How Uniswap v3 Begun a New Age Of Efficiency For DeFi

The popularity of Uniswap v2 in 2020 was unprecedented for a DeFi protocol. The decentralized exchange seemed to be the epicenter of the new financial revolution. First matching and then outperforming major trading platforms in terms of volume, Uniswap has been forked countless times to try and mimic its success.  The launch of its third iteration on May 5th introduced a new model which combines the limit order books used by traditional exchange platforms with the automated market maker (AMM) formula. This design has brought capital efficiency with more flexibility when providing liquidity.  In exchange, liquidity providers (LPs) must have an active role in the protocol. Uniswap v2 model allows a user to provide liquidity for the entire range of a trading pair. The newest iteration has a feature called concentrated liquidity and will limit it to a specific section of the price spectrum.  Therefore, users must compete to stay profitable. After its rollout, the decentralized exchange saw a bump in its number of users with the migration of around 9,500 LPs to the new iteration. This metric dropped after the hype settled, according to data provided by The Block.  With Uniswap v3 model, fewer LPs have the capacity to participate in the race

2021-06-11Deep Dive

‘All Banks Go Fintech’: Hong Kong Unveils ‘Fintech 2025’ Strategy

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) plans to guide local banks towards full adoption of fintech technologies, a new strategy reveals. The region‘s central banking institution also stressed that it’s going to “walk the talk” by digitalizing its own supervision of financial institutions.  Hong Kong Central Bank to Support Fintech Development  Hong Kong‘s monetary policy regulator has presented its new strategy to stimulate the fintech development of China’s special administrative region. With the strategy, HKMA aims for a comprehensive adoption of new financial technologies in the next four years. The central bank also wants to “promote the provision of fair and efficient financial services for the benefit of Hong Kong citizens and the economy.”  Speaking at a seminar organized by the Hong Kong Association of Banks, HKMAs chief executive Eddie Yue outlined five focus areas of “Fintech 2025.” The regulator wants to encourage all banks to go fintech, future-proof Hong Kong for CBDCs, create next-gen data infrastructure, expand the fintech-savvy workforce, and nurture the ecosystem with funding and policies.  One of the key directions in which the monetary authority intends to intensify its efforts is the full digitalization of bank operations. Expanding on the accomplishments of its Smart Banking Era Strategy announced in 2017,

2021-06-10Deep Dive

El Salvador Brings New Global Puzzle - What Is Bitcoin & How To Tax It?

There is a great number of issues debated today following the major news that El Salvador recognized the worlds number one cryptocurrency, bitcoin (BTC), as legal tender. This may bring some important changes when it comes to how bitcoin is treated on the legal stage globally. However, in what manner and to what extent is not exactly clear yet.  As reported, the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador passed the Bitcoin law today. Also, the 90-day countdown to promulgation has already begun, meaning that, in September, BTC will be recognized as a satisfactory payment for any monetary debt.  The new law also allows prices to be expressed in BTC and taxes to be paid in it, while exchanges in BTC will not be subject to capital gains tax.  “It will be interesting to see how tax authorities around the world react to this,” Richard Howlett, a solicitor at Selachii Legal Limited, a London-based law firm, told Cryptonews.com.  According to him, if El Salvador would declare that their legal tender is BTC only, then it would set an argument that BTC elsewhere is not subject to capital gains tax also.  “However, I fear that governments worldwide would not want to lose the capital gains tax income and

2021-06-10Deep Dive

Gembiranya HODL Token TFUEL

Meneliti pasaran menuju penghujung minggu, pasaran kripto dilihat seperti sedang memberi isyarat untuk membuat lonjakan harga yang disokong oleh kenaikan yang dibuat oleh nilai Bitcoin  Namun disaat kripto lain sedang membuat rentak kenaikan semula, TFUEL sudah pun meroket melebihi 100% pada bulan ini.  Kenaikan harga TFUEL ini disokong kuat oleh pelancaran Mainnet 3.0 di rangkaian yang dijadualkan pada 30 Jun ini dan juga dengan pelancaran ‘one-click delegated staking’  Hal itu terus memberikan momentum yang positif kepada TFUEL yang telah mencatatkan paras ketinggian sepanjang masa (ATH) terbaru 2021 di paras harga $0.67.  Dapat dilihat pada carta TFUEL/USDT, menjelang penghujung dagangan Mei, TFUEL sudah pun mula menunjukkan pergerakan yang positif setelah menembusi paras RBS (resistance become support) sekitar harga $0.30-$0.35.  Menyambung momentum kenaikan pada pembukaan pasaran hari ini, nampaknya harga TFUEL sedang membuat sedikit penurunan dari paras ATH sebelum ini sekitar harga $0.57.  Sekiranya pergerakan harga berjaya mengekalkan momentum lonjakan, paras ATH terbaru $0.67 bakal ditembusi dan meneruskan langkah pendakian yang lebih tinggi dalam mencapai paras ATH terbaru.  Kebanyakan pakar penganalisis menjangkakan harga TFUEL berkemungkinan bakal menuju ke paras harga hingga sekitar $0.80-$1.0 untuk membuat ATH terbaru jika terus disokong sentimen yang positif.  Namun jika pergerakan harga tidak berjaya meneruskan kenaikan, paras RBS $0.57 bakal diuji semula sebelum memberikan isyarat

2021-06-10Deep Dive

​Are Huobi-like Exchanges in Top Rank Still Reliable?

Several problems of Huobi have surfaced after Mingxing Xu, the founder of OKEx, was arrested despite its success as one of three famous exchanges in blockchain industry with the other two being Binance and OKEx. As such, are these household names still trustworthy? The answer can be found herein.  Huobi isnt effectively regulated in spite of a high rating on WikiBit, and its comment section is rife with exposures of its interrupted networks. Liquidation triggered by this operation hit nearly 330,000 traders at that time, the worth of which reached billions of dollars only within 24 hours.  Huobi at its early stage boasted reputation, providing satisfying services, smoothing transactions, and keeping assets safe as best as it could. However, since Lin Li disappeared and Jun Du took the exchange over, Huobi has been unscrupulously reaping profits by cutting off networks once a certain market occurs and recovering the access when it falls back so as to conceal what happened. Huobi has commonly performed these unscrupulous operations even if it is a first-class exchange.  As OKEx is deeply troubled while Huobi has carried out inaccessible networks several times, Binance is the only one that stays aloof at present. Therefore, it can be said that

2021-06-10Deep Dive

China’s Police Arrests Over 1,000 Crypto Traders on Fraud and Money Laundering Charges

Chinese authorities have arrested 1,100 suspects who allegedly used cryptocurrency to launder funds for telecommunications network fraud activities.  China Continues Crackdown on Crypto  The Ministry of Public Security on Wednesday (June 9, 2021) announced that authorities cracked down on a group of people believed to be running an illegal criminal gang. According to the announcement, they used crypto for money laundering activities in order to avoid law enforcement agents.  Meanwhile, the authorities were able to stop the flow of funds and catch the suspects through its card freeze operation. Since January 2020, the Chinese government has carried out drastic measures to combat money laundering and illegal activities in the country, targeting the cryptocurrency and telecommunications industry.  The actions of the government consequently led to a freeze wave, with banks reportedly freezing cards linked to crypto transactions. As reported by CryptoPotato back in November 2020, this affected over 70% of Chinese bitcoin miners.  According to the Ministry of Public Security, the latest development is the “fifth round of centralized network collection”, which focuses on people using crypto for money laundering activities. The investigations led to the arrest of 1,100 suspects and the dismantling of 170 criminal gangs.  China has continued to adopt a negative and hostile stance

2021-06-10Deep Dive

Curve Finance Upgrades Algorithm For Concentrated Liquidity

Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Curve has been tweaking its mathematically complex algorithm to introduce dynamic automated market making.  In an announcement on June 9, Curve Finance unveiled its latest upgrade which introduces a method for creating liquidity for assets that are not necessarily pegged to each other in a way more efficient than current automated market makers offer.  The DeFi protocol is combining two popular asset swap models into a hybrid system that builds upon the current mathematical formula (x·y = k) for AMMs.  The “algorithm for exchanging volatile assets” went live on June 10 according to the latest tweet from Curve which explained:  “When swapping or depositing: treat it to be similar to typical crypto pools elsewhere, except with smaller slippage on average,”  Heavy math  The whitepaper, penned by Curve Finance CEO Michael Egorov, goes into the complex mathematics behind the new algorithm. The upgrade essentially allows low-slippage swaps between volatile pairs of assets or between assets that have constantly fluctuating prices.  There are two versions, one on Ethereum which contains USDT, wBTC, and wETH, and the Layer 2 Polygon version which has am3Crv (Curves stablecoin pool), wBTC, and wETH, it added.  Yearn developer “Banteg” described it as “concentrated liquidity which doesnt require manual rebalancing,” adding that

2021-06-10Deep Dive

More Latin American MPs Push for Bitcoin Laws – Including a Gov’t Vice Minister

The ranks of Latin American politicians joining the laser-eyed, bitcoin (BTC) adoption-supporting movement are beginning to swell – and while the majority of the crowd are young, opposition party MPs, the group now boasts at least one government vice minister.  While the movement began in earnest over the weekend, when the President of El Salvador Nayib Bukele expressed his support for adoption, others in the region have quickly followed suit. Bukele‘s regime has pushed ahead with a landmark bill that will see BTC adopted as the nation’s legal tender – alongside the USD – set to promulgate in 90 days.  But as previously reported, a small but growing number of MPs in other nations, such as Paraguay, Argentina, Panama, and Brazil, has also come out in favor of implementing similar measures in their own countries. Although some have talked of launching private members bills, most of these realistically stand little chance of success as things stand.  However, the Ecuadorian Vice Minister of Economic Inclusion Julio Eduardo Clavijo is the exception. Although only a junior minister, Clavijo is exceptional in that he is – unlike most of the others thus far – a member of his nations government and the ruling party. Like others,

2021-06-10Deep Dive

Here’s what would happen to Bitcoin if the government tried to take it over

Fear mounted as the FBI announced that it helped Colonial Pipeline retrieve a portion of its BTC ransom payment, but can the government actually take over Bitcoin and the network?  On June 7, the United States government task force seized more than $2 million in Bitcoin (BTC) to pay a ransom following an attack on the Colonial Pipeline system. A warrant filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California shows that authorities recovered 63.7 BTC.  As news of the recovery spread through mainstream media, some outlets suggested that the U.S. government somehow hacked the Bitcoin address in order to extract the funds. For example, University of Michigan professor and New York Times contributor Justin Wolfers tweeted:  This triggered a discussion on whether an entity could break through SHA-256 encryption, and if so, why waste this ability on unlocking a Bitcoin wallet that only contains $2 million?  The same type of cryptography is used by the National Security Agency, banks, foreign agencies, cloud storage systems, and most electronic devices like smartphones and communication apps.  If governments wanted to create short-term havoc in the cryptocurrency market, they would need to make large sales to negatively impact the price. However, there would probably be

2021-06-10Deep Dive

Layer 2 Solutions Stand To Transform The Crypto World

The crypto market has continued to showcase a staggering amount of growth over the course of the last year and half, as is probably best made evident by the fact that the total capitalization of this sector doubled from $1 trillion to $2 trillion over the course of Q1 2021 alone. Not only that, during the aforementioned time window, even the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector has grown tremendously, with the total value locked (TVL) in the space rising from $15 billion to a whopping $67 billion, thereby showcasing a growth of more than 400%.  That being said, as the DeFi market has continued to expand and thrive recently, a lot of functional issues related to the Ether network — the platform on which a bulk of all DeFi platforms in existence today are built on — have continued to arise, primarily those related to high transaction costs and low data throughput.  To put things into perspective, all through Q1 2021, gas costs (or transaction fees) on the Ether network continued to remain at all-time high, staying at an average of around $40 during February and recently scaling up to a whopping $70.  So whats the deal with Layer 1 and Layer 2 solutions

2021-06-10Deep Dive
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