Blockchain Bites: Poolin Lending, Square Crypto’s Grant and a Senate Candidate Who Holds Bitcoin

News

2 June 2020

The crypto mining pool Poolin has started working with crypto lender BlockFi to expand its lending and financial services business.

Meanwhile, Square Crypto has awarded a grant to a Bitcoin Lightning Network watchtower and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is going after the Venezuelan petro dollar’s architect. Here’s the story:

Top Shelf

Mining
Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), a Chinese computing chip producer, plans to raise a $2.8 billion initial public offering. Part of the proceeds will be focused on developing 14nm chips, which will be used for crypto mining. Poolin, the second largest bitcoin mining pool, is expanding its cryptocurrency lending and financial services businesses, with crypto lender BlockFi providing a source of capital for Poolin.

Compliance Issues
The Human Rights Foundation, an organization that focuses on working with activists around the world, spoke about the issues of surveillance and compliance that Elliptic, a blockchain analytics company, creates for the crypto community. Compliance has been key to bitcoin’s ascendance, though there are fears that Bitcoin could be regulated out of existence. “The tools you’re building regardless of your intentions will be used for policing bitcoin,” the foundation’s founder Alex Gladstein said. “At the end of the day what you’re doing is warrantless surveillance against people in other countries.

Election 2020
Cynthia Lummis was the U.S. Representative for Wyoming from 2009 to 2017 and is now running for U.S. Senate. A budget hawk and founding member of the Freedom Caucus, she first bought bitcoin in 2013 after a tip from her son-in-law. She’s been an advocate ever since. In a long ranging interview with CoinDesk’s privacy reporter Ben Powers she discusses the digital dollar, Wyoming’s integrated crypto framework and how crypto’s should be regulated, if at all.

Crypto Support
Tech Mahindra, the IT subsidiary of Mahindra Group, will work with local edutech firm Idealabs to develop blockchain talent within India, by offering professional certification courses. Developers are working to improve the Bitcoin lightning network in a virtual hackathon called Hack Sprint. Brave, a privacy-focused internet browser, has added 1.5 million monthly active users (MAU) in April and May. (The Block) Major publishing houses are accusing the Internet Archive’s “Open Library” of allegedly violating copyright laws, The Block reports.

Finance
Private Swiss bank Maerki Baumann launched a new crypto trading service for institutional and wealthy clientele. While the ConsenSys-backed crypto exchange Nomisma has received approval to trade crypto derivatives in the European Union (The Block) and the Elwood Global Blockchain Equity exchange-traded fund has become the largest blockchain ETF with $95.4 million in total assets. (The Block)

Petro Dollar
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, put a $5 million bounty on the architect of Venezuela’s blockchain-based petro dollar. The Venezuelan government has mandated that all gas stations accept the petro as payment. (Decrypt)

Funding
Square Crypto has awarded a $100,000 grant to a Bitcoin Lightning Network watchtower called the Eye of Satoshi. (The Block) SynchroLife, a restaurant review platform that rewards users in its native crypto token SynchroCoin, has raised $2.6 million in Series A funding round led by MTG Ventures. (The Block)

Market Intel

Bitcoin Boost
Bitcoin has risen above $10,000 for the first time in almost a month as protests across U.S. cities continue to intensify. At around 23:05 UTC (7:05 p.m. Eastern Time), bitcoin rose from $9,895 to around $10,429 over the course of 30 minutes as a new wave of volatility greeted the end of the daily closing period for June 1. This latest move above $10,000 looks to have nullified a significant amount of selling pressure building in the market. The price rise sparked more than $133 million worth of buy liquidations on crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX – the highest since October 26, according to data analytics firm Skew.

BSV Gains
Bitcoin SV, or BSV as the token is known, has risen 96% so far in 2020, versus a 36% gain for bitcoin (as of Monday). It’s also beating the 18% year-to-date return for bitcoin cash (BCH), another offshoot from bitcoin.

CoinDesk Research

CoinDesk Research: May 2020 Review
Bitcoin’s returns continue to outpace stocks, bonds and gold, and so does its volatility. Spot exchange volumes probed historic highs in May and bitcoin options markets passed a milestone and didn’t look back. Outperforming crypto assets a couple of use-specific crypto tokens that topped crypto returns for the month. Download the full report here.

CoinDesk Podcast Network

Does Bitcoin Fix This?
In response to protests across the country following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, some in the Bitcoin community have plumbed the “Bitcoin Fixes This” meme to argue that the core underlying issue has to do with a structurally unjust monetary system. Others have clapped back against pushing that meme in this moment. NLW takes a look at all sides of the argument in the latest episode of The Breakdown.