Kalam Crypto #32: Tesla sells BTC, USDC reserves revealed, and ZkEVM by Polygon

This week, Tesla liquidates 75% of their BTC, Circle reveals details of USDC reserve assets, Polygon announces ZkEVM, and Bitcoin mining becomes more sustainable!

26 Jul, 2022

CoinMENA Team

Author

"Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos." - Mary Shelle

Ahlan wa sahlan, and welcome to the 32nd edition of CoinMENA's weekly newsletter, Kalam Crypto. Every week we will bring you the latest news and developments from the exciting world of cryptocurrencies. This week, Tesla liquidates 75% of their BTC, Circle reveals details of USDC reserve assets, Polygon announces ZkEVM, and Bitcoin mining becomes more sustainable! All that and more, so let's dive into this week's letter, and talk crypto:

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Global News 🌍

Tesla has paper hands: Tesla reported on Tuesday that it has sold roughly 75% of its bitcoin holding in Q2 to boost its liquidity, adding $936 million to its balance sheet. The sell-off occurred due to the company’s overall liquidity concerns, given Covid shutdowns in its Shanghai plant for most of the quarter. Tesla bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin in February 2021, and its balance sheet showed the company held $218 million worth of digital assets as of June 30, 2022.

What does this mean for bitcoin? Elon Musk himself commented that this should not be taken as a verdict on bitcoin and that the company was open to increasing its bitcoin holdings in the future. The sell-off does demonstrate that bitcoin is a highly liquid asset. It is also worth noting that up to $100 billion of BTC get traded every day. Therefore an entity selling close to $1 billion is not that significant from a volume perspective.

Circle setting the standard for transparency: Circle, the issuing company of the dollar-pegged stablecoin, USDC (available on CoinMENA), launched the USDC Trust & Transparency blog series by their CFO, Jeremy Fox-Geen. Circle aims to build trust by releasing a monthly breakdown of their USDC reserve assets, by each and every Treasury Bond, and a list of cash reserve custodians. The first monthly post shows that as of June 30, 2022, USDC reserve is held solely in cash and 3-month U.S. Treasuries, held in segregated accounts for the benefit of USDC holders, and is entirely separate from Circle’s operations. This voluntary move towards additional transparency is a welcome move for the crypto industry, which is still reeling from the effects of several high-profile collapses caused in part by a lack of transparency and insufficient collateral backing users’ digital assets.

Bitcoin mining continues to shift to sustainable energy: The Bitcoin Mining Council (BMC), a voluntarily global forum of Bitcoin mining companies that represent about 50% of worldwide mining hashing power, released their Q2 2022 report , which reveals year-on-year improvements in the sustainable power mix and technological efficiency of bitcoin mining. Other notable findings include:

Bitcoin mining consumes only 0.15% of global energy production.
Global bitcoin mining emits only 0.086% of the world’s CO2 production.
Bitcoin is the industry leader, with 60% of the electricity used to power Bitcoin mining machines coming from sustainable energy. This figure is up 6% from Q2 2021 and 2% from Q1 2022.
Bitcoin mining hash rate is up 137% year-on-year, while energy consumption is up 63%, showcasing increased efficiency by 46%.

Keep an eye on 👀

Polygon announces ZkEVM: Ethereum scaling solution Polygon announced the launch of Polygon Zero-Knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine or “ZkEVM,” the first roll-up with EVM equivalence. ZkEVM will allow developers to deploy applications written in Solidity, Ethereum’s smart contract language, and take advantage of the ecosystem’s developer tools, just as they do on the Ethereum mainnet. “Besides The Merge, this is the second-biggest event in terms of technology in the ecosystem in general,” Polygon co-founder Mihailo Bjelic said. If you want to learn more about Zero Knowledge proof, check out our Co-Founder Yazan Barghuthi’s post on linked in.

CoinMENA News 🗞

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Tweet of the week 🐥

Quiz Corner ✅

Last week’s question: How many new bitcoins were mined between 2009 and 2012?

Answer: 10,500,000

This week’s question: Which of the following is NOT true for crypto airdrops?