ALSO: Goldman discloses $400M in Bitcoin ETFs
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MetaMask, the popular self-custodial crypto wallet for the Ethereum (ETH) network, is starting the rollout of its blockchain-based debit card developed with payments giant Mastercard (MA) and crypto payments specialist Baanx. The MetaMask Card will initially be available in a "limited pilot of a few thousand digital-only cards" to users based in the European Union countries and the UK, Metamask told CoinDesk on Wednesday. The company plans broader distribution later this year, with a "full rollout" in the EU and U.K. and more pilot launches in other regions through the coming quarters. The offering comes as traditional financial services and blockchain-based digital assets are getting increasingly intertwined. As global institutions tokenize old-school instruments like bonds and credit and asset managers start offering bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) exchange-traded funds, payments giants are exploring ways to implement blockchain tech into financial rails. Mastercard has been working with Baanx on its Web3 payments initiative, connecting traditional payments with crypto platforms like hardware wallet firm Ledger and decentralized exchange 1inch. Rival company Visa (V), meanwhile, has partnered with Circle's USDC stablecoin and the Solana (SOL) network to speed up cross-border payments. CoinDesk broke the news in March that MetaMask was testing a blockchain-based payment card with Mastercard and Baanx. |
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Hashrate Pressures Miners |
Bitcoin (BTC) miners are expanding their capacity again as network hashrate reached a fresh all-time high this week following a capitulation event, on-chain analysis firm CryptoQuant shared in a report with CoinDesk. Network hashrate set a new record of 627 exahash per second on Tuesday, recovering from the 8.5% drawdown in early July. Such expansion comes despite a recent drop in bitcoin prices and record-low hash price – or the average revenue per amount of mining power – indicating positive sentiment among miners after a bout of selling in the past few months. Hashrate refers to the computational power used by miners to mint new bitcoin and verify new transactions on the Bitcoin network. Millions of calculations are solved each second to ‘win’ new blocks, in a process broadly called mining. “We may have seen a miner capitulation event last week as miner outflows spiked after prices touched $49,000,” CryptoQuant said. “Bitcoin daily miner outflows spiked to 19K BTC on August 5, the highest level since March 18.” Miners are entities that supply computing power to any blockchain network in return for “rewards” in the form of BTC tokens. They typically sell bitcoin to keep operations afloat continually as running such systems is costly: Only five popular mining rigs were profitable in early July as prices floated around the $54,000 mark. “Miners sold some Bitcoin as their average operating profit margins were squeezed to 25%, the lowest since January 22,” the firm added. |
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Goldman Sachs (GS) holds positions in a variety of bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds (ETFs), according to a 13F filing. The investment bank disclosed that it holds positions in seven out of the 11 BTC ETFs in the U.S. Its largest holding is the iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) at $238.6 million, followed by Fidelity's Bitcoin ETF (FBTC) at $79.5 million, then $56.1 million of Invesco Galaxy's BTC ETF (BTCO), and $35.1 million in Grayscale's GBTC. It also holds smaller positions in BITB, BTCW, and ARKB. BTC ETF flows continued in the green during the U.S. Tuesday trading day with $4.39 million in daily inflow recorded, according to SoSoValue. During CoinDesk's Consensus 2024 festival in Austin, Mathew McDermott, the bank's global head of digital assets, said the BTC ETFs were a "big psychological turning point" for the industry. |
Ethereum Set For Programming Change |
Ethereum developers are steering toward an upgrade that could bring the most fundamental changes in the network's programming environment since the original smart-contracts blockchain shook up the crypto industry when it launched nearly a decade ago. The Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) known as EVM Object Format (EOF), which has been discussed extensively in developer circles this year because of some participants' concerns about possible security risks, is now set to be included in a major package of changes expected later this year or early next, known as the Pectra hard fork. The EOF proposal is a series of smaller changes aiming to update the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), the programming environment that executes smart contracts on the blockchain, and arguably Ethereum’s secret sauce that made it different from Bitcoin and other early distributed networks when it launched in 2015. Specifically, EOF would make smart contracts more developer friendly, especially for those building decentralized applications in Solidity or Vyper programming languages. The series of changes are incredibly delicate that can break existing smart contracts, so developers have added in a new version, allowing dapp builders to choose which version of the EVM to use when deploying their code. “EOF will be the first major EVM related change in years,” said Parithosh Jayanthi, a core developer at the Ethereum Foundation, over a text message on Telegram to CoinDesk. “It sets the stage for future upgrades to the EVM and showcases the base layers intent to continue to improving the EVM.” |
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The Economist June 2025 Edition |
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