On Wednesday, Shiba Inu (SHIB) developers appeared on stage at the Blockchain Futurist Conference in Toronto to discuss the “End Game” for Shibarium – the meme token’s metaverse and NFT-oriented layer 2 blockchain.
The team said that the Shibarium mainnet has gone live, allowing developers to begin building apps on the blockchain.
The ecosystem will include “Shibdentities,” a proof of personhood solution that lets users retain control of their data and privacy.
Shibdentities can be used to create digital wills, which transfer assets to another user’s wallet after one person’s death is confirmed.
“We are building a decentralized, autonomous, digital nation state,” said the team during its keynote presentation.
Regarding the Shibarium metaverse, the ecosystem will feature

Updated filings show that former President Donald Trump owns $2.8 million worth of cryptocurrency in his Ethereum wallet – a far higher amount than disclosures from earlier this month appeared to suggest.
The disclosures paint a different picture of Trump’s views on crypto than his public pronouncements about the asset class would seem to suggest.
Trumps Crypto and NFT Earnings
As submitted to the Office of Government Ethics, entry 24 under Trump’s “Employment Assets and Income and Retirement Accounts” lists a series of items related to crypto and NFTs.
The item is titled “CIC Digital LLC (License fees for NFTs)” and is subdivided into three parts: One of those parts included his Ethereum crypto wallet, which contained $2,806,341 in assets at disclosure time.
Another part

PayPal announced that it will temporarily suspend crypto purchases on its platform for its U.K. based users beginning in October.
The move comes in response to evolving regulatory guidelines provided by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) – Britain’s chief market regulator.
PayPal Pauses Crypto Buys
Per an email received by certain U.K. users on Wednesday, the suspension will take effect on October 1, and is expected to last until early 2024.
“Your crypto remains safe,” clarified the company. “You can keep it on our platform at no charge. You can also sell your crypto at any time.”

PayPal will ‘pause’ crypto purchases in UK 🇬🇧 pic.twitter.com/NPkj7F61cC
— Crypto Crib (@Crypto_Crib_) August 16, 2023

PayPal enabled crypto services for U.K. customers in September 2021,

Bitcoin has tapped a new all-time high against the Argentine peso, shortly after a Bitcoin-supportive presidential candidate came first in the nation’s primary elections.
The asset now trades for $10,258,244.60 ARS, up 21% over the past 5 days.
Pressure on the Peso
Compared to the US dollar, Bitcoin has performed remarkably well against the peso over time given that the latter currency’s persistently high inflation.
Last month, the nation’s annual inflation rate skyrocketed to 115% up from 98% in January. Meanwhile, as BTC is up 76% year to date in USD terms, its risen 249% against the peso in that same timeframe.
Yet a large portion of those gains came only after Argentina’s primary elections over the weekend, which saw Javier Milei – leader of La Libertad Avanza (Freedom

Crypto fund inflows are running positive again after a three-week lull period, with the vast majority of capital rushing into Bitcoin (BTC).
The renewed interest follows the release of inflation figures for July, which came in slightly better than expectations.
Bitcoin Funds Back In Profit
According to CoinShares’ weekly digital asset flows report, inflows to crypto funds totaled $28.5 million last week, with $27 million heading into Bitcoin. This follows a three-week period in which Bitcoin experienced $144 million in net outflows.
Other digital assets including Ether (ETH) and XRP also scored inflows last week of $2.5 million and $0.5 million respectively. The latter is now on its sixteenth week of consecutive inflows, with assets under management rising by 127% since

Famous podcast host and MMA commentator, Joe Rogan, is no stranger to Bitcoin (BTC).
Having mentioned it in numerous conversations already, both he and his guests have praised the asset before for its absolute scarcity and freedom-focused properties, while contrasting it against the controlling nature of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). He’s even accepted BTC as payment for one of his comedy shows.
That said, the podcaster’s remarks on Bitcoin are often only in passing. Despite popular demand, he seemingly neglects to host any experts on his show to explain its benefits at length, or to answer common questions about the technology – which he’s confessed to not understanding very well.
What might be keeping Rogan from hosting Bitcoin-dedicated podcasts with experts

With the Bitcoin (BTC) network’s programmability and scalability still relatively limited compared to other blockchains, developers continue mulling over ways to push the protocol’s capabilities to its limits.
One hotly debated idea comes from BIP 300 and BIP 301 – aka “Drivechains” – a soft fork proposal to allow Bitcoin to effectively scale through sidechains. In a blog post on Monday, analysts from BitMEX explored the benefits and tradeoffs of the proposal.
BIP 300: Sidechain Peg-Out
Proposed by developer Paul Sztorc, Drivechains is an “improved merged mined sidechain mechanism for Bitcoin.” A sidechain is another blockchain that connects itself to Bitcoin’s main network by using the same internal currency, BTC, for transactions and gas payments.
The upgrade’s first

Nansen – a blockchain market intelligence firm – released a report on Tuesday analyzing how the earliest whales to onboard Coinbase’s layer 2 blockchain – Base – are using their money.
Here’s what the company found.
Early whales largely allocated to Ethereum and its layer 2 networks. As of August 7, the most value held by these whales ($19.6 million) was on Ethereum itself, followed by Base ($17.6 million), Arbitrum, and Optimism.
Regarding tokens, ETH was the most common holding at $11.6 million. Beneath it were relatively large memecoin allocations, including Bald at $2.7 million (skewed by the BALD deployer), UNIBOT ($284,000), and BITCOIN ($273,000).
Some of the most common entities these whales are interacting with include commonly used decentralized exchanges, such

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed to postpone its decision on whether to approve or deny the Ark 21Shares Bitcoin ETF for listing on BZX.
This marks the agency’s first delay on the latest wave of Bitcoin spot ETF applications, possibly indicating a similar short-term fate for rival applicants.
Questions For the Public
In its Friday letter, the SEC said it seeks public comment on BZX’s application, which would list the very first Bitcoin spot ETF on a U.S.-regulated exchange.
“Institution of proceedings is appropriate at this time in view of the legal and policy issues raised by the proposed rule change,” wrote the SEC. “Institution of proceedings does not indicate that the Commission has reached any conclusions with respect to any of the issues

Crypto infrastructure giant Fireblocks has publicly revealed security vulnerabilities in the technology used by over a dozen major digital asset wallet providers.
If unaddressed, the company warned that attackers could exploit the bugs to steal from millions of customers.
The Bitforge Exploits
The set of vulnerabilities – collectively referred to as “Bitforge” – apply to popular multi-party-computation (MPC) protocols, including GG-18 , GG-20, and Lindell17. These protocols allow cryptocurrency to be controlled and managed by multiple individuals and groups.
“The BitForge vulnerabilities, if left unremedied, would enable attackers to exploit a newly discovered flaw in the GG18 and GG20 protocols by exfiltrating the full private key due to a missing zero-knowledge proof,”

Attorneys representing Tesla CEO Elon Musk are calling for a judge to dismiss a multi-billion dollar case accusing the celebrity entrepreneur of insider trading with Dogecoin (DOGE) against his online followers.
The lawyers say the accusations should be dismissed with prejudice, barring plaintiffs from continuing to burden the judicial system with additional accusations based on Musk’s Twitter activity.
Elon Musk’s ‘Silly Tweets’
In a letter filed in a New York federal court on Monday, Musk’s lawyer Alex Shapiro blasted the disgruntled investors repeated plea attempts as “baseless” and “frivolous.”
The lawsuit, he explained, is “based on nothing more than Mr. Musk’s innocuous andoften silly tweets” about DOGE. “There is nothing unlawful about tweeting words of support for,

Despite a largely bullish court ruling in favor of Ripple last month, Morgan Creek founder Mark Yusko is no more enthusiastic about the company, nor the XRP ledger.
In a Tuesday interview, the investors said that the ledger is not only “corruptible,” but that it lacks any “real adoption.”
Yusko’s View On Ripple
In conversation with Darren Moore Jr, Yusko said that he “struggles” with the XRP ledger at large.
While remaining open to the idea that it could serve as a payment rail for banks and brokerage firms, he sees little evidence that it’s actually gaining traction. “There are lots of announcements with very little behind it,” said Yusko.
Launched in June of 2012, the XRP Ledger was designed as a public blockchain that would provide cheaper, faster, and less

Big Three credit rating agency Moody’s has downgraded numerous regional banks in the United States due to weak earnings last quarter and sizable unrealized losses, according to the firm’s Monday note.
Meanwhile, banking giants including Bank of New York Mellon (BK.N), US Bancorp (USB.N), State Street (STT.N) and Truist Financial (TFC.N) have been placed on review for potential downgrades.
Stress in the Banking Sector
As reported by Reuters on Tuesday, Moody’s note highlighted “profitability pressures” at many banks that are expected to hinder their ability to generate further capital. Banks downgraded by the firm include M&T Bank (MTB.N), Pinnacle Financial Partners (PNFP.O), Prosperity Bank, and BOK Financial Corp (BOKF.O).
Meanwhile, high exposure to commercial real

The House Financial Services Committee (HFSC) approved a slew of proposals related to digital asset regulation last month, of which any could be the first piece of crypto-specific legislation signed into U.S. federal law.
Here’s a summary of the differences between the most important bills, and what each could mean for crypto as a whole.
4 Crypto Bills: A Summary
One of the most high-profile bills to score approval was the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act (aka FIT 21), which received bipartisan support (all Republicans + 6 Democrats) from the HFSC last week.
The bill would clear confusion about what jurisdiction the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has over digital assets, versus the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

While anticipation over a potential Bitcoin (BTC) spot ETF has gripped investors, an Ethereum (ETH) ETF approval may also be waiting in the wings.
Bloomberg analysts are now assigning 75% odds of one such product being approved in the United States this year.
Ethereum ETF On The Horizon
As tweeted by Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart on Friday, the organization’s approval odds are the same as those it assigned for a Bitcoin futures ETF in early September 2021.
The very first U.S.-based fund of the kind – the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO) launched in late October of that year, pulling in $1 billion within two days of its launch.
At the time, many companies were vying to list the product after Gary Gensler – Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)

Heather Rhiannon Morgan (aka “Razzlekhan”, 33) pled guilty to a money laundering conspiracy in connection with the 2016 Bitfinex hack on Thursday, which saw more than 119,756 Bitcoin (BTC) robbed from customers.
This came moments after her husband, Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein (35), pleaded guilty to being the man behind the hack itself.
Bitfinex Hacker Confirmed
In Washington, D.C., federal court, Lichtenstein confessed to both stealing and laundering the funds, officially clearing the air on a years-long mystery around one of the largest thefts in Bitcoin history. At the time of the hack, the exchange’s stolen BTC was worth roughly $71 million but is worth $3.4 billion today.
“Lichtenstein used a number of advanced hacking tools and techniques to gain access to Bitfinex’s

Crypto trading platform Bitstamp has introduced an XRP lending service offering a “permanent” 2% yield, shortly after relisting the asset for trading last month.
This puts XRP on an already sizable list of coins viable for 2% APY on Bitstamp, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), USD Coin (USDC), and Tether USD (USDT).
Permanent Yield On XRP?
As explained by Bitstamp in a blog post on Thursday, the company partners with Tesseract for its lending service, which “only lends to reputable institutions and undertakes rigorous risk and credit assessments for all borrowers.”
Tesseract breaks down counterparties into four tiers, with Tier 1 including “large top-tier market makers from traditional finance,” and Tier 4 including “smaller institutional borrowers.”
Per Bitstamp’s

Crypto exchange Coinbase has revealed its launch date for Base – the Ethereum layer 2 blockchain designed to make transactions faster and cheaper than the underlying network.
As of today, users can begin bridging ETH to base, with dapps “across the on-chain ecosystem” starting to enable Base support.
Base: A Bridge To Crypto
As published in a blog post from Base on Thursday, the Base mainnet will go live “for everyone and everything” on August 9.
To commemorate the launch, the firm also announced “Onchain Summer” – a month-long festival by 50 creators and developers with a daily showcase of novel things that can be done on-chain.
Participants in the festival will be open to ~100 ETH in grants from Coinbase, spread across participants in four different events: Onchain

Bloomberg ETF analysts have boosted their approval odds for a U.S. Bitcoin (BTC) spot ETF from 50% to 65%, in light of “recent events and new information.”
The analysts believe it is most likely that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will simultaneously approve all recent applications for the product after Grayscale defeats the agency in federal court.
The ETF Approval Thesis
As published by analysts James Seyffart and Eric Balcunas to Bloomberg Terminal, a flurry of new developments make the approval seem close.
These include SEC chairman Gary Gensler’s “downplaying” of his role at the agency, and the regulator’s “tacit approval” of Coinbase as a Bitcoin exchange. Coinbase has been selected by an array of new applicants – including BlackRock and Fidelity – to

Fitch Ratings – one of the world’s “Big Three” credit rating agencies – has removed the United States from its position among the very highest tier of long-term lending counterparties.
The nation’s Long-Term Foreign-Currency Issuer Default Rating (IDR) slid from AAA to AA+ on Tuesday, prompting criticisms against Fitch from both the U.S. Treasury Department and the White House.
Why The Downgrade?
According to Fitch, the downgrade reflects expectations of “fiscal deterioration,” the country’s “growing general government debt burden,” and an “erosion of governance” regarding how to manage that debt relative to its AA and AAA-rated peers.
Firstly, the government deficit has been rising over time and is expected to reach 6.3% by the end of 2023, versus 3.7% at the end of 2022.

Bitcoin (BTC) whale MicroStrategy announced on Tuesday that it has gobbled up another 420 BTC since its last announcement in June.
This brings the company’s total holdings up to 152,800 BTC worth $4.46 billion.
According to MicroStrategy’s Q2 earnings report, the firm’s 12,800 BTC acquired since Q1 was acquired for $28,233 per coin – below the asset’s current market price of $29,195.However, the company’s average purchase price for its total BTC holdings remains at $29,672, slightly above the market price.

“We efficiently raised capital through our at-the-market equity program and used cash from operations to continue to increase bitcoins on our balance sheet,” stated Andrew Kang, CFO of MicroStrategy.

The CFO added that Bitcoin has a promising backdrop of “increasing

Lawyers representing FTX’s creditors said they weren’t filled in on a recently proposed plan to revive the company’s international exchange, according to a Monday night filing. 
Creditors claimed that the proposed restructuring plan is a mere “idea” with no formal talks having taken place to actually put it into action. 
No Contact With Creditors?
The claimants’ statement accused FTX’s lawyers of breaking their promise to provide a public roadmap for the bankruptcy proceedings and to work with creditors on a successful reorganization plan. 
Instead, debtors ignored creditors’ suggestions for restructuring, which were not formally negotiated. Though the plan has been released in line with a pre-established deadline, creditors claim that what has been proposed only presents

A phishing scammer recently nabbed $20 million in USDT from an unsuspecting victim using a zero transfer phishing attack, reported blockchain security firm PeckShield on Tuesday.
The stolen funds were frozen in short order by Tether – the issuer behind USDT – raising questions about who the victim was given the speed of their response.
The Zero Transfer Phishing Attack
According to PeckShield, the victim address intended to send funds to one wallet, but was fooled into sending the USDT to a phishing address that began and ended with the same set of characters.
Days earlier, the victim had received 10 million USDT from Binance, and had sent those funds to the desired alternative address. However, at the time of that transfer, the scammer conducted a zero-value token

Tether, the world’s largest stablecoin issuer, released an assurance report on Monday covering its financials as of June 30.
The Q2 attestation showed that the issuer now holds over $3.3 billion in excess reserves to back its USDT tokens.
Tether’s Massive Surplus
As explained by Tether in an accompanying blog post, the issuer’s excess reserves stem from the profits generated by its existing reserves. These profits are not distributed to shareholders and are instead solely used as insurance to back its tokens.
USDT is designed to maintain parity with the U.S. dollar and is always convertible 1:1 for dollars within the company’s reserves.
“Tether is again demonstrating its commitment to transparency by disclosing its direct, indirect exposure (via Money Market Funds) to US

An early user of the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) just reclaimed tens of thousands of Ether (ETH) that he’d locked up in the old ENS registrar over 4 years ago.
Having appreciated substantially since that time, the value of those 39,712 ETH is now worth roughly $74 million.
Reclaiming Old Funds
According to blockchain analysts at Lookonchain, darkmarket.eth was responsible for reclaiming the funds – the largest owner of locked Ether within the old registrar until now.
After reclaiming his funds, the user sent 63,734 ETH ($119 million) to a new wallet.

After 2.7 years of dormancy, darkmarket.eth reclaimed 39,712 $ETH ($74.17M) locked in the ENS auction just now.
And transferred 63,734 $ETH($119M) out to a new wallet.https://t.co/OtXYRpcOhn
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) July

The Bank of Canada published a report on Wednesday outlining Canadian crypto ownership trends last year.
Its Bitcoin Omnibus Survey found that Bitcoin (BTC) ownership across the country declined from 13% to 10% of the population in 2022.
The report noted that the ownership decline occurred on the back of Bitcoin’s massive price decline of over 50% throughout the year and increased regulatory scrutiny after FTX’s collapse in November. Altcoin ownership also decreased in 2022.
That said, ownership still remained elevated from the 8% level observed between 2018 and 2020.
For the past five years, awareness of the term Bitcoin has remained stable at roughly 90%, but recent adopters were more likely than early adopters to get involved for investment purposes.
“Similar to the

Paul Munter – principal advisor to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on accounting and auditing matters – issued a warning on Thursday to crypto accounting firms whose work is inappropriately marketed as a substitute for “audits.”
The statement, titled “The Potential Pitfalls of Purported Crypto “Assurance” Work”, claimed that clients of such firms often promote their work as being at “parity” with a financial statement audit.

“Such suggestions are false,” he asserted. “Non-audit arrangements are neither as rigorous nor as comprehensive as a financial statement audit, and may not provide any reasonable assurance to investors.”

The advisor referenced a March report from the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), which warned investors of accounting

Grayscale wrote a letter to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Thursday calling for the agency to simultaneously approve any qualifying Bitcoin spot ETF applications, so as to not “pick winners and losers.”
However, the firm also argued that Coinbase shouldn’t qualify as a surveillance partner to launch such a product, under the SEC’s pre-established rules.
Why Coinbase Isn’t Good Enough
Per the comment letter, the SEC has already questioned the pricing data produced by ‘unregulated’ Bitcoin trading venues for years.
Grayscale referenced the SEC’s explicit denial of the GraniteShares ETP Trust in 2018, which intended to form a surveillance-sharing agreement (SSA)with Gemini’s exchange. The SEC determined that Gemini did not represent a regulated market

Crypto investor and Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz told followers on Wednesday to “Buy BTC” in response to the United States government’s rapidly growing interest expense on its sovereign debt.
To some analysts, the trend suggests that the Federal Reserve will be forced to lower its benchmark interest rate again if the Federal government can no longer keep up.
The US Debt Problem
According to market analyst Joe Consorti, the U.S. government is now paying $970 billion per year in interest payments – up $41 billion from Q2. That’s the highest interest expense of all time by a wide margin, with annual payments only reaching $600 billion as recently as Q1 2022.
Consorti expects interest costs to reach $1 trillion soon. That’s over 20% of the government’s $4.7 trillion

The House Financial Services Committee (HFSC) failed to reach an agreement for stablecoin legislation on Thursday due to a number of disagreements Democrats had with its existing text.
Committee Chair Patrick McHenry (R-NC) blamed the White House for holding up the bill, while Democrats alleged that Republicans were attempting to rush incomplete legislation.
No Compromise For Stablecoin Bill
The bill, titled the Clarity for Payment Stablecoins Act of 2023, would allow the Federal Reserve to write requirements for stablecoin issuers, but still preserve the authority of state-level payment stablecoin regulators while outlining other requirements.
After 15 months of negotiations, McHenry claimed the committee was “closer than we’d ever been” to a bipartisan deal aside from a