This Week in Crypto
The top 5 headlines, the top 5 tweets, and the top 5 memes
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Top 5 Headlines
Bitcoin tumbles—then recovers—on news of a capital-gains tax hike
Bitcoin declined for the seventh time in eight days, extending losses after President Joe Biden was said to propose almost doubling the capital-gains tax for the wealthy.
The slide pushed Bitcoin down as much as 3.6% to about $49,760, sending it below the low of $51,707 reached Sunday before it bounced back. The coin had tumbled as much as 15% over the weekend in the wake of a false report from an anonymous Twitter account that the U.S. Treasury was cracking down on crypto money laundering.
Capacity Increase Propels Ethereum to All Time High
Ethereum has reached a new all time high of $2,590, more than recovering from the crash earlier last week while bitcoin seems to be somewhat struggling at $54,000, down from $65,000.
The ethereum ratio has been on a bull run, up to 0.047 bitcoin from 0.038 just a couple of days ago.
The reason is most likely because ethereum has increased capacity by about 20% following numerous gas related improvements during the upgrade earlier this month.
You can now buy bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies on Venmo
Venmo on Tuesday announced that it will allow users to buy and sell cryptocurrencies on its platform. That means 70 million monthly active users will soon have access to bitcoin, ethereum and other digital tokens at a time when their value has never been higher.
Cryptocurrency Giant Binance.US Hires Former Top Bank Regulator
A former top U.S. banking regulator is set to join Binance.US, one of the world’s biggest bitcoin exchanges, in the latest move by a cryptocurrency company to deepen its ties to Washington.
Brian Brooks, an acting head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency under the Trump administration, will become the new chief executive of Binance.US, the U.S. affiliate of overseas crypto-exchange giant Binance Holdings Ltd.
PancakeSwap Widens Binance Smart Chain’s Lead Over Ethereum on Transactions
A flurry of activity on the decentralized cryptocurrency exchange PancakeSwap has helped to push the number of transactions on Binance’s smart-contract blockchain, Binance Smart Chain (BSC), to five times that of the perceived industry leader, Ethereum.
While the Ethereum blockchain processed a record 1.56 million transactions on Wednesday, BSC registered a total transaction volume of 9.13 million, according to data provided by EherScan. BSC-based PancakeSwap, which generates liquidity from traders who stake tokens, known as “farmers,” alone processed more transactions than Ethereum. PancakeSwap contributed more than 2 million of BSC’s transactions on the day, or some 20% of the total.
The PancakeSwap coin price (CAKE), representing the upstart platform’s own tokens, has jumped 46-fold this year, for a market capitalization of about $4.2 billion.
Top 5 Tweets
Top 5 Memes
About Grokking Crypto
Crypto is moving so fast and trying to keep up with everything can feel a bit overwhelming. Dozens of crypto-related articles, podcasts, and YouTube videos are published every day. Moreover, 90% of these resources aren’t even worth reading or listening to, which makes the task of keeping up even more difficult.
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