Last Week in Review: Twitter rebrands to “X”, and Chainlink rallies after update announcement

by Team Luno
· 3 minute read

The highlights from last week’s headline grabbers. All the important news, numbers and events from the world of crypto in one place. 

News from the block

🦅 The Fed likely to raise rates but investors remain optimistic

  • The Federal Reserve, the central bank of the US, is meeting 25 and 26 July to decide where to go with interest rates. It is widely expected that the Fed will raise rates by another 0.25%.

  • “On the one hand, the US economy continues to perform remarkably well, while on the other, the excellent news on inflation means that the Fed can take its foot off the gas and wait a few months for further developments,” Matthew Ryan, head of market strategy at financial services firm Ebury, commented to The Financial Times.

  • “The US central bank is widely expected to raise interest rates by 0.25 percentage points following the conclusion of its policy meeting on Wednesday, but investors are divided over whether there will be additional increases later this year,” FT reported.

👁️ Vitalik Buterin raises issues with Sam Altman’s Worldcoin

  • Worldcoin’s identity system, ‘Proof-of-Personhood,’ faces issues with privacy, accessibility, centralisation, and security, according to Buterin,” as per CoinDesk. 
  • “Risks include unavoidable privacy leaks, further erosion of people’s ability to navigate the internet anonymously, coercion by authoritarian governments, and the potential impossibility of being secure at the same time as being decentralised,” Buterin wrote. 
  • The WLD coin rose 30% in the days following launch. 

✖️ Twitter officially rebrands to “X”

  • Twitter has begun its transformation to an everything app, starting with its rebrand to “X”.
  • “Twitter made one massive impression and changed the way we communicate. Now, X will go further, transforming the global town square,” Linda Yaccarino, Twitter’s Chief Executive, tweeted.
  • Elon Musk said the bluebird logo will eventually be replaced by the company’s new one.  

⛓️ Chainlink releases new protocol connecting blockchains to banks

  • The price of LINK (Chainlink) has gained more than 17% following news of its new interoperability protocol.

  • “This is the launch of the standard that could connect all of the blockchains and all of the bank chains,” Sergey Nazarov said in an interview with CoinDesk.

  • “Data provider Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP), designed to help build cross-chain applications and services, is now live for early access users on the Avalanche, Ethereum, Optimism and Polygon blockchains,” CoinDesk reported. 

🛅 Tesla continues to HODL its digital assets 

  • Tesla’s digital asset holdings have remained unchanged since the company reduced its holdings from $218 million to $184 million during the fourth quarter of 2022, according to financial statements published Wednesday, as noted by Blockworks.  
  • “The value of the holdings, as of June 30, stayed flat — despite bitcoin’s price rise during the quarter — due to accounting rules that don’t allow for unrealized gains on crypto to be recorded,” according to the publication. 

TL;DID read

10 investment terms every crypto investor should know

Crunching the numbers

⏳ 2140 – When the last bitcoin will be minted. 

🔺 30% – By how much WLD, the Worldcoin cryptocurrency, soared in the days following its release. 

🔺 0.25% – By how much analysts expect the Fed to raise interest rates following its meeting on Wednesday.

⛓️ 17% – LINK, the native cryptocurrency of the Chainlink network, gained 17% after the network announced a new protocol that will tie in bank operations with blockchains. 

Crypto trivia

The Bitcoin halving is one year away, what does it mean for the price?

Protect your crypto 

The first step to protecting yourself against scams is staying up to date with the various ways criminals can get access to your crypto investments. We’re here to help you. Read below how you can avoid falling prey to scams on WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. 


🔑 Staying safe from crypto-related scams on social media

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