It’s All About Crypto Blog
From Speculation to Prediction: How Crypto Is Finding a New Use Case
For a long time, crypto was seen primarily as a vehicle for speculation. If you wanted to "use" cryptocurrency, you traded it. And that meant most activity flowed through centralized exchanges. But lately, something interesting has been happening. Spot and derivatives volumes on exchanges have been flat or even declining. Meanwhile, transactions on prediction markets...
Buy TER, Move to Bhutan: A New Model for Token Distribution
You may have heard about Bhutan’s unprecedented digital nomad visa: pay $2,800 and you can live there for a full year. For anyone who has ever wanted to spend time in Bhutan, the offer sounds incredibly tempting. The country has long been extremely closed off. Officially, the only way to visit is as part of an organized tour - with a licensed guide who accompanies you...
What Happens When the ETH Runs Out?
News that Vitalik Buterin has been actively selling ETH barely causes a ripple anymore. So what if his wallet has shrunk by another 17,000 ETH this month? Most people have grown used to it and assume it’s just how things are supposed to work. After all, he’s not only spending the proceeds on himself - he’s also funding Ethereum’s development. But...
Confidential Doesn’t Mean What I Thought It Meant
Alright, I’ll say it straight: I was wrong. Or at least, I was wrong until recently. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you probably remember my enthusiastic posts about assets on the Liquid network. L-BTC, USDT on Liquid - I praised them more than once. I wrote that transactions there are confidential, that this protects you from...
The Unthinkable Happened: USDT Supply Is Declining
The total supply of Tether tokens has been shrinking for the second month in a row. For me, that comes as a real surprise. Year after year, I got used to seeing the supply grow and grow. It felt like every other day there was another headline about Tether minting yet another billion. For the supply to decline, it is not enough to simply pause new issuance...
Crypto Didn’t Take the Money - Coinbase Did
KlariVis, a banking analytics platform, has released a study claiming that U.S. banks are losing deposits due to money being transferred to the Coinbase exchange. According to the study, $78.3 million was moved from deposits across 53 banks to Coinbase over the past year. Several cryptocurrency media reported this. And, at first glance, it looks like cryptocurrencies are gradually replacing...
Coinbase Walks Away - OP Pays the Price
The OP token has dropped nearly 25% in just 24 hours - all because Coinbase announced it would no longer use the Optimism Superchain for its Base network. What does such a sharp move actually mean? One of two things: * either this is an irrational panic sell-off, * or the market had been pricing in the idea that OP would...
The Return of Crypto Payments in Belarus - On the Bank’s Terms
In Belarus, the Deputy Governor of the National Bank has announced that in the near future, self-employed individuals - meaning entrepreneurs and freelancers - will be allowed to receive payment for their services in cryptocurrency. At first glance, it sounds progressive. Even more ambitious than El Salvador, where similar rules apply only to Bitcoin, not to other cryptocurrencies...
Stablecoins Replace Banks? Vietnam Is Already There
A week ago, I published an article about who will unseat Bitcoin from the top spot. Among other things, I argued that in the foreseeable future, stablecoins could replace banks for everyday users. It turns out that in Vietnam, that future has already arrived. Wello has launched a platform that lets people pay for everyday purchases not just with stablecoins, but directly...
Blockchain Privacy, But Not for Everyone
The Stellar team has officially unveiled a new privacy solution for transactions, developed by engineers at Nethermind. It enables asset transfers on the Stellar network while concealing the details of the payment from outside observers. Block explorers will show that a transaction took place, but they won’t reveal who the actual sender was or who ultimately received the...
