Compilation: Luan Peng, ChainCatcher
"What Important Events Happened This Week (7.29-8.4)"
ChainCatcher News, according to a CoinGecko research report, governments around the world collectively hold 471,380.6 BTC, valued at approximately 32.7 billion USD, accounting for 2.6% of the total circulating supply of Bitcoin.
Among them, the U.S. government holds the largest amount of Bitcoin among national governments, with 213,297 BTC, approximately 14.82 billion USD. A significant portion of the Bitcoin held by the U.S. government comes from the seized dark web marketplace "Silk Road."
ChainCatcher News, according to Protos, Russia has exchanged "The Wall Street Journal" reporter Evan Gershkovich and a former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan for some Russians detained by the U.S. and its allies, including Alexander Vinnik, the founder of the cryptocurrency exchange BTC-e.
Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan traveled to a location outside of Russia yesterday. According to Business Insider citing TASS, Vinnik and others will be sent in another direction, and their names have been removed from the FBI's electronic database.
It is reported that in May of this year, Vinnik pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering during his time at BTC-e. He admitted responsibility for approximately 121 million USD in losses and encouraged criminals to use the platform for money laundering and storing illegal gains. Gershkovich and Whelan were arrested for espionage in March 2023 and December 2020, respectively, but the U.S. denied these charges.
ChainCatcher News, OKX CEO Star retweeted @xiaomucrypto's tweet about the "aevo project harvesting users" and commented, "What is the original intention of listing tokens on cryptocurrency exchanges? After some token projects are listed on exchanges, the only thing they do is release, reduce holdings, and harvest users. Exchanges should not become accomplices to such projects, and OKX has not done well in listing. How to protect this market without regulation on listing and reducing holdings? This is something that the entire industry should reflect on."
ChainCatcher News, Forbes reporter Eleanor Terrett revealed that California Congressman Ro Khanna will host another meeting in Washington next Monday, with representatives from the cryptocurrency industry, Democratic politicians, and the Harris campaign team in attendance.
Eleanor Terrett stated that this move represents an effort by Democratic supporters of cryptocurrency to establish a new starting point with the industry.
ChainCatcher News, Bitwise Chief Information Officer Matt Hougan believes that the market is "not optimistic enough" about Bitcoin, and after the Bitcoin 2024 conference, investors need to rethink the potential upside of this mainstream cryptocurrency.
Hougan believes that political support may be due to the increasing popularity of cryptocurrency among Americans. The industry's strong lobbying influence in Washington has led many politicians to publicly support Bitcoin, even if their support is more about attracting its growing popularity rather than a genuine belief in its value.
This shift in perspective and the increasing prevalence of Bitcoin has led Hougan to "rethink what is possible." Hougan pointed out that ideas that were once considered far-fetched are becoming increasingly plausible: G20 countries adding Bitcoin to their balance sheets to outpace the U.S., comprehensive cryptocurrency legislation rapidly passing due to bipartisan support, and widespread acceptance of cryptocurrency on Wall Street.
ChainCatcher News, the Russian Central Bank governor stated that Russia plans to launch international cryptocurrency payments by the end of this year to counter Western sanctions. The central bank is prepared to take flexible measures and has been discussing this initiative with various ministries, institutions, and enterprises.
In addition, the Russian State Duma (lower house of parliament) has preliminarily approved legislation allowing businesses to use cryptocurrency for international payments.
ChainCatcher News, according to the public account of Tancheng Brigade of Linyi Traffic Police Detachment, the bureau recently dismantled a criminal gang laundering money for fraudsters and arrested 4 suspects. On July 1, the bureau received a clue from Ms. Li, a resident in its jurisdiction, that she may have fallen victim to investment and financial fraud. Li admitted that she was induced by a "successful man" to recharge over 600,000 RMB on a false investment platform over a month ago.
- The police locked in the suspects and pursued them for over 1500 kilometers overnight, successfully capturing two suspects, Li and Qiu, in Changning, Hunan. Subsequently, in the outskirts of Tancheng, they successfully captured Zeng and Miao, who were counting cash.
Upon investigation, the criminal gang used virtual currency transactions to conspire with overseas fraud suspects multiple times to transfer the defrauded funds and illegally profit over 50,000 yuan.
ChainCatcher News, according to Kaiko data, the Turkish Lira (TRY) has shown resilience to the volatility of the cryptocurrency market this year, with its trading volume exceeding $100 billion for 8 consecutive months, the longest period on record.
9. Qatar to Implement Cryptocurrency Framework by the End of 2024
ChainCatcher News, Henk Jan Hoogendoorn, head of the Financial Services Department at the Qatar Financial Centre (QFC), stated that Qatar has established a robust framework for tokenizing various real-world assets, including securities, debt capital market instruments, investments, Islamic bonds, and other asset categories. The framework is expected to be completed and enacted in the fourth quarter of this year.
Additionally, the QFC recently established a digital asset lab to encourage innovation and research in the financial and digital asset fields.
10. ByBit Exchange Suspends Operations in France
ChainCatcher News, ByBit announced in a press release on August 1 that it will cease operations in France and restrict account functions for French users.
ByBit stated that starting from August 2, accounts of French users will be "restricted to only closing positions," preventing the opening of new positions or depositing new funds in their ByBit services and products.
Starting from August 13, all open positions for French customers will be automatically liquidated, and banking card services for French customers will also be suspended. Customers can choose to withdraw the remaining funds from their ByBit accounts.
ByBit concluded the announcement by expressing its anticipation of returning to the French market once it obtains the appropriate regulatory approval in France.
"What are some exciting articles to read this week (7.29-8.24)"
From founding the mining giant Bitmain to the largest cryptocurrency asset management platform in Asia, Wu Jihan and Ge Yuesheng seem to follow a basic principle, avoiding duplicating efforts.
They prefer to enter blue ocean markets, rely on original eye-catching products, and become market leaders through aggressive strategies.
In 2013, as one of the first manufacturers of Bitcoin mining machines, Bitmain quickly dominated the market, at one point controlling over 30% of the network's computing power, and its founder, Wu Jihan, was seen as the only person with the opportunity to control Bitcoin.
In just over 5 years, Bitmain, with a valuation of several billion dollars, became the top unicorn in the cryptocurrency industry.
At the end of 2018, Wu Jihan and Ge Yuesheng, who had left Bitmain, set their sights on the still-developing Asian cryptocurrency asset management field and founded Matrixport, quickly making a mark in the market with the innovative cryptocurrency wealth management product "Dual Currency Wealth Management."
Two years later, Matrixport also successfully joined the unicorn ranks. Today, with assets under custody and management each exceeding $3 billion, Matrixport has become one of the most important leaders in the cryptocurrency asset management market.
2. Interpreting Coinbase's 2024 Q2 Financial Report: Revenue of $1.45 Billion, Net Profit Down 97% QoQ
Coinbase announced its second-quarter financial report today, with revenue of $1.45 billion, an 11% decrease from the previous quarter, and a year-on-year growth of over 100%, almost in line with analysts' expectations of $1.37 billion. Net income was $36 million, a 97% decrease from the previous quarter. Adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) was $596 million. Coinbase achieved positive revenue growth for four consecutive quarters.
Coinbase's total trading volume in the second quarter was $226 billion, a 28% decrease from the first quarter, with trading revenue of $781 million, a 27% decrease from the previous quarter, and subscription and service revenue growing by 17% to $599 million. Total operating expenses were $1.1 billion, a 26% increase from the previous quarter. Coinbase made good progress in diversifying its revenue in the second quarter, with subscription and service revenue reaching nearly $600 million. The balance sheet increased to $7.8 billion.
It is worth mentioning that Coinbase's custody fee revenue in the second quarter was $35 million, a 7% increase from the previous quarter. The main driver was that the average cryptocurrency asset prices in the second quarter were higher than in the first quarter, and it also benefited from the related fund inflows as the custodian of BTC ETF products. In addition, Coinbase generated $240 million in interest income from USDC stablecoin in the second quarter, a 22% increase from the previous quarter.
On July 31, StarkNet derivative ZKX founder Eduard announced the closure of the platform due to the inability to find a viable economic path, and all user funds will be refunded to their trading accounts.
According to CoinGecko data, since the announcement of the closure, the ZKX token has dropped by over 50%, currently priced at $0.01.
However, the news of ZKX's shutdown continues to ferment in the cryptocurrency community. The project had just issued the ZKX token a few weeks ago and announced a $7.5 million large financing supported by top institutions such as GCR, Amber Group, and Crypto.com. The decision to shut down was unexpected.
Investor @Ye Su posted on social media, stating that as an investor, they did not receive any advance notice when ZKX closed.
He added that the team claimed they had no money, refused to provide any financial or expenditure details, and were unwilling to communicate with us investors. Most projects consider how to transform and actively communicate during difficult times. In contrast, Edward took the money from early supporters without any communication, showing a lack of moral standards and forfeiting the right to start a business in the industry in the future.
4. Conversation with GaiaNet CEO: Challenging Giants, Building Decentralized "ChatGPT"
In 2015, Matt Wright became involved in cryptocurrency after helping the top UK bank Barclays host a blockchain hackathon, and has been in the cryptocurrency field for nearly 10 years now.
- Matt Wright previously worked at JPMorgan and was involved in the development of the open-source blockchain platform Quorum. With Quorum being acquired by ConsenSys, Matt Wright joined ConsenSys as the community lead, and later headed ConsenSys' DAO organization and its accelerator Fellowship.
Most of the time, Matt Wright has been working with developers. With the advancement of AI technology, more and more developers around Matt are getting involved in AI-related projects.
However, Matt quickly realized that the current AI field is dominated by a few centralized organizations in Silicon Valley, leading to various issues such as scrutiny and bias in closed-source models, high model training costs, user privacy, and IP ownership.
Therefore, Matt decided to lead his team in creating a truly democratic AI infrastructure that can address these issues. Gaia was born in May this year. As an open-source distributed AI infrastructure project, Gaia aims to be a decentralized alternative to AI giants, decentralizing AI agents and allowing AI data content providers to have rightful ownership and rewards for their data content.
The first use case of GaiaNet emerged in academia. Dr. Yang, director of the FHL Vive Center at the University of California, Berkeley, is using GaiaNet's distributed network to create a decentralized teaching assistant by leveraging a large amount of research and data, including courses, works, and student feedback.
In addition to building network infrastructure, GaiaNet is also seeking cooperation with academic institutions that possess valuable data, aiming to enable them to have their own AI agents.
At its inception, GaiaNet received $10 million in seed funding, with key strategic advisors including Lex Sokolin of Generative Ventures, Brian Johnson of Republic Capital, Shawn Ng of 7RIDGE, Kishore Bhatia, EVM Capital, Mantle EcoFund, and ByteTrade Lab.
5. Full Text of the Federal Reserve's Decision: Maintaining Interest Rates and Not Signaling a Rate Cut
The Federal Reserve has maintained the federal funds rate target range at 5.25%-5.50% for the eighth consecutive time and reiterated that it will not cut interest rates until it has greater confidence in inflation, indicating that the committee will focus on both inflation and employment risks.
On July 29, a "legitimate" community vote transferred "49.9 million COMP tokens worth $25 million" from the Compound treasury to an unfamiliar and unmonitored multisig address, sparking a DAO governance attack controversy.
After the COMP transfer proposal was approved, the price of COMP tokens fell by nearly 7% within 24 hours, from $50 to $46.6.
On July 30, Bryan Colligan, Growth Lead at Compound, announced the launch of the Stake COMP (stCOMP) product, which will be controlled by the Compound DAO, as a condition for canceling the proposal. The product will allocate 30% of the annual additional market reserve to COMP stakers.
The "Proposal 289 for the $24 million COMP transfer" has been canceled, and as a result, the price of COMP tokens surged by over 13% within the day, now priced at $51.4.
7. Key Points of Vitalik Buterin's Speech at EDCON 2024: The Next Decade of Ethereum
Since its official launch on July 30, 2015, the Ethereum blockchain has been leading the innovation and development of blockchain technology, attracting global developers' attention with its unique charm, and jointly outlining the blueprint for a decentralized future.
At EDCON 2024, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin once again took the spotlight to deliver a keynote speech on "The Next 10 Years of Ethereum," reviewing significant progress in Ethereum's fees, transaction inclusion time, and wallet security, and anticipating widespread use of smart contract wallets within the next five years.
8. Meme Carnival Night, Trump "Defeated" by a Dog
The annual Bitcoin conference, which has always been a focus of attention in the cryptocurrency community, became even more popular this time due to the high-profile announcement of a speech by the influential figure in the US presidential election, Donald Trump.
Under such high attention, the birth of memecoins often follows. With Trump's speech spanning both politics and cryptocurrency, this year's Bitcoin conference naturally became a night of memecoins under the Buff boost from Trump.
However, the biggest meme winner of the night was not the Trump concept, but Neiro, the new Shiba Inu of Kabosu, the original dog of Doge.
On July 28, the 3-day Bitcoin 2024 (Nashville) came to a close.
Bitcoin 2024 is destined to leave the most colorful mark in the history of cryptocurrency. At a critical time during the 2024 US presidential election, this Bitcoin technology forum has become one of the largest political stages.
Compared to previous attention to Bitcoin technical innovation, Bitcoin 2024 saw the gathering of politicians, with the market focus almost entirely on politicians' promises regarding cryptocurrency.
US presidential candidates Trump and Robert Kennedy, as well as several US senators, participated in the conference, proposing key strategies for Bitcoin and even influencing the future direction of the cryptocurrency market.
After more than a decade of development, the Bitcoin conference has transformed from a forum only of interest to technical geeks into a political stage where politicians gather, reflecting the expanding influence of cryptocurrency, which has finally entered the mainstream.
Bitcoin may not need politicians, but politicians now need cryptocurrency.
Humpy, the main leader of Golden Boys, had previously initiated "hijackings" through DAO on multiple DeFi protocols.
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