Bitcoin is a tool to prevent extortion by the police in Nigeria, centralized social media is being censored amid Thai protests and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said the central bank has set its previous inflation target of 2% in the coming decades will adjust again.
You read Blockchain Bites, the daily summary of the most important stories in blockchain and crypto news, and why they are important. You can subscribe here and all CoinDesk newsletters.
Top plank
Police-resistant
To combat extortion and coercive policing in Nigeria, some, such as Nigerian programmer Adebiyi David Adedoyin, are turning to bitcoin. Human Rights Watch has documented a trend in the country where police arrest citizens, determine their life savings through entry of force on their phones and seize it. It almost happened with Adedoyin. “The money they raise to let me go in that case would have been a lot more if I had more money in my account. But I had most of my money in bitcoin, ‘said Adedoyin. Police are looking less for a bitcoin portfolio, he said.
Bitcoin fund
Fidelity Investments’ chief strategist, Peter Jubber, launches a new bitcoin index fund. Announced in a Wednesday morning submission to the Securities and Exchange Commission, “Wise Origin Bitcoin Index Fund I, LP” has a minimum purchase of $ 100,000 and is the latest example of Wall Street veterans warming up to bitcoin. Wise Origin links back to Fidelity Investments through Jubber and Fidelity’s brokerage services and distribution companies, both of which are set up to receive compensation from the new fund. It also shares a Boston office building with Fidelity, reports Danny Nelson.
Centralized censorship
Thailand’s anti-government protests highlight the vulnerability of major social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, reports Sandali Handagama of CoinDesk. On Wednesday, Thailand’s digital minister, Puttipong Punnakanta, said authorities would continue an internet operation – including censorship of Facebook and potential interference on Twitter – in an attempt to curb a fundamental will of widespread political action in the country.
Exchange of exchange
The New Zealand Stock Exchange has stopped trading for the third day in a row as a result of criminal cyber attacks. Targeted disruption of malicious actors has prompted the hosting service of the NZX exchange Spark to beat it intermittently offline. The criminals, potentially linked to the Amada Collective and Fancy Bear cyber gangs, are demanding bitcoin to stop the attacks. In recent weeks, the group has also tried to squeeze bitcoin from PayPal, MoneyGram, YesBank India, Braintree and Venmo, reports Sebastian Sinclair of CoinDesk.
Blockchain on the LINE
Message giant LINE has launched a wallet for users to manage digital assets and a blockchain platform where developers can issue their own tokens, tokenize digital assets and run decentralized applications (dapps). The wallet services are only available in Japan, at launch, where LINE is particularly well known. The company, whose messaging app has 84 million users, aims to use its existing network to accelerate the development of its token economy and accelerate adoptions of many dapps built on its own blockchain platform – distinguishing it from other experiments for messaging-app-blockchain.
Quick bites
At stake
Inflation watch
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell announced new measures to control inflation during his annual speech on the US Federal Reserve’s policy approach during the Jackson Hole symposium on Thursday.
The Fed has given itself the flexibility to change its monetary policy plans in the future, including keeping inflation above its traditional 2% target. In his speech, Powell did not rule out the use of his monetary policy tool, such as a broader expansion of his balance sheet to avoid tumbling markets as the economy deteriorates and bankruptcies increase.
It is a speech that could have long-term implications on both bitcoin and ether, given the relatively precarious position of the dollar in the global financial system.
The implication for Krypto is that the Fed could probably run inflation hot for a few years, which could theoretically weaken the dollar and increase bitcoin prices.
Thursday offers a reminder of how dramatically once slow monetary forces have accelerated due to the devastating economic toll of the coronavirus pandemic. The national debt now stands at $ 26.5 trillion. Digital currencies are now being studied and pursued by central banks in China, the US and almost everywhere else. Goldman Sachs recently warned that the dollar risked losing its dominant reserve status, reports Bradley Keoun of CoinDesk.
Market intel
Flat options
The Bitcoin options market foresees some price turbulence in the short term, reports Omkar Godbole of CoinDesk. The implicit volatility of Bitcoin on one-month options, a measure of market expectations for price movements, fell to its lowest level since July 25. Short-term price expectations have fallen sharply from 70% to 52% over the past two weeks. This wait-and-see approach is taking place at the address of Jackson Hole of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, in which he expects to show tolerance for high inflation – a move that could weaken the US dollar and drive bitcoin higher.
Tech pod
Back to baseline?
Baseline Protocol, where companies can use Ethereum’s public mainnet as a common frame of reference among various record systems, has released version 1.0. The way companies typically operate blockchains is by implementing data on-chain like a traditional workhorse database – a serious error of judgment, said John Wolpert of ConsenSys. Announced Wednesday, it used Microsoft-supported project – developed by Paul Brody, blockchain lead at EY, and Wolpert – using Ethereum only for events and event bookings, reports Ian Allison of CoinDesk.
DeFi debate
DeFi Pulse, led by the Concourse Open Community, has become the main source of knowledge in the decentralized finance space (DeFi), and pioneered a metric called “Total Value Closed.” TVL represents the dollar value of all tokens locked into the smart contract of a given decentralized loan project. While a handy way to rank projects, it also raises controversies about the value in embedded value.
Op-ed
NFT games?
Leah Callon-Butler, a CoinDesk columnist and director of Emfarsis, betrays the unknown world of the Philippines with non-fungal tokens (NFTs) to earn money during the coronavirus pandemic. A popular Ethereum-based game, Axie Infinity, where players damage digital circles, Axies, breed, educate, fight and trade, offers paths out of poverty and helps spread the word about new technology, she said. “It’s food on the table, it’s money for their families and it saves them if they can not even leave the house during this pandemic,” said Gabby Dizon, the Filipino co-founder of mobile app development company Altitude Games.
Podcast angles
Distribution of dictators’ horde
Ruben Galindo, director of the P2P network Airtm, joins the latest The Breakdown to discuss how the crypto-powered network is collaborating with the Venezuelan opposition government to distribute $ 18 million in funds raised by the US in seized from the Maduro dictatorship.
Who won #CryptoTwitter?
