Twitter’s CEO and founder Jack Dorsey has tweeted his disapproval of Coinbase’s steering his company away from corporate activism. See also: Coinbase’s New Policy: Anti-Woke or Just a Joke?
With bitcoin trading in an unusually tight range and DeFi darling SushiSwap suffering shrinkage, CoinDesk’s Markets Daily is back for your latest crypto news roundup!
"Contrary to what the critics would have you believe with all of their scary language about fraud and risk, when I send an on-chain Bitcoin transaction to you, it will get to you, no matter what. There is no point of censorship, seizure, or control." - Alex Gladstein
A great throw back from Alex Gladstein where he makes a response to the old and tired criticisms of Bitcoin. Is it stupid to think we would want to hold our own passwords to our money, or it is a revolutionary new tool in the global quest for human rights and individual freedom? A great response for the next time you come across and ignorant critic, who needs a dose of truth.
Central bank digital currencies have the potential to challenge the primacy of the U.S. dollar, according to a new report from Germany's Deutsche Bank.
The man is alleged to have fleeced 2,200 victims in the U.S. and 45 other countries, netting $3.5 million via payments in bitcoin and other digital assets.
A Chinese video streaming copycat service raised $2.1 million via an initial exchange offering in August 2019 – but it appears this last resort wasn’t enough to save the company.
O(1) Labs-led lightweight blockchain Coda Protocol said that it is relaunching as “Mina,” following a settlement in a trademark dispute with software maker R3.
Brian Armstrong has split crypto down the middle after taking the stance that Coinbase will remain "laser focused" on its mission and keep activism out of the workplace.
On Oct. 6, we'll reveal the results of our first CoinDesk U ranking of the top-20 universities for blockchain education. Here's how you can watch it live.
The now-renamed California department responsible for the regulation of financial services will soon have more powers to supervise the cryptocurrency industry.
In 1971 Nixon announced that the US would sever all ties between the dollar and gold and would no longer convert dollars to gold at a fixed value of $35/oz, putting an end to any remnants of a gold standard and ushering in a new era in finance.
This new system led to decades of excessive risk-taking, cheap credit and questionable incentive structures. In 2008, the new system came crashing down when the US housing bubble burst and in turn, sent the entire world into the worst financial crisis since the great depression.
To manage the economic crash, central banks pushed quantitative easing to stimulate the economy, but now, 12 years later, the world's economy is again teetering on the edge.
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the fragility of the global economy. With decades of currency debasement, investors are turning to scarce assets such as gold and Bitcoin to hedge the risk of inflation.
In this interview, I talk to macroeconomist and founder of FFTT, LLC Luke Gromen. We discuss the current macroeconomic climate, how the system that has been in place for the last 50 years is coming to an end and why we need Bitcoin.
On Sunday, Ocean Protocol conducted a hard fork from its old token address to prevent the KuCoin exchange hacker from continued unloading of stolen OCEAN tokens on decentralized exchange Uniswap.
With bitcoin's record-breaking run above $10,000 and Twitter talking blockchain strategy, CoinDesk’s Markets Daily is back for your latest crypto news roundup!
Chain Reaction Hosts Tom Shaughnessy and Yan Liberman are joined by Chad Barraford of Thorchain. The three discuss the genesis of Thorchain, why cross-chain liquidity pools will revolutionize value transfer, and why RUNE's token econ makes sense long term vs quick yield farming plays.
A Caribbean firm is in hot water with the CFTC for allegedly allowing U.S. retail investors to partake in leveraged trading of cryptocurrencies and precious metals.
Despite the progress that Bitcoin has made since its inception in filling the cavernous gaps in the financial system and providing relief to the world’s underbanked, there are some areas where more growth is still desperately needed.
But now, with a new service in addition to its legacy offerings, CoinFlip is addressing those areas of need on two fronts.
CoinFlip already operated some 950 Bitcoin ATMs across the country, offering one of the most friction-free and critical entry points to BTC for those who are underserved by legacy financial institutions. Users can accrue BTC from CoinFlip’s machines with as little as a bitcoin wallet, mobile phone number, name and whatever fiat cash they want to invest.
Bitcoin ATMs like CoinFlip’s are one of the most critical ways that people around the world are accessing Bitcoin. And, to complement this service, CoinFlip is now also offering the sale of gift cards at major retailers in exchange for BTC through a partnership with eGifter. So, not only can more underbanked people now invest in BTC through CoinFlip, but they can exchange that BTC for goods and services as well.
“CoinFlip is always looking to bring new crypto services to our customer base, which is primarily retail investors and people who are underserved by financial institutions,” explained Dustin Wei, CoinFlip’s head of business development. “Gift cards are a great way for our customers to actually spend their bitcoin at the merchants that they choose. CoinFlip offers several different ways to buy bitcoin, but this is the first time that we are offering a way for people to spend it.”
Though the ultimate objective for BTC would be to serve as truly digital cash, which can be spent anywhere for any kind of good or service, the adoption of Bitcoin has not yet reached this point. In the meantime, using gift cards as a bridge between bitcoin and the vast majority of retailers is a popular solution that is helping to prove this use case.
“Bitcoin’s ultimate goal is to become a currency,” Wei said. “Today, bitcoin is still not widely accepted so gift cards are a great indirect way to actually spend bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. We hope that bitcoin will one day be used as a direct currency for goods and services.”
Through the new marketplace, CoinFlip is offering gift cards to dozens of major retailers, including Adidas, the Apple App Store, Target and more. It’s currently available through CoinFlip’s website, but soon the gift cards will be integrated into its Bitcoin ATMs, giving users another way of converting their fiat and giving the ATM operators additional foot traffic.
All told, this new marketplace will be another critical inroad from a group that is dedicated to putting bitcoin in the hands of those who need it most, and propelling this technology into its inevitable future.
“We hope that with this gift card marketplace, our user base made of retail investors and financially underserved users realize that bitcoin is more than just an investment vehicle,” Wei said. “Cryptocurrency adoption happens when people realize it’s the best way to both store value and transact, and this is the first step in making that happen. We believe that eventually, merchants will directly accept bitcoin as they see an exponential amount of users use gift cards purchased with crypto.”
The perpetual contracts will be open for trading 24/7, unlike equity exchanges which are open for business for a limited number of hours, five days a week.
There have been a lot of difficult events in the world this year: a global pandemic, shelter in place, social unrest, widespread protests and riots, and west coast wildfires. There seems to be additional bad news every day, including recent events regarding Breonna Taylor. On top of that we have a contentious U.S. election on the horizon.
Everyone is asking the question about how companies should engage in broader societal issues during these difficult times, while keeping their teams united and focused on the mission. Coinbase has had its own challenges here, including employee walkouts. I decided to share publicly how I’m addressing this in case it helps others navigate a path through these challenging times.
In short, I want Coinbase to be laser focused on achieving its mission, because I believe that this is the way that we can have the biggest impact on the world. We will do this by playing as a championship team, focus on building, and being transparent about what our mission is and isn’t.
Play as a championship team
During difficult times I think it’s important to go back to the guideposts we’ve established, like our culture doc, mission, and values.
One of the tenets of the Coinbase culture doc is to play like a championship team. What does this mean?
Be company first: We act as #OneCoinbase, putting the company’s goals ahead of any particular team or individual goals.
Act in service of the greater mission: We have united as a team to try and accomplish something that none of us could have done on our own.
Default to trust: We assume positive intent amongst our teammates, and assume ignorance over malice. We have each other’s backs.
Focus on what unites us, not what divides us: We help create a sense of cohesion and unity, by focusing on what we have in common, not where we disagree, especially when it’s unrelated to our work.
Sustained high performance: As compared to a family, where everyone is included regardless of performance, a championship team makes a concerted effort to raise the bar on talent, including changing out team members when needed.
Through this lens, we start to have a glimpse of a solution. A championship team wants to win, and every teammate is willing to make sacrifices to achieve that. They have each other’s back, and focus relentlessly on the long term goal, avoiding distractions.
Focus on building
There are many places that a company can choose to allocate its limited time and resources. There is never enough time to do everything, so companies need to choose what change they want to see in the world and focus there. It can take decades to move the needle on large global challenges.
At Coinbase, we say that we are focused on building. What does this mean? It means we are going to focus on being the best company we can be, and making progress toward our mission, as compared to broader societal issues.
We focus on the things that help us achieve our mission:
Build great products: The vast majority of the impact we have will be from the products we create, which are used by millions of people.
Source amazing talent: We create job opportunities for top people, including those from underrepresented backgrounds who don’t have equal access to opportunities, with things like diverse slates (Rooney rule) on senior hires, and casting a wide net to find top talent.
Fair talent practices: We work to reduce unconscious bias in interviews, using things like structured interviews, and ensure fair practices in how we pay and promote. We have a pay for performance culture, which means that your rewards and promotions are linked to your overall contribution to the mission and company goals.
Enable belonging for everyone: We work to create an environment where everyone is welcome and can do their best work, regardless of background, sexual orientation, race, gender, age, etc.
We focus minimally on causes not directly related to the mission:
Policy decisions: If there is a bill introduced around crypto, we may engage here, but we normally wouldn’t engage in policy decisions around healthcare or education for example.
Non-profit work: We will do some work here with our Pledge 1% program and GiveCrypto.org, but this is about 1% of our efforts. We are a for-profit business. When we make profit, we can use that to hire more great people, and build even more. We shouldn’t ever shy away from making profit, because with more resources we can have a greater impact on the world.
Broader societal issues: We don’t engage here when issues are unrelated to our core mission, because we believe impact only comes with focus.
Political causes: We don’t advocate for any particular causes or candidates internally that are unrelated to our mission, because it is a distraction from our mission. Even if we all agree something is a problem, we may not all agree on the solution.
Of course, there are exceptions here around internal employment matters, whistleblowing, etc. And we want all employees to feel safe disagreeing on the work itself. Candor and debate are core to a healthy team, where it is safe to disagree. We consider these to be related to our mission.
Why are we mission focused?
It has become common for Silicon Valley companies to engage in a wide variety of social activism, even those unrelated to what the company does, and there are certainly employees who really want this in the company they work for. So why have we decided to take a different approach?
The reason is that while I think these efforts are well intentioned, they have the potential to destroy a lot of value at most companies, both by being a distraction, and by creating internal division. We’ve seen what internal strife at companies like Google and Facebook can do to productivity, and there are many smaller companies who have had their own challenges here. I believe most employees don’t want to work in these divisive environments. They want to work on a winning team that is united and making progress toward an important mission. They want to be respected at work, have a welcoming environment where they can contribute, and have growth opportunities. They want the workplace to be a refuge from the division that is increasingly present in the world.
Change happens in the world only when a smart, talented, group of people come together to focus on a hard problem for a decade or more. Many companies never stand the test of time, because they decide to dabble in unrelated efforts, and distract and divide their workforce in the process. Paradoxically, by being laser focused on our mission, we will likely have an even greater impact on the world, through our products and growing customer base.
Lastly, it would go against our principles of inclusion and belonging to be more of an activist company on issues outside of our core mission. We have people with many different backgrounds and viewpoints at Coinbase, and even if we all agree that something is a problem, we may not agree on how to actually go solve it. This is where there is a blurry line between moral statements and politics. We could use our work day debating what to do about various unrelated challenges in the world, but that would not be in service of the company or our own interests as employees and shareholders.
What is the scope of our mission?
Coinbase’s mission is to create an open financial system for the world. This means we want to use cryptocurrency to bring economic freedom to people all over the world. This is difficult and important work, and every employee at Coinbase signed up because they are excited about this mission.
Economic freedom is unevenly distributed around the world.
I realized at some point this year that many employees were interpreting our mission in different ways. Some people interpreted the mission more broadly, to include all forms of equality and justice. It makes sense if you believe that economic freedom is not possible without equality for all people. Others interpreted the mission more narrowly, believing that we were trying to create infrastructure for the cryptoeconomy, and that yes, this would create more equality of access for all people, but we weren’t trying to solve all forms of inequality in the world.
The narrower interpretation is how I intended the mission to be understood. I don’t think companies can succeed trying to do everything. Creating an open financial system for the world is already a hugely ambitious mission, and we could easily spend the next decade or two trying to move the needle on global economic freedom. We will keep building the most trusted and easy to use financial products that help people access the cryptoeconomy, so everyone can get the benefits of this new technology and we can bring more economic freedom to the world.
A clear agreement
At the Q3 all hands meeting this past week, I shared with the company the above clarification of our culture and mission. These types of clarifications are needed periodically, as almost every year there will be some sort of event which tests the culture. My goal is to create clarity for all employees going forward about how we’re going to operate. I suspect the vast majority of people will be excited to proceed in this direction — after all, the mission is what we all signed up for and is what Coinbase is uniquely positioned to achieve as a company. But for some employees, working at an activism focused company may be core to what they want, and we want to prompt that conversation with their manager to help them get to a better place. Life is too short to work somewhere that you aren’t excited about, and we’re happy to make that a win-win conversation.
We’ve clarified this new agreement in some new internal communication guidelines that we published in the last month, but in summary it says:
We won’t:
Discuss causes or political candidates internally when unrelated to our mission
Expect the company to represent our personal beliefs externally
Assume negative intent, or not have each others back
Take on activism outside of our core mission at work
We will:
Fight to get on the same page when we have differences
Support each other, and create team cohesion
Assume positive intent
Put the company goals ahead of our teams or individual goals
Make Coinbase a welcoming place for people of all backgrounds
Of course, employees should always feel free to advocate around issues of pay, conditions of employment, or violations of law, for instance. Hopefully the above sets some clear guidelines.
Conclusion
These are difficult times, and every CEO I know is trying to figure out how to lead through it.
I recognize that our approach is not for everyone, and may be controversial. I know that many people may not agree, and some employees may resign. I also know that some of what I’ve written above will be misinterpreted, whether accidentally or on purpose. But I believe it’s the right approach for Coinbase that will set us up for success long term, and I would rather be honest and transparent about that than equivocate and work in a company that is not aligned.
We need to do a better job of being authentic about who we are, and hopefully this blog post is a first step in that direction. We are an intense culture and we are an apolitical culture. We’re also committed to making Coinbase a place that creates incredible job opportunities and a welcoming environment for people of every age, race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.
With a strong, united culture, we can build a company that changes the world. At Coinbase, that culture means staying focused on our mission and being the best company we can be. I believe this is how we will have the greatest impact. With this clarity, hopefully everyone can make an informed decision and we can move forward as #OneCoinbase.
If you want to work at a company like this, please check out our careers page.
Nic Carter appears on our new Opinionated podcast to discuss the $20 billion stablecoin phenomenon and its implications for the global financial system.
With final preparations for the launch of Ethereum 2.0 soon to be underway, CoinDesk's Christine Kim spoke with Developers Raul Jordan and Eduardo Antuña DÃez about what's left to do and what comes next.
he platform targeted at combating scams advertised in video ads deploys a combination of Theta’s blockchain, Google’s BigQuery solution and Chainlink’s oracles.
With bitcoin's best day in two months and a surprisingly positive report out of Chinese state media, CoinDesk’s Markets Daily is back for your latest crypto news roundup!
The total value of stablecoins has now surpassed $20 billion, reflecting the growing demand of investors looking to hedge their risks in both crypto and traditional markets amid the coronavirus pandemic.
MakerDAO has voted not to compensate victims of the "Black Thursday" flash crash, a former Pantera partner is launching a new crypto-focused fund and bitcoin may be headed to the doldrums as the U.S. dollar rises.
From the CoinDesk Global Macro news desk, this is Borderless - A twice-monthly roundup of the most important stories impacting bitcoin and the crypto sector from around the world.
As part of our ongoing efforts to be maximally transparent and accountable to readers, CoinDesk has substantially updated and expanded its ethics policy.
The Ministry of Finance is seeking amendments to the law that would force cryptocurrency users to report wallet balances and large transactions to the tax authorities.
Focused around digital identity and data, Ontology announced on Thursday it has partnered with automaker Daimler AG to build blockchain-enabled mobility solutions.
Iran is regulating bitcoin mining with an iron fist. But as U.S. sanctions and the pandemic put pressure on the economy, Iranians are seriously considering bitcoin as an alternative to the falling rial.
Cryptocurrency exchange and custodian Gemini announced on Thursday that its UK users, individual and institutional, will now be able to trade and store crypto using the Pound sterling (GBP).
Cryptocurrency exchange and wallet platform Coinbase announced on Wednesday it has hired three new executives to serve as VPs for Product, Engineering, and Design & Research.
In order to scale our business and fulfill our vision of increasing economic freedom in the world, we need the ability to do more with our resources. That’s why we’re creating a new Platforms team across our Product and Engineering orgs, and have hired two exceptional leaders for this new team. Shilpa Dhar joins Coinbase as VP of Product and Ravi Byakod is joining as VP of Engineering. In leading the new Platforms team, Shilpa and Ravi will help us focus on creating strong, scalable, and compliant infrastructure that can keep up with the growing cryptoeconomy.
Shilpa joins Coinbase from Venmo, where she served as Head of Product. Before that, she spent over a decade at PayPal where she led teams including Nextgen Commerce, Identity, Global Customer Onboarding and User Platforms.
Ravi joins Coinbase from Adobe, where he managed development and operations for their commerce platform. Ravi previously held senior engineering leadership positions at StubHub, eBay, Flipkart, and Google, where he worked for more than a decade.
We also welcome Frank Yoo, VP, Design & Research. Frank brings nearly 20 years of design experience, most recently leading global design and research teams for GSuite at Google. Before that, Frank built the design function at Lyft and led design at Linkedin and Yahoo!. His passion for taking the complex and making it simple and usable makes him a great fit to lead Design and Research at Coinbase.
We continue making investments in talent, pushing ourselves to raise the bar on hiring and ensuring our teams are well-positioned to make our mission and vision a reality.
Welcome to Coinbase!
We’re hiring! Coinbase is growing and looking for smart, creative, passionate optimists. To learn more about open positions check out ourcareer page.
"DLCs are uniquely positioned to bring smart contracting to Bitcoin using oracle contracts that are much more private and scalable than previously thought possible." - Ben Carman
Ben Carman, a developer with the awesome team at SuredBits, drops a BitcoinMagazine article today laying out Discreet Log Contracts and how they can be an exciting new addition to the functionality and power of the Bitcoin system. Privacy, cost savings, and non participating oracles to real world events; DLCs bring a new layer to both decentralizing markets on Bitcoin & the Lightning network. Listen to today's episode to find out more!
Check out the SuredBits blog for tons of awesome work about DLCs and so many other great technologies being built on Bitcoin:
A thanks to today's sponsor Hexa Wallet and the killer wallet they are building! Seedless backups, built in batching, multisig savings, & more! Hit me up if you want to be one of my contacts!
The Venezuelan agency responsible for regulating cryptos has legalized the mining industry, but in the process mandated it be centralized under government control.
The artwork titled, ‘Portraits of a Mind’ created by the Robert Alice project is a set of 40 paintings made up of a transcription of the code associated with the Bitcoin blockchain.
The Chamber of Digital Commerce announced Wednesday that former acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney has joined the group’s board of advisors.
Origin is announcing Origin Dollars, or OUSD, a stablecoin whose reserves leverage decentralized finance (DeFi) so that balances grow wherever it resides.
Santiago Roel Santos (@santiagoroel), partner at ParaFi Capital, an active DeFi fund, joins us to answer your burning questions around popular DeFi projects:
Is Synthetix scalable?Is Nexus Mutual incentives correctly designed?Does Yearn Finance have key man risk?Are food forks like Yam going to be around?Host: Jason Choi (@MrJasonChoi). If you enjoyed the show, consider tipping! This show is not financial advice; show host and guest may hold some of the assets discussed.
Borrow and lend crypto at market-beating rates: Nexo.ioSubscribe to my essays here: jasonchoi.substack.com
Musical credits:
Transition track: "BHANGER" by Phortissimo. Used with permission
Outro track: "LEMMiNO - Infinity [Chill]" is released under a Creative Commons license (BY-SA) 4.0 Music provided by BreakingCopyright: https://youtu.be/uweorwa3q34
Disclaimer: Jason Choi is an investor at Spartan Capital, the hedge fund arm of The Spartan Group. All opinions expressed by Jason and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of The Spartan Group and any of its subsidiaries and personnel. This podcast is for information purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.
Bitcoin miners have successfully survived the 2020 Halving and COVID-19, and the network is now seeing some of its highest hash rates ever as these operations power up new equipment and reach new levels of decentralization going into the second decade of bitcoin mining.
Bitcoin Mining Is Decentralizing
China still dominates the bitcoin mining space, although the percentage of the hash rate coming from the country has dropped recently, from around 65 percent in early 2020 to about 50 percent more recently as Chinese mining farms are weathering a particularly difficult monsoon season and the government is sending mixed signals that Bitcoin may be under attack as part of a campaign to promote the new digital yuan.
Meanwhile, the U.S., Russia, Iceland, Central Asia and South America, among other regions, are all seeing continued growth in mining as miners benefit from plentiful, cheap, stranded energy in these regions — principally hydroelectric power, wind power or oil and gas, depending on the location.
In addition, Kazakhstan has been in the news lately as its government partnered with miners through a $715 million investment fund.
The following graph from a report prepared by BitOoda for Fidelity Digital shows an estimated breakdown of hash power around the world, indicating that China contributes 50 percent of the world’s hash power, while the U.S. is in second place with 14 percent.
It should be noted though that other analyses have placed China’s share as high as 65 percent of the total hash rate, with the U.S. at 7.2 percent and Russia at 6.9 percent.
Chinese Operations Are Looking Westward
The U.S. and Canada make up 21 percent of the global hash rate, at least in BitOoda’s analysis, second only to China. And that share is expected to go up by many in the industry.
In a recent live stream hosted by Bitcoin Magazine, Elsa Zhao, the marketing manager for Chinese mining giant Whatsminer, confirmed that her company is focusing its expansion plans outside of China.
In an announcement officially coming soon, the company, second only to Bitmain in its singular ability to influence bitcoin mining, will offer details about its new mining equipment manufacturing plant planned for the U.S..
Bitmain, a Chinese operation that is still the largest mining equipment manufacturer in the world, is weathering its own storm: a company feud between co-founders Micree Zhan and Jihan Wu that may split the company in half.
Bitmain has two manufacturing locations — one in China for the Chinese market and one in Malaysia for international sales. As far as it’s mining operations, Bitmain seems poised to continue its expansion into the U.S.
In a recent interview with Bitcoin Magazine’s John Riggins, Bitmain’s head of operations for North America, Raymond Walintukan, said that he sees more decentralization out of China in Bitmain’s future, with the company building on its current operations in North America.
Walintukan works from a mining farm in interior Washington State, where stranded hydroelectric power is plentiful and cheap. Bitmain also has mining farms in Texas and Tennessee. He stressed that Bitmain is now an international company, as much as it is a Chinese company.
Ryan Porter, head of business development for mining consultants BitOoda, told Bitcoin Magazine in an interview that more investors, including some from China, are inquiring about new mining opportunities in North America.
“We certainly see a reason to believe that a significant portion of hash power will migrate to North America,” said Porter. “The existing infrastructure, cost of power and regulatory stability here is competitive globally.”
And the decentralization of hardware manufacturing could become a major factor for continued migration in the near future.
“China has been a real industry innovator in producing the leading ASIC manufacturers,” Porter added. “However, with TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) planning to build a plant in Arizona, there could be domestic hardware manufacturers that emerge, which would also be a catalyst for hash to migrate outside of China.”
So, despite more expensive power pricing — averaging from 3.5 to 4 cents per MW, which is higher than in places like Central Asia and South America — North America is still considered a desirable hub for bitcoin mining because of the relative stability of the political environment and the ability to lock in multi-year power contracts (China averages just under 1 cent per MW).
The Importance (And Ongoing Challenge) Of Bitcoin Mining Decentralization
In a recently released Coinmetrics report, researchers noted that the distribution of mining and hash rate is the most important factor in “sustaining a secure, censorship-resistant payments and savings system.”
It noted that mining is the anchor and the “effective decentralization” that provides security for the Bitcoin network. The report uses a metric it called the “Nakamoto coefficient,” which measures the number of pools that would need to collaborate to launch a 51 percent attack on the network. For instance, iIn 2014, mining pool GHash.io controlled over half of the network’s hash power for about a day, giving Bbitcoin a Nakamoto coefficient of 1.
The researchers concluded that bitcoin mining has become increasingly decentralized, with a Nakamoto coefficient of four.
Like most profitable enterprises within the legacy financial system, the natural pull of bitcoin mining is toward more control and organization by one or a relatively small number of controlling bodies.
At this point in the early history of Bitcoin, it is inevitable that a small and informed group of early adopters, like Bitcoin Core developers, will move the system forward in an organized fashion.
But, as Coinmetrics’ researchers argue, it’s important to have significant bitcoin mining take place in different parts of the world.
And even though there are some signs that Bitcoin mining is becoming more decentralized, especially with Chinese operations moving some of their has power to North America, there is still a long way to go before this industry can be considered truly international.
Coinmetrics noted that, even as hash power migrates from China, Bitcoin mining is still at risk of centralization through possible state level coercion and vertical and horizontal integration.
“While Bitcoin mining is distributed, it’s still at risk of centralization through state-level coercion and vertical and horizontal integration. Several exchanges, including Binance, OKEx, and Huobi, operate mining pools. BitMAIN, a hardware manufacturer, owns both BTC.com and AntPool, and is the only investor in ViaBTC,” noted the report.
And, in China, mining pools continue to grow despite a particularly difficult year. As long as there is cheap power, the incentive to build economies of scale in China will grow.
New China-based mining pool Lubion, which has China and Iran as its principal sources of hash power, only came onto the scene in March 2020 but is already in the top-ten of pools by hash, rivalling longer-standing pools like F2Pool (also based in China).
Still, there is reason for mining decentralization advocates to remain optimistic.
Noting that Kazakhstan could be on track to become one of the world’s largest Bitcoin mining hubs as the country sets up a $715 million development fund, Mow said:
“Bitcoin mining will become a strategic investment sector for many nation states. Slowly at first, and then all at once.”
Skynet Labs has raised a $3 million funding round led by Paradigm, aiming to offer developers decentralized storage solutions for all types of applications.
In my recent Bitcoin Vs Ethereum show, I was joined by Samson Mow and Vitalik Buterin to discuss the philosophical differences between Bitcoin and Ethereum.
For me, the fundamental differences between the two are quite clear, where Bitcoin is conservative and slow, focusing on sound monetary policy, Ethereum is inflationary, experimental and has, what many consider unachievable goals.
Following the debate about the philosophical differences I was keen to expand the conversation into the technical differences between the two networks.
In this episode, I am joined by Andrew Poelstra, Tadge Dryja and Vitalik Buterin and Patrick McCorry. With Paddy as co-host, we discuss the fundamental and technical differences between Bitcoin and Ethereum, scalability and use cases.
The Chinese e-commerce giant has reportedly agreed to help the nation's central bank develop infrastructure including a wallet for its cash-equivalent digital currency.
A group of anonymous Uniswap users is trying to unite the many small holders of the UNI governance token to deal with potential problems in the automated market maker’s (AMM) governance.
