Electric car company Tesla is adopting blockchain to ensure its sustainability, the number of DeFi users doubled in 2021, and banking network SWIFT is launching a new payment tool to compete with cryptocurrencies. These and more news in this practical daily summary so that you are always informed with the most recent events that occur within the crypto world.
Bitcoin and Blockchain Adoption
📍Tenerife is educating its companies about Blockchain. The Tenerife Journal informs The island's council is training local companies in blockchain technology to improve their positioning in different industries. David Pérez, CEO of the public companies, said that local producers of wine, honey, cheese, and other local products are receiving training on how to use blockchain technology to improve their participation and popularity in the markets.
The idea of the training is also to enable producers to use the potential of this technology to add value to the supply chain and thus improve their marketing possibilities at local and international levels.
📍Blockchain technology comes to Tesla to verify the battery supply chain for its electric cars. The American company owned by the controversial Elon Musk reported that it will use the technology blockchain to verify the life cycle of the nickel used in the batteries of its electric cars. Tesla signed an agreement agreement with raw materials supplier BHP to ensure the use of sustainably mined nickel for battery manufacturing.
The company says one of its main goals is to ensure the company's sustainability with the environment. The company suspended payments with bitcoin in May due to the high energy consumption of the network, although now its CEO indicates that he is evaluating the number of miners who use clean energy sources in Bitcoin to resume payments with the cryptocurrency.
NFT and DeFi Markets
📍The DeFi ecosystem now has over 3 million users. According to data from Dune Analytics, the number of active users in DeFi has grown exponentially since the beginning of the year. The chart shows that active users in decentralized ecosystems at the beginning of the year were around 1.170.000 users; now, this number has doubled to 3.092.268 users.
Number of active users in DeFi for July 2021. Source: Dune Analytics
Source: Dune Analytics
According to the data, the largest number of users is concentrated in Uniswap, with over 2,4 million active users, followed by Compound which has nearly 330 thousand active users. By mid-May, GlassNode reported that the number of active users in DeFi had surpassed the 2 million mark
Miners
📍Huobi and OK Group, two of the largest miners in the industry, are dissolving their crypto mining businesses in China. Heavy regulations imposed by the Chinese government have forced many cryptocurrency miners out of the country. Now, the two largest crypto mining companies in the industry, Huobi and OK Group, have announced that they will will dissolve its China-based crypto companies as they have become “unnecessary” following heavy regulations.
Huobi Group will dissolve its China-based entity called “Beijing Huobi Tianxia Network Technology Limited (BHT)”, while OK Group is saying goodbye to its entity called “Beijing Lekuda”.
Development and Technology
📍Lightning Network (LN), Bitcoin's scaling solution, reaches 1.988 BTC deposited. Now the capacity of LN The number of bitcoins deposited within this network has nearly doubled so far this year. By January, the amount of bitcoins deposited within this network was only 1.000 BTC. Today, this amount is almost 2.000 BTC, demonstrating the growing interest of the crypto community in second-layer solutions that allow for faster and cheaper transactions, such as LN.
The data from Bitcoin Visuals show that the number of bitcoins deposited in LN began to grow significantly in May, despite the fall in bitcoin prices on the markets.
Source: Bitcoin Visuals
📍SWIFT, the global banking payments network, does not want to lose ground to cryptocurrencies. Business Wire reported on launch SWIFT Go, a new fast and efficient payment service that enables cross-border payments at very low costs. In the release, Stephen Gilderdale, SWIFT’s Chief Product Officer, says that SWIFT Go is a key component in SWIFT’s new strategy to enable instant and frictionless cross-border transactions and compete with the cryptocurrency industry.
SWIFT connects more than 11.000 institutions and 4.000 billion accounts in 200 countries around the world, so its new payment tool will further strengthen banks' capabilities to meet the needs and demands of their customers, in terms of fast cross-border payments with low processing costs.
Rules and Regulations
📍Elizabeth Warren reiterated her opinion about cryptocurrencies, which represent a huge risk for the financial system. According to statements Senator Elizabeth Warren during the conference “Cryptocurrencies: What are they good for?”, cryptocurrencies “put the (financial) system in the hands of a group of faceless shadowy super-coders and miners,” so the risks to financial stability and the economy are increasing, he reported.
Warren, who has emerged as one of the most prominent cryptocurrency skeptics, is calling on Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, another crypto skeptic, to implement a new regulatory framework to rein in the rapid growth of cryptocurrencies in the country “in a timely manner.”
📍Kazakhstan could open the doors to cryptocurrencies in the country. A local medium informs The country’s government is considering the possibility of banks offering cryptocurrency services to citizens. Although the news has not been officially confirmed, the Association of the Data Center and Blockchain Industry of Kazakhstan assures that citizens will soon be able to go to their banks to open cryptocurrency accounts, thanks to a pilot that the nation will implement to provide exposure to crypto assets.
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