• Russia Takes Second Place Rank by Power Capacity in Crypto Mining, Reports
Russia has for the first time climbed to second place in the world in terms of total power capacity of the facilities devoted to the production of digital currencies. According to data provided by the country’s largest mining operator, Bitriver, the amount of power involved in coin minting has reached 1 gigawatt (GW) in the first three months of the year.
The United States remains the clear leader with 3 to 4 GW of mining capacity, the Russian business daily Kommersant reported. The top 10 also includes Gulf countries (700 MW), Canada (400 MW), Malaysia (300 MW), Argentina (135 MW), Iceland (120 MW), Paraguay (100–125 MW), Kazakhstan (100 MW), and Ireland (90 MW), the newspaper detailed.
• Chinese city public servants to receive digital yuan salaries starting May
Image from financefeeds.com
The Chinese city of Changshu has stated that all civil servants in its jurisdiction will be paid their full salaries in digital yuan starting May 2023, according to local reports.
According to a notice issued by financial authorities in the city, civil servants — including those in public service, public institutions and state-owned units at all levels — will be compensated in digital yuan.
An on-site staff member of a local hospital reportedly confirmed that the workforce would receive payments in digital yuan starting next month. In addition, reporters were told that employees can opt for digital yuan settlements through self-service terminals.
• Trust Wallet Fixed Vulnerability But Warns $88,000 of User Funds Are Still at Risk
It took a few days for the team at Trust Wallet to patch a vulnerability that put users’ funds at risk and release the necessary fix. But the popular crypto wallet didn’t publicly acknowledge the issue for months, and says even now that affected users will need to move to a new wallet address to protect their funds.
The Binance-backed wallet project said it had been initially alerted to the problem by a security researcher last fall, who flagged an issue in its open-source library that exposed private keys to a security risk.
Though most of the users’ vulnerable funds have been secured, Trust Wallet says that $88,300 of funds are still exposed. Trust Wallet acknowledged that a few users had fallen victim to the vulnerability, pledging on Twitter to offer them a refund.
• EU Parliament Approves Crypto Licensing, Funds Transfer Rules
Lawmakers in the European Union voted 517-38 in favor of a new crypto licensing regime, Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA), with 18 absentions, making it the first major jurisdiction in the world to introduce a comprehensive crypto law.
The European Parliament also voted 529-29 in favor of a separate law known as the Transfer of Funds regulation, which requires crypto operators to identify their customers in a bid to halt money laundering, with 14 abstentions.
The vote follows a Wednesday debate in which lawmakers largely supported plans to make crypto wallet providers and exchanges seek a license to operate across the bloc, and require issuers of stablecoins tied to the value of other assets to maintain sufficient reserves.
In a tweet, the European Commission’s Mairead McGuinness described the vote as a “world first” for crypto rules.
“We’re protecting consumers and safeguarding financial stability and market integrity,” McGuinness said. “The rules will start applying from next year.”
• Satoshi-Era Bitcoin Whale Moves $11 Million After Sleeping for 12 Years
The whales keep waking up. Another sleeping HODLer moved 400 Bitcoin—worth nearly $11 million at current prices—after not having transacted for nearly 12 years.
Monday’s movements showed the whale moved 360 BTC ($9.8 million) to one wallet while the remaining 40 BTC to a number of other locations.
Such movements are becoming more commonplace: Just last week, a whale moved over 279 BTC, or $7.6 million, to new wallets after a decade of inactivity.
• Ethereum Shanghai Upgrade Brings Record Inflow of 572K ETH Staked in a Week
Ethereum’s Shanghai upgrade brought a record-breaking weekly inflow of ether (ETH) deposits for staking last week, mainly driven by institutional staking service providers and investors reinvesting rewards after withdrawal, crypto analysts said.
Investors deposited some 571,950 ETH tokens into staking contracts, worth more than $1 billion, according to a Dune Analytics data dashboard created by Tom Wan, an analyst of digital asset investment firm 21Shares.
This was the largest weekly token inflow in ether staking’s almost two-and-a-half-year history, per blockchain data provided by 21Shares.
• First Republic Lurches as It Struggles to Find a Savior
First Republic, based in San Francisco, has been widely seen as the most in-danger bank since Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank collapsed last month. Like Silicon Valley Bank, it catered to the well-off — a group of customers able to pull their money en masse — and amassed a hoard of loans and assets whose value has suffered in an era of rising interest rates.
The bank’s founder and executive chairman, Jim Herbert, until recently one of the more admired figures in the industry, has disappeared from public view.
Stock prices are always an imperfect measure of a lender’s health, and there are strict rules about what types of entities can acquire a bank. Still, First Republic’s stock slide means that its branches and $103 billion in deposits could be bought for, theoretically, an amount less than the market capitalization of Portillo’s, the Chicago-area hot dog purveyor. Of course, any company that buys First Republic would be taking on multibillion-dollar losses on its loan portfolio and assets.
Concluding Notes:
- Russia is now ranked second in the world in terms of total power capacity of the facilities devoted to the production of digital currencies
- Salaries to be paid with digital yuan starting May 2023 in China
- TrustWallet fixes vulnerability but users’ funds could still be in danger
- European Parliament voted in favor of a new crypto licensing regime
- Bitcoin whale moves $11M after a decade
- Record-breaking ETH inflow due to the Shanghai upgrade
- First Republic Bank is at financial chrisis, could be collapsing
