Europe’s Biggest Telecom Buys Polkadot

The biggest crypto news and ideas of the day

Dec. 21, 2021

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Today's must-reads

Top Shelf

BEARISH TURN? Between hawkish U.S. Federal Reserve positioning and a general de-risking across markets recently, CoinShares reported $142 million in crypto outflows across the industry last week. This is the largest weekly downturn on record, the digital-asset manager said, more than the previous record of $97 million last June. This bearish turn follows a 17-week run of inflows, and more than $9.5 billion in fresh capital pumped into crypto this year. Further, strangely, NFT web searches are up (even if the non-fungible market is down).

STABILITY WANTED: Fitch Ratings said that regulatory clarity could moderate stablecoin credit risks. In a new report the prominent credit rating agency said the fiat-pegged digital assets could create new market opportunities, and that uncertainty has deterred financial institutions from using them. Fitch notes that the European Union is the first major economy to publish draft regulations for the sector and has called for issuers to be regulated like banks or electronic money institutions.

BIT DERIVATIVE? BitMEX, the storied, bitcoin-only derivatives giant, will airdrop a new exchange token to account holders in early 2022. The BMEX token is similar in design and purpose (to reward users and pay for exchange services) to Binance's BNB and FTX's FTT token, two global crypto exchanges that have eaten into BitMEX's market share. One-fifth of all BMEX, out of a capped supply of 450 million tokens, will be reserved for BitMEX employees.

TANZE DIE POLKA: Europe's biggest telecommunications company, Deutsche Telekom AG, is throwing its weight behind the interoperable blockchain platform Polkadot. Deutsche Telekom's digital innovation subsidiary has purchased a significant trove of Polkadot's native cryptocurrency, DOT, to participate in its proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism and will also provide node-running infrastructure for other stakers. The telecoms company has existing stakes in oracle network Chainlink, NFT-geared blockchain Flow and mobile-first payment network Celo – all of which are PoS.

TESTING GROUND: Ethereum opened the Kintsugi testnet to the public on Monday, Tim Beiko, a developer for the blockchain, announced in a post. Named for the Japanese art of mending broken pottery with gold, Kintsugi is one of the final public testnets before Ethereum 2.0, the long-awaited, ambitious upgrade to make the most used blockchain cheaper, faster and more scalable. Earlier testnets were available only to developers, but this "longer-lived public testnet" will allow developers and the community to test applications and features in a controlled setting.

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What others are writing...

Off-Chain Signals

Brian Eno on NFTs & Automaticism (Crypto Syllabus)
Secret bitcoin miners in China could still make up 20% of global hashrate (Protos)
US Goes to Court to Recover $154M Stolen From Sony, Converted to Bitcoin (Decrypt)
Twitch co-founder's Fractal NFT project gets hijacked — $154,000 stolen (The Block)
Crypto mayors on the rise (Tech Crunch)

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