MetaMask 👉 ETH purchases via PayPal, BlockGPT 🚀 ‘chat to earn’, Buying 🏎 with Bitcoin gets $3.7M fine
Daily Crypto, Blockchain & Web3 Update 2023-05-12
CRYPTOCURRENCY
Bitcoin bears need BTC price to go below $27K ahead of Friday's $900M options expiry (4 min read)
The $900 million Bitcoin weekly options expiry on May 12 might play a decisive role in determining whether the price will succumb to falling below $27,000.
Bitcoin bears will try to take advantage of macroeconomic headwinds, Silk Road coins' FUD — fear, uncertainty and doubt — and uncertainty caused by Bitcoin’s transaction fee spike to pull Bitcoin's price down in the next few days.
The subsequent 8.2% two-day correction tested $27,400 support, favoring the thesis of sideways trading as investors evaluate the economic crisis dynamic and its potential impact on cryptocurrencies.
Account abstraction could bring the next billion users to Ethereum — Ambire CEO (1 min read)
Ivo Georgiev, CEO of Ethereum smart contract wallet Ambire, explained account abstraction and how wallets can bring more people to the network. He believes self-custody is an “extremely difficult” problem that can be solved with account abstraction. He explained that account abstraction makes crypto wallets programmable, giving them multiple keys and allowing features like two-factor authentication.
The CEO claimed that account abstraction could boost crypto adoption through new tools like embedding wallets on websites. “I think account abstraction will onboard the next one billion users on Ethereum,” he added.
BTC price risks $27K loss as Bitcoin trend lines brew ‘bullish cross’ (3 min read)
BTC price action offers little relief to Bitcoin bulls despite U.S. macro data releases showing inflation subsiding. Bitcoin headed toward $27,000 after the May 11 Wall Street open as bulls failed to show strength.
After a modest recovery from local lows seen the day prior, the pair remained weak, even as new United States macro data offered bullish cues. “Dump was retraced but then price quickly rolled over again,” popular trader Daan Crypto Trades summarized.
Bitcoin fees plummet 95% as BTC price recovers from US gov’t scare (3 min read)
Bitcoin was not subject to U.S. government selling this week, analysis shows, but BTC price action remains pressured. Bitcoin struggled to recover from fresh losses on May 11 as a false alarm over United States government sales spooked markets.
Financial commentator Tedtalksmacro called May 10 “just another day in crypto.”
In a Twitter summary of the day’s events, he added that U.S. inflation data had delivered for risk asset bulls, implying ongoing declines to come in the next few months.
Buying a car with Bitcoin gets $3.7M fine, prison time in Morocco (2 min read)
A crypto user who purchased a luxury car with Bitcoin faces 18 months in prison and a $3.7 million fine in Morocco, which still considers the use of crypto as an illegal act.
A recent report by Euronews stated the Casablanca Court of Appeal had upheld the conviction of Thomas Clausi, a 21-year-old French citizen, on charges of fraud and illegal use of cryptocurrency.
According to Clausi’s lawyer, Mohamed Aghanaj, the court confirmed the verdict last week. This decision indicates that the Moroccan judicial system is taking a strong stance against cryptocurrency use in the country.
MetaMask rolls out ETH purchases via PayPal to US users (2 min read)
Crypto wallet and decentralized application (DApp) provider MetaMask has started rolling out Ether purchases via PayPal for users in the United States — one of MetaMask's biggest markets. The company claims to be the first Web3 wallet to offer Ether transactions via PayPal.
Through the collaboration, American users can now choose PayPal as their payment method when buying ETH using MetaMask. The integration also makes it possible to transfer ETH from PayPal to MetaMask.
Big breath as Beacon Chain stops finalizing ... and then recovers (2 min read)
An unidentified issue on Ethereum’s Beacon Chain led to an issue with transaction finality for nearly half an hour on May 11.
Around 8:15 pm UTC on May 11, a number of Ethereum core developers announced that the Beacon Chain was having issues confirming transactions. New blocks were able to be proposed, but an unknown issue was preventing them from being finalized.
On Sept. 15, 2022, Ethereum’s pre-existing proof-of-work chain “merged” with the Beacon Chain, finalizing the network’s transition to a faster and more environmentally friendly proof-of-stake consensus mechanism.
Bitcoin miner Marathon Digital hit with another SEC subpoena (2 min read)
Bitcoin miner Marathon Digital has disclosed that it received another subpoena from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission relating to its 100-megawatt data center in Hardin, Montana.
On May 9, Marathon announced that it had partnered with digital assets infrastructure company Zero Two to create a large-scale immersion Bitcoin mining facility in Abu Dhabi.
The facility would consist of two mining mines with a combined 250-megawatt capacity, and Marathon noted that while mining in Abu Dhabi would normally be infeasible, its “custom-built immersion solution” would be sufficient to ensure the mining rigs remained cool.
BLOCKCHAIN
Federal Reserve's FedNow will connect with Metal Blockchain (3 min read)
The Federal Reserve’s forthcoming instant payment service FedNow will be connected to Metal Blockchain, according to a May 11 announcement from the Metal Blockchain team. The announcement said that the integration will allow Metal users to instantly convert funds to stablecoin and back again using FedNow’s “send/receive” function.
FedNow is an instant payment system developed by the United States Federal Reserve. It allows for round-the-clock, near-instant payments between banks. Currently, U.S. residents can only make instant payments domestically through third-party apps such as PayPal and Venmo, or crypto wallets. The Federal Reserve has stated that the new service will launch in July.
China launches national blockchain center to train half a million specialists (2 min read)
On May 10, the National Blockchain Technology Innovation Center, first announced in February, officially started its work in the Chinese capital city of Beijing. The center will collaborate with local universities, think tanks and blockchain businesses to develop blockchain technology in China. The institution will reportedly train more than 500,000 specialists in distributed ledger technology (DLT).
Leading the new center is the Beijing Academy of Blockchain and Edge Computing, which developed the ChainMaker blockchain; a home-grown blockchain serving as a blueprint for the center’s developments.
Binance looks to the UK for regulation amid US crypto crackdown (2 min read)
Binance seeks regulation in the U.K. amid a U.S. crackdown on cryptocurrencies as its chief strategy officer acknowledges the challenging business environment in the United States.
Crypto exchange Binance has acknowledged that a crackdown on cryptocurrencies has made conducting business in the United States challenging. It is now looking to be regulated in the United Kingdom.
While Hillmann acknowledged the “very confusing” environment in the U.S., he expressed the company’s commitment to doing “everything we possibly can” to be regulated in the United Kingdom.
BlockGPT launches ‘chat to earn’ ecosystem for training AI (3 min read)
BlockGPT, a recently launched Web3 company, announced the launch of its ‘chat to earn’ artificial intelligence (AI) service and related blockchain ecosystem on May 11.
According to the company, BlockGPT aims to create a decentralized, token-governed chatbot on the blockchain with similar functionality to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
The AI model's launch comes alongside the offering of two tokens, a governance token called BGPT and a meme token called AIBGPT. Both are reportedly built on PancakeSwap, a decentralized exchange that allows users to trade BEP-20 tokens.
NFTs
Milady memecoin surges 5,250% after Musk tweet, exchange listings (2 min read)
On May 11, Milady (LADYS), the self-organized memecoin of the namesake anime avatar nonfungible tokens (NFT) collection, surged by over 5,250% within 24 hours to trade at a $0.0000001528 at the time of publication. The day prior, American business magnate Elon Musk tweeted a meme using the imagery of a Milady NFT, sending the average Ether sale price of the collectionsoaring.
According to token developers, LADYS has “no association” with Milady creator Charlotte Fang or Milady Maker. The token “is simply paying homage to an NFT collection we all love and recognize.”