KC #45: BTC less volatile than stocks, Circle & Block to onboard 1 billion users

“I don’t think there’s anything more important in my lifetime to work on” Jack Dorsey on Bitcoin

Ahlan wa sahlan, and welcome to the 45th edition of CoinMENA's weekly newsletter, Kalam Crypto. This week, bitcoin is less volatile than the S&P500, hashrate reaches an all-time high, and Block teamed up with Circle to onboard 1 billion users to crypto! All that and more, so let's dive into this week's letter, and talk crypto: Prefer to listen to Kalam Crypto instead? Check out our podcast:

Lightning Round ⚡️

Bitcoin less volatile than S&P 500: According to a CNBC report, bitcoin has been less volatile than the S&P500 and has fallen just enough to match the volatility of the Nasdaq.

Bitcoin hashrate reaches an all-time high: Bitcoin hashrate increased 3.4% this week. This is good news for the Bitcoin network because it means the network is more secure than ever. However, the combination of high hashrate and low bitcoin price is squeezing miners’ margins.

Ultrasound Ethereum: Ethereum's deflationary trend continues and is almost below pre Merge levels. At the time of The Merge on September 15th, the total ETH supply was 120,520,000 coins. It rose to 120,534,000, but has since fallen back to 120,522,000. You can follow the ETH issuance schedule on the ultra sound money website.

Global News 🌍

Bitcoin less volatile than S&P 500: CNBC headline of the week: “Bitcoin less volatile than S&P 500.” Is this the start of the decoupling between bitcoin and risk assets? Perhaps it's too early to declare that. However, bitcoin bucking this trend during one of the most volatile economic conditions in decades bodes well for its promise to be “digital gold” in the future. According to a Bloomberg report, bitcoin’s correlation with gold is increasing and now sits at 0.5, while its correlation with Nasdaq and S&P 500 has decreased in the past few months.

Circle & Block teaming up to onboard the next 1 billion users: Jack Dorsey’s TBD is partnering with Circle, the issuer of USDC stablecoin, to unleash the power of stablecoin payments onto the next billion crypto users. The main objective of the partnership is to enable value to be transferred easily between crypto and the “real economy” using stablecoins. One of the first use cases will be to facilitate remittance payments between the USA and Mexico. 

Keep an eye on 👀

51% of Ethereum blocks are OFAC compliant: After the Merge, one of the potential side effects of the increased centralization of Ethereum validators was that it makes the network more prone to censorship. OFAC is the Office of Foreign Assets Control, the entity enforcing United States economic sanctions. Pre Merge, only 9% of Ethereum was OFAC compliant.

Did you know 🤔

The total stablecoin market capitalization is $147 billion; USDT is the largest, accounting for $68 billion, while USDC is the second largest, with $44 billion; However, their distribution is quite different. USDC is the dominant stablecoin decentralized exchange (DEX) and decentralized finance (DeFi), while USDT is dominant on centralized exchanges (CEX). 

CoinMENA News 🗞

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Tweet of the week 🐥

Quiz Corner ✅ 

Last week’s question:  All the coins other than Bitcoin are grouped together under this category:

Answer: Altcoins 

This week’s question: What is the process of encrypting and decrypting information called?

1. Cryptocurrency

2. Cryptography

3. Block

4. Decentralized Application

See the answer in next week’s newsletter.