On Wednesday, Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) posted her upcoming cryptocurrency regulation bill on GitHub. What she got in return were eight pull requests and lots of trolling. The Verge reports: As of press time, Github users have commented on 24 issues in the bill and made eight pull requests -- some of which have proposed meaningful additions to the bill. One user asked the senators to "increase the value of proof-of-work cryptocurrencies with a tax on mining." Another thread raised concerns about algorithmic backing of stablecoins.

However, the more common response has been trolling. One flagged issue is titled, "You Know You Can Find Someone To Do Findom Using Google, Right." Another is titled only with the eggplant emoji. In a related thread, a user commented, "Feds are not looking post floppa," accompanied by a picture of a popular Russian caracal who has gained an internet following under the name "Big Floppa." The trolling also extends to commit requests, where one user proposed replacing the bill with the source code of the popular first-person shooter Doom. "This bill would do far more to benefit everyday Americans if its text was replaced with the source code of Doom," reads a comment responding to the request. "Devs should merge asap."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The co-founder and CEO of Solana, Anatoly Yakovenko, had a Steve Jobs moment when he stood in front of an auditorium in New York City and announced the launch of Saga, an Android web3-focused smartphone. "This is something that I fundamentally believe the industry needs to do," Yakovenko said. "We didn't see a single crypto feature at the Apple developer conference 13 years after Bitcoin was alive." People will pull out their laptops in the middle of dates so they don't miss an NFT minting opportunity, Yakovenko joked. "So I think it's time for crypto to go mobile," Yakovenko added.

Saga aims to implement digital asset products and services, so users can easily transact with their cryptocurrency through the device, opposed to a laptop browser. In addition to the announcement of Saga, Yakovenko shared the launch of the Solana Mobile Stack, or SMS, which is a web3 layer for Solana built on the phone. SMS will consist of a number of products including a seed vault, a custody solution, a mobile wallet adapter, Solana Pay for Android and its decentralized application (dApp) store. It "provides a new set of libraries for wallets and apps, allowing developers to create rich mobile experiences on Solana," a press release said.

A number of crypto companies including FTX, Phantom and Magic Eden will partner with SMS and there is also a $10 million developer fund for people who build apps on it. "The builders are coming and they are higher quality than before," Raj Gokal, COO at Solana Labs said. "They're ready for the next leg of user growth." The $1,000 device will have 512 GB of storage with a 6.67-inch OLED display and is available for preorder with a $100 deposit and deliveries will occur in Q1 2023, Yakovenko said.

Physical futures crypto exchange CoinFLEX is pausing withdrawals citing "extreme market conditions" along with uncertainty around a certain counterparty, its CEO Mark Lamb said in a blog post Thursday. CoinDesk reports: Lamb said the counterparty is not Three Arrows Capital or "any lending firm." CoinFLEX expects to resume withdrawals "in a better position as soon as possible." Additionally, FLEX Coin trading is being halted for perpetual swaps and spot trading in the short term.

Coinbase shares fell almost 10% on Wednesday after rival crypto exchange Binance.US said it's dropping certain trading fees for customers. CNBC reports: Binance.US, the U.S. affiliate of the largest crypto exchange in the world by trading volume, said it will allow users to make spot bitcoin trades for the U.S. dollar and stablecoins tether, USD Coin and Binance USD without paying spot trading fees. Shares of Coinbase were down 9.7%. Robinhood slipped by less than 1%. In a separate report, Barron's Daren Fonda speculates that a price war could be next.

"It's the beginning of the end of Coinbase's high-fee business model," says Mizuho Securities analyst Dan Dolev. "We've said that the fees will eventually go close to zero. And it could be pretty rapid -- it may be months. The market is very competitive and getting tighter."

Crypto's structural flaws make it an unsuitable basis for a monetary system, according to the Bank for International settlements (BIS). Instead, monetary systems could be built around central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), which are digital representations of central bank money. CoinDesk reports: The BIS, an association of the world's major central banks, dedicates a 42-page chapter in its "2022 Annual Economic Report" to laying out a blueprint for the future of the global monetary system. In that vision, there is room for only some of crypto's underlying technical features, like programmability and tokenization, not for cryptocurrencies themselves. "Our broad conclusion is captured in the motto, "Anything that crypto can do, CBDCs can do better,'" said Hyun Song Shin, an economic adviser and head of research at the BIS, during a press briefing on Monday.

The chapter, which will be published Tuesday ahead of the full report, identifies a number of limitations of crypto, including the lack of a stable nominal anchor. In monetary policy that is a variable -- such as a currency peg -- that can be used to control price levels. Stablecoins, cryptocurrencies pegged to the value of assets like sovereign currencies, are the crypto world's search for such an anchor, Shin said. Stablecoins attempt to "piggyback on the stability of real money issued by central banks."

Shin said the recent crash of terraUSD, a dollar stablecoin with a market capitalization of $18 billion in early May that rapidly lost its peg, illustrated how stablecoins, despite their name, are unstable and don't make good units of account. Unlike other leading stablecoins, such as USDC and USDT, which are reportedly backed by dollar-denominated reserves, terraUSD is an algorithmic stablecoin backed by another cryptocurrency (in this case LUNA) with an algorithm in place to regulate supply and demand of the stablecoin and maintain its peg. "The second important finding is that crypto and stablecoins fail to achieve the full network effects that we normally expect of money," Shin said. Money, Shin said, is the perfect example of a virtuous circle of greater use and greater acceptance. Crypto's decentralized nature, on the other hand, achieves exactly the opposite, namely fragmentation.

A new report finds that blockchain systems might not be working as well as many crypto enthusiasts assume. From a report: The report was commissioned by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, and the work was done by the software security research company Trail of Bits. Trail of Bits CEO Dan Guido says blockchain -- the public ledgers that keep track of cryptocurrencies, which are replicated on computers around the world -- isn't the egalitarian tech its advocates claim. "It's been taken for granted that the blockchain is immutable and decentralized, because the community says so," says Guido. But in practice, he says, these networks have evolved in ways that concentrate power in the hands of certain people or companies, including the large pools of "miners" whose computers earn virtual currency by maintaining the blockchains.

Guido's team calls these potential situations "unintended centralities" -- situations in which someone gains leverage over the decentralized system, creating opportunities for tampering with the record of who owns what. Another example in the report of this kind of concentration is the fact that 60% of Bitcoin traffic is handled by just three internet service providers. "Let's say somebody with great top-down control of the internet in their country starts to interfere with that network," Guido says. By slowing down or stopping legitimate blockchain traffic, an attacker could become the "majority" voice in the consensus of what's written to a blockchain at that moment. "They can rewrite history. They can censor transactions. They can make it so that you can't spend your Bitcoin," says Guido. "It's definitely something people would want to do if they want to 'grief' the network."

Crypto lending platform BlockFi announced that it has secured a $250 million revolving credit facility from FTX, BlockFi CEO Zac Prince said in a tweet on Tuesday, and the company subsequently announced in a press release. CoinDesk reports: Prince said the move "bolsters our balance sheet and platform strength." He added that "the proceeds of the credit facility are intended to be contractually subordinate to all client balances across all account types (BIA, BPY & loan collateral) and will be used as needed." This is not the first time FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has stepped in to bail out a major crypto company impacted by the recent market downturn. Last week, crypto broker Voyager Digital (VOYG) secured a revolving line of credit with Bankman-Fried-founded quant trading shop Alameda Research.

Though it is now in the position of backstopping a broader market crash, FTX is reportedly one of the firms that liquidated Celsius -- the troubled decentralized crypto lending platform that was forced to halt all user withdraws last week. Celsius, one of BlockFi's competitors, reportedly ran out of funds to repay depositors due to a series of risky decentralized finance bets. In the press release, BlockFi said the credit facility is contingent on the execution of "definitive documents," which the two companies expect to be completed in "the coming days."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CoinDesk: Investment product provider ProShares is set to list the U.S.'s first exchange-traded fund (ETF) allowing investors to bet against the price of bitcoin (BTC). The ProShares Short Bitcoin Strategy (BITI), which is designed to deliver the inverse of bitcoin's performance, will start trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) Tuesday, ProShares announced Monday. The ETF will allow investors to hedge their bitcoin exposure, which may prove particularly pertinent given the sharp downturn in crypto markets of late.

ProShares was the first firm to list a bitcoin futures ETF in October, a factor which saw the world's largest crypto hit an all-time high of around $68,900 in the subsequent weeks. Bitcoin investors will be hoping the listing of a short bitcoin futures ETF does not have a similar effect on the world's largest crypto in reverse. Bitcoin's price dropped below $20,000 for the first time since Dec. 20 on June 18, falling as low as $17,800 the following day.

CNN reports: "The price of bitcoin breached $19,000," reports CNN, "and ethereum fell below $1,000 Saturday morning, extending the brutal crypto bear market to new lows." Bitcoin plunged nearly 10% in less than 24 hours, adding to a series of sustained losses over the last several months. It now sits below $20,000 for the first time since November 2020, down more than 70% from an all-time high of $68,000 per coin in November 2021. Bitcoin has lost $900 billion in value since that peak. Ether is also experiencing a so-called crypto winter. The second-largest digital token plummeted 10% on Saturday to $975, its lowest level since January 2021. The coin has lost 80% of its value from its record high last November.... The crypto world is reeling from the $60 billion collapse last month of two other major tokens, Terra-Luna and Celsius. Those losses have increased doubts about the general stability of digital currency.... Still, even at $20,000, about half of all bitcoin wallets are still sitting on profits, according to an analysis by the Columbia Business School cited by The New York Times. The study also found that 61% of bitcoin addresses had not sold anything in the last 12 months, suggesting that a total run on crypto may be avoidable.
Bitcoin has now lost more than 70% of its value in about seven months. But CBS News notes that even then, "many in the industry had believed it would not fall under $20,000." The overall market value of cryptocurrency assets has fallen from $3 trillion to below $1 trillion, according to coinmarketcap.com, a company that tracks crypto prices. A spate of crypto meltdowns has erased tens of billions of dollars of value from the currencies and sparked urgent calls to regulate the freewheeling industry. Last week, bipartisan legislation was introduced in the U.S. Senate to regulate the digital assets.

For the first time since 2020, Ethereum mining has become unprofitable for many miners connected to a traditional energy grid. CryptoSlate reports: The price of Ethereum has dropped below $1,250 while energy prices are skyrocketing. The average cost of electricity in states such as New England, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island is over $0.22 per kWh. Using a single Nvidia 3090 overclocked to generate 130mh/s will cost miners around $1.85-$2.13 per day in electricity. The Ethereum reward for the same GPU is just (0.001625 ETH) $2.03 at today's price. Therefore any miner paying more than $0.245 for electricity is now paying more for electricity than the value of Ethereum being mined. At this point, it becomes more cost-effective to turn off the mining rig and buy Ethereum spot using the money that would otherwise be used on electricity. [...]

There are plenty of alternative cryptocurrencies that can be mined with a GPU. However, the others are also down considerably. At $0.245kwh, Ergo yields -$0.06, RavenCoin -$0.58/day, Ethereum Classic -$0.66, and Firo -$0.70 using a single Nvidia 3090. These are the contenders for GPU hashrate when Ethereum finally goes to proof of stake. The issue is that an increase in miners on the network will dramatically increase the mining difficulty meaning that, to be remotely profitable, the price of the tokens will also have to increase considerably. For Ethereum to become profitable again, either the difficulty needs to decrease or the price needs to rise above $1,400. Alternatively, should energy prices drop below $0.24kwh to match average costs in other parts of the United States, Ethereum would also become profitable.

With crypto prices tumbling precipitously, traders have begun increasingly turning against one another to eke out ever-elusive profits. From a report: Many shark traders scour blockchains -- digital ledgers for recording transactions -- seeking information on other traders, particularly those with highly leveraged positions, an anonymous user known as Omakase, a contributor to the Sushi decentralized exchange, said in an interview. The sharks then attack the positions by trying to push them into liquidation, and earning liquidation bonuses that are common in decentralized finance (DeFi), where people trade, lend and borrow from each other without intermediaries like banks. Related strategies may have contributed to the collapse of the TerraUSD stablecoin, with shark traders making money off price arbitrage between the Curve decentralized exchange and centralized exchanges, according to Nansen, a blockchain analytics firm.

Recent troubles at crypto lender Celsius Network were exacerbated by arbitragers as well. The price of stETh token that Celsius has a large position in started trading at a large discount from Ether, to which it's tied. "As stETH goes down, arbitragers buy stETH and short ETH against it, sending ETH lower, which again lowers collateral values across DeFi," effectively worsening Celsius's position, according to a recent Arca note. As Omakase put it, "In a downtrend environment, where yields are harder to access, what we are going to see is some actors utilize some more aggressive strategies, and that may not be necessarily good for the community." Omakase added: "The environment has become more player vs player."

Three Arrows Capital failed to meet demands from lenders to stump up extra funds after its digital currency bets turned sour, tipping the prominent crypto hedge fund into a crisis that comes as a credit crunch grips the industry. Financial Times reports: The group's failure to meet margin calls this past weekend makes the group the latest victim of an acute fall in the prices of many tokens like bitcoin and ether that is rippling across the market. Singapore-based Three Arrows is among the biggest and most active players in the crypto industry with investments across lending and trading platforms. Lenders have sharply tightened up how much credit is on offer following tremors over the past month.

Celsius, a major crypto financial services company, blocked withdrawals last week, while a pair of major tokens collapsed in May. US-based crypto lender BlockFi was among the groups that liquidated at least some of Three Arrows's positions, meaning it reduced its exposure by taking collateral the fund had put down to back its borrowing, according to people familiar with the matter. Three Arrows, which made a "strategic" investment in BlockFi in 2020, had borrowed bitcoin from the lender, the people said, but had been unable to meet a margin call. One of the people said the liquidation had occurred by mutual consent.

Crypto staking and yield generation platform Finblox has imposed a $1,500 monthly withdrawal limit and paused rewards in light of uncertainty surrounding crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, which made a $3.6 million investment in the Hong Kong-based platform last December. From a report: According to a statement shared on Twitter, Finblox has made the changes as it evaluates the impact of Three Arrow Capital's reported issues. It was reported on Wednesday that Three Arrows Capital is facing possible insolvency after incurring at least $400 million in liquidations.

Don't count Bill Gates among the fans of cryptocurrencies and NFTs. From a report: Those digital asset trends are "100% based on greater fool theory," the Microsoft co-founder said Tuesday at a TechCrunch conference, referencing the notion that investors can make money on worthless or overvalued assets as long as people are willing to bid them higher. Gates added that he's "not long or short" crypto. And he mocked Bored Apes NFTs, joking that "expensive digital images of monkeys" will "improve the world immensely." Instead, Gates said he prefers old fashioned investing. "I'm used to asset classes, like a farm where they have output, or like a company where they make products," he said.

The UK's digital minister reiterated the government's ambition to make Britain a global crypto hub while sounding a cautious note about the potential criminal uses of digital assets. From a report: "We do intend the United Kingdom and London to be crypto centers," Chris Philp said in an interview with Bloomberg Radio on Wednesday. "But of course we've got to do that in a way that protects the public and in particular pays attention to issues concerning for example money laundering, and making sure that crypto is not used as a way to circumvent things like sanctions." The UK Treasury in April announced plans to make the country a global crypto hub, soothing an industry that had sparred with the financial regulator over what it considered to be overly strict guardrails. Retail investors in the UK are barred from using crypto derivatives, and authorities are imposing tougher rules on marketing. [...] "The Treasury are working closely with the Bank of England, the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority to make sure that balance is struck in the right way," said Philp.

The Block reports: The future of crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital hangs in the balance as the firm faces potential insolvency after being liquidated by its lenders. According to well-placed sources, the investment firm -- which counts the likes of options exchange Deribit and financial services firm BlockFi among its venture bets -- is in the process of figuring out how to repay lenders and other counter-parties after it was liquidated by top tier lending firms in the space. Sources declined to share the names of those firms on the record for fear of reprisal, but three people said the liquidation totaled at least $400 million. They added that the firm has maintained limited contact with its counter-parties since being liquidated. The liquidation event is just one of several setbacks by the firm, which has backed projects like Avalanche, Polkadot, and Ether which are all down 57%, 38.8%, and 47% over the last 30 days respectively. The fund sustained significant losses during the collapse of the Terra ecosystem last month, after investing heavily in its native token LUNA. The firm, which reportedly managed approximately $10 billion at market peak by some estimates, is led by former classmates Su Zhu and Kyle Davies.

Bitcoin plunged to the lowest in about 18 months after the freezing of withdrawals by the Celsius lending platform added to concern that systemic risk in the crypto ecosystem will accelerate the digital-asset market meltdown. From a report: The world's largest digital token tumbled as much as 17% to $22,603 -- its lowest since December 2020. Other cryptocurrencies also declined as a broader sell-off continued. The MVIS CryptoCompare Digital Assets 100 Index, which measures 100 of the top tokens, dropped as much as 17%. And the total market value, which topped $3 trillion in November, dropped below $1 trillion as of 10:54 a.m. New York time on Monday, according to CoinGecko. "The fundamentals to support stabilization and recovery just aren't there," said Steven McClurg, co-founder and CIO at crypto fund manager Valkyrie Investments. "Things can and likely will get worse before they get better."

Celsius Network, one of the biggest crypto lenders, told customers Sunday evening that it is pausing withdrawals, swap, and transfers between accounts in a move that has sparked discussions and prompted the price of the firm's token to take a 60% tumble in the past one hour to as low as 19 cents. From a report: "We are taking this action today to put Celsius in a better position to honor, over time, its withdrawal obligations," wrote Celsius, which counts stablecoin-issuer Tether International, growth equity fund WestCap Group and Canadian pension fund Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec among its investors. [...] Celsius, which was valued at $3.25 billion when it extended its "oversubscribed" Series B financing round to $750 million in November, allows users to deposit their Bitcoin, Ethereum and Tether and receive weekly interest payments. Depending on the time horizon and the token, the platform offers as much as 18% interest a year. On its website, Celsius says 1.7 million people call "Celsius their home for crypto."

The European Union is nearing an agreement on key legislation to regulate the cryptocurrency sector that would set common rules across the 27 member states, Bloomberg reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. From a report: France, which currently chairs the EU, and the European Parliament are optimistic about resolving remaining issues holding up the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) package and reaching a deal this month, according to the people. Negotiators are expected to meet on June 14 and June 30. MiCA, first presented in 2020, will put European regulators at the forefront of supervising cryptocurrencies by creating unified rules across the $17 trillion economy. Addressing issues such as investor protection and crypto's impact on financial stability has taken on added urgency after last month's collapse of the TerraUSD algorithmic stablecoin.

Member states and the parliament still disagree on several key aspects of MiCA. According to the people, areas of disagreement include:
Whether to include nonfungible tokens in the new set of rules
How to regulate significant stablecoins
Supervision of the largest crypto-asset service providers, or CASPs

Both sides are also discussing how to limit the use of stablecoins as a payment method by introducing a ceiling, in particular for transactions not denominated in euros, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing confidential information.

Nigerian Exchange, plans to start a blockchain-enabled exchange platform next year to deepen trade and lure young investors to the market. From a report: The move follows the introduction of regulations to guide trade in digital assets by the Nigerian Securities and Exchange Commission, and the growing interest to adopt the distributed-ledger technology by businesses and policy makers across the continent including in Kenya and South Africa. The exchange looks to deploy the blockchain technology in settlement of capital market transactions, Temi Popoola, the chief executive of Nigeria Exchange, said in an interview. "For a lot of young and upcoming Nigerians, that is the kind of technology they adopt and we want to see how we can deploy it to grow our market," Temi said. The plan is unfolding in the wake of a rout in cryptocurrency markets following the collapse of the Terra blockchain in May. Bitcoin has plunged more than 50% since reaching a record high last November.