Kalam Crypto #88: Citi Token Services, Deutsche Custody, 1-year Ethereum Merge

“No dinosaur ever approved of an asteroid.” Erik Voorhees

Ahlan wa sahlan, and welcome to the 88th edition of CoinMENA's weekly newsletter, Kalam Crypto. This week, Citi launched a new offering to tokenize customer deposits, Deutsche Bank announced they would custody crypto for institutional clients, we revisited the 1 year anniversary of the Ethereum Merge, and the highest transaction fee ever paid for bitcoin was then refunded! 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 ⚡️

Citi Bank to Tokenize Customer Deposits: “Citi Token Services”, a new offering from Citi Bank, will convert customers' deposits into digital tokens, enabling instantaneous global transfers. The new offering will rely on a private blockchain managed by the bank.

Coinbase to integrate Lightning: CEO of Coinbase Brian Armstrong announced that Coinbase is working on integrating the lightning network to enable faster & cheaper bitcoin transactions.

Deutsche Bank to custody crypto: Deutsche Bank has partnered with Swiss crypto firm Taurus to provide custody services for institutional clients' cryptocurrencies and tokenized assets

FacePalm of the Week 🤦‍♂️ Who's responsible for the fat fingers? That's the question circulating on Bitcoin Twitter this week. On September 10th, someone paid a staggering $510,000 fee to transfer $2,000 worth of BTC—nearly 480,000 times the standard fee. It turns out the wallet belonged to PayPal, but the mistake was made by their infrastructure partner, Paxos, due to a single transfer bug. Fortunately, the Bitcoin miner who received the excessive fee agreed to refund Paxos 19.8 BTC, sparing them significant financial loss, though not the accompanying embarrassment.

Global News 🌍

One Year After the Merge: On September 15th last year, Ethereum switched from a proof-of-work (PoW) to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism in a crucial upgrade called the Merge. This shift to proof-of-stake has made ether a deflationary currency and reduced Etheruem’s energy consumption by 99%. Since the Merge, 11.5 million ETH have been staked and 362 thousand new validators have joined the network.

Tweet Of The Week 🐥

In case you need a reminder, Bitcoin is king.

CoinMENA News 🗞️

🎁Earn 20 USDC 🎁

Deposit or Withdraw USDC via the Stellar network, our recently added feature, and earn $20 USDC! Act now, this offer is limited to the first 1,000 CoinMENA users to complete such deposit or withdrawal. Terms and conditions apply, see full campaign details in this blog post.

Quiz Corner ✅ 

Last week’s question: Who founded the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF), which oversees the Stellar network? Answer:  Jed McCaleb

This week’s question: What can users earn by depositing or withdrawing USDC via the Stellar network?

A) $10 USDC

B) $15 USDC

C) $20 USDC

D) $25 USDC

See the answer in next week’s newsletter. Or check out our new learning platform https://university.coinmena.com/