News Updates
Ethereum London upgrade is live on the Ropsten testnet
The London upgrade includes several updates to Ethereum, including the aforementioned EIP-1559. Basically, Ethereum network developers implement the upgrade on the multiple testnets to ensure things work as expected before launching it on the live mainnet. Ropsten is the first testnet. The next one is Goerli, expected to be upgraded around June 30th. The mainnet release is in flux depending on how the testnets go, but I’ve seen an estimated date to be around July 16th. You can read more about the timeline here.
El Salvador will airdrop $30 of bitcoin to each adult citizen in the country
Some sources peg it to be $117M, if you’re curious. A few highlights: First off, that’s ~$117M in buying pressure in the market since the government is going to need to purchase this. Second, the global user base of bitcoin owners is expected to grow 2.5% due to 4.5M new El Salvadorans acquiring it. Smart move by the government to promote adoption of the currency. And finally, I think airdrops are a very convenient way of distributing money. The closest example I can think of are the stimulus checks this last year, which were either direct deposited in a bank or sent through the mail. Airdrops going right into an e-wallet is more convenient, more traceable, and overall more efficient. I think it’s an advantage crypto has when considering various adoption strategies (DeFi protocols love airdropping tokens).
Bank of Israel testing Ethereum for its digital shekel
There’s some back-and-forth between monetary policymakers on the viability of using blockchains as infrastructure for digital money. In Israel (as have a few other countries), it looks like there’s testing being done on Ethereum. Meanwhile, in Switzerland, there’s an economist saying CBDCs cannot run on blockchain. We’ll have to see how this gets settled years from now.
Bullish! I was struck by a tweet I read this week (found below) describing the state of the market from 2018 - 2019. Sentiment during this time is well-documented in on-chain analyses, but one big takeaway from the tweet was how outside investment had pretty much dried up. Times are different now with a16z and other firms raising multi-billion dollar funds.
SEC delays Robinhood IPO due to its growing crypto business
The suits are at it again, aren’t they? In all seriousness, the original IPO date was expected to be in June, then July. Now it could be pushed back further, pending any SEC questions.
Tweet of the Week
Picture of the Week
