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The Week in Review: NFTs on Instagram, MicroStrategy working on BTC payments tech, and more
Team Luno
The highlights from last week’s news, numbers and events from the crypto industry.
News from the block
Michael Saylor, the Bitcoin mega-whale and former CEO of MicroStrategy, is on to his next Bitcoin venture, while on the NFT front, Meta has enabled users to display collectibles across its platforms. And, regulatory filings from a Swiss bank reveal that institutional investors continue to hold digital assets, even while inflation numbers remain stubbornly hard to tame.
Too long; Did read
Market cycles come and go like the seasons, but what are the drivers behind these events?
Crunching the numbers
Do you have $50,000 to become an independent validator on Ethereum POS?
The crypto time capsule
In 2012, a US senator opened his campaign to Bitcoin donations. The price of Bitcoin was around $15 at the time.
Crypto trivia
What does the founder of Cardano have to do with Ethereum?
Worth a watch
The founder of Stripe made the case for Bitcoin to the International Monetary Fund. Here’s how he did it.
News from the block
Michael Saylor is building Bitcoin technology
Speaking recently at the Baltic Honeybadger 2022 conference in Latvia, Michael Saylor, the former CEO of MicroStrategy, said developers at the company are currently working on software solutions that will integrate with the Lightning Network, a second payments layer built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain.
The Lightning Network enables the Bitcoin network to process 1 million transactions per second. Saylor says his company’s work will help onboard the masses onto Lightning.
Facebook and Instagram users can now show off their NFTs across these platforms
Meta, Facebook’s parent company, last week rolled out an update that enables NFT owners to share their collectibles across its social media accounts.
“As we continue rolling out digital collectibles on Facebook and Instagram, we’ve started giving people the ability to post digital collectibles that they own across both Facebook and Instagram,” the company said. “This will enable people to connect their digital wallets once to either app in order to share their digital collectibles across both.”
Interest rates are up but are they having the desired effect?
The main objective of the US Federal Reserve Bank in raising interest rates is to suppress the economy. A rise in unemployment numbers is a sure sign this approach is busy working, but the latest figures from the US show a reverse trend, with job numbers increasing instead of decreasing.
This may mean that the Federal Reserve will continue raising interest rates until these indicators start to fall in line.
The strong figures from the job market is threatening to keep pushing prices higher as a limited supply of workers are able to earn more and thus spend more.
Swiss bank Credit Suisse holds over $30 million in digital assets for institutional clients
Regulatory filings by Credit Suisse for the end of Q2 has shown that the bank holds digital assets worth around $30 million for its institutional clients. The filings were in line with recent regulation that requires banks to disclose their crypto assets.
This latest information is another sign that traditional financial institutions are cosying up to cryptocurrencies and other digital assets.
TL;Did read
Market cycles explained
Trends, cycles and patterns we see in the natural world also occur in free markets. These markets behave differently but they are cyclical. Here’s how to make sense of them.
Crunching the numbers
32 – How much Ethereum investors must stake to become an independent validator on the Ethereum blockchain, following the Merge sometime in mid-September.
$50,000 – The value of 32 ETH at the time of writing.
20,268 – The number of cryptocurrencies currently in existence.
$69,000 – Bitcoin’s all-time high, which it hit in November 2021.
The crypto time capsule
In mid-August 2012, a US state representative, Mark Warden, added a Bitcoin donation system to his campaign website, the first state representative in New Hampshire to do so.
“This is a cutting-edge technology that is market-based, voluntary, and extremely innovative. I have constituents and vendors who prefer this medium of exchange, so it’s natural to want to respond to the marketplace,” said Warden.
The price of Bitcoin was around $15 at the time.
Crypto trivia
Charles Hoskinson is the founder of Cardano, but did you know that he was also part of the original group of five that co-founded Ethereum in 2013, serving as the foundation’s chief executive at the time?
He exited Ethereum after a fallout with other members on whether Ethereum should continue operating as a commercial or non-profit company.
Hoskinson and former Ethereum co-worker Jeremy Wood formed an engineering and research company called IOHK (Input Output Hong Kong), which eventually led to the creation of Cardano, officially launched in 2015.
Worth a watch
Jack Mallers, founder of Strike, a Bitcoin payments company, was called on by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to explain how his company is changing the payments space. In this podcast with Peter McCormack, he explains how that conversation unfolded.
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