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Though a small percentage of the vote remains outstanding, it’s safe to say Bruce Fenton, a former bitcoin activist who spent a substantial amount of his holdings to self-fund a primary campaign emphasizing digital asset issues, will not represent the state of New Hampshire in the U.S. Senate. 

With approximately 87% of the vote counted as of publication, Fenton remains in a distant fifth to Donald Bolduc, a former military officer, and Chuck Morse, the state senate president, according to the New York Times. Either Bolduc or Morse will then face Senator Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), the incumbent and general election favorite. 

Fenton self-funded his race for the Senate relying on nearly $1.6 million worth of bitcoin. 

The former Navy medic-turned-bitcoin activist was the volunteer executive director of the Bitcoin Foundation from 2015 to 2016. 

“I learned a lot, met great people, shared ideas, toured our state & leveled up skills,” Fenton said in a tweet conceding the election. “Today I go back to work on sound money,” he said in another. 

© 2022 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.

Quick Take

• The Block Research has aggregated and analyzed data of 263 crypto exchanges
• The correlation between bull runs and growth in the number of exchange launches waned off after the 2017 bull run
• Changes in regulatory policies of various countries have forced exchanges to shut down/ relocate to more crypto-friendly countries
• Singapore is the most favored country by crypto exchanges, followed by the United Kingdom, United States, Seychelles, and Estonia

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Compound Treasury, an institutional DeFi yield platform backed by the Compound Finance protocol, says it can now offer over-collateralized crypto-backed loans to accredited institutional clients, the firm announced on Wednesday.

Clients can now borrow US dollars or USD Coin (USDC) from the platform using bitcoin, ether, and supported ERC20 tokens as collateral. The loans have open-ended tenures, which means there is no set repayment timetable. 

As such borrowers will have some flexibility in servicing their debt positions as long as their loans are overcollateralized. Borrowing on the platform will attract a 6% interest rate.

The liquidity to support these loans will come from both the platform’s clients and the Compound DeFi protocol. Institutional clients already earn up to 4% yield on Compound Treasury. According to the announcement, the crypto collateral put up by borrowers will remain in the platform’s wallet for increased transparency.

Compound Treasury became the first DeFi-backed firm to receive an S&P credit rating, as reported by The Block in May. The firm secured a B-rating at the time.

© 2022 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.

Ethereum Classic’s hash rate has surpassed 64 terahashes per second (TH/s), having grown more than 40% during September ahead of The Merge.

Hash rate, also called hash power, is a measure of crypto mining output. It is a metric that represents the amount of computing power used in generating a single block on a proof-of-work blockchain.

According to data from mining pool 2miners, Ethereum Classic’s hash rate has witnessed a 200% growth in the last 30 days, going from 30 TH/s on August 15 to now at its all-time high 64 TH/s. This accounts for only 7.6% of Ethereum’s hash rate of roughly 832 TH/s. 

The rapid growth comes as Ethereum — a blockchain that forked away from Ethereum Classic in 2016 — is about to change its consensus from proof of work to proof of stake in what’s called The Merge. This is estimated to take place around 1 am ET on September 15.

After The Merge, Ethereum will no longer support mining operations, forcing miners to migrate to other proof-of-work blockchains. As such, it is expected that Ethereum’s hash rate will flow to other proof-of-work networks.

With Ethereum shutting its proof-of-work consensus, miners have announced their migration plans to Ethereum Classic amongst many other proof-of-work blockchains. A blog post from 2 Miners said that mining on Ethereum Classic and others like Ravencoin and Ergo is the “safest post-Merge strategy” at least in the first few days after the event. 

In July, AntPool, a mining pool operated by mining giant Bitmain, first signaled support for Ethereum Classic and made a $10 million investment in its ecosystem. Ethermine, the largest mining pool on Ethereum, announced support for Ethereum Classic as well.

Ethereum Classic’s mining algorithm called Ethash is compatible with mining equipment used on Ethereum. Due to this, the native crypto asset on Ethereum Classic called ETC can be mined with the same GPU and ASIC-based mining machines manufactured previously for Ethereum.

For the latest news and updates about The Merge, make sure to check out our live coverage.

© 2022 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.

Ownera, a trading network for tokenized assets, has announced a $20 million Series A fund raise. Investors include J.P. Morgan, LRC Group and Accomplice Blockchain, the company said. 

Founded in 2019, Ownera aims to create a unified trading pipeline for digital assets, which will connect siloed tokenization platforms and trading interfaces, per the release. Clients, such as financial institutions, will be able to access Ownera’s wallet, which enables them to invest, trade, lend and borrow against a connected set of tokenized assets. 

“Dozens of platforms are being deployed by financial institutions across the market, and our job is to be the neutral layer, seamlessly interconnecting them into one global distribution and liquidity network, using open-source network specifications,” Ami Ben-David, Ownera co-founder & CEO, said in the statement. 

The funds from the raise will be used to accelerate the deployment of the network. 

“Interconnectivity is key to maintaining a liquid marketplace for tokenized assets,” said Scott Lucas, Head of Markets DLT at J.P. Morgan, in the release. “Ownera has developed a solution with the potential to connect multiple platforms to start building towards that liquid marketplace.” 

Lucas will join Ownera’s board alongside Nadav Zohar, chairman of the LRC Group, who will serve as executive chairman. 

Ownera previously raised an undisclosed amount in July 2021, according to data from Crunchbase.

© 2022 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.

Ethereum’s long-awaited upgrade known as The Merge is set to be completed tomorrow, Sept. 15 at roughly 5 am UTC.

The Merge is one of the biggest technological changes in the blockchain space. It has been in the works, in a way, since Ethereum first went live in 2015. When it takes place, it will move Ethereum to a proof-of-stake blockchain, reducing its environmental impact and changing some of its tokenomics. 

Here’s what you need to know.

Understanding The Merge

The main purpose of The Merge is to transition Ethereum’s consensus mechanism from a proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake model.  

Proof of work means the network is secured by miners, using electricity in exchange for block issuance and a portion of transaction fees. Proof of stake secures the network through validators who stake ether in order to validate the network.   

To prepare for this transition, Ethereum developers launched the Beacon Chain in December 2020. This chain functions as a proof-of-stake network running parallel to Ethereum and allows users to stake ether — which means there is enough ether staked on the network ahead of the switch. The Beacon Chain has about 13.4 million ether staked across thousands of validator nodes. 

When The Merge happens, it will bring the current blockchain over and merge it with the proof-of-stake system that’s running in parallel.

The idea of changing a car’s engine from gas to electric, while it’s in motion, has become a popular analogy when explaining the Merge. This is in essence what the Ethereum core developers hope to do — changing the network’s mechanics without any downtime.  

What are the key timings?

In the last few months, there has been a lot of testing. Ethereum developers activated the Merge on the Ropsten test network in June, Sepolia in July and Goerli in August. 

The successful Bellatrix upgrade on September 6 was the first part of the Merge — it prepared the network for the main upgrade. Tomorrow the Paris upgrade will bring the process to completion. 

The Merge will be triggered once the network reaches Terminal Total Difficulty (TTD), at this point Ethereum will move from proof of work to proof of stake. The figure for the TTD is 58,750,000,000,000,000,000,000 and the current estimate for when The Merge will happen can be tracked here.  

What will be the impact of The Merge?

The Merge will reduce the environmental impact of Ethereum and reduce the issuance of new ether tokens.  

Proof of work draws criticism for its negative impact on the climate through excess electricity usage, whereas proof of stake requires less energy consumption as mining becomes obsolete following The Merge. It will reduce the network’s energy consumption by 99.95%, according to the Ethereum Foundation.  

As a result of the transition there will be fewer new ether tokens issued on a yearly basis. According to estimates, the rate of new ether creation will drop nearly 90% after the upgrade, due to the fact validator rewards will be significantly smaller than the miner rewards issued on proof of work. 

If you account for the amount of ether that gets burned within the transaction fee process, then the network’s net issuance will — at current activity — drop to near zero. If activity rises, the network could even become deflationary, where less ether is produced each year than is burned.

But The Merge won’t fix all of Ethereum’s woes. Notably, it won’t increase the network’s speed, nor will it lower transaction fees on the network.  

For a more detailed overview on The Merge and what it means, read our complete FAQ here — and see our live coverage here.

© 2022 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.

Diamond Standard, a startup that aims to tokenize diamonds, has raised a $30 million round led by venture capital firm Left Lane Capital and investment firm Horizon Kinetics. 

Venture investment syndicate Gaingels and startup investing platform Republic.co also participated in the round, the company said in a release Wednesday. 

Diamond Standard says that tokenizing diamonds opens up the rare mineral as an asset class, providing a new store of wealth to both retail and institutional investors.

It is licensed to operate in Bermuda as an issuer and seller of tokens and digital assets and makes Ethereum-based tokens are backed by physical diamonds. This can be sold on cryptocurrency exchanges. 

It aims to position diamonds as an investable asset alongside investor exposure to shares, index funds, and cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.

“Following 20% returns last year, the Diamond Standard Coin has continued to generate a positive return this year, while the S&P 500 is down 14% and bitcoin is down 50%, said founder and CEO Cormac Kinney. “Investors need a new uncorrelated asset class, and this capital will enable us to increase capacity and expand our offerings.”

Diamond Standard is “aggressively hiring.” It plans to use the money to expand production capacity and accelerate distribution. 

© 2022 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.

A surge of Twitter profiles impersonating Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin are trying to capitalize on attention surrounding The Merge to push scams offering huge giveaways. 

Impersonators have acquired verified Twitter accounts, before switching the name, profile picture and description to match Buterin’s — lending authenticity to the attacks. 

To spot the scam, canny Twitter users have to notice that the tweets come from a handle other than Buterin’s own @VitalikButerin. In the screen grab below, for example, a user with the handle @greezbock is seen offering a chance to claim 100,000 ETH ($159 million). 

In recent days, many of these scam tweets have been posted on Twitter — the crypto industry’s social network of choice — both directly and in the replies of high-profile accounts like Elon Musk.

Typically these scams work by asking Twitter users to send money with the promise of more in return — but nothing is ever paid back.

Buterin rickrolls his following

These fake accounts are pushing the same sorts of giveaways as a set of bot accounts have been doing for months. These accounts reply to popular crypto accounts with links to YouTube videos that promote the fake giveaways.

In response to one user highlighting the issue, Buterin mocked the impersonators, replying “But why is everybodyy silentFQTP on thiss???” — a common bot response to the scam posts in an attempt to amplify the message. He linked to a YouTube version of Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up, in an internet prank known as a Rickroll.

In a game of whack-a-mole, new fake accounts seem to pop up as quickly as others get reported. Buterin isn’t the only one to be impersonated, with Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao also favored by the perpetrators. 

The ramp-up in scams comes just hours ahead of The Merge, currently estimated to take place around 1 am ET on September 15.

For the latest news and updates about The Merge, make sure to check out our live coverage.

© 2022 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 Merge, where Ethereum will transition from a proof-of-work consensus mechanism to proof of stake, is estimated to take place in the early hours of Thursday morning. 

The Merge will be triggered by reaching the specific Total Difficulty threshold, also called Terminal Total Difficulty (TTD). This is what defines when it will actually happen. Bordel.wtf currently places the time of The Merge at 5 a.m. UTC. However, this is just an estimate and it’s still subject to change. 

Ahead of the upgrade, many leading crypto exchanges will be suspending deposits and withdrawals of Ethereum ERC-20 tokens until The Merge is complete. 

Here we break down how the top five centralized crypto exchanges intend to navigate The Merge.

• Binance, the largest crypto exchange, intends to suspend deposits and withdrawals for Ethereum ERC-20 tokens one hour before The Merge happens, according to a blog post. If a chain split occurs and an Ethereum proof-of-work chain persists, Binance intends to handle the technical requirements necessary to enable forked tokens to be credited on a 1:1 ratio.
• Coinbase plans to briefly suspend new deposits and withdrawals for Ethereum ERC-20 tokens a few hours before The Merge, per a blog post. A timeframe for the pause is yet to be provided.  
• FTX is aiming to support continuous trading during The Merge, according to a blog post. After the upgrade, ether futures and perpetual contracts will track the proof-of-stake Ethereum price.
• Okx plans to alert users when it intends to pause services for The Merge. Withdrawals, deposits and transfers of ERC-20 tokens will be paused but trading services, such as spot and futures trading, will not be paused, per a blog post. After The Merge, Okx will track the proof-of-stake Ethereum price.
• ByBit intends to track the proof-of-stake Ethereum price following The Merge, according to a blog post. Information on any suspensions has not been provided. The post outlines that a forked Ethereum proof-of-work tokens will be supported if cleared by its risk management and security teams. 

On Twitter, Web3 infrastructure development and trading company Jump Crypto provided a handy complete list of what exchanges intend to do. 

For the latest news and updates about The Merge, make sure to check out our live coverage.

© 2022 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.

Tech investor SoftBank Group is considering the creation of yet another Vision Fund despite the decidedly mixed results of the first two, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal citing people familiar with discussions at the company.

This would be the third Vision Fund created by the company over the last few years. SoftBank is also considering putting additional money into one of the existing funds in lieu of starting a new one, the WSJ said.  

The first $100 billion Vision Fund was launched in 2017, with $60 billion in investment coming from Saudi Arabian and Emirati wealth funds.

Among its highest profile investments were WeWork and the Chinese ride-hailing app Didi. The former failed spectacularly in its initial public offering of company stock in 2019, resulting in the resignation of company co-founder Adam Neumann.

Didi is also struggling due to intense scrutiny from Chinese regulators over the last year. In July, it was fined $1.2 billion following a year-long probe into how it handles data protection.

Vision Fund 2, launched in 2019, has been hit hard by the downturn in tech valuations and is down 19% from its original $49 billion invested.

A decision about the launch of the third fund is expected in the coming months.

© 2022 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.