Blockchain Africa
Crypto

Aethir introduces a decentralized cloud network on the Ethereum mainnet.

The decentralized cloud compute network on the Ethereum mainnet has been launched by Aethir, a supplier of Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePINs). Businesses can donate idle GPU resources to Aethir’s GPU-as-a-service solutions network, along with data centers, other cloud providers, and cryptocurrency mining operators. The mainnet launch is crucial, as co-founder Mark Rydon stated. “By providing a scalable framework for redistributing idle compute resources, we can empower more innovation in the rapidly evolving domains of AI,

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Crypto

Miners of Bitcoin Profit from the BTC Uptrend as Exchange Transfers Reach a Two-Month High

According to a research by CryptoQuant, transfers of bitcoin (BTC) from mining pools to exchanges hit a two-month high this week as BTC remained close to its local high of $70,000. After the bitcoin halving, which reduced daily mining earnings, miners’ desire to profit from their holdings led to a surge in sales through over-the-counter (OTC) desks. On June 10, miners sold at least 1,200 BTC, the most they had in the previous two months. Miners transferred almost 3,000 BTC ($209 million) to exchanges the day before, with the majority of that amount coming from the btc.com mining pool into Binance. A brief decline in bitcoin’s value from $70,000 to $66,000, followed by a few days of recovery, matched the increase in transfers. With Marathon Digital (MARA) having sold 1,400 BTC ($98 million) since the beginning of the month, selling activity among bitcoin miners in the US has also intensified.According to the report, miners’ daily earnings has dropped to $35 million, a 55% decrease from its peak of $78 million in March. Lower transaction fees following the halving are the reason for the decline in revenue.

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Article

How does blockchain technology function in the gaming industry?

The gaming business has undergone some pretty big changes recently. What was formerly a recreational pastime aimed at children and young adults has

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Crypto

Zipmex’s licenses are revoked by the Thai SEC for noncompliance with directives.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of Thailand has withdrawn two of the cryptocurrency exchange Zipmex’s operating licenses following months of regulatory examination. The SEC said on June 11 that, as of May 28, Zipmex was no longer permitted to function in Thailand as a cryptocurrency broker and digital asset exchange. In February, the regulatory body mandated that Zipmex cease providing services to Thai users until it could rectify its financial standing and operational shortfalls. The exchange was, in the Finance Minister’s opinion, “still in contravention” of the directives. “Zipmex is required to return assets to its clients or proceed according to their clients’ requests,” said the SEC. “If any clients

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Crypto Blockchain

Tether Hopes to Make Over $1 Billion in Deals in the Upcoming Year: Bloomberg

According to CEO Paolo Ardoino, Tether, the company that develops stablecoins, anticipates closing deals worth $1 billion in the upcoming year, as reported by Bloomberg on Tuesday. According to Ardoino in an interview, Tether is concentrating its investments on biotech, AI, and financial infrastructure. In the last two years, the corporation has also invested almost $2 billion in these sectors, and it anticipates that this trend will continue. In order to generate billions of dollars in profit, Tether, the company behind the biggest stablecoin in the world, USDT, invests the majority of its assets in US Treasury bills and other securities. A portion of money will be set aside for deals, according to Ardoino. “It’s all about investing in technology that helps with disintermediation with traditional finance,” he said. “Less reliance on big tech companies

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Crypto

Polygon Establishes New Grants Program, Unlocking 1B POL in Over a Decade

Layer-2 network Polygon Labs announced on Tuesday that it is launching a Community Grants Program to incentivize builders to construct inside its ecosystem.Over the course of the next ten years, the program seeks to give developers ownership of one billion POL, Polygon’s soon-to-be rebranded MATIC token. On Tuesday, the program went live, allowing users to distribute 35 million tokens, which are currently valued at $23 million. This first tranche of tokens will be valued in MATIC, as the network is in the process of switching from its existing coin, MATIC, to the new POL ticker. The program will tap into funds made available by Polygon’s Community Treasury, and the team shared that roughly 100 million POL tokens

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Crypto

Macron Calls Surprise French Election That’s Unlikely to Stir Crypto, But Will Shake Up Government

French President Emmanuel Macron dissolved parliament and ordered a quick election after his ruling Renaissance party received only around half of the seats won by Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in the European Parliament elections. The two rounds of voting are scheduled to take place on June 30 and July 7. The election is unlikely to reverse the country’s gains in the cryptocurrency business. It registered 74 cryptocurrency companies last year, with the number anticipated to increase to 100, and French officials have recently tried to recruit more digital asset companies.The United Kingdom, whose government has stated that it aspires to be a crypto hub, now has only 44 registered cryptocurrency enterprises. Macron, who was initially elected president in 2017, called the election after the National Rally, also known as Rassemblement National, won 31.4% of the seats available to French candidates. That surpassed the performance of Besoin d’Europe, the EU’s spokesperson for Renaissance. France, the EU’s second-largest member by population, was granted 81 seats out of 720. Germany, the largest, receives 96 seats. “I have heard your message,” Macron said in a televised address, “and I will not let it go without a response.” Last year, the EU, a trading union of 27 nations, passed a comprehensive, first-of-its-kind crypto package known as the Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) legislation.The laws enable crypto firms to operate throughout the EU if they obtain a crypto asset service provider license in any member country. The package will go into effect for stablecoin issuers on June 30, with the remainder of the legislation becoming effective by the end of the year. “I

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Crypto

Fireblocks, a cryptocurrency custody company, teams up with Coinbase International Exchange to provide more “reliable” trading.

The firms announced on Monday that Fireblocks, a cryptocurrency custody company, has partnered with Coinbase International Exchange, the non-U.S. division of the trading business that offers spot trading and perpetual futures to institutional and retail clients in qualifying jurisdictions. Customers of Fireblocks can now use Fireblocks’ governance and policy guidelines to safeguard exchange operations, including deposits and withdrawals, by connecting to their Coinbase International Exchange accounts, the company announced. In May 2023, Coinbase International Exchange obtained a regulatory permission to provide its services from the Bermuda Monetary Authority. Prior to adding spot cryptocurrency trading for ordinary users, it solely functioned as an exchange for derivatives for institutions. Secure hardware enclaves are paired with Fireblock’s usage of Multi-Party Computation (MPC), a cryptographic key sharing technology, to eliminate a single point of compromise from API credentials and thwart further threats including insider collusion attempts. To prevent an insider from taking funds out of an exchange account unilaterally, users can set up user roles, governance policies, and approval procedures for exchange deposit and withdrawal activities using Fireblocks’ policy engine. As per a press release, they may also check the balances of all associated accounts and make deposits, withdrawals, and rebalances via the Fireblocks Console or API. “As we continue to expand our offerings for institutional and retail clients, this collaboration underscores our commitment to providing a robust

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Technology

Squads Labs raises $10 million in Series A funding and unveils its smart wallet for public testing on iOS.

Squads Labs, a technology firm that promises to help businesses transact and manage digital assets, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Electric Capital. Squads Labs confirmed in an email on Monday that RockawayX, Coinbase Ventures, L1 Digital, and Placeholder participated in the fundraising round.Squads has also announced a smart wallet geared at individuals for public testing on iOS. The startup already offers a Solana-based business wallet. This has resulted in over $10 billion in worth. The new wallet, Fuse, is intended to eliminate the need to learn seed phrases, which are streams of 12 to 24 random syllables used to restore access to a user’s assets, in favor of wallet recovery and two-factor authentication. Individual users are frequently the focus of efforts to attract additional players to the cryptocurrency business. While Squads’ focus has historically been on recruiting enterprises to the digital asset world, with the launch of Fuse, it appears to be broadening its appeal to both sides of the market. Squads intends to use the new funds to enhance its smart account technology and products, as well as expand its personnel.

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Crypto Ethereum

$215 million in ARB tokens will be distributed by Arbitrum for innovative gaming

The developers of the Ethereum rollup-based layer-2 network Arbitrum, the Arbitrum Foundation, have made significant financial contributions to the growth of the gaming

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Technology Tech Africa

AfDB and Intel to teach AI to millions of Africans

Together, the African Development Bank (AfDB) and tech behemoth Intel are aiming to providesophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) skills to three million Africans and

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Technology

Wealth fund in Norway will vote against Musk’s $56 billion Tesla compensation proposal.

Next week, shareholders will have the opportunity to vote on Tesla (TSLA.O) CEO Elon Musk’s $56 billion compensation plan, which was declared illegal

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Crypto

Crypto traders anticipate a “bullish” recovery, viewing the decline as a swift shakeout.

After US job statistics beat forecasts on June 7, there was a decline in Bitcoin, Ether, and the whole altcoin market. Traders, however,

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Crypto

Why is today’s price of Bitcoin lower?

In the past day, the price of bitcoin has decreased by almost 3.25%, reaching $3,690 on June 8. The value of the entire

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Crypto

Price of bitcoin closes at $69K following a fall $1.3 billion in open interest for Bitcoin

According to data, the price of bitcoin stabilized throughout the weekend. The biggest cryptocurrency had abrupt fluctuations during the previous Wall Street open

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Blockchain

The Zilliqa 2.0 update improves interoperability with other chains and performance.

The much awaited version 2.0 upgrade of blockchain network Zilliqa has now released its white paper and roadmap. The upgrade will go live on the mainnet later in 2024. As per the network, the next version of the platform is expected to enhance its functionality by increasing its speed, efficiency, and interoperability with other blockchain networks. The sharding architecture, or x-shards, of Zilliqa 2.0 is pivotal. This feature enables users to build anything they can imagine on the Zilliqa platform, allowing businesses and developers to create blockchain experiences tailored to their needs. One technique for improving the scalability and performance of blockchain networks is sharding, which is used to database and blockchain systems. They are able to process more transactions faster and with greater efficiency as a result. Beyond x-shards, the white paper replaces the energy-intensive proof-of-work system with a new proof-of-stake consensus mechanism. With ultra-fast finality and enhanced security made possible by this modification, the network becomes more ecologically friendly. It is also possible to modify block times as needed. The average block time on the root mainnet shard is only two seconds. A cross-chain communication hub is another feature of the network update that facilitates communication between x-shards, the Zilliqa mainnet, and other blockchains that are compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Zilliqa 2.0 is EVM-compatible, allowing it to run smart contracts written in languages like Solidity and work seamlessly with popular wallets

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Crypto

After the hack of Ronin Bridge, Sky Mavis retrieves $5.7M.

The popular play-to-earn (P2E) game developer Sky Mavis has revealed that, with the help of Norwegian authorities, it has recovered $5.7 million from the infamous Ronin Bridge incident of 2022. Sky Mavis revealed on June 7 that the “Økokrim,” Norway’s central unit for combating economic and environmental crimes, had froze and returned $5.7 million in proceeds from the Ronin Bridge breach. Law enforcement, attorneys, accountants, and blockchain forensic teams like Chainalysis needed to coordinate their operations, according to Sky Mavis. The blockchain gaming firm publicly thanked the Norwegian government and the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for tracking the funds

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Business

Customers Bank Announces Debanking of Some Digital Asset Hedge Funds

Customers Bank, which serves some of the biggest names in crypto, including Galaxy Digital (GLXY), Coinbase (COIN), and Circle, has informed some hedge fund clients that it will no longer provide banking services, according to three people familiar with the situation. While the scope of the cull is unknown, one source said “a load of funds” were involved. A second source claimed that the activity represented the offboarding of inactive accounts rather than widespread debanking in the industry.A third source stated that their digital asset financial services firm has spoken with a number of funds seeking for new providers in recent weeks, maybe as a result of Customers’ account offboarding. This new development demonstrates the challenge that certain cryptocurrency companies have in entering the US dollar banking system following the failures of Silvergate Bank and Signature Bank last year. Total deposits at the end of the first quarter were roughly $18 billion, with CBIT accounting for about $2 billion. Customers Bancorp (CUBI) owns the West Reading, Pennsylvania-based corporation, which solely accepts US dollars and does not issue loans to promote bitcoin activities. It provides its clients, estimated to be well over a hundred digital asset enterprises, with a real-time blockchain-based payments network called Customer Bank Instant Token (CBIT), which allows crypto clients to make U.S. dollar payments 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Customers Bank’s spokesman declined to comment on the policy, stating simply that the bank was selective about who it accepted as clients. To restrict its exposure to cryptocurrency, the bank has capped deposits in CBIT, which provides almost rapid settlement and has no costs. “We have previously discussed publicly our 15% cap on deposits in the CBIT vertical,” the spokesperson said. “As a

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Article

Understanding the concept of smart contract testing.

Smart contract testing is the rigorous process of evaluating and verifying the functionality, security, and performance of smart contracts, which are self-executing contracts

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Ethereum

Fee War Is Probably to Blame for Cathie Wood’s Ether ETF Retraction

In September, Cathie Wood’s Ark was the first business to apply for approval to establish a spot ether exchange-traded fund (ETF), setting the standard ahead of several other well-known candidates. Then, within the last week, it withdrew without providing an explanation. Chalk it up to the intense battle to lure customers with low fees for crypto ETFs, according to experts. At this week’s CoinDesk Consensus conference in Austin, Texas, Wood stated during a fireside chat that the reason ARK’s spot bitcoin ETF, which debuted earlier this year, wasn’t profitable for the company was because it charged investors a meager 0.21% fee. That’s a lot less than what most non-crypto ETFs charge, even though it’s comparable to what other bitcoin ETF issuers charge. “Perhaps this

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Crypto

Crypto Trading Alerts From Notifi Are Added to the Coinbase Wallet

Through the Notifi messaging service, users of Coinbase’s mobile cryptocurrency wallet can now receive automated alerts about events occurring on-chain. According to a press release, the service’s first customer is the perpetuals exchange GMX. Users of the platform, which is built on Arbitrum and Avalanche, will be able to create custom automatic flags in addition to receiving information regarding upcoming liquidations and governance upgrades. “If you’re not constantly monitoring what’s happening on-chain it’s impossible to keep up,” Notifi CEO Paul Kim said in an interview. With the launch of the service, Coinbase’s XMTP-based communications rails have expanded. Users of Coinbase wallets can communicate with one other since July of last year thanks to the XMTP protocol.According to the press announcement, Notifi also makes use of the XMTP protocol.

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Crypto

Decentralized Trade SushiSwap Launches on Rootstock, a Bitcoin Sidechain

The decentralized exchange SushiSwap has gone online on the Rootstock sidechain for Bitcoin (BTC), as per a Thursday release published by CoinDesk. One of the most well-known projects, Rootstock was founded in 2018 with the goal of bringing decentralized finance (DeFi) features—more often associated with Ethereum and BNB Chain—to the Bitcoin network. It describes itself as the first Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) that is compatible with the Bitcoin sidechain. Similar to an operating system on a computer, an Ethereum virtual machine (EVM) is software that runs smart contracts. With the use of Ethereum’s smart contract technology and the security of the Bitcoin network, Rootstock hopes to provide a platform that developers can use to create and implement decentralized apps (dApps).The RBTC coin, which is correlated 1:1 with BTC, is used in the ecosystem. About half a year after Uniswap was introduced to the Bitcoin sidechain, the integration has taken place. Uniswap was the original fork of SushiSwap. DeFi Llama data indicates that Rootstock’s bridged total value locked (TVL) is little over $450 million. Additions to the Bitcoin network that were previously the purview of Ethereum and other platforms have been made more quickly since the year 2023 began. The Ordinals protocol served as the foundation for the introduction of smart contracts to the largest blockchain in the world. It enabled the creation and storage of a version of NFTs on the Bitcoin network, and this led to more projects.

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Crypto Defi

Digital Security Company ‘Firewall’ for DeFi Protocols is Built by Ironblocks.

Following protocol hacks and heists, a cottage industry of cryptocurrency security companies monitors the scene. One of them has now been out with a “firewall” meant to thwart the thefts in advance.According to CEO Or Dadosh, CoinDesk, Ironblocks’ new tool is a free solution for developers looking to secure their smart contracts. Their Firewall enables them to quickly and easily implement different security “policies” to keep an eye on transactions on their decentralized finance protocols and identify any unusual activity. The open-source toolkit might provide some relief from the constant risk of DeFi hacking. According to Dadosh, there can be up to ten distinct hacks of protocols that provide cryptocurrency holders with lending, trading, staking, and other financial services every week. These thefts total: PeckShield projected losses of $60 million during April. According to Dadosh, the firewall is a part of the smart contract processing protocols.Developers can choose from a small number of policies that search the flow for suspicious patterns and other indicators that a hack is underway. “It doesn’t stop or pause the application, it just stops the specific transaction that may attack the application, just like

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Crypto

Binance requests that the UK Competition Tribunal dismiss the majority of the collusion case: Reuters

According to Reuters, Binance requested that the majority of a collusion action made by BSV Claims against it and three other cryptocurrency exchanges be dismissed from the U.K.’s Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT). The litigation may be worth up to 10 billion British pounds ($13 billion).In 2019, the exchanges delisted the token, allegedly engaging in collusive anticompetitive action, according to BSV Claims. The company said that as a result, token holders lost out on possible profits of more than 9 billion pounds. According to BitMEX Research, it determined the loss by examining the gains made by other cryptocurrencies since then. Claims that BSV might have grown to be a significant cryptocurrency were removed, per Binance’s request to the tribunal. As reported by Reuters, Binance laywer Brian Kennelly stated that owners of BSV “could reasonably have sold it and reinvested it in comparable cryptocurrency”. When BSV Claims was founded in 2022, it stated that the lawsuit was being brought on behalf of about 240,000 investors in the UK. Based on documents at Companies House, David Curries, a member of the House of Lords and a former chairman of the CAT, is the only director of the business. Bittylicious, Kraken, and Shapeshift are other defendants in this case. Craig Wright is one of the main supporters of BSV. A London court last month found that Wright had lied “extensively and repeatedly” in support of his claim to be the anonymous creator of bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. June 7 is the deadline for the case, which is 1523/7/7/22.

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Crypto

The Bank of Canada starts the G-7 Monetary Easing Cycle and reduces the benchmark rate by 25 basis points.

The Bank of Canada lowered its benchmark overnight rate by 25 basis points to 4.75% on Wednesday morning, as predicted. Since Canadian authorities had previously expressed satisfaction with the path of inflation coupled with some anxiety about slowing economic growth, most economists had anticipated the move. “[It is] reasonable to expect further cuts to our policy interest rate” if inflation continues lower, said BoC Governor Tiff Macklem in

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Article

How to use software wallets to safely store cryptocurrency

Choosing the right software wallet is the first step towards securing your cryptocurrency storage. Password managers, 2FA, and multisig wallets are additional measures.

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Crypto

Sam Bankman-Fried is back in prison in New York City pending his appeal.

After spending a short time at a transfer facility in Oklahoma, US officials have sent former CEO of cryptocurrency exchange FTX Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried back to the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) in Brooklyn. After spending almost a week at the Federal Transfer Center in Oklahoma City, Bankman-Fried was being housed at MDC Brooklyn as of June 4, according to Federal Bureau of Prisons inmate data.Numerous people conjectured that the authorities planned to move the former CEO of FTX to a prison in the San Francisco Bay Area close to the California home of his parents. The reason behind SBF’s return to New York is unknown. The former CEO of FTX had been asked by his attorneys to stay at MDC Brooklyn in order to support him in his appeal of his conviction and sentence.SBF was advised to remain in the state by Judge Lewis Kaplan of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, who presided over his criminal trial and sentencing. A jury found Bankman-Fried guilty in November 2023 of seven felonies pertaining to the embezzlement of client monies at FTX and Alameda Research.Judge Kaplan condemned SBF to 25 years in jail back in March. On April 11, Bankman-Fried’s legal team submitted a notice of appeal. No documents indicating the grounds for SBF’s anticipated appeal were visible on the court docket as of the time of publishing. Among those connected to the demise of FTX and Alameda, Bankman-Fried was one of the few who entered a not guilty plea and was put on trial. Judge Kaplan sentenced Ryan Salame, the former co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets, a company domiciled in the Bahamas, to ninety months in jail on May 28. Three other former executives who were engaged in the collapse of the exchange, Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang, and Nishad Singh, have entered guilty pleas and are awaiting sentencing. For the first time since November 2022, Salame made a post on social media site X shortly after his sentencing hearing. A “complete memoir of [his] time at FTX and Alameda,” as he has proposed, should be published. Bankman-Fried, on the other hand, hasn’t posted to X since January 2023 and hasn’t talked to the media much while he’s being tried. Changepeng Zhao, the former CEO of Binance, reported to the Federal Correctional Institution in Lompoc, California, after receiving a four-month prison sentence for breaking American money laundering rules. With his sentence likely to expire in October 2024, Zhao revealed that he intends to “write something” during his confinement. With SBF and Zhao already facing criminal charges, Alex Mashinsky will be the next well-known player in the crypto sector. In January 2025, the criminal prosecution of the former CEO of Celsius is scheduled to commence.

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Technology

‘Right to warn’ on AI risks is demanded by former employees of OpenAI and Anthropic.

Leading artificial intelligence (AI) developers’ former staff members are pushing these cutting-edge AI firms to strengthen their policy for protecting whistleblowers. With the public, they might then express “risk-related concerns” about the development of increasingly complex AI systems. The “Right to Warn AI” petition was established on June 4 by a group of 13 former and present workers from OpenAI (ChatGPT), Anthropic (Claude), and DeepMind (Google), as well as the seminal AI scientists Stuart Russell and Yoshua Bengio. By issuing this declaration, frontier AI businesses hope to demonstrate their commitment to enabling staff members to voice concerns about AI risks both internally and externally. William Saunders, a former OpenAI employee and supporter of the movement, commented that, when dealing with potentially dangerous new technologies, there should

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Crypto

StarkWare establishes a $1 million research fund for scaling ZK Bitcoin.

With a $1 million research fund, StarkWare has revealed its ambitious aspirations to employ zero-knowledge (ZK) technology to deliver Bitcoin to a wider audience. With ZK technology, namely Scalable Transparent Argument of Knowledge (STARK) cryptography, the project aims to expand Ethereum and Bitcoin concurrently. “We aren’t Ethereum maxis; we are scaling maxis.” With this introduction, StarkWare hopes to carry out Satoshi Nakamoto’s vision by facilitating regular micropayments and developing a scalable system to facilitate international Bitcoin transactions. In a press release shared with Cointelegraph, Eli Ben-Sasson, co-inventor of cheat-proof ZK encryption and CEO of StarkWare, stated that “Bitcoin today is mighty, but still a fraction of what it can be.” “Crypto can clean up the digital world and finance. It can deliver

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Crypto

Wisconsin Pension Plan Is Probably Going to Increase Its Bitcoin ETF Investment,Professor at Marquette Says

According to David Krause, a finance professor at Marquette University in Milwaukee, the addition of two spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to Wisconsin’s pension plan’s portfolio in the first quarter was probably just the start of the state’s cryptocurrency investments.Shares in Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) and BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), worth at $164 million as of March 31, were acquired by the SWIB, according to a May filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Large institutions—pensions in particular—don’t typically invest in nascent exchange-traded funds (ETFs) like the spot bitcoin ETFs, so the revelation stunned the industry. However, as Krause noted in an interview with PBS Wisconsin, the state’s investment board has historically been ahead of the curve. “Wisconsin’s investment board has always been innovative,” he said. “This is a fully funded pension fund so in a way, they have

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