Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.
Blockchain news
- Blockchain developer platform Alchemy said it has ended its closed beta and is now available for all developers to use. The US-based startup claims that it currently provides the infrastructure and developer tools that support over USD 7.8bn dollars worth of on-chain transactions annually, 70% of top Ethereum applications, and roughly 60% of the total assets locked in DeFi. It also said that the platform powers 4 million users and over 30 billion queries per year. The startup is backed by Stanford University, Coinbase, the Chairman of Google, Charles Schwab, among others.
- A Japanese university said that it will launch a blockchain-powered job search pilot program for graduates, in conjunction with major Japanese firms and domestic startups. Per a press release, the Keio University’s economics department said that its platform would help safeguard students’ personal data during the job search process and better match candidates with potential employers. The university said that major financial companies, including Mitsubishi UFJ Bank and Sumitomo Life, would be taking part in the three-year pilot.
- Mitsubishi Corporation RtM, business giant Mitsubishi’s metals and minerals arm, will start using a new blockchain-powered platform for its supply chain management and financial operations. The company stated that the platform would seek to digitize the entire transaction process for all parties, including customers. The platform, said the firm, would be capable of dealing with asset transfers, confirmations, invoicing, and drafting contract terms & conditions.
- Chinese state-sanctioned blockchain infrastructure project, Blockchain-Based Service Network (BSN), has launched its English-language website for international decentralized applications (dapp) developers. Per the website, developer have permissioned, permissionless, and interchain services at their disposal, while public chains include Ethereum (ETH), EOS, Tezos (XTZ), NEO, Nervos (CKB), and IrisNet.
- EMURGO, a founding entity of the Cardano (ADA) protocol has partnered with Moonstake, a technology company focused on blockchain and staking technologies. Per the announcement, the two will be jointly driving blockchain staking activity and accelerating industry adoption of staking within Cardano’s ecosystem, while broadening awareness of EMURGO and Cardano.
Crypto adoption news
- Major crypto payment processor BitPay said that it has enhanced its service to allow consumers to make crypto payments directly from the Coinbase account to BitPay merchants, eliminating the peer to peer movement of funds. Currently, the default daily limit set by Coinbase is USD 1,000 per day, but plans to increase this limit are already being developed, it added.
Investment news
- One-year-old DEX aggregator 1inch said it closed its first investment round, raising USD 2.8m from Binance Labs, Galaxy Digital, Dragonfly Capital, FTX, and others. “1inch has become the de facto interface for trade execution in DeFi, with aggregate volumes surpassing USD 1 billion,” Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao was quoted as saying.
- The Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said that it will invest some USD 4 million in industry 4.0-era tech advances, including blockchain technology-powered advances. Per DVB CN, the broadcaster said that
it will invite contractors to apply to supply it with the solutions it requires until August 21, and hopes to have its new tech platform ready by the end of 2021.
DeFi news
- Equilibrium, a consortium of decentralized finance (DeFi) products, has partnered with Polkadot, a shared protocol that enables different blockchain networks to operate together. Per the press release, the DeFi market is fragmented, with 87% of the current DeFi market locked on Ethereum, while ETH represents only 12% of crypto, leaving huge untapped market potential for DeFi, which Equilibrium said will make accessible via Polkadot technology. Users will be able to trade multiple crypto assets from Equilibrium’s native decentralized exchange and use its interface to manage assets across multiple blockchain protocols, without new logins, they said.
Legal news
- A 25-year-old woman from Sydney, Australia, Kathryn Nguyen, has been sentenced to a maximum two years and three months in jail for stealing over XRP 100,000 in January 2018, today worth nearly USD 30,000, but some USD 400,000 at the time, the report said. She and an associate hacked into a crypto account and swapped the two-factor authentication to her mobile phone, transferring the coins to an overseas exchange, trading it for bitcoin (BTC), and shuffling it into different wallets.