ADA has a trump card
In today’s edition, BTC HODLers shaken, crypto gambling retired, and goodbye algo-stablecoins.
Good morning! Welcome to The Daily Moon. It’s a week of troubles for crypto liquidity provider Wintermute. First, it lost $160 million in a hack. Now, before it could figure out how to get the stolen cash back, skeletons tumbled out of the closet. It turns out that the crypto firm owes $200 million to various lenders. Let’s see how this one plays out.
The markets were cautious ahead of the Fed’s interest rate announcement. Bitcoin was at $19,200 levels while Ethereum traded at ~$1,350. Back home, Sensex and Nifty fell on rate hike fears.
ADA’s Ready For The Split
It’s time to move on from Ethereum’s Merge. Cardano has an upgrade planned on Thursday that may cut transaction fees and increase the blockchain’s speed. Called the Vasil hard fork, this could even help Cardano reach $1.
What’s so special?
A replug first. A hard fork is where a blockchain is split to make it more efficient. Think of it as a software upgrade on your computer or smartphone. In Cardano’s case, the Vasil hard fork will upgrade the blockchain so that the network can support more transactions.
This will come in handy with smart contracts. These are contracts on the blockchain that are executed between two or multiple parties. Cardano hosts smart contracts already, but the grouse is that the speed is slower than Ethereum. When it undergoes a hard fork, this happens:
Cardano’s smart contract language Plutus (a crypto-world alternative to C++) will upgrade to Plutus version 2.
Cardano’s ledger tweak will reduce the size of each transaction. This will minimise network delays.
The idle time before new block additions will be cut to under five seconds as against ~20 seconds. This will increase the network speed.
Good times to last?
The network crossed 50,000 transactions per day ahead of the hard fork. But Cardano fell after higher-than-expected US inflation numbers. The Fed rate hike is next. But experts say that Cardano’s Vasil upgrade will take it closer to $1.
P.S. Snoop Dogg’s son Champ Medici released an NFT track called “ADA Dreams” dedicated to Cardano.
BTC And The Tale of Two Upgrades
Bitcoin is having a hard time, thanks to Ethereum’s Merge and Cardano’s Vasil fork. The largest crypto has not only seen a price slide but there are also fewer “buy the dip” calls in the market.
What does this mean?
That Bitcoin is not moving markets like it used to. Santiment, a behaviour analysis platform, noted that the chatter on social media around Bitcoin buying has changed. Traders who were earlier “bragging” about buying the dip last week are now showing signs of being unsure.
So what?
Well, BTC is a curious one. Long-term holders still believe in the token. But all signs point to a need to ramp up Bitcoin volume if it wants to remain relevant to traders. Wednesday’s rate hike decision will test the waters for Bitcoin and the larger crypto market.
Twitch Is Taking It Down
Teenagers went broke gambling crypto. And finally, Twitch has a change of heart. The platform will ban unlicensed gambling sites from live streaming content from October 18.
It was a blackhole
Sites such as Stake, Rollbit, Duebits, and Roobet paid streamers to gamble live. Users, sometimes as young as 16, were enticed to try their luck and got pulled into an endless down cycle. Many went bankrupt and borrowed money to gamble more. Streamers made millions. It was only in August that Twitch started taking it seriously.
There was no choice
Many influencers threatened to leave the platform if crypto gambling was not addressed. One user even admitted to conning friends to borrow money to gamble. Twitch had two options: either to ban these sites or see users log off.
No Algo Coins Please
US politicians don’t want a repeat of the Terra-Luna saga. A proposed law has called for a two-year ban on Terra-like algorithmic stablecoins. There’s a grace period for existing algo stablecoin providers to switch to better models.
What’s the deal?
Remember how the Terra de-peg caused a $40 billion crypto crash in May? That was mostly because the stablecoin wasn’t backed by actual cash. US legislators want none of that. If this law is passed, stablecoins would need to be supported by physical reserves.
But what about tokens such as Synthetix USD and BitUSD that are backed by a sister crypto of the same protocol? Will they get banned too? No answers yet.
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