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- This Week in Bitcoin (October 21st 2022)
This Week in Bitcoin (October 21st 2022)
What is up you beautiful people!
Time for another edition of This Week in Bitcoin. LETS GO! But first. Shoutout to The Stacks Foundation for sponsoring this podcast. If you want to get started building on Stacks and push the mission forward of a user-owned internet with Bitcoin as the base layer. Check the links below. Learn Clarity: https://start.stacks.org/ Learn more about Stacks: https://stacks.co/ Apply for a grant: https://stacks.org/grants
Now lets jump in and get updated on the latest. Starting with Bitcoin mainchain.Catch the podcast on YouTube, Apple, Spotify or Fountain.
Bitcoin
The Guinness Book of World Records though?!
The Guinness World Record book included a section for crypto in its 2023 edition. Bitcoin made the list as the worlds most valuable cryptocurrency, as well as the worlds first globally decentralized digital asset. Who else was in the book? El Salvador as the first country to adopt crypto as legal tender. Cool stuff.
The CTO of Walmart said in an interview that crypto payments will play a critical role in the future of how consumers transact. Bullish
Bitcoin mining is constantly in the news, usually regarding its energy use. The Bitcoin Mining Council released their report for Q3 dropped some stats on the current state of Bitcoin mining. Notable facts: 59% of power comes from sustainable power mix, Mining efficiency is up 23% YoY, and Bitcoin now accounts for 99% of all crypto hashing power globally. Aka it's the only player in the game.
Stacks
It's all engines go at Stacks.
ALEX dropped some big news last week, and they continue to bring updates at a crazy pace. The testnet for Stacks Bridge went live today. This bridge allows USDC on ETH and xUSD on Stacks to be swapped back and forth cross-chain. This opens up a huge level of liquidity to the Stacks ecosystem. Will Binns, one of the developers who worked on this project posted a tweet thread explaining how this is a huge primitive to allow all kinds of assets to be traded to the Stacks ecosystem. Check the thread here.
We also got news on Zest Protocol's testnet. October 20th the testnet goes live to the world bringing on-chain Bitcoin yields to Bitcoin hodlers. They will be having a Twitter Spaces this Thursday with the heavyhitters from Trust Machines. Muneeb, Dan Held, and Tycho will be in the house to talk Zesty things. Should probably be there.
But wait theres more! Mark Hendrickson dropped some major alpha about the Hiro wallet. The Hiro wallet team is now focused on bringing the ability to hold BTC directly into the Hiro wallet. YES! So now you can hold BTC and STX in the same wallet. This also opens the door for much more fluid integrations with BTC as an asset inside Stacks applications. Very exciting times, you can read the tweet thread here.
Last but not least. The Stacks Pre-Accelerator (@web3startuplab) is now accepting applications for its next cohort. There was some very promising startups that came out of the first cohort, im excited to see what happens in this next batch.
Lightning
Open-source rules everything around me.
I'm just gonna create it cause I think it should exist, no big deal. That's what the team at Zebedee said when they started creating open-source apps. Over the weekend they announced nbd.wtf This is a collection of applications they built that don't fit into their suite of Lightning-powered tools for video games, but they wished existed. So they spent the time to create them and are giving them out to the world as open-source software. It's a beautiful time. Read the announcement.
LNSploit was announced and released on GitHub. It's a tool designed to attack and exploit the Lightning network. When dealing with money, If attackers can find an avenue, they will use it. This tool should make it easier to find and patch holes to keep the network as secure as possible. Check out the GitHub if your nerdy.
RSK
Big funding for Sovryn
Sovryn announced they raised $5.4m to continue bringing DeFi to Bitcoin. One interesting part is Sovryn is a fully decentralized community. The raise was approved by the voting governance body. The round was led by General Catalyst, with participation from Collider Ventures, Bering Water, Bollinger Investment Group, Balalji S and other prominent angels. Read more on U.Today.
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