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Quick Take

• Blockchains provide open databases from which past transactions and smart contract interactions can be queried.
• Financial and user activity can be monitored on a per-block basis. This means that all business metrics update dynamically in real-time.
• Dune Analytics is a popular tool in the Ethereum community for building custom dashboards related to crypto protocols.

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The nuclear and fossil-fuel based power generator Energy Harbor Corp announced Monday that it has partnered with bitcoin mining hosting provider Standard Power, according to a press release. 

The bitcoin mining endeavor will commence in December of 2021. Standard Power will convert an abandoned paper mill in Coshocton, Ohio into a mining facility that uses energy from Energy Harbor’s nuclear power plants. 

“By partnering with Energy Harbor, we have proactively structured our hosting capabilities to ensure that 100% of the power associated with this facility is carbon-free,” said Maxim Serezhin, Standard Power’s Chief Executive Officer.

Bitcoin has garnered renewed scrutiny in its sustainability this year after historic price peaks. Notably, in March, Elon Musk’s company Tesla accepted bitcoin as a payment option then rejected it two months later due to stated environmental concerns, citing a dependence on fossil fuel. Yet the very act of pinning down the true energy mix of bitcoin mining of fossil fuel or renewable sources is much harder than it appears, as The Block has previously explored.

Nuclear power is indeed carbon-free. Rather than burning the high carbon capacity found in fossilized plants and animals, nuclear power plants split uranium atoms to turn steam-powered turbine generators for energy. The U.S. Department of Energy states that a nuclear plant produces one gigawatt of energy on average, with the largest American nuclear power plant Palo Verde in Arizona producing 3.99 gigawatts. 

And yet, aside from the Energy Harbor-Standard Power partnership, nuclear power does not appear to be a popular option for “clean” bitcoin mining efforts. Ukraine has been considering using excess nuclear power for bitcoin mining for the past year but does not appear to have made headway. 

One possible reason for the scarcity of nuclear-powered bitcoin mining could be the upfront costs. Building the Vogtle nuclear power units in Waynesboro, Georgia — the first nuclear project to be built in the United States in the 21st century — cost more than $25 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal. 

© 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.

Uniswap said Tuesday that it is moving one step closer to bringing the popular decentralized exchange onto the layer-two protocol known as Optimistic Ethereum.

“During this Alpha period, OΞ will support an initial throughput of 0.6 transactions per second. Because Uniswap v3 is currently one of the few protocols deployed to OΞ, this should translate to transaction capacity roughly in line with L1. Unlike L1, transactions on OΞ confirm instantly — no more pending or stuck swaps!” the decentralized exchange (DEX)’s team said in a blog post.

Plans for integrating with the technology, which is being developed by the a16z-backed startup Optimism, were made public when Uniswap’s third iteration, or v3, went live in March. Optimism is one of a number of startups working on so-called rollups, which aggregate transactions onto a secondary protocol with the goal of scaling the base layer and sharply reducing transacting costs. 

Such a goal has big implications for markets like Uniswap, which sees its transactions conducted directly on the Ethereum blockchain. According to data from ETH Gas Station, Uniswap is currently the biggest consumer of gas on Ethereum, accounting for 1,500 ETH spent on transactions in the past 30 days.

In the blog post, the Uniswap team stressed that would-be users should “treat this as an early alpha product.”

“Optimistic Ethereum is a complex Layer 2 scaling solution still in need of rigorous battletesting. At launch, the Optimism team will have upgrade rights over the bridge contract, allowing them to address any bugs that should arise,” the team wrote.

© 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 French government on Tuesday suggested that the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) be empowered with oversight powers of the economic bloc’s crypto industry. 

France’s financial markets regulator, the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF), published a wide-ranging policy document on Tuesday. Among its suggestions: that “[d]irect supervision should also be granted to ESMA whenever the EU decides to regulate a financial activity, profession or type of product that was previously unregulated.” 

The AMF went on to say:

“In such case, it makes sense to build regulatory expertise at ESMA level from the outset. For instance, should an EU framework be established to regulate providers of non-financial data, ratings and services in the future, it would be legitimate to entrust ESMA with authorisation and supervision tasks in relation to the entities covered by that framework. Likewise, granting ESMA the power of direct supervision of public offers of crypto-assets in the EU (scrutiny of white papers) and of crypto-asset service providers would create obvious economies of scale for all national supervisors and concentrate expertise in an efficient way, for the common European benefit.”

For years, ESMA has proposed policy avenues in the area of digital assets, preparing reports on specific subjects and issuing warnings to would-be investors of initial coin offerings, for example. As such, the kind of regulatory expertise referred to by the AMF already exists, in some fashion, at ESMA today.

The EU formally proposed a regulatory framework for crypto assets last fall. 

In March, ESMA issued a statement, reiterating past warnings about investments in unregulated crypto assets.

© 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.

S&P Dow Jones Indices went live with a group of new digital asset-focused products on Tuesday, including one that tracks more than 240 cryptos at launch.

Tuesday’s launches build on the products released in May, when S&P went to market with three indices focused on bitcoin, ether, and one that tracks both of those major cryptocurrencies. Among those going live today is the Cryptocurrency Broad Digital Market (BDM) Index, which S&P said “provides a wide performance snapshot of the cryptocurrency market and includes more than 240 coins at launch.”

“For more than a century, our indices have offered insight into how the markets are performing. Now, with the introduction of the S&P Cryptocurrency Broad Digital Market Index, we’re providing that answer to cryptocurrency investors,” Peter Roffman, Global Head of Innovation and Strategy at S&P Dow Jones Indices, said in a statement. 

As with the earlier products, data is being provisioned by industry data provider Lukka. 

In May, Roffman told The Block in an interview that S&P had ambitions beyond its initial trial of indices, with a focus on the cryptocurrencies that have attracted institutional interest to date. At the time, Roffman referred to the original debut as a “first step.”

“The expansion of our Digital Market Indices family gives one of the broadest snapshots yet of this rapidly growing asset class with the ability to slice and dice by market cap,” Roffman said Tuesday.

© 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.

Quick Take

• Mercado Bitcoin is Brazil’s biggest crypto exchange. Its parent company is now valued at $2.1 billion.
• The group is planning geographical expansion and acquisitions, but long term it is eyeing a bigger prize: the region’s massive population of people who lack bank accounts.

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Crypto exchange developer Shipyard Software has raised $21 million to build Clipper, a decentralized exchange that is designed for different types of traders.

According to the firm, Polychain Capital led a $4 million equity round with participation from 0x Labs, 1inch, DeFi Alliance, and Quantstamp, among others.

An additional $17 million was pledged by liquidity providers for Clipper, with participation from Polychain, Nascent, Three Arrows Capital, and more. The exchange was recently fully integrated with decentralized aggregators 1inch and 0x. The firm says it will use its new funds to further develop Clipper and grow the exchange’s liquidity pool. 

“We believe that Shipyard is beginning with a genuinely innovative approach by targeting small-to-medium sized traders, not whales,” said Polychain Capital founder and CEO Olaf Carlson-Wee. “Shipyard’s tech will fill a desperately needed void of DEXs that cater to retail traders.”

According to its website, Shipyard Software builds specialized decentralized exchanges for specific types of trades, traders, and instruments. It launched Clipper, its first exchange, on June 30.

According to the firm, most individual crypto traders place trades that are on average less than $10,000. However, most decentralized exchanges today operate on a structure that conflicts with these trades by optimizing for much larger trades. Shipyard Software says it built Clipper to resolve the “feeding frenzy” smaller retail investors face because of this.

© 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.

Bitcoin fell sharply during Tuesday morning’s trade after new data released by the U.S. Labor Department showed a jump in consumer prices — a slight confutation of the narrative that the cryptocurrency does well in the face of higher inflation. 

The consumer price index or CPI increased 0.9% last month, representing a jump of 5.4% relative to June 2020, according to the new data.

Bitcoin fell as the data was announced from highs above $33,000 to slightly above $32,000, a percentage decline of 2.35%. 

Proponents of bitcoin, including famed investor Paul Tudor Jones, have backed bitcoin as a hedge against inflation and aggressive US monetary policy, decried as “money printing.”

Still, bitcoin doesn’t appear to always trade as a safe haven asset or hedge against inflation. 

© 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.

Quick Take

• The emergence of SushiSwap might be a contributing factor in several decisions made by Uniswap
• SushiSwap has built different products to help new projects launch, manage, and grow their tokens
• The evolution of SushiSwap signifies a clash of ideologies within DeFi communities

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Grayscale is ramping up its efforts to get its flagship bitcoin fund ready for the ETF prime time. 

The firm — which manages over $30 billion in digital assets — announced Tuesday that it will offload fund account and administration functions for the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust to BNY Mellon in October. Those functions are currently executed in-house, according to CEO Michael Sonnenshein. 

The new deal sets the stage for BNY Mellon’s role in Grayscale’s plans to convert GBTC into a bitcoin ETF. 

“Engaging BNY Mellon is an important milestone as part of our commitment to converting Grayscale Bitcoin Trust into an ETF,” said Sonnenshein in a press release. “BNY Mellon has a long-standing reputation as a trusted provider and has established one of the first teams dedicated to servicing the growing digital currency asset class.”

Sonnenshein first unveiled Grayscale’s plans to upgrade its GBTC product into an ETF on an episode of The Scoop. 

Grayscale is among several firms in the market hoping for bitcoin ETF approval from US regulators. Despite a recent slide in crypto prices and its AUM, it is still the largest cryptocurrency asset management with more than $20 billion under management for its Bitcoin Trust product. 

© 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.