Bitcoin Could Be Easier to Attack Than Ethereum? 😮

In today’s edition: 💬 Armstrong's earnings call insights, 🚀 Uniswap's planned upgrade, 🕒 A long queue for new Ethereum validators, 🚨 A decrease in crypto money laundering, and more!

February 16, 2024

👯‍♀️ Refer Unchained with a friend and earn a Premium subscription

VaultCraft by Popcorn is your no-code, DeFi toolkit for building automated, non-custodial yield strategies. Learn more on vaultcraft.io about how you can supercharge your crypto portfolio!

Union is the first sovereign interoperability layer pioneering trustless bridging between appchains, L1s, and L2s without depending on trusted third parties, oracles, multi-signatures, or MPC. Looking to future-proof blockchain bridging, it is the only protocol that fully addresses the sovereign bridging trilemma, unlocking a horizontally-scaled future.

Starknet made news this week for announcing what will be the largest initial airdrop by number of eligible addresses ever. But it faced heavy criticism online for many of the details of the airdrop, from the fact that Ethereum solo takers received almost 22% of the distribution to eligibility requirements that users held at least 0.005 ETH in their wallets as of Nov. 15, 2023 to the fact that the token generation event took place almost two years before the unlock date.

StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson joined Unchained to respond to the multiple critiques of the airdrop and discuss why he and the Starknet Foundation decided on the details that they did.

Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Fountain, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Pandora, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Or watch it on YouTube.

What’s Poppin’?

by Brandy Betz, Sam Sriram, Nelson Wang, Benjamin Powers, and Sage Young

The cost to attack Bitcoin ranges from $5 billion to $20 billion, while it would cost over $34 billion to attack Ethereum, according to CoinMetrics. Even then, researchers found no way for the attacker to profit and the network would still survive.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong laid out the company’s approach to regulation on its fourth-quarter earnings call.

With Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade scheduled to go live on the mainnet in March, Uniswap plans to roll out V4 in the third-quarter of the year. The protocol says this version will have the “most rigorously audited code ever deployed on Ethereum.”

Lawmakers complimented the design of crypto at a house hearing. They highlighted that what makes crypto at risk for illicit use is exactly what makes it attractive for legal users too.

The largest US crypto exchange Coinbase beat analyst estimates for both the top and bottom lines, and its shares jumped almost 14% in after-hours trading.

Almost 8,300 validators each with 32 ether (ETH) are currently waiting in line to begin staking, while 161 validators are trying to exit, a sign of continued interest in restaking.

New data from blockchain data platform Chainalysis showed that money sent from illicit addresses dropped 30% from the prior year. 

Daily Bits…✍️✍️✍️

  •  🛑 Jupiter Asset Management canceled its investment in a Ripple XRP exchange-traded product, following compliance concerns under Ireland's regulatory framework for mutual funds.

  • 🏦 JPMorgan analysts suggest US regulators could influence Tether's operations via the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), despite Tether's offshore status and recent compliance actions.

  • 🌐 U.S. Federal Reserve Gov. Christopher Waller suggested that stablecoins, predominantly pegged to the dollar, could enhance the global strength of the US currency through its integration into decentralized finance.

  • 🔎 Australian police and regulators face scrutiny for delayed action against the HyperVerse crypto Ponzi scheme, which cost investors $1.7 billion. It reportedly took two years before any action was taken by the agencies.

  • 👨‍⚖️ During the COPA trial, questioning of Craig Wright's witnesses by the Crypto Open Patent Alliance lawyers revealed inconsistencies in their testimonies, casting doubt on Wright's claim to be Bitcoin's creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.

  • 📊 MicroStrategy's strategic bitcoin investments yielded over $4 billion in profits. The company holds 190,000 bitcoins, which is now valued at over $10 billion as bitcoin prices surge.

The $$$ Corner…

  • 🌋 Lava Network secured $15 million in seed funding for its modular blockchain infrastructure and is introducing 'Magma' reward points ahead of its anticipated mainnet launch.

  • Haun Ventures led a $3.5 million round for Witness, a new crypto infrastructure startup.

What Do You Meme?

Recommended Reads

📈 Your Market Update 📉

  • BTC is down .1%, trading at $52,285

  • ETH is up .8%, trading at $2,826

  • BTC dominance: 49.81%

  • Crypto market cap: $2.06T

*All data as of today, 06:30 am ET. Source: CoinGecko

We Are Hiring!

  1. A Sponsorships Manager to grow sponsorships across all its platforms as the publication itself grows. See the details and apply here. 

  2. A Bitcoin Reporter to cover all things Bitcoin. See the details and apply here. 

  3. A Regulatory Reporter to cover regulatory topics in the space. See the details and apply here.

  4. A Senior Editor to help assign and edit daily news stories, as well as work on features and other editorial projects as needed. See the details and apply here.

  5. An Audience Development Director to broaden the reach of the publication’s content, whether through the web, social media, newsletters, podcast platforms, or videos. See the details and apply here.

🔝 Are you hiring and want to promote the postings in the Unchained newsletter? Let us know!

Thank you for reading Unchained. This post is public so feel free to share it. 📩📤