

© 2023 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.

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