Crypto's Builders Are Upgrading, Not Breaking Ground

Plus: Tether probe, Uniswap censorship and Vitalik Buterin as Catsington |

What you need to know today in crypto and beyond  July 26, 2021 Sponsored By:     Welcome to The Node.   If you were forwarded this newsletter and would like to receive it, sign up here.   Questions? Feedback? We'd love to hear from you! Simply reply to this email.   –Daniel Kuhn Today's must-reads Top Shelf CUTTING DOWN: FTX cut its leveraged offerings – or the amount of debt a trader is allowed to borrow – from 100 times to 20 times, CEO Sam Bankman-Fried said Sunday. A day later, Binance, announced it will also reduce the maximum leverage users can use to trade futures contracts and halt its margin trading service involving sterling, the euro and Australian dollar, as it seeks to stave off a widespread regulatory backlash.   CANCELED: Uniswap Labs is restricting access to some tokens on the user interface it supports. The software studio cited an "evolving regulatory landscape" in its decision to delist certain meme tokens, tokenized stocks and derivatives in a Friday announcement. These assets are still accessible on the underlying Uniswap protocol.   ANOTHER PROBE: The U.S. Department of Justice is reportedly investigating Tether for a possible offense conducted years ago, Bloomberg reported Monday. The extent of the probe is unknown, though it may implicate some of Tether's executives.   CRYPTO STAR POWER: Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin is joining the cast of "Stoner Cats," a new animated NFT show created by actress Mila Kunis that also features Jane Fonda, Chris Rock and Ashton Kutcher. The Ethereum co-founder will voice a taxidermied cat named Catsington. To watch the first five-minute episode, viewers must purchase an NFT that is both a digital artwork of a randomly selected character from the show as well as a ticket to unlock all episodes that are made.   PILING UP: The number of crypto ATMs installed globally has increased by more than 70% to over 24,000 this year. ATMs can be found in 75 different countries, according to Coin ATM radar. The growth compares with a jump of almost 120% for all 2020.   –Helene Braun A message from Nexo Your digital assets deserve a savings account in their BEST INTEREST. Leading crypto lender Nexo treats you, your crypto and your fiat to industry-best Crypto & Fiat services, featuring:    * Up to 12% interest on digital assets, paid out daily! * Yields available on BTC, ETH, LTC, BCH, XRP, XLM, EOS, TRX, LINK, BNB, PAXG, USDT, USDC, TUSD, PAX, DAI, HUSD, GBP and EUR. * No minimum or maximum limits on funds deposited, offering infinite opportunities to earn. * #ZeroFees on all transactions. * Military-grade wallet security and top-tier insurance on all custodial assets with SOC 2 Type 2 certified crypto custodian BitGo.   Get started at nexo.io Overheard on CoinDesk TV Sound Bite "We were trying to find a model where we're going to allow by people being able to purchase NFTs to dictate what they want to watch." —Actress Mila Kunis, on CoinDesk TV's "First Mover." A message from CoinDesk The Investor's Perspective on the Bitcoin Taproot Upgrade Taproot is a bundle of three upgrades to Bitcoin aimed at improving network security, privacy and scalability. At the same time, it poses some potential drawbacks to Bitcoin including risks of low adoption, unintended privacy shortcomings and Bitcoin community disappointment and fracturing.   CoinDesk Research's newest report dives into the economic impact and investment implications of the Taproot upgrade. Download the full report. What others are writing... Off-Chain Signals Nearly $900 million in crypto short positions were liquidated following BTC's surge to $39,000 (The Block) Bitcoin miner Argo breaks ground in Texas, kicking off green energy rush (Protos) A Prehistory of DAOs (Mirror) A tax loophole is helping bitcoin holders save tons of cash by avoiding federal taxes (CNBC) DeFi, by definition, cannot be fully regulated, Siam Commercial Bank president says (Cointelegraph)   –H.B. & D.K. Sponsored Content   Globalway: GraphLinq: Bringing No-Code Development to Blockchain The GraphLinq platform helps to minimize costs by providing off-chain data storage for developers to use when appropriate. This allows for the building of graphs and other workflows that only incur gas fees when necessary. The system also relies on a layer 2 transaction solution running on the Polygon chain to further minimize costs. Putting the news in perspective The Takeaway Crypto's Builders Are Upgrading, Not Breaking Ground Everyone's building decentralized finance, even bitcoiners.   Jack Dorsey announced a new division of Square that was going to build an open financial infrastructure using Bitcoin as its basis. RSK and Sovryn have already been doing decentralized finance (DeFi) for Bitcoin for a while now.   Does anyone want to try to come up with new applications for blockchain technology any longer? It doesn't seem that way.   Bitcoin was a step change in technology because it proved that cash value can exist online in a purely digital way. Ethereum was a step change because it proved computing could be distributed trustlessly.   Nothing else has leveled up the internet since, at least as far as I can tell. Since Bitcoin and Ethereum, every project since has been an attempt to slightly improve what's already come so far. This isn't so bad, but it's disappointing that all the new changes that are faster, better, smarter versions of what's been done already only seem interested in copying the applications to date as well (mainly DeFi and NFTs).   Some examples: The mood out of the Tezos ecosystem seems to be all about non-fungible tokens. That's a lot of NEAR's vibe these days, too.   Solana got a pretty nice DEX built and it too has moved fast into NFTs, with a little more of an intellectual property orientation, it seems.   Polkadot has appeared to be going more for the DeFi angle, which makes sense because the Polkadot and Ethereum communities go way back.   You get my point.   The only project that even claims to be breaking genuinely new ground is DFinity with its Internet Computer. I don't quite see it, but I'm also not completely dismissive of the idea that it might be. But, much like the other examples, it's not trying to run anything fundamentally different yet. When it went live, it announced applications in DeFi, social networking, infrastructure services and a provenance application – all nice lines of business but nothing we haven't seen before.   And, look, incremental improvements got TVs from bulky cathode ray tube sets to liquid-organic-dilithium-D^6-ODANG displays today, so it's not for nothing! There's a lot of value to be captured in the whole incremental improvement hustle!   But there's a point in a technology when it feels like blinders have fallen on its builders and inventors can't see beyond those limits.   With everyone but everyone building exchanges, DeFi and NFTs – that is, the same things as everyone else – this all feels much like the cities around the world vying to be "The Next Silicon Valley." None of them have done it and none of them will.   Even if technology's HQ relocates someday, it won't be because that place did Silicon Valley better, but because it found a paradigm-shifting formula.    Greatness isn't born of incremental improvements on what's come before. Greatness is born of changing what we believe to be possible, and I can't help but think that there is a bit more greatness to be squeezed out of this distributed ledger idea.   –Brady Dale The CoinDesk Quarterly Review 2021 Q2   After two consecutive quarters of strong price gains for most of the top crypto assets, Q2 2021 finally brought an end to market euphoria with a resounding crash.   Most CoinDesk 20 assets, which constitute 99% of the crypto market by verifiable volume, ended the quarter with negative returns. Meanwhile, protocol development for the world's largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, Bitcoin and Ethereum, reached new milestones.   CoinDesk Research's latest Quarterly Review dives into the trends, developments and technological progress that shaped the crypto markets from April to June 2021. The full report is now available from the CoinDesk Research Hub. The Chaser... 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