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Apple could be months away from launching a headset that combines VR and AR, after presenting a version of the device to its board last week, according to Bloomberg.

Unnamed sources told the publication that the tech giant has also been developing an operating system (dubbed rOS) to go with the mixed reality headset. 

Per Bloomberg, the company wants to unveil the headset as early as the end of this year or sometime next year and get it to consumers in 2023. 

The device features processors “on par with those in Apple’s latest Macs” and “ultra-high-resolution screens.”

Additionally, Apple is working on a separate product that will feature only augmented reality, as opposed to the headset that features both that and virtual reality. The AR glasses are expected to be released sometime later this decade.

Apple seems to be closer to moving products to market geared toward virtual world applications. Other major players in AR and VR include Meta, formerly known as Facebook, which announced last month it will be opening a physical store to sell hardware products for the metaverse.

© 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.

Some bitcoin miners saw their stocks go up on Thursday, while others continued on a slower downwards path.

Notably, Iris Energy was up +20.36%, BIT Mining +28.05%  and Argo Blockchain +14.58%.

Bitfarms, TeraWulf, and Hut 8 were down slightly by the end of Thursday’s trading session.

Here’s how crypto mining companies performed on Thursday, May 19:

© 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.

Republican members of the US House Committee on Financial Services have sent a letter to Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell outlining the tasks they see as most salient in the path toward a central bank digital currency (CBDC).

The Fed released a discussion paper on a possible digital dollar in January of this year.

In that paper, the Fed identified the pros and cons of a CBDC and invited public comments to open the discussion on how a CBDC could improve the domestic payments system. Now, lawmakers are asking the Fed to address the parts of the financial system that a CBDC could improve.  

“As the Fed considers its next steps, we believe it is necessary to first understand the problems a CBDC would solve,” said the letter. “Moreover, we believe the Fed should understand whether the benefits of a CBDC outweigh the risks to commercial banks, the existing payments system, and consumers.”

Lawmakers have asked the Fed to discern inefficiencies in the US payment system and examine whether a CBDC would mitigate them.

That includes taking a look at whether a CBDC could address the needs of the unbanked and underbanked. The existing Fed paper doesn’t adequately address how a CBDC would solve difficulties unbanked individuals may have in paying minimum balance fees or distrust of banking institutions that could lead them to avoid the banking system, according to the lawmakers. 

To that end, the letter advocates for a private-sector approach, specifically advocating for the use of stablecoins in payment systems. 

“Committee Republicans believe stablecoins, if issued under a clear regulatory framework, hold promise as a potential cornerstone of a modern payment system,” said the letter. “Transacting in stablecoins has the potential to be a more efficient, faster, and less expensive payment option than what currently exists.”

The signatories requested that the Fed conduct a “detailed analysis” on how a CBDC might impact the stablecoin market, particularly through the lens of innovation and competition. 

Lawmakers are also interested in how a CBDC might be used as a monetary policy tool by the Fed, and have requested an analysis of how it could impact the central bank’s decision-making. It also advocates for further examination of the privacy and security mechanisms of a CBDC. 

The letter, dated May 18, has been signed by all 24 members of the Committee, which includes crypto advocates like Reps. Warren Davidson, Tom Emmer, and Ted Budd. 

© 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

• In this weekly series, we dive into some of the most interesting data and developments across the Layer 1 blockchain landscape, from DeFi and bridges to network activity and funding
• L1 ecosystems that have built connections with Terra and its native assets are adjusting to a new reality as they contend with the fallout of UST’s collapse
• This week, we take a look at Cosmos, Avalanche, and Solana

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members of The Block Research.
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Commonwealth Bank of Australia, a Sydney-based bank with multinational operations, has paused testing features allowing crypto sales on its app amid the crypto market downturn and regulatory uncertainty. 

Commonwealth announced plans to pilot crypto trading and custody features in November of 2021. Users could purchase 10 assets of bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and other cryptocurrencies, with the potential to add more features in 2022 after more tests. 

However, Commonwealth paused rollout on Thursday with no current plans of resuming, according to Guardian Australia, 

Commonwealth CEO Matt Comyn cited UST and Luna crashes as the main reason for current market volatility, adding that more regulation would be needed before re-activating and advancing crypto trading features.

© 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.

Law enforcement agencies in the US have been rapidly onboarding cryptocurrency investigative tools.

A new offering on the market aims to condense chains of crypto transactions into easily viewable timelines — perfect for showing to a jury, for example.

On May 18, at a conference in New York City, Jacob Illum, a chief scientist for blockchain sleuthing firm Chainalysis, announced a new investigative technology dubbed Storyline.

Launched in 2014 and with a recent funding round valuing the firm at $8.6 billion, Chainalysis is the current market leader in crypto investigations. Chainalysis’ flagship investigation tool has historically been Reactor, which visualizes crypto wallets and their transactions in extensive webs.

While Reactor aims to improve upon publicly available block explorers, in cases of more intricate transaction histories, those webs can be hard to examine. For someone less familiar with blockchains, they are difficult to decipher. This is especially true when it comes to smart contract interactions, which can involve a number of intermediary wallets that are not at the core of the transaction.

“The solution to obfuscation is simplicity,” Illum told The Block. Illum, who colleague and investigator Erin Plante described as “James Bond’s Q,” led the development of Storyline, which has been in beta testing within the company for the past eight months.

The Block reviewed a demonstration of Storyline, which was led by Illum. It draws on the same blockchains — mostly Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible chains — and data sources as Reactor but filters out “what’s noise and what is real,” as Illum put it. Storyline identifies a number of intermediary wallets that are not core parties to a transaction.

Illum pulled up a case of wash trading in NFTs that went through aggregators. The aggregators allowed the NFTs to change hands for steadily increasing valuations, after which trades they returned to the original wallet which would sell it again. It’s a project that Illum has worked on for some time.

The Reactor imagery is comprehensive but is a veritable Christmas tree of multicolor types of transactions and various intermediaries which, in addition to being opaque, does not clearly illustrate that those NFTs were going back to the original wallet that was selling them.

Source: Source: Chainalysis Reactor; wallet addresses blurred

Storyline condenses these wallets into chronological transactions, as shown below.

Source: Chainalysis Storyline

This was, however, a prepared project. For a more live demonstration, The Block requested an address from the Ronin hack, which the US Treasury has tied to the North Korean Lazarus Group and subsequently sanctioned a series of linked wallets.

With a transaction hash inputted, Storyline pulled up several wallets associated with the Ronin hack. It noted the wallets were sanctioned and, conveniently, put the date of their sanctions designation on a timeline.

After a couple of minutes of clicking, Illum found a series of outgoing transactions to other Ethereum wallets beginning post-sanctioning, on May 14 — to wallets that have not yet ended up on the US sanctions list. Several of those transactions ultimately led to Tornado Cash.

Source: Chainalysis Storyline

Illum demonstrated further outgoing transactions from Tornado Cash that happened shortly after those deposits and contained similar sums but noted that those required more research to confirm as affiliated.

The value is particularly valuable for presenting investigations to people who don’t know and don’t necessarily need to know the broader details of the blockchain. For criminal investigations, that can include prosecutors and juries.

“There is a flow to it that is followable and is fact. And I think that’s something we should explain more to juries,” said Santa Clara County cybercrime prosecutor Erin West of blockchain tracing during a panel. Of Storyline, she praised the value of “[h]aving that kind of timeline to tell a story and show to a jury.”

© 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

• Layer 0s have typically been used to scale existing Layer 1 blockchains
• LayerZero, a cross-chain interoperability protocol, has an L0 architecture as well, hence its name
• Given the recent rise of L0s, a formal definition of them has yet to be established across the industry, resulting in slightly varied definitions across various contexts
• LayerZero has built a series of cross-chain endpoints that essentially allows it to function as a messaging fabric under the existing L1s
• The definition of L0s is likely to still be refined slightly over time, though the utility it currently provides and will eventually provide is definitely going to be an integral part of the crypto landscape

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

Stablecoin issuer Tether said it reduced its commercial paper holdings in the first quarter of this year to improve the quality of its reserves.

Tether reported today that it had reduced its commercial paper to $19.9 billion from $24.2 billion the previous quarter, a 17% decrease. It also added U.S. Treasury bills, increasing them to $39.2 billion from $34.5 billion. 

The company added that it planned to cut its commercial paper by another 20%, which would be reflected in its second-quarter report.

Bloomberg said last October said that much of Tether’s commercial paper had been issued by big Chinese companies, causing some analysts to question the quality of the reserves. Tether has refrained from disclosing the names of those firms.

Tether is the provider of USD Tether (USDT), the biggest stablecoin in the crypto market. It maintains the value of its centralized stablecoin by using a basket of assets, including corporate debt, US Treasury bills and some cash reserves.

A quarterly attestation report showed that Tether had about $82 billion of reserves on March 31 last year, of which cash reserves and bank deposits accounted for $4 billion. Its current market cap is about $74 billion, according to CoinGecko.

The company had some difficulty dealing with investor fears over the recent TerraUST collapse. During the last week, USDT’s market cap dropped by about $9 billion amid a spike in redemptions of USDT for dollars. Still, on May 12 the company said in a post that it would honor all redemptions as proof of its solvency.

© 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.

Binance US has hired Krishna Juvvadi as vice president and head of legal, the crypto exchange operator announced on Thursday.

Juvvadi has joined Binance US from Uber, where he served as global head of operations compliance. He also worked for the US Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division as a trial attorney early in his career.

At Binance US, Juvvadi will lead the day-to-day operations of the company’s legal department. He will report to Norman Reed, who joined Binance US in December as general counsel, with prior experiences from the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, crypto and fintech.

“Krishna is a skilled legal practitioner whose experience shaping and implementing the regulatory strategy of Uber translates extremely well to our similarly nascent, fast-growing business and industry,” said Brian Shroder, CEO of Binance US, in a statement. “We recognize the importance of remaining responsive to and complying with the evolving rules and regulations governing the crypto ecosystem, and we continue to attract and invest in top legal and compliance talent to ensure this priority remains at the forefront of our operations.”

The head of legal is a newly created position at Binance US, meaning Krishna hasn’t replaced anyone, a company spokesperson told The Block.
 
Binance US and Binance have been busy hiring people who have worked for the government sector in their careers. In recent weeks and months, the two companies have made over a dozen such hires, including Krishna, Reed, Steven McWhirter and Stephanie Cabossioras.

© 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 protocol focused on carving out dedicated blockchain space for gaming and entertainment developers today announced a $6.5 million seed-stage fundraise.

Saga, which broke cover in March after it was founded in late 2021, is now valued at $130 million.

Investors involved in the fundraise — which was denominated in as-yet-unlaunched tokens — included Maven 11, Longhash Ventures, Hypersphere, Figment, Polygon Studios, Samsung NEXT, Chorus One, GSR, C2X, CRIT Ventures, Akash Network, Unanimous Capital, Strangelove Ventures, Tess Ventures, Merit Circle, Hustle Fund, Polymer, Zaki Manian, Jae Kwon, Garrette Furo, Alex Shin, Nick Tomaino and other angel backers.

Saga had previously raised $2 million in pre-seed funding in late 2021 from Ignite, formerly Tendermint, as part of an incubation program.

“The purpose of Saga as a protocol is to ensure that developers get their own space in which to build because as more users come into web3, particularly in gaming and entertainment, the expectations around developer and user experience are going to grow higher and higher,” Saga’s co-founder and CEO Rebecca Liao told The Block.

Saga seeks to solve this problem with so-called “chainlets” — dedicated blockchains that can be tailored to meet developers’ needs. Those wishing to build applications that incorporate crypto can do so using Saga’s chainlets directly, or by relying on them as a scaling solution for another layer 1 or layer 2 blockchain.

Liao says that web3, as it stands, cannot deal with more “experiential” apps — especially those involved in gaming and entertainment. She points to network congestion, performance issues stemming from slow throughput and high gas fees as key limiting factors. Saga’s chainlets, she says, can help developers overcome these.

With about 20 validators verifying transactions across of each of these through a shared security model, Liao says Saga can support as many as 1,000 chainlets in its current form. “A lot of the innovation is going to happen around validator orchestration and making sure that we are balancing the compute cycle accordingly,” she adds.

Saga is planning to launch its mainnet and token early next year. In the next few months, it will release an “AlphaNet” to begin onboarding developers and forging partnerships with infrastructure and gaming outfits.

© 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.