Trump's cryptocurrency stance in doubt: US government holds 50,000 ETH

Headline

▌Opinion: Trump's U-turn on Cryptocurrency, but Promises to Be Fulfilled Are in Doubt

Cerus Markets co-founder Michael Brescia said that former President Donald Trump announced his support for cryptocurrency at the Bitcoin Conference in Nashville, promising to replace the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, establish a cryptocurrency advisory committee, and reserve Bitcoin in the Federal Reserve System if re-elected. However, Trump criticized cryptocurrency many times during his first term, saying that it is "not money", based on "castles in the air" and "may promote illegal behavior", and that Bitcoin is a "scam".  

While Trump's shift has excited cryptocurrency supporters, there are questions about whether he will fulfill these promises. His policies are more likely to be driven by donations than firm beliefs. What the cryptocurrency industry needs is not only fierce rhetoric, but clear regulatory guidelines and meaningful participation from both sides.

▌The US government address also holds 50,000 ETH

As of this writing, the US government still holds more than 183,000 Bitcoins, worth about $12 billion, making it the largest geopolitical owner of this decentralized currency. According to Arkham Intelligence, the US government also holds 50,000 ETH, 121 million USDT, 40,000 BNB, and more than 10 million USDC.

Market

As of press time, according to Coingecko data:

BTC's latest transaction price is $66,905.24, with a daily increase or decrease of -1.6%;

ETH's latest transaction price is 3,334.31 yuan, with a daily increase or decrease of +1.9%;

BNB's latest transaction price is $576.09, with a daily increase or decrease of -1.5%;

SOL's latest transaction price is $183.27, with a daily increase or decrease of -0.6%;

DOGE's latest transaction price is 0.1288 US dollars, with a daily increase or decrease of -0.6%;

XPR's latest transaction price is 0.6027 US dollars, with a daily increase or decrease of +0.4%.

Policy

▌Vote on U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow's crypto bill has been postponed, or resumed in September

Debbie Stabenow, chairwoman of the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee, has been working on a crypto bill and planned to hold a hearing on Wednesday, but the vote on the bill was postponed, or resumed in September.  

Stabenow said her bill would give the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission authority over "digital commodities" and provide permanent funding for the CFTC to oversee the market. The bill would specifically require cryptocurrency companies to hold adequate capital reserves and establish strict cybersecurity standards. It also aims to protect retail customers by providing them with accurate information about their assets.  

“The bill has gone through multiple iterations as industry leaders and committee members continue to provide input to Senator Stabenow’s team,” said Cody Carbone, chief policy officer at the Chamber of Digital Commerce, in a statement. “It now appears that consideration of the bill will be delayed until after the August recess to reach more consensus, and it is positive that Senator Stabenow continues to reach out to stakeholders for feedback.”

Harris Considering Michigan Senator Peters as Her Running Mate

U.S. presidential candidate Kamala Harris is reportedly considering choosing Michigan Senator Gary Peters as her running mate for her 2024 running mate. Peters is interested in the position and is currently trying to gain support from his fellow Democrats for his run for vice president.  

According to Stand With Crypto, a nonprofit political advocacy group, Peters is “vehemently opposed to cryptocurrency.” The nonprofit noted that Senator Peters co-sponsored the Digital Asset Money Laundering Act in 2023, but also mentioned that he supports repealing SAB-121, which requires banks holding digital assets on behalf of customers to record those assets as liabilities on their balance sheets.

▌Two Artists Sue the SEC Over Whether NFTs Are Securities and Its Jurisdiction

Two NFT artists sue the SEC over whether NFTs are securities and its jurisdiction. Law professor Brian Frye and "Song a Day Mann" songwriter Jonathan Mann filed a lawsuit against the SEC and its five commissioners in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana on Monday.

Lawyers for the two artists accused the SEC of launching a "campaign to assert jurisdiction over the sale of digital artworks," citing Taylor Swift's tickets as an example, and cited the agency's two recent cases against NFTs. Both companies are preparing NFT projects and are seeking declaratory judgments from the court. The SEC declined to comment on the complaint. Ashley Ebersole, general counsel of 0x Labs and a former SEC lawyer, said the SEC's previous NFT enforcement actions have been settled, so there is little opportunity for courts to consider whether NFTs are securities. Blockchain Applications Bitcoin L2 Protocol Ushers in Adoption Wave, but Security Still Needs to Be Improved Dozens of protocols driving innovation in the Bitcoin blockchain were showcased at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville. Bitlayer co-founder Charlie Hu said Franklin Templeton is exploring ways to unlock benefits for customers through the Bitcoin network by supporting protocols such as Bitlayer. Build On Bitcoin co-founder Alexei Zamyatin talked about the security issues of Bitcoin L2 and introduced research on the virtual machine BitVM. B2 Network co-founder Calvin believes that Bitcoin can be an entry point to the non-crypto world and emphasizes the importance of continuing to build infrastructure that scales Bitcoin.

▌Aave DAO Launches Lido Custom Market and Opens It to Third-Party Developers

Aave DAO has launched a custom pool designed specifically for stETH and wstETH for Lido Finance. The new Aave V3 ETH Lido pool paves the way for additional custom financial solutions in the future and is open to third-party developers, allowing them to build additional dedicated pools to optimize specific use cases.  

Lido will provide liquidity incentives to users and reward developers for innovating use cases for collateralized ETH to support further growth of the Lido ecosystem. Aave's V3 flexible architecture allows for multiple custom deployments to meet unique risk profiles, such as segregated collateral markets or institutional use cases.  

This new Lido pool is the first custom deployment on Aave V3, demonstrating the protocol's versatility and ability to optimize specific use cases.

Cryptocurrency

▌US Presidential Candidate Kennedy: Only Bitcoin Can Guarantee the Dollar's Reserve Currency Status

US Presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. believes that US policymakers are quickly realizing the "inevitability" of Bitcoin and are scrambling to develop a coherent digital asset strategy to maintain the United States' fiscal dominance. Kennedy said that only Bitcoin can guarantee the dollar's reserve currency status.

▌Solana-based PYUSD stablecoin has a supply of nearly $240 million since its launch in May

According to data from the Dune analytics dashboard cited by the Solana Foundation, the Solana-based PYUSD stablecoin currently has a supply of nearly $240 million since its launch in May, while the supply of the Ethereum-based PYUSD token is about $348 million, and PYUSD on Ethereum was launched nearly a year ago.  

Sheraz Shere, General Manager of Payments at the Solana Foundation, said: "This rapid growth highlights the strength and efficiency of the Solana network."

▌BlackRock: It is expected that crypto ETFs will be allocated in model portfolios by the end of this year or next year

Samara Cohen, Chief Investment Officer of BlackRock ETFs and Index Investments, discussed the iShares Ethereum Trust ETF (ETHA) and expects to see crypto ETFs allocated in model portfolios by the end of this year or in 2025.

▌WisdomTree founder: cryptocurrency will go mainstream

Jonothan Steinberg, founder and CEO of asset management company WisdomTree, said in an interview on July 29 that cryptocurrency will go mainstream as regulatory clarity, publicly traded crypto funds and tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) stimulate adoption.

▌Bernstein: Cryptocurrency is no longer a "bipartisan issue", Bitcoin and related stocks will benefit

Bernstein analysts said in a report that Donald Trump outlined six cryptocurrency commitments on Saturday, including establishing a national strategic Bitcoin reserve after his election, and Kamala Harris appeared to extend an olive branch to the industry. Cryptocurrency "is no longer a bipartisan issue", and Bitcoin and related stocks will benefit from the "Trump deal."  

Bernstein analysts said: "We believe that this olive branch from the Democrats is a bit late, and the industry will seek more concrete actions (to reverse previous mistakes) before welcoming the Democratic campaign."  

The analyst added: "The crypto community and industry seem to be clear that crypto is no longer a bipartisan issue. As the possibility of Trump's election increases, Bitcoin prices rise. As President Biden supports Harris as a potential successor to the Democratic candidate, Bitcoin prices fluctuate in a range. We believe that the crypto market will trade entirely on the direction of political developments before the election results are announced in early November."

▌View: The market may need a bigger catalyst than Trump's speech for a major breakthrough

QCP Capital posted on its official channel that although Bitcoin prices fluctuated during Trump's Bitcoin conference speech, the market did not fluctuate as violently as expected. Bitcoin price is staying between $67,000 and $70,000, with volatility dropping significantly.  

Trump’s speech echoed industry expectations, but the market may need a bigger catalyst for a major breakthrough. This catalyst may come as the US election approaches, when promises and policies become clearer.  

Despite Trump’s optimistic remarks, Bitcoin failed to break through its all-time high, so Bitcoin may continue to trade in a range.

Important Economic Dynamics

▌The probability of the Federal Reserve keeping interest rates unchanged this week is 95.9%

According to CME’s “Fed Watch”, the probability of the Federal Reserve keeping interest rates unchanged this week is 95.9%, and the probability of a 25 basis point rate cut is 4.1%. The probability of the Federal Reserve keeping interest rates unchanged by September is 0%, the probability of a cumulative 25 basis point rate cut is 89.6%, the probability of a cumulative 50 basis point rate cut is 10.1%, and the probability of a cumulative 75 basis point rate cut is 0.3%.

▌U.S. Treasury cuts quarterly borrowing forecast, expects year-end cash buffer to fall

The U.S. Treasury cut its forecast for federal borrowing this quarter and expects the government's cash buffer to fall by the end of the year. The Treasury said in a statement on Monday that it now expects net borrowing of $740 billion from July to September, down from an April 29 estimate of $847 billion. Most bond traders had expected the decline. The authority's estimate for cash balances at the end of September remained at $850 billion. In addition, the Treasury expects a year-end cash balance of $700 billion, a forecast that is being closely watched by traders because of its potential impact on the upcoming debt ceiling battle. This reserve will be reduced after the debt limit required by law is restored early next year unless Congress agrees to increase it or suspend it again.

▌Nvidia releases software and services aimed at promoting the rapid popularization of artificial intelligence

Nvidia, the world's most valuable chipmaker, announced a series of software updates designed to make generative artificial intelligence easier for more companies to use. The chip company officially released Nvidia Inference Micro Services (NIMs), a software package that solves many of the logistical problems required to use AI for specific purposes. Generative AI is the technology behind chatbots, speech recognition and other automated human-computer interactions, which often requires the coordination of numerous hardware, software and information retrieval. Many companies do not have the expertise in this area, so Nvidia is trying to provide services for this and charge fees. Nvidia founder and CEO Huang Renxun demonstrated the company's latest products at the Siggraph conference in Denver on Monday. At this graphics technology conference, he tried to convince as many industries as possible to start using Nvidia's technology to popularize artificial intelligence in the economy.

▌Apple uses Google's custom chip to pre-train AI models, Nvidia's dominance is at risk

Apple (AAPL.O) said on Monday that the AI ​​models that support its artificial intelligence system Apple intelligence were pre-trained on processors designed by Google (GOOG.O), a sign that large technology companies are looking for alternatives to Nvidia (NVDA.O) when it comes to training cutting-edge artificial intelligence. In a technical paper published by Apple, the company detailed its choice of Google's self-developed tensor processing unit (TPU) for training, and Apple released a preview of Apple Intelligence for some devices on Monday. Nvidia's expensive graphics processing units (GPUs) dominate the market for high-end artificial intelligence training chips, and demand for Nvidia GPUs has been so high in the past few years that it has been difficult to procure the required quantities.

Golden Encyclopedia

▌What is Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS)?

DPoS is an evolution of the Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism designed to provide enhanced scalability, efficiency, and democratic governance. Daniel Larimer proposed the DPoS concept in 2014 as an enhancement of the traditional PoS consensus mechanism designed to improve efficiency and scalability. Larimer first shared his vision in a Bitcointalk forum post, which led to the actual implementation of DPoS and the launch of BitShares in 2015. This marked the beginning of DPoS in blockchain technology, laying the foundation for its adoption in other projects such as Steem and Eos. In particular, Eos, which used the consensus mechanism to conduct one of the largest initial coin offerings (ICOs) in the cryptocurrency industry in 2017, has attracted great attention to DPoS and highlighted its potential in achieving high performance and decentralized governance.

Disclaimer: As a blockchain information platform, Golden Finance publishes articles for information reference only and is not intended as actual investment advice. Please establish the correct investment concept and be sure to increase risk awareness.