after the crypto project's multi-billion-dollar collapse

after the crypto project's multi-billion-dollar collapse

  last week we finally saw a few crypto  VCs and companies with lots of exposure to terra's ecosystem break their silence after the crypto project's multi-billion-dollar collapse first there was binance whose CEO changing Zhao revealed that the exchange never sold the 3 million worth of luna it had received in exchange Binance'slisting fees in 2018.  at its peak, Binance's holding of luna exceeded 1.6 billion dollars today that's worth a couple of thousand dollars if that Pantera capital took the opposite path revealing that it had managed to sell off 80 of its lunar holdings before the crash the crypto VC revealed that its initial 1.7 million dollar investment in the project returned a  whopping 170 million which is especially impressive since Pantera purchased its luna on the open market in early 2020.  like Binance Delphi digital held its lunar bags until the bitter end an end that was extremely bitter given that luna accounted for around 13 of the crypto VC's portfolio  Delphi digital did not reveal exactly how much money it saw disappear.

but did  specify in a blog post that its 10  million investment in terra earlier this  year is quote entirely lost  it's currently believed that the largest  loss was experienced by a crypto VC  called hashed an early terror investor  which had accumulated more than 3.5  billion dollars of luna over the years  according to on-chain analysis conducted  by coindesk  let's just say this luna isn't worth  nearly as much as it was  the final superfan to speak out was  galaxy digital CEO mike Novogratz who  had actually gotten a terror-related  tattoo back in January it's again not  clear exactly how much money galaxy  digital lost but the fact that it had to  issue a statement during the crisis  confirming it was still solvent suggests  it was somewhere in the region of a heck  of a lot  there are obviously hundreds of  thousands of individual investors who  have incurred comparable losses in  aggregate and this is why so many in the  terror community are turning to the  upcoming terror fork for hope  although i mentioned the details about  terra's upcoming fork in our recent  video about terra's implosion.

 it's  important to note that a few amendments  have been made to the fork proposal  most of these involve how luna's new  supply will be distributed and i'll  leave the new details about tara's fork  in the description  the fork proposal is currently being  voted on by luna holders and as i  predicted it looks like it's likely to  pass when the voting period ends in  about 48 hours  assuming everything goes according to  plan the terror blockchain will fork  this friday after a snapshot has been  taken  now i will quickly caution that you  could see a lot of speculative pumps on  luna and ust around the time the  snapshot is supposed to happen  i also have a feeling there will be a  lot of cell pressure for terra's new  lunar coin since so many people are  desperate to get their money back as  such i suggest exercising extreme  caution if you're planning on taking  part in terra's new chain  meanwhile in el salvador president najib  buchelli welcomed financial officials  from 44 different countries to discuss  bitcoin adoption as part of an event  about financial inclusion in the  developing world  as many of you will know el salvador  made bitcoin legal tender in september  and the government has been buying the  dip ever since something that not  everyone is supportive of  najib tweeted the full list of countries  that were represented at the historic  meeting .

 it seems representatives  from just about every African country  were present along with a few from the  middle east and Latin America  in what was likely an intentional  coincidence orchestrated by Najib 44 is  the same number of countries that were  represented at the Bretton woods hotel  in 1944 when the us dollar was decided  to be the world's next reserve currency  similarly the 44 representatives  traveled to bitcoin beach where el  Salvador's own bitcoin adoption began  and  about el Salvador's  bitcoin beginnings  whereas the representatives at the  Bretton woods conference sat around a  table sharing papers and talking  politics the representatives who  attended bitcoin beach went around the  town paying for goods and services in  BTC to show themselves and others just  how powerful bitcoin can be  naturally the representatives present  took a series of group photos one  wherein they screamed bitcoin and  another more official photo which has  since been photoshopped to give each  financial official a set of laser eyes  which is of course supposed to imply  that they're all bullish on bitcoin.

  the evident over-representation of African countries at el Salvador's event suggests that the next country to adopt bitcoin as legal tender is likely to hail from that region as many of you will also know the central  African republic recently made bitcoin legal tender alongside the central African franc a currency that is indirectly controlled by France to this day as I mentioned in my article about the countries that could adopt bitcoin as legal tender not having control over your national currency seems to be one of the factors that drive bitcoin adoption at the national level as it so happens the central African republic isn't the only country that uses the central African franc and of the five others that do two were present at el Salvador's bitcoin event specifically equatorial guinea and the republic of the congo will they adopt bitcoin as legal tender well.

 if you ask me it's not a question  of if but when because at the rate that  fiat currencies are failing bitcoin  might be the only bet for many central  banks  the failure of fiat currencies and the  possibility that a cryptocurrency could  fill that void is arguably the main  reason why governments around the world  are rushing to roll out central bank  digital currencies the country leading  the charge in this regard is china which  has been working on its digital yuan  since 2017 and it's no coincidence that  its crypto crackdown has coincided with  its cbdc rollout  when china banned bitcoin mining in may  last year it was believed that all  chinese bitcoin mining operations had  ceased or relocated to different  countries  however recent research by cambridge  university found that some chinese  bitcoin miners have continued their  operations in secret with china suddenly  accounting for over 20 percent of  bitcoin's hash rate  this just goes to show that bitcoin  mining is much easier said than done but  it also begs the question of why chinese  bitcoin miners continue to operate  despite the risks and whether it's a  good or bad thing for bitcoin  one possibility is that china isn't all  that serious about its bitcoin ban there  have been many headlines that seem to  imply chinese regulators are considering  reversing the ban.

 the most recent being a landmark ruling by a shanghai court that BTC counts as property if this is the case then it would be good for bitcoin given that it would open the floodgates to billions of dollars of demand from sidelined Chinese investors another possibility is the Chinese government is mining BTC to sell for extra money or even stacking sats themselves this sounds a lot less far-fetched when you remember that china's ties to Russia have only grown stronger ever since Russia Russia invaded Ukraine something that hasUkraine drawn the ire of the united states it seems China is taking the threat of potential sanctions seriously as the Chinese government is reportedly starting to pressure its officials to offload any assets they have overseas selling off assets that can be seized and acquiring assets that can't be seized sounds like a solid game plan given the circumstances China finds itself in and BTC is one of the few assets that falls in the latter bucket.

  if this is the case then it could actually be good for bitcoin that's because any country that's leveraging bitcoin has an economic interest in ensuring that most of its hash rate is within its borders or at least not entirely within the borders of countries that are hostile towards it this would inevitably lead to a bitcoin mining competition between countries which would ultimately increase the decentralization of the bitcoin blockchain the most likely possibility is that Chinese bitcoin miners are in fact just secretly taking advantage of any cheap untraceable and or surplus energy to make an extra buck from selling BTC on the side.

  if this is the case then it would not be  as good for bitcoin because the energy  sources being used by these bitcoin  miners are probably as dirty as they get  and that will give more ammo to the  anti-crypto critics  if you don't know what I'm talking about  check out my video about how much energy  and emissions are actually associated  with bitcoin mining that will be in the  description  speaking of environmental concerns tesla  was recently kicked out of the sp 500's  ESG index for not adhering to the  ever-changing definition of  environmental social and governance  responsibility  a spokesman for the s p explained that  tesla's removal was justified because of  quote tesla's lack of low carbon  strategy and codes of business conduct  the latter reason relating to a series  of discrimination lawsuits at one of  tesla's many manufacturing facilities  besides the fact that these  justifications sound more like excuses  tesla's mission is to literally quote  accelerate the world's transition to  sustainable energy which is why the s  p's announcement took many people by  surprise  this included.

 tesla ceo elon musk who  tweeted about how it's ironic that an  oil company has one of the highest esg  scores how this is evidence that esg is  a scam that's been weaponized by wall  street elites that the s p ratings  agency has lost its legitimacy and the  corporate esg is quote the devil  incarnate and  cryptocurrency you'll know that elon's  assessment is more or less correct esg  seems to be nothing more than an excuse  by asset managers to prop up companies  that conform to their ideological  commands and push all the dissenters  down  it's safe to say that the s p's decision  to drop tesla from its esg index and  elon's outspoken response has called the  credibility of esg investing into  question and this could be very good  news for cryptocurrency  that's because crypto projects are under  extreme pressure to conform to esg  criteria especially those that are  looking to appeal to legacy institutions  or secure funding from established asset  managers  esg has also been used to bash btc as an  investment on the grounds that it's  environmentally unfriendly even though  all the esg obsessed investors seem to  be more concerned about the fact that  they can't govern bitcoin with money  like a publicly listed company or select  proof-of-stake cryptocurrencies  last.

 but not least a crack in ESG's credibility could eventually lead to more investment in the energy industry which has been underfunded for years because of ESG mandates thisESG underfunding has been a significant contributor to the rising energy costs around the world which you'll recall began well before Russia-Ukraine invaded Ukraine bringing down energy costs is more important than ever given that energy costs are contributing to rising food costs and the possible shortages we could see in the not so distant future more about that in the description as you might have guessed ESG is one of the reasons why institutions are excited about Ethereum's transition from proof of work to proof of stake as it will make the Ethereum blockchain more environmentally friendly Ethereum's transition from proof of work to proof of stake is called the merge and plans for the merge have basically been around since Ethereum began.

 now the merge was actually delayed so many times that it pushed Ethereum co-founder Gavin wood to quit Ethereum and create polkadot and it's become a  common talking point among Ethereum critics the most recent delay occurred in mid-April when Ethereum developers stated that Ethereum's transition to proof of stake would probably occur sometime next year scratching the summer deadline in what may be a first Ethereum Ethereum developer recently confirmed that the merge will, in fact, be occurring this summer with the caveat that everything must go according to plan in terms of test nets and the like the summer timeline seems to be set in stone as it's reflected in Ethereum's official roadmap.

  more importantly ethereum developers  didn't delay ethereum's difficulty bomb  which began earlier this month and will  make ethereum impossible to mine in a  few months time  another sign of seriousness is ethereum  creator vitalik buterin's ideological  contradictions which he posted to  twitter shortly before the summer  deadline was re-established  these included things like the desire to  see ethereum become more like bitcoin in  the long term and feeling more aligned  with quote intellectual elites than the  average person despite being a  passionate lover of democracy and  decentralization  the ideological contradiction that  caught my eye the most relates to the  nation-state adoption of cryptocurrency  which vitalik fears will just lead to  more centralization in the many places  it occurs this relates to another  cryptic comment vitalik recently made as  part of a recent mini documentary for  the zcash privacy coin and that's that  quote we have to have some optimistic  vision of technology and not just worry  all the time about how it's going to  turn into a dystopia  this ties into another comment vitalik  made back in march in a time magazine  interview and that's that quote crypto  itself has a lot of dystopian potential .

n if implemented wrong  call me crazy but it sounds like vital  is genuinely concerned about the future  of cryptocurrency should control of  protocols fall into the wrong hands  this is something that could happen on  any proof of stake chain including  Ethereum post-merge  this is simply because proof of stake  makes it much easier for institutions to  influence a blockchain and if most of  the staked crypto is coming from just a  few validators this could threaten a  blockchain security and censorship  resistance  this has become a serious topic for eth  given that a liquid staking protocol  called lido finance now holds around a  third of all the eth being staked on the  beacon chain I'll be doing a deep dive into lido  finance and liquid staking later this  week in the meantime you can check out  my most recent Ethereum update using the  link in the description  turning to the charts we can see that  BTC has finally found some support  around 30k which is certainly nice to  see after eight straight weeks of price  decline  fun fact BTC has never gone down for so  long.

 but this abnormally long drawdown  can be explained by bitcoin's strong  correlation with the stock market which  has seen these kinds of multi-week  declines many times before  i've been talking about the possibility  of a relief rally for weeks now and i  maintain that one must come eventually  because all indicators suggest btc is  very oversold  the weekly rsi is at its lowest level in  years and btc's price candles are well  outside of the weekly bollinger bands to  the downside  bitcoin's fear and greed index is also  at historic lows and as the saying goes  by when there is blood in the streets  warren buffett said it not me  last week's top performing altcoins were  kyber network iotex carver phantom and  the kucoin exchange token an interesting  list to say the least  starting with kyber network the knc  token seems to be rallying due to the  release of kyber swap's referral  campaign which began a few days back  note that the referral campaign ends  this thursday so we could see an end to  knc's speculative pump  zooming out on knc's price action tells  a different story however as the token  seems to be rising from the ashes with a  very strong rebound  it's not entirely clear what's causing  this short-term rally but i suspect it  has something to do with kyber swap.

  next, we have iotex whose Sioux coin has taken a short-term trip to the moon on the news that the next votes mainnet upgrade will be taking place at the end of the month unfortunately iotx's recent price action is barely visible on its long-term price chart for what it's worth its price appears to be in a long-term uptrend sort of when it comes to carver its carvacoin is shooting for the stars on the upcoming launch of its own mainnet upgrade which will feature support for the Ethereum virtual machine as you can see carver has seen some very volatile price action and it's important to point out that its recent dip was due to terror's implosion for context all cosmos based cryptocurrencies seem to have taken a  hit but luckily for carver its price is still in a nice long-term uptrend as for phantom the FTM coin is responding positively to the prospect of the proposed changes to phantom's staked ftm.