🛑 ‘PoS Fanatics Attacking PoW are Actual Supervillains' - Kraken CEO

View in browser April 22, 2022 Here's your Friday's edition of Cryptonews Crunch, featuring the latest articles about ongoing attacks on Bitcoin's proof-of-work consensus mechanism, the Ukrainian Central Bank's restriction on crypto purchases, and the latest bitcoin price forecast. Enjoy! Markets - Change 24hr Source: CoinMarketCap.com 'PoS Fanatics Attacking PoW are Actual Supervillains', Kraken's Powell Says A letter by a group of Democratic members of the US Congress attacking proof-of-work (PoW) mining and praising proof-of-stake (PoS) has caused an uproar in the Bitcoin (BTC) community, with Kraken CEO Jesse Powell claiming that "PoS fanatics attacking PoW are actual supervillains." In the letter, Congressman Jared Huffman described PoW mining, which Bitcoin is based on, as something that is "poisoning our communities," and contributing to "air, water, and noise pollution." He also claimed that "Bitcoin produces annually carbon emissions comparable to Greece," and said PoS is an "available" option that has "99.99 percent lower energy demands." Kraken's CEO said of the comparison between PoW and PoS that, "Game isn't zero-sum. Energy is fungible. Some things cost more energy because they're better. My laptop sucks more juice than my calculator for a reason. Both are good and can co-exist. They are not interchangeable."  Similarly, Nic Carter, co-founder of Coin Metrics and General Partner at Castle Island Ventures, argued that the letter was full of false statements. Read more... Ukrainian Central Bank's Restrictions Affect Crypto Users Ukraine's central bank, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), has placed additional restrictions on its citizens' cross-border money and asset transfers, a measure that will affect crypto transactions. In an official NBU notice, the bank explained that individuals had been "temporarily prohibited" from conducting "quasi-cash transactions" from fiat hryvnia bank accounts, with cross-border peer-to-peer (P2P) transfers in the fiat limited to a monthly total of USD 3,384. The media outlet Forklog explained that this measure would affect crypto-related transactions – presumably those made to exchanges and wallets based overseas. The NBU stated that its measures on the restriction of the "cross-border transactions of citizens" had been made "in order to prevent the unproductive outflow of capital from the country" during a time of "martial law."  Read more... Bitcoin Price Forecast for 2022 Cut Once Again The price of bitcoin (BTC) will hit a peak of USD 81,680 this year, before falling back to USD 65,185 by the end of the year, argued a panel of members from the fintech and crypto industry surveyed by comparison website Finder.com. The peak of over USD 80,000 was described as "significantly higher" than the current bitcoin price (USD 40,542 as of Friday at 11:17 UTC), but still 15% lower than Finder.com's end-of-year prediction from January of USD 76,360. Martin Fröhler, CEO of trading platform Morpher, who gave one of the most bullish end-of-year predictions for BTC, commented that, "Political uncertainty, inflation, and an ever increasing desire to own non-government controlled assets will propel Bitcoin to new all-time highs." Read more... Promotion ChangeNOW: Trusted Crypto Swaps Swap your crypto assets with ease at the NON-CUSTODIAL crypto swap service. Learn More Daily Briefs Polygon (MATIC) has launched a new blockchain network, Supernets, and said it will invest USD 100m in projects that use it and that are interested in increasing their growth through a dedicated Supernet chain. Stripe and social media giant Twitter will pilot stablecoin payouts for select users of Twitter's content monetization products. Eligible users of Twitter's Ticketed Spaces and Super Follows programs will be able to receive their earnings from the company in USD coin (USDC). The Bahamas government will allow Bahamians to pay taxes using digital assets. The government will also start enabling Bahamians access to digital assets using the Bahamas sand dollar, a central bank-issued digital currency that was launched in 2020. The Russian tax agency Federal Tax Service (FNS) reportedly wants to allow companies involved in cross-border trade to accept crypto as a form of payment – and pay foreign exporters in cryptoassets. Also, the Russian Central Bank has claimed that its digital ruble could be ready as soon as next year. Ross Ulbricht, the convicted creator of the Silk Road dark web market for drugs, made an agreement with prosecutors stipulating that a portion of a newfound trove of Silk Road bitcoin (BTC), seized from an unnamed hacker, will be used to cancel out the more than USD 183m in restitution Ulbricht was ordered to pay as part of his sentence.  Binance is seeking to be dismissed from a USD 8m lawsuit in which a woman accuses the exchange and others of orchestrating and aiding a romance scam. Also, a local representative of Binance has reportedly met with Russia's financial intelligence unit, Rosfin, in Moscow in April 2021, with officials asking the exchange to hand over client data such as names and addresses of users to "help them fight crime." Permission to hand over data was granted by a Gleb Kostarev, Binance's head of Eastern Europe and Russia, when his colleague present in the meeting told him that he didn't have "much of a choice." Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, wrote on Twitter that the North Korean hacker group behind the Axie Infinity (AXS)'s Ronin bridge attack has tried to move their funds through the exchange, spread out over 86 accounts. He added that USD 5.8m has been recovered. The US Department of Justice announced the arrest of Chet Stojanovich, aka 'Chester J. Stojanovich', on charges of defrauding more than a dozen victims of more than USD 1.8m, through fraudulent misrepresentations that he would provide the victims with specialized miners and miner-hosting services. Emmanuel Macron, the French president and presidential candidate in the current run, said that he is in favor of making "rapid progress" on the Markets in Crypto-assets (MiCA) Regulation that is meant to provide a legal framework for cryptoasset markets to develop within the EU. The US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) issued a consent order against Anchorage Digital Bank, which they say is based on the bank's failure to adopt and implement a compliance program that adequately covers the required Bank Secrecy Act/anti-money laundering (BSA/AML) program elements. The bank has been given 15 days from the date of the order to appoint a Compliance Committee. Scott Free Productions, a movie and TV production company co-founded by filmmaker Ridley Scott, has joined the project to produce a movie that will explore the birth and rise of the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain. Currency.com has expanded into the United States and will provide its services in 48 states and territories. Web3 and blockchain security firm CertiK announced an additional USD 60m investment from SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Tiger Global. The financial arms of the South Korean banks Shinhan and Kookmin (KB) have joined the search engine giant Naver in an investment round worth some USD 13.6m for the crypto disclosure platform Xangle. Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) announced the creation of a16z crypto research, a lab that will work closely with their portfolio and others toward solving problems in the crypto industry. Decentralized finance protocol Bastion has raised USD 9m in a Series A funding round led by Three Arrows Capital. Digital economy bank MetaLend announced the completion of a USD 5m seed round of financing led by Pantera Capital. Decentralized privacy system Nym announced that advisors composed of George Danesiz (ex-Meta), Aggelos Kiayias (IO Global), Ben Laurie (Google), and Bart Preneel (KU Leuven) have joined their scientific advisory board. 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