Crypto Scoop: The Crypto Community Celebrates Bitcoin Pizza Day

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May, 26 2023

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Crypto Scoop

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While the crypto community celebrates bitcoin pizza day, we see new crypto and metaverse initiatives.

Amid celebrations of bitcoin pizza day, we see new crypto and metaverse initiatives. In this edition of the crypto scoop, we review the following:

  • Price moves of top cryptocurrencies
  • Ethereum’s co–founder’s thoughts on Ethereum preservation
  • Chinese Government’s metaverse initiative

Price Moves Of Top Cryptocurrencies

This week, the price of bitcoin dipped below $27,00 while Ethereum traded at $1,800. The red charts did nothing to sour the mood as the crypto community celebrated bitcoin pizza day. Bitcoin pizza day, marked on May 22, dates back to 2010 and celebrates Laszlo Hanyecz purchasing two boxes of pizzas for 10,000 bitcoins.

Stablecoin-as-a-Service (SCaaS) provider also launched the first Bitcoin-based stablecoin, Stably USD (#USD) operation on the Bitcoin network. The Bitcoin network now supports #USD as a native BRC20 token. This is made possible by the expansion of the Bitcoin Ordinals ecosystem which was prompted by the Taproot upgrade in Novemebr 2021. 

According to Stably, each #USD token is said to be backed one-for-one by USD and kept by a US regulated custodian in a collateral account for the benefit of token holders who have gone through KYC/AML procedures. At the moment, #USD can be issued and redeemed via platforms like Fedwire, SWIFT, USDC and USDT across 200+ countries. However, the initial launch of #USD’s issuance and redemption process is manual. 

In a recent interview with Cointelegraph, Obi Nwosu, CEO and co-founder of Fedi, asserted that Bitcoin will come out on top by the end of the year. Nwosu explained that it is becoming “increasingly hard to deny” that Bitcoin has the “fastest, cheapest, easiest, most decentralised and secure” ecosystem. He noted: “It is going to be clear by the end of this year that it’s going to be tick, tick, tick for Bitcoin.”

Vitalik Buterin Speaks On Preservation Of Ethereum Blockchain

In his recent article, “Don’t overload Ethereum’s consensus”, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin discusses the dangers of “overloading” Ethereum’s social consensus. Vitalik noted that this could bring “high systemic risks to the ecosystem.”

The use of Ethereum social consensus for additional purposes has been suggested over the years. These include price and data oracles, re-staking campaigns, and using layer-1 soft forks to revive layer-2 projects.  Although Buterin acknowledged the "natural urge" to attempt to expand the Ethereum blockchain's fundamental capabilities, he added that doing so might weaken the consensus layer.

In response to issues like price oracles, Buterin suggested potential solutions, such as "not-quite-crypto economic decentralised oracles" or validator-voting-based oracles that explicitly commit to their emergency recovery procedures not being L1 consensus-based.

Chinese City Launches A  Government Backed Metaverse Platform

The China Metaverse Technology and Application Innovation Platform was launched on May 22 in Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu Province in eastern China, to advance metaverse study and development nationwide.

The organisation's administrative head is the Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology (NUIST). By combining the resources of Chinese businesses and academic organisations, the platform aspires to advance research projects in areas connected to the metaverse. 

Brazil has also made progress toward establishing its CBDC. The nation's central bank's digital currency (CBDC) is being piloted by 14 institutions chosen by the Central Bank of Brazil. The list, released on Wednesday, includes important regional financial institutions like Bradesco, Nubank, and Itaú Unibanco, Banco do Brasil, Brazil's largest publicly traded bank, and the regional stock exchange B3. 

Microsoft and Visa, two multinational corporations popular for their crypto connections, were also selected to participate. The central bank will begin incorporating participants into the Real Digital Pilot platform in mid-June 2023.