Crypto Flipsider News – July 5th – Bitcoin, Investors, Grayscale, Cardano, ADA, DAO in Wyoming, Hermitage

Greetings dear cryptorists,

Welcome back to the never-sleeping world of digital assets. Take your helmet and let’s go: ride on the Bitcoin roller-coaster, then climb to the top with Cardano, celebrate with the first American DAO, and welcome the world’s greatest art masters on NFTs.

That’s our hitchhiker’s guide to the crypto galaxy of today:

Bitcoin roller-coaster: biggest drops, but institutional investors are still into it
Grayscale launches its Cardano Trust
First DAO legalized in the United States
Ex-Cryptopia employee admits stealing hundreds of cryptos
Russian Hermitage Museum considers issuing NFT on artworks

Bitcoin Party is On! – Hashrate Drops, Whales are Back, Investors Rubbing Their Hands

Bitcoin lost around 45% of its value during the second quarter. This is one of the worst quarters for Bitcoin since Q1 2018 when it lost almost 60% of its value.

At the same time, the mining difficulty of the leading crypto decreased by almost 28%, regarding the severe Bitcoin hashrate drop to the lows of 2019.

The main factors behind a hard season for Bitcoin were China’s bans on cryptocurrency mining and trading, Tesla’s step back from Bitcoin payment acceptance, sustainability issues.

Weak hands may get dizzy and faint. Crypto whales meanwhile continue their cold-blooded hunt: Glassnode’s data shows a steep jump in the number of Bitcoin wallets holding from 1,000 to 10,000 Bitcoins.

Slow and Steady Wins the Race: Cardano Reached Grayscale

The world’s biggest cryptocurrency manager Grayscale officially adopted Cardano (ADA). The company announced it adjusted its Digital Large Cap Fund to include the fifth biggest cryptocurrency into the family.

Cardano now is the third biggest large cap fund, accounting for 4.26% of funds’ total weight. Bitcoin and Ethereum are still the dominant ones, operating at 67.47% and 25.39% respectively.

Currently, Grayscale reports having $29.8 billion worth of assets under management in total.

Cardano has dropped a lot of sweet news regarding the evolution, partnerships, and upgrades earlier this year. Skeptics may say, market darling is seeing the world through pink glasses. However, it actually materializes its promises. Could be a bit faster, though 🙂

Fall of the Wall: First DAO was Legalized in the United States

The American CryptoFED DAO became the first Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) legally recognized in the United States. The American CryptoFed DAO aims to create a monetary system without inflation, deflation, and zero-cost transactions.

The state became the first in the US to recognize DAOs as Limited Liability Companies (LLC) earlier this year. The law came into effect on July 1st, 2021.

DAOs offer a new blockchain-based organizational working model, where the community (not the central governor) makes the decisions by voting on smart contracts. Since DAO itself is a set of smart contracts, the decisions automatically get executed whenever they get support from a majority.

Another victory for democracy, but… Being still a young working model and purely a set of smart contracts, DAOs are vulnerable to various risks: code failures, manipulative behavior, or ignorance. But as the system of governance, DAOs should most probably never turn into something like Mao.

Ex-Cryptopia Employee Admitted Stealing Hundreds of Cryptos

The former employee of Cryptopia exchange pleaded guilty to stealing up to $250k worth (the exact number is being counted) of cryptos and customer data from New Zealand’s cryptocurrency platform.

The employee copied to USB the private keys of Cryptopia’s clients’ wallets and made unlawful crypto withdrawals from multiple wallets, accounting for almost 13 Bitcoins.

Crypto exchange was among New Zealand’s most promising startups, until 2019 when it suffered the massive $24million-worth heist. The hack was not connected to the mentioned private key theft. Since then Cryptopia was set on a liquidation procedure.

Crypto custody on exchanges is not the safest option, to say the least. While we are all aware of the risk of them being hacked, the menace of malicious staff collecting clients’ data is threatening. Maybe crypto exchanges should apply KYC rules when onboarding their employees too?

Russian Hermitage Museum considers issuing NFT on artworks

The State Hermitage Museum is opening to tokenized art. The world’s second-biggest fine art museum, based in Saint Petersburg, Russia, announced plans to host the NFT exhibition later this year.

The museum will exhibit NFTs for artworks from The State Hermitage collections. It has already started talks in collaboration with Binance crypto exchange regarding the NFT issuance.

Apart from imagining what Rembrandt, da Vinci, or Van Gogh would say about tokenizing their works, our priority question is: will they feel safer online rather than locked in the fireproof safes of the museum?