Bitcoin rally, Visa buys CryptoPunk, Jack Dorsey mining

The cryptocurrency market is beginning the week off sturdy.

Bitcoin, the most important cryptocurrency by market worth, hit a greater than three-month excessive on Sunday, topping $50,000, and is buying and selling at around $49,600 as of Monday afternoon.

Other prime cryptocurrencies, like ether, cardano and dogecoin, are up as nicely, with the worth of the whole cryptocurrency market at over $2.15 trillion, in accordance with CoinMarketCap.

Between Visa shopping for a CryptoPunk non-fungible token, or NFT, for six figures and Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey making an attempt bitcoin mining, listed here are six issues that occurred within the crypto area this previous week.

1. Jack Dorsey says he’s ‘making an attempt’ bitcoin mining

It’s no secret that Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter and Square, loves bitcoin. He has touted it as the most important project in his lifetime to work on, and Square, his digital payments company, bought over $170 million worth of bitcoin earlier this year.

Now, the billionaire CEO is mining it, too. “I’m making an attempt mining with @compass_mining,” Dorsey tweeted on Tuesday.

Compass Mining is a service that hosts, provides and operates cryptocurrency mining rigs for particular person miners who don’t wish to fear about buying and sustaining mining gear themselves.

Bitcoin operates on a proof of work mannequin, the place miners should compete to unravel advanced puzzles with the intention to validate transactions. The course of is not straightforward: It requires lots of vitality and pc energy, which is not low cost. The computer systems themselves, together with different gear, may also be very costly.

2. Robinhood says dogecoin accounted for 62% of crypto income in Q2

In its first earnings report since its IPO final month, Robinhood stated that cryptocurrency accounted for greater than half of all transaction-based gross sales within the second quarter.

Dogecoin, a meme-inspired cryptocurrency that began as a joke, accounted for 62% of its crypto income, Robinhood reported.

In whole, its income from crypto transactions was $233 million within the second quarter.

3. Coinbase is shopping for $500 million in crypto on its steadiness sheet

4. The world’s second-largest stablecoin is altering its make-up

In a blog post on Sunday, Centre, the consortium that developed stablecoin USD Coin, introduced it is altering the make-up of its reserves as soon as once more.

This time, its reserves will consist of money and U.S. Treasury bonds.

Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies which are purported to be pegged to order property like fiat forex. While the builders behind USD Coin beforehand stated it was backed 1:1 by money, it was revealed in July that money made up simply over 60% of its reserves. The different 40% was backed by debt securities and bonds.

USD Coin is the second-largest stablecoin, with $27 billion price of cash in circulation.

5. Hacker behind $600 million crypto heist returns all stolen funds

Poly Network, a decentralized finance, or DeFi, platform was hacked earlier this month, with over $600 million worth of crypto stolen.

The hacker exploited a vulnerability in the platform’s code, which allowed them to transfer the stolen funds. But as of Monday, Poly Network has recovered all of the stolen funds.

“At this point, all the user assets that were transferred out during the incident have been fully recovered,” Poly Network said a blog post on Monday. “We are within the means of returning full asset management to customers as swiftly as attainable.”

The individual claiming to be the hacker stated the theft was merely finished “for enjoyable.”

6. Visa purchased a CryptoPunk

Visa introduced that it bought a CryptoPunk NFT for $150,000 in ether.

“Today, as we enter a brand new period of NFT-commerce, Visa welcomes CryptoPunk #7610 to our assortment,” the corporate tweeted on Monday.

CryptoPunks are an assortment of 24×24 pixelated avatars, every thought of to be uncommon NFT collectibles. There are a complete of 10,000 in existence and no two are precisely alike. Each has its personal distinctive options and equipment.

“We assume NFTs will play an essential function in the way forward for retail, social media, leisure and commerce,” Cuy Sheffield, head of crypto at Visa, stated in a blog post on Monday. “To assist our shoppers and companions take part, we’d like a firsthand understanding of the infrastructure necessities for a worldwide model to buy, retailer and leverage an NFT.”

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About the Author: Daniel