Daily Archives: April 29, 2022

The Argentinian government has taken the first steps in the launch of its own central bank digital currency (CBDC). A new decree identified the number 207/2022 gives new faculties to the Argentinian mint to involve in the investigation, development, and issuance of digital currencies. This puts Argentina on the trail of countries like Brazil and Mexico, that are already involved in the development of their e-currencies.

Argentina Prepares the Field for a CBDC

The government of Argentina is preparing the legal field for future issuance of its own central bank digital currency, the digital peso. In a decree approved and published on April 26 with the number 207/2022, the Argentinian government modified the functions and faculties of the national mint, giving it new responsibilities and possibilities.

In these new faculties, the decree includes capture and digital processing of data, images, codes, sounds, and microchips, software design and development, implementation of digital security, teleprocessing of information, printing, and/or recording of databases.

While the national mint just had the faculties to print national currency, the new decree justifies this change by stating that:

Currently, the advancement of digital environments in terms of transactions and payments… artificial intelligence and digital governance systems, as well as the emergence and proliferation of “blockchain” technology, cryptographic technologies and assets justify the update of the reach of the national mint.

To Rosendo Gravanago, legal counselor in the crypto asset area, this is a clear move in the direction of issuing a CBDC. He stated:

This gives us the pattern that Argentina is trying to get into the CBDC trend, a trend that has been adopting centralized electronic fiduciary money.

Argentinian National Exchange and Payment Platform

Also, there are other modifications to the original purpose of the organization which hints at the future establishment of a national exchange with payment processing possibilities. In this sense, the decree allows the national mint to manage and execute payments and/or collections on behalf of third parties through the use of electronic devices, transactional platforms, or any other means.

Gravanago declared to local media that:

With this regulation, the national mint is empowered to create a kind of central exchange.

These changes put Argentina in the CBDC panorama in Latam, trailing behind countries like Brazil and Mexico that are already engaged in research and development tasks related to the future issuance of their digital currencies.

What do you think about the sets that the Argentinian government is taking towards the possible issuance of a digital peso?

Sergio Goschenko

Sergio is a cryptocurrency journalist based in Venezuela. He describes himself as late to the game, entering the cryptosphere when the price rise happened during December 2017. Having a computer engineering background, living in Venezuela, and being impacted by the cryptocurrency boom at a social level, he offers a different point of view about crypto success and how it helps the unbanked and underserved.

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons

Lending and borrowing have become words that are associated with Bitcoin. This is the same with traditional finance where lending and borrowing remain a big part of the ecosystem. However, there has not been an intersection of these three. This has mostly stemmed from the distrust of traditional finance toward bitcoin. The digital asset which remains largely unregulated did not provide the kind of backing tradfi wanted. That is until now.

Bitcoin-Backed Loans In Tradfi

Investment bank Goldman Sachs has announced the introduction of Bitcoin-backed loans. In what is a first for a major U.S. bank, Goldman Sachs has expanded its crypto offerings to include these bitcoin-backed loans. It is the first secured lending facility of its kind which will lend out cash that is collateralized by BTC. 

Related Reading | Number Of Bitcoin Millionaires On The Rise As Accumulation Continues

Mostly, banks have shied away from the cryptocurrency due to its highly volatile and unregulated nature. Nevertheless, various institutions have taken to providing services that revolve around cryptos such as asset and wealth management, trading, and investment. All of which remains a far cry from cash loans that use bitcoin as collateral.

A move like this will see not only Wall Street embrace the cryptocurrency faster but other factions of the traditional finance will begin to move in this direction. 

BTC succumbs to bears | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com

Goldman Sachs has no doubt evolved in its view of bitcoin over time. Less than two years ago, the bank did not believe that the cryptocurrency was an asset class. Since then, it has not only recognized it as an asset class but has been offering its clients a way to trade the cryptocurrency. It also boasts a crypto research team that publishes reports on the crypto market. Over the months, these reports have been mostly bullish toward digital assets such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Crypto Collaterals

Although this is the first for a major bank to accept bitcoin as collateral for a loan, it is in no way a novel concept. The rise of the decentralized finance (DeFi) space has seen users being able to borrow against their crypto holdings for a long time. There are DeFi protocols dedicated to this in the space.

Related Reading | Bitcoin Briefly Tops $40,000 As More Countries Adopt Crypto

In this regard, traditional finance is playing catch-up to DeFi which requires no paperwork for individuals to secure a loan. With a deal like the one Goldman Sachs is offering, it can help to bridge the gap between traditional and decentralized finance.

Bitcoin is trading at $38,927 at the time of this writing, down 2.64% in the last 24 hours.

Featured image from Bitcoin Lending, chart from TradingView.com

On April 29, photography-focused tech start-up Picture This is finally launching the ‘Polar Bear’ NFT, which raises awareness and money towards climate change and the impact humans have on our planet.

Digital artworks have seen a booming rise in sales and popularity since the start of the decade. Minting art as an NFT has enabled artists to reach audiences in ways earlier not fathomable. Now, the photography community is finally entering the NFT space.

One devotee is Christian Houge. For decades, the artist’s dramatic photography has provoked a strong emotional response from international museums and art institutions like the California Museum of Photography, Auction Paris, and Three Shadows Photography Art Center in Beijing, among others. This week, Houge is officially expanding his internationally renowned art from gallery walls to the blockchain.

— At first, I was naturally sceptical of NFT art, being an analogue ‘old school’ photographer working for years to finalise my climate-related projects. I am interested in new technology, even if this also represents a double-edged sword in Humankind’s so-called progress. I see that as a Faustian bargain. ‘It giveth and taketh away, so even more important to be conscious as to not lose ourselves and the nature both within us. Personally, I find NFTs fascinating, as this technology is here to stay. It will change how we work and relate. Conscious NFTs with storytelling and provoking feelings are important in the web3 environment, says Christian Houge.

Environmentally responsible art

For Houge’s official NFT debut, the artist is releasing the unseen ’Polar Bear’ artwork from the ‘Residence of Impermanence’ series, along with photography-tech startup Picture This. For the past ten years, Houge has spent his life earnings collecting different rare trophy animals, to subsequently set the large taxidermy collection on fire in front of traditional British wallpapers, which for Houge, represents imperialism. The series, ‘Residence of Impermanence’, highlights how man is violently exploiting nature, for which we consider ourselves superior above all living things.

With This NFT drop, Houge is contributing to wildlife conservation and forest conservation in Paca, Brazil under the project Pacajai REDD+ with partner Offsetra. This is a part of the Picture This impact program to offset the carbon footprint of NFTs. Proceeds of sales will be donated to Earth.Org in support of support Earth.Org’s Global Ecosystem development of photographers, NGOs partners, and global ambassadors, and its operations. The purpose of the Houge NFTs is to raise awareness of climate change and the impact humans have on the planet and to advocate for hope and solutions to build a better future.

The Polar Bear NFT, priced at 0.5 ETH, will be the first to drop from the seven-piece ‘Residence of Impermanence’ collection. The collectors of this unrivalled work of art will gain prioritized access to the rest of the collection, which will subsequently be released. The collection also consists of exclusive behind the scenes video footage of the burning of seven rare animals, with every animal coming as completely unique NFTs. The photographs, regarded as the masterpieces of the project, will be available in editions of five.

All collectors of ‘Residence of Impermanence’ will have the privilege of meeting the artist in person as well as permanent prioritized access to all upcoming drops by Houge.

Picture This

Picture This is a digital marketplace and cultural hub for photographic art with one grand mission: making groundbreaking photography available to everyone on the planet. The team behind Picture This have dedicated their lives to making photography an accepted genre, by celebrating and communicating the realm.

The next step? Maintaining this energy within the digital universe — bridging fine art and the blockchain with the help of photographers, and making sure that their art will keep a long-lasting cultural relevance.

— At Picture This, we’re passionate about the opportunities that the blockchain creates for photographers. The current NFT space is mainly celebrity and speculation driven. There’s a risk that we’re losing something essential: artistic value and trust. As more collectors are getting into the NFT space, we’re bringing trust and quality assurance, says Ilgi Evecan, Chief Digital Officer at Picture This, adding:

— Art has been a great catalyst to grow NFTs as a new asset class. This makes NFTs not just a technological breakthrough, but a cultural one. I’m excited about how photography NFTs can advance that breakthrough. Photography has always stood for inclusivity in the art space and will do so also in the NFT space.

For more information, be sure to check out the official website, Twitter or Discord channels.

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By L.J Brock, Chief People Officer

Overnight I saw the note from Brian Chesky announcing to Airbnb employees that they would be moving to a permanent remote-working model. I applaud Brian and his team. While it may sound simple in a post-pandemic era, the logistics can be anything but. I am ecstatic to see them join the growing ranks of remote-first companies because more people, more ideas, and more experiments will make remote work better for everyone. Redesigning the nature of work, is work that should not be done in isolation (no pun intended).

When we went remote-first in May 2020 we were not shy to admit that we did not have all the answers, and while we still don’t, there have been some important learnings along the way. As Airbnb starts off on their journey and in our crypto-mindset of being transparent and open source, here are some of our key learnings from operating a remote-first company over the last two years…

Flex on location, consistent on experience

One of the most obvious benefits that drew us to remote-first was the ability to give our people the flexibility to choose where they live and work, while also giving Coinbase access to a much broader talent market. What followed was that we needed to put the practices in place to protect those employee choices and ensure that you are neither privileged or punished for your choice. It’s one thing to say ‘you can choose to work from the office if you prefer’ and another to say ‘you will receive the same opportunities and experience regardless of where you chose to work’.

Some of the practices we’ve introduced include, ‘one person, one device’ meaning regardless of your location, all attendees should join from their own device — creating an equal experience for all. We also have deliberately tried to remove one standard time zone for all employees. Prior to going remote, we had a high density of employees on the west coast and knew that if this was the norm it would penalize those who had chosen to live and work elsewhere. Today we are completely decentralized, without a physical headquarters and we’ve worked hard to instill cultural norms where no standard hours exist. For some employees, this could look like adopting west coast hours and taking the mornings to themselves and for others it may be prioritizing synchronized work in common working hours and async work at other times.

Redesigning how we connect

Human connection is still core to the way we work and going remote-first meant redesigning the way our people connect. When it comes to connection we’ve learned that one-size does not fit all. As we sought to design centralized processes, we realized that our teams needed the flexibility and discretion to design experiences to fit their needs. What has resulted is a set of guidelines and guardrails.

Offsites play a big role in our approach to connection. Each org is designated a bi-annual offsite budget on a use-it-or-lose-it basis. In the past I think there has been pressure to prove ROI for offsites based on the cost of travel, accommodation etc, but we openly recognize that ~90% of the value of coming together is to build relationships. We have optimized our offsite guidance to recommend that teams include just 1–2 days of content, to focus on the most valuable in-person activities and avoid burnout.

Quarterly offsites alone can not carry the full weight of our need for connection, so we complement this approach with remote-first tactics to build connection between in-person meetings. Some tactics that have worked for us include all company virtual events, bi-weekly town halls, quarterly all hands, social neighborhood budgets (an individual discretionary budget to fund meet-ups with colleagues) and team connection budgets (a discretionary manager budget to drive connection within immediate teams).

Async norms

When we committed to remote-first for the long term we had to address some of the more complex realities of working apart, such as how we can make decisions efficiently and asynchronously. This was an important challenge for us to solve and one which Emilie Choi discussed on our blog last year (see ‘How we make decisions at Coinbase’). Having norms around a few types of decision making tool sets (Problem/Proposed Solution and RAPIDs) has made a huge difference in driving consistency, clarifying our thinking and understanding of each other, while being able to move quickly. Another key element of this framework for us has been the use of collaborative technology like Google Docs and the concept of a ‘DRI’ or Directly Responsible Individual for each action item.

Congratulations again, Airbnb. I look forward to continuing to share learnings as we each navigate a remote-first world, and seeing more companies take the leap.

One of the most popular topics of debate within the crypto community revolves around the Bitcoin (BTC) four-year halving cycle and the effect it has on the long-term price of the top cryptocurrency. 

Bitcoin price failed to hit the long-predicted $100,000 level in 2021 and many crypto analysts now find themselves wondering about the outlook for the next six to 12 months.

Currently, BTC price trades below $40,000 and various technical analysis metrics suggest that further downside is more likely that a recovery to the $40,000 to $45,000 range. Let’s take a look at what analysts’ views are on Bitcoin’s longer-term prospects.

Bitcoin could bottom in November or December

A general overview of the four-year cycle theory was discussed in a Twitter thread by crypto analyst and pseudonymous Twitter user “Wolves of Crypto,” whose analysis indicates that “the most probable bear market bottom for Bitcoin will take place in November/December 2022.”

This projection assumes that the peak BTC price of $68,789 back on November 10, 2021 marked the high of the last cycle and that the market is currently in the corrective phase typically seen after a cycle top.

The analyst said,

“The 200–week SMA has been the long-tested bear market bottom indicator for Bitcoin, and hence, the bottom will likely be placed at ~$24,000.”

Should this model play out, the price of BTC will breakout above its previous all-time high sometime around August or September of 2023.

Bitcoin “seems a bit undervalued here”

The possibility that the bottom in BTC could come before the end of 2022 was hinted at by Willy Woo, an independent market analyst who posted the following chart suggesting that the “Orange coin seems a bit undervalued here.”

The “Highly Liquid Supply Shock” metric quantifies on-chain demand and supply, and shows its relative movement in standard deviations from the long-term average.

As shown on the chart above, each time the oscillator dipped as low as the current reading, the price of BTC entered a sharp rally shortly thereafter.

Woo said,

“Not a bad time for investors to wait for the law of mean reversion to play out.”

Related: Bitcoin is 40%+ down from its ATH, but on-chain analysts say it’s ‘starting to bottom out’

Bitcoin price is at a mid-term low

Many analysts believe that BTC could be in an optimal accumulation range, a point touched on by crypto market analyst Philip Swift. According to Swift, the active address sentiment indicator (AASI) suggests that BTC is in a buy zone.

According to Swift, the AASI is currently “back in the green zone,” which suggests that the “Bitcoin price change is at a sensible level relative to active address change.”

Swift said,

“This tool has a good hit rate across bull and bear markets for signaling a mid-term low.”

Indeed, a survey of the previous instances where the AASI hit levels similar to its current reading shows that the price of BTC hit its low point around the same time and proceeded to climb higher in the following weeks and months.

Generally, it appears as though Bitcoin’s price action is keeping in-line with the previously established four-year cycle, albeit to a lesser percentage increase than expected.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

In recent times, cryptocurrencies that burn tokens have been very popular and a number of well known blockchain projects have destroyed large sums of digital assets. While a number of crypto projects have different burn schemes, the overall effect is usually the same, as destroying tokens reduces the circulating supply.

Blockchain Projects Burn Tokens for Specific Benefits and Objectives

Burning tokens has been a popular trend and articles often highlight specific projects like Ethereum, Terra, Shiba Inu, and many more that have destroyed large sums of native tokens.

$SHIB burn portal is a huge success!👺🔥

— Shiba Inu to $1 (@ShibInform) April 28, 2022

Six days ago, Bitcoin.com News reported on the Shiba Inu (SHIB) developers launching a burn portal, which allows shiba inu holders to burn their stash of SHIB. In that particular case, SHIB burners are rewarded for destroying their tokens. SHIB currently has a burn rate of around 180.18% during the past 24 hours.

1/ The on-chain votes for proposals 133 and 134 to burn the 88.675 million Pre-Col-5 $LUNA in the Community Pool (~$4.5 billion), swapping for $UST using the on-chain swap, and reducing the oracle_rewards_pool distribution window from 3 to 2 years have now passed!

— Terra (UST) 🌍 Powered by LUNA 🌕 (@terra_money) November 10, 2021

During the first week of November 2021, the Terra (LUNA) team of developers burned 88.7 million LUNA and projects like Ethereum (ETH) burn native tokens every minute of the day. For instance, after the implementation of the Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 1559, more than 2.17 million ether has been destroyed forever.

76,100 #BNB ($35,060,900) has been burned since the BEP-95 real-time burning upgrade 🔥

— BurnBNB (@BurnBNB) April 27, 2022

Just like SHIB, Ethereum has a burn rate as well, as metrics show over the last 60 minutes, 135 ether was burned and during the last 24 hours, 4,477 ETH has been destroyed. The Binance digital asset BNB has a scheduled burn process and the project has destroyed coins to reduce the overall supply.

Burning Crypto Simply Means Sending Tokens to a Null Address

The process has been leveraged by a number of cryptocurrency network developers and the community has grown fond of the process. Burning tokens, however, does not mean the tokens get engulfed in flames in the literal sense.

Most projects burn tokens by simply sending the digital currencies to a dead address. The address is simply a black hole of funds as no one has the private keys to the addresses used in the destruction process, which is simply sending coins to the null address.

Once the tokens are sent to the null address, the coins are unretrievable and will never be used again. Digital currency burn schemes have been around for years and the project Counterparty is one of the oldest to deploy the burn mechanism idea.

Counterparty’s Proof-of-Burn

In fact, Counterparty burned bitcoin (BTC) to bootstrap the project. “All XCP that will ever exist were given out proportionally to those who recognized Counterparty’s value and were ready to “burn” their bitcoins to participate in Counterparty,” the project explains in a blog post about the proof-of-burn process.

Burning tokens includes a number of benefits, and some algorithmic stablecoin protocols leverage the burn process to distribute stablecoin assets in an autonomous fashion. While Counterparty used a proof-of-burn to bootstrap XCP, most blockchain projects burn coins to reduce the token’s overall supply.

In a way, burning tokens is similar to a share buyback in traditional equity markets. Removing coins from the circulating supply makes the crypto asset scarce and the scarcity aims to make the rest of the coins in circulation more valuable.

What do you think about crypto asset projects that employ the proof-of-burn process or burn tokens to reduce the coin’s overall circulating supply? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Jamie Redman

Jamie Redman is the News Lead at Bitcoin.com News and a financial tech journalist living in Florida. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for Bitcoin, open-source code, and decentralized applications. Since September 2015, Redman has written more than 5,000 articles for Bitcoin.com News about the disruptive protocols emerging today.