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Nasdaq announced its intentions last September as it looked to respond to the demand from institutional crypto investors.

Integration into Arbitrum’s wider DeFi system could provide some new impetus for bullish sentiment for ARB tokens, one exchange executive said.

The latest price moves in bitcoin (BTC) and crypto markets in context for March 24, 2023. First Mover is CoinDesk’s daily newsletter that contextualizes the latest actions in the crypto markets.

The bill will strip technology innovations such as software programming, coding, apps and Artificial Intelligence development from tax obligations on income, property, capital gains and import tariffs, Bukele said in the tweet.

When Animoca initially unveiled its plans for the fund last November, its target was $2 billion. This was then cut in half to $1 billion in January.

The next main catalyst for the sector is the reward halving in early 2024, the report said.

In anticipation of the upcoming Ethereum blockchain upgrade known as Shapella, the Ethereum Foundation has doubled the maximum bug bounty to $500,000 for identifying related vulnerabilities.

The highly-anticipated Shapella upgrade, also referred to as Shanghai-Capella, is scheduled for release on the mainnet on April 12 at 10:27 a.m. UTC, at block number 6,209,536. Its main feature is Ethereum Improvement Proposal-4895, which will enable validator staking withdrawals on the main network for the first time. It also includes three other improvements aimed at optimizing gas costs for specific activities.

In a developers meeting on Thursday, Fredrik Svantes, a security researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, highlighted the increased reward as part of the last-minute testing efforts.

“There’s a 2x multiplier for any vulnerabilities that affect the Shapella codebase. Go ahead and start looking for more vulnerabilities as the max bounty payout for Shapella-specific issues is now up to half a million dollars,” Svantes said.

A bug bounty is a program offered by organizations to incentivize individuals or groups to identify and report security vulnerabilities in their software or systems. The rewards may vary depending on the severity and potential impact of the bug identified.

The doubling of the maximum bounty for identifying Shapella vulnerabilities may be seen as a precautionary step in ensuring the security of the network. The Foundation’s bug bounty program covers vulnerabilities in various aspects of the network, including the blockchain consensus model, proof of stake, network security and consensus integrity, per the official website.

Final ‘shadow fork’ before mainnet

Parithosh Jayanthi, a devops engineer for the Ethereum Foundation, said that once final client software releases are out, developers will launch one final mainnet “shadow fork” to test these releases.

In the context of Ethereum, a software fork is a test done on the mainnet rather than a testnet, allowing developers to see if a piece of code from the proposed upgrade will work correctly on the real blockchain. There have also been multiple shadow forks conducted before in preparation for Shapella and a final one is needed to test client releases, Jayanthi explained at yesterday’s meeting. 

“Once all the [client] releases are done, we’d have a mainnet shadow fork, and I guess that would be the last attempt at the transition publicly before we hit mainnet,” Jayanthi said.

Developers have also conducted extensive public testing on three test networks, or testnets, namely Sepolia, Zhejiang and Goerli. On March 14, Shapella was deployed on the Goerli testnet as the final dress rehearsal prior to the mainnet launch.

During the Thursday meeting, developers also urged all node operators on the Ethereum network upgrade their nodes ahead of the launch to ensure a smooth transition. Overall, the Ethereum core team is taking a comprehensive approach to testing and ensuring the security of the upcoming Shapella upgrade, in anticipation of its launch.

© 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.

Coinbase may be caught in the crypto regulatory crackdown in the U.S., but the company is finding plenty of friendly faces in Brazil.

On Tuesday, Coinbase introduced an app geared solely toward the Brazilian market, with customer support available in Portuguese 24/7, and integrating the revolutionary Pix digital payment system created by the government and launched in 2020. The next day, in the U.S., the company said it was served with a Wells notice from the Securities and Exchange Commission notifying the company of investigations into several offerings and continuing a string of regulatory warning shots fired at crypto firms in the U.S.

And while the U.S. is still debating policy around the industry, late last year Brazil’s president signed a bill into law establishing regulatory framework for the trading and use of bitcoin.

The industry sees differences between the regulatory approaches as stark. Where the U.S. is cracking down on a seemingly weekly, if not almost daily, basis on crypto-related companies, in Brazil they are welcoming them with open arms.

“Brazil is a great example of a country in which regulators have understood the value of crypto and they are creating a very healthy debate around the topic to keep innovation and growth going,” said Fabio Plein, country director for Brazil and newly-named regional managing director at Coinbase in Brazil, in an interview. “Brazil is advancing in the creation of regulatory framework that protects users and the U.S. government right now is lagging behind in how to regulate this universe.”

Eyes on Brazil

The focus on Brazil is part of the company’s drive to go deep into markets with the most potential. Adding Pix payments was key since it’s the principal payment method in the country. The instant payment platform created by the central bank went live in late 2020. In March 2021, there were fewer than 400,000 Pix transactions recorded. In February, the number of transactions via Pix surged to more than 2.5 billion.

Coinbase isn’t alone in its drive to focus on Brazil. Last year, digital bank Nubank said a month after providing crypto trading to customers, it had reached one million crypto users. And earlier this month, the bank launched its token, Nucoin, that rewards users’ engagement through a loyalty program, which it said would be available to Nubank’s more than 70 million customers in Brazil through an initial airdrop.

Mercado Pago, owned by the giant Amazon-like Mercado Libre, started offering crypto trading in 2021.

The government’s not just supporting the industry. It’s actively seeking to launch a central bank digital currency next year and is testing the use of a blockchain platform for the tokenized version of its legal tender, known as the real.

Agenda of innovation

Coinbase also created a tech hub located in Brazil to produce products and services for other countries.

“We wanted to bring the same app, the same experience that made us the exchange leader in the U.S.,” Plein said. The company has 100 million users now, and is aiming to get to 1 billion. While Brazil has a young population that is tech-savvy and interested in alternative assets, the market is limited to the population of about 216 million.

Brazil’s also got a GDP per capita of just $7,500 compared to the U.S.’s more than $70,000, according to the World Bank.  

Still, “where in the U.S., the regulatory approach is more about enforcement, in Brazil it’s more about understanding that crypto is part of an agenda of innovation,” Plein said.

© 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 tokenization of vehicle titles could enable fractionalized vehicle ownership, the report said.