Crypto Guides, Knowledge & Insights

ConstitutionDAO: The failed project that shook the crypto world

ConstitutionDAO is a true underdog story that gave the world an idea of what DAOs, a new form of blockchain-based community, can accomplish in the future. 　　For those not familiar with the saga, heres what happened. What is ConstitutionDAO？　　ConstitutionDAO was launched on Nov. 11 by a group of crypto enthusiasts as an attempt to raise funds via DAO to buy the first printed version of the US Constitution, on auction by Sothebys. 　　This version is the last privately owned copy—of only 13 copies in total—of the Constitution, and ConstitutionDAO hoped to serve as to transfer it to community ownership rather than to a lone wealthy individual.　　By Nov. 19, ConstitutionDAO raised nearly 11,000 ETH on JuiceBox, a community funding for people and projects, or just over $45 million—more than twice the estimated sale price of $20 million.　　Unfortunately, ConstitutionDAO lost out the auction Citadel CEO, Ken Griffin.　　Five days after the auction ended, ConstitutionDAO was in a state of turmoil. After several lively discussions, the organizations core contributors announced on the 24th that they were shutting down ConstitutionDAO and would refund contributions automatically. 　　$PEOPLE, which ConstitutionDAO gave to contributors at a rate of 1 ETH to 1 million $PEOPLE, would be of no

2021-12-13Deep Dive

Bybit re-opens ‘Deposit Blast-Off,’ earn up to $3,000 in reward

Crypto exchange Bybit is rewarding users who make deposits and trade on its exchange. Called the ‘Deposit Blast-Off,’ the promotion is currently ongoing and runs until Jan. 3, 2021 — rewarding new and existing users who have yet to make their first deposit with up to $3,000 in bonuses.　　Once registered, users must make all deposits within seven days for them to be considered in the calculation of their reward. Any deposits made after this timeframe will not be considered in the calculation of the reward.　　For example, if a user makes a first-time deposit comprising $5,000 worth of BTC and $1,000 worth of ETH within seven days of the event registration, their total eligible deposit is $6,000. The user will therefore receive a 180 USDT bonus and a 10 USDT coupon.　　The list of assets that are eligible as deposits: BTC, ETH, BIT, USDT, XRP, DOGE, DOT, EOS, LTC, XLM, AAVE, AXS, CHZ, COMP, DYDX, LINK, MANA, MKR, SUSHI, UNI, YFI.　　There are some caveats to the deposit event: All rewards will be distributed within 15 working days after eligible users make their deposit. Users must ensure that all funds deposited are held in their accounts until the issuance of the bonus and

2021-12-13Deep Dive

Korean Officials Quit Jobs to Join Crypto Industry, Lawmaker Reveals

Public officials in South Korea are increasingly choosing career opportunities in the cryptocurrency sector. Some of them come from financial authorities which raises ethical questions, according to the findings of a Korean lawmaker, quoted by local media.　　Former Financial Officials Hired by Major Korean Exchanges　　A growing number of officials in Seoul are vacating their government posts and moving to the crypto industry, according to Roh Woong-rae, member of the Korean parliament from the ruling Democratic Party. On Sunday, he called for the introduction of stricter rules regarding their employment after leaving public service.　　Quoted by the Korea Herald, the lawmaker revealed that a Grade 5 employee at the countrys main financial regulator, the Financial Services Commission (FSC), has recently quit his position to join Bithumb, which is one of the leading digital asset exchanges in South Korea.　　Roh admitted that regulations now do not restrict such employment. At the same time, he believes that its quite inappropriate for a former FSC official to directly join a crypto company overseen by the regulatory agency he has been working for.　　Government officials in Korea are classified according to their seniority, with Grade 1 being the top level. Only Grade 4 and higher officials at the FSC

2021-12-13Deep Dive

Is Singapore the ‘Future’ of Cryptocurrency?

Irish FinTech startup CoinCub has released its cryptocurrency rankings for the fourth quarter of 2021, putting the nation of Singapore in the top spot.　　Under the heading “The future is happening in Singapore,” CoinCub calls the country the most promising for crypto investors to live and work.　　“The city-state‘s robust economy, positive legislative environment, and high rate of cryptocurrency adoption are key factors that have contributed to its rise to #1,” the company says. “Singapore has leapfrogged the United States this year thanks to the latter’s uncertain regulatory environment and scaling back of initial coin offerings (ICOs).”　　CoinCub notes that Singapore won the top spot thanks to a booming crypto economy and the fact that it is home to the second-highest percentage of crypto owners on the planet.　　“Thats not to mention the clear government strategy and firm regulations that have been providing reassurance to crypto-shy investors,” the rankings said.　　As PYMNTS reported earlier this year, this is happening during a boom in investments in Singapore, which have risen from $20 million in 2014 to $1.1 billion in 2020, with figures expected to shoot up even more this year.　　Meanwhile, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) is processing applications from companies seeking licenses to operate payment

2021-12-13Deep Dive

Cryptocurrencies Are For The Underground Economy — Taiwanese Billionaire Businessman Terry Guo

Taiwanese billionaire Guo Taiming has trashed cryptocurrencies, labeling them as only befitting the underworld.　　Speaking in a recent interview with the Economic Daily, the Hon Hai Precision Ltd founder said that he failed to understand the whole “virtual currencies” topic and its decentralization claims.　　“Currency can never be decentralized, so the central bank will not open it. Virtual currency is a fake topic, only the underground economy. Will use virtual currency.” He said.　　According to him, while the concept of decentralization is very important when used with industrial production and health information, currency decentralization was not possible especially when it comes to global finance.　　“Mainstream monetary finance will not be able to be decentralized, and some virtual currencies will form a form of assets, but global finance cannot be replaced by a decentralized approach,” he added.　　Although Gou later took to Facebook to clarify his claims, he noted that the attempt to integrate virtual currencies into the lives of the general public before first integrating it with the real economy was the beginning of the end of cryptocurrencies.　　“Cryptocurrency and NFT fulfill the transaction needs in the virtual world, but moving forward they need to be incorporated into the real world and the real economy to

2021-12-13Deep Dive

Crypto Regulations Should Be Comprehensive, Consistent, and Coordinated, Says IMF

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has recently published some recommendations on how to effectively regulate the cryptocurrency sector around the world.　　In a recent blog post, the IMF acknowledged that crypto assets are rapidly revolutionizing the entire global financial system. However, policymakers still struggle to monitor the risks associated with the market.　　Regulators Must Act Fast　　The financial institution pointed out that the rapid growth of the crypto space has caused it to interlink with the regulated economic systems while still being unregulated.　　The IMF noted that these interlinkages could pose serious risks if global financial regulators do not act quickly to mitigate the threats and harness the revolutionary power of crypto.　　“Policymakers struggle to monitor risks from this evolving sector, in which many activities are unregulated. In fact, we think these financial stability risks could soon become systemic in some countries,” the report reads.　　The IMF called for a “comprehensive, consistent, and coordinated” approach to regulating the crypto space, emphasizing that uncoordinated regulatory measures may “facilitate potentially destabilizing capital flows” since most crypto firms operate across borders.　　 The IMF Suggestion　　To effectively regulate crypto at a global level, the IMF listed three core requirements that regulators must include.　　First, crypto service providers that deliver several critical functions,

2021-12-13Deep Dive

“Don’t Sell Your Bitcoin On The Cheap To MicroStrategy,” Binance’s CZ Warns

Changpeng Zhao has warned investors not to sell their BTC to Michael Saylor in a state of panic.　　Binance‘s CEO appeared to have taken note of Saylor’s aggressive Bitcoin purchases during price dips.　　Michael Saylors MicroStrategy has purchased well over 100,000 BTC since it began its buying spree in 2020.　　Michael Saylors aggressive Bitcoin purchases have caught the eye of Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao.　　Dont Sell Your Bitcoins　　Changpeng Zhao, CEO of the world‘s largest cryptocurrency exchange drew the attention of users to Microstrategy’s methods of buying BTC cheaply. Zhaos comments suggested that Saylor capitalized on investors panic as he leveraged the strategy of buying the dip.　　“Dont sell your Bitcoin on the cheap to Saylor. He is always buying when you panic sell,” Zhao said. Since the warning went public, it has garnered 25K likes and over 3,000 retweets.　　“Every Bitcoin deserves a good home,” replied Michael Saylor to Zhao‘s warnings. The humorous exchange between the two CEOs stems from MicroStrategy’s recent Bitcoin purchases. The software company currently owns over 122,473 BTC after accumulating over 9,000 BTC in the last quarter. During the last blip in prices, Michael Saylor noted that the company bought 1,434 Bitcoins at an average price of $57,477 for $82.4 million.　　Investors in

2021-12-13Deep Dive

Bitcoin Privacy 101: Key differences between a CoinSwap and a CoinJoin

Bitcoin is trustless and permissionless — anyone can use it without having to provide their real-world identity. This leads many people to think of Bitcoin as an anonymous network, where transactions are private, however in reality this is far from the truth. Bitcoin can work without a trusted third party in part because it is radically transparent — the entire transaction history is recorded and verified by everyone (well, every full node) and so is publicly available for anyone to analyze.　　This full transaction history provides a structure known as the ‘transaction graph’ which is essentially how transactions are connected together, and shows how the bitcoin has moved between different addresses.　　This public information can reveal a lot about the nature of transactions and be used to track the movement of funds and de-anonymize individual addresses. For example, although an individual bitcoin wallet address can be generated and used anonymously, much of the activity on Bitcoin is linked to real-world identities via regulated exchanges and custodians who are required to share customer information with authorities.　　Using this information, companies that specialise in blockchain analysis can link any purchases or transactions back to the identity of the person who first purchased the coins.　　The public

2021-12-12Deep Dive

Solana network slows to a crawl following alleged DDoS attack

On Thursday, the Solana network experienced a significant slow down in transaction processing, sparking fears of another DDoS attack.　　However, blockchain service provider GensysGo played down the incident, attributing the situation to “growing pains,” rather than inherent design flaws.　　“The #Solana validator network is experiencing issues this morning. TPS issues as the network works to process txn requests. Remember, this is blockchain. If your txn ID went through then its not lost, just pending. Growing pains is all!”　　Nonetheless, considering this is the second such incident since mid-September, investors are growing twitchy around the protocols security and robustness.Is Solana highly centralized？　　Word of a DDoS attack first came to light on Thursday around 15:00 GMT, when Solana NFT platform Blockasset tweeted that they were aware of long token distribution times. They added that this is due to a DDoS attack flooding the network.　　Since then, Blockasset has deleted the tweet, but the event was still captured in a Reddit post.　　A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack refers to a malicious attempt to disrupt the normal traffic of a target by way of overwhelming it with a flood of internet traffic.　　So far, the Solana Foundation has yet to post an official response to the incident. And users are

2021-12-11Deep Dive

Coinbase finally introduces DeFi yield product, bars United States users

In September, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the leading crypto exchange in the country, Coinbase, were at loggerheads over the crypto firms proposed yield program which the financial regulator considered to be a direct violation of its securities law.　　While the exchange has since dropped its plan to launch the program in the United States, it has gone ahead to introduce the decentralized finance (DeFi) yield product in 70 other countries.Coinbase introduces DeFi yield in 70 countries　　According to a press statement released by Coinbase on Thursday, the crypto exchange will be providing exposure to DeFi for its customers who are looking to put their digital asset to work. For a start, users would be able to lend and borrow assets, like DAI —a Stablecoin.　　DeFi has tremendous potential to help increase economic freedom, and were excited to be able to provide a trusted and accessible way to participate.　　DeFi, no doubt, has recorded tremendous growth in this year. However, access to the space is still very much limited as it involves some level of technicalities that an average user might find difficult to navigate.　　Coinbase looks to democratize access to the space by introducing its global customers to what many

2021-12-11Deep Dive

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