A volatile week in review
It’s been a turbulent week for cryptocurrency markets. Bitcoin has jumped 5.6% in the last 24 hours, but is up just 0.9% for the week. Ethereum has gained 3.9% on the day, but is up just 1.2% over the last seven days. Dogecoin is up 6.3% today, but is up just 0.7% for the week. Much of the volatility in the markets is tied to the inflation data released Thursday.
Ethereum developer's new proposal to increase throughput by 50%
A proposal put forward by Benjamin Adams of Nethermind, EIP-7781, proposes to reduce the slot time on the Ethereum network from 12 to 8 seconds. This change will speed up the process of creating blocks and improve the overall performance of the network.
According to the developer's calculations, the throughput of the blockchain can increase by 33% without the need to increase the number of BLOBs.
Support for Adams' initiative was expressed by Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake, noting that this proposal is equivalent to increasing the gas limit to 45 million and expanding the number of BLOBs in a block to nine.
Optimism airdrop hands out 10.3 million OP
Ethereum's Layer 2 team, Optimism, has conducted its fifth airdrop, distributing 10.3 million OP tokens (worth roughly $16 million) to 54,700 unique addresses. The initiative is aimed at supporting users of Superchain, a rollup ecosystem built on the OP Stack. The distribution took into account activity across the OP Mainnet, Base, Zora, Mode, Metal, Fraxtal, Cyber, Mint, Swan, Redstone, Lisk, Derive, BOB, Xterio, Polynomial, Race, and Orderly networks.
The airdrop was limited to wallets that interacted with at least 20 smart contracts on Superchain between March 15 and September 15, 2024. Individual distributions were augmented by bonuses awarded for actions such as delegating OP or using the seven protocols in the ecosystem. Tokens can be claimed until February 13, 2025. In total, Optimism has distributed over 265 million tokens across five airdrops, with approximately 550 million OP remaining in reserve for future airdrops.
Justin Sun's new role
Tron founder Justin Sun has been elected as the Prime Minister of the self-proclaimed microstate Liberland. The new Congress also includes entrepreneur Evan Luthra and journalist Jillian Godsil. Liberland is an unrecognized territory between Croatia and Serbia, measuring just six square kilometers. The microstate was founded in 2015 by Czech citizen Vit Jedlicka, who later became its first president. Liberland's national motto is "Live and Let Live," and the country's official currency is Bitcoin.
Has the mystery of Bitcoin's creator been solved?
On October 9, the documentary "Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery" premiered, in which Peter Todd was named as the creator of Bitcoin. The basis for such assumptions was his post on the BitcoinTalk forum, which was reportedly accidentally published from his personal profile, which was noted by Forbes.
The director and his team also found a message from Todd in which he claims to be "the world's leading expert on how to donate your bitcoins," which the authors interpreted as a denial of access to approximately 1.1 million bitcoins attributed to the creator of the cryptocurrency.
In one interview, the programmer jokingly noted that he is "Satoshi Nakamoto and Craig Wright at the same time." CoinDesk noted that Todd made a similar joke on Peter McCormack's What Bitcoin Did podcast in 2019, where he also said that he bought his first bitcoins at $0.2, which is about the price of October 2010 - almost two years after the release of the digital gold white paper.
However, Peter Todd has denied all of these claims.
Tether to release documentary in honor of its 10th anniversary
Tether has announced the release of a documentary dedicated to USDT and its role in fighting inflation, timed to coincide with the stablecoin's anniversary. The trailer features vivid excerpts from interviews with users from Turkey, Brazil, and Argentina, who talk about how USDT helped them cope with the sharp devaluation of their national currencies.
Tether positions its stablecoin as an equivalent of the US dollar. Brazil has seen significant growth in USDT usage in the past year, accounting for 80% of all crypto transactions in the country, according to data for October 2023. The trailer also mentions that this figure reaches 90%.
USDT tokens were initially issued on October 6, 2014, based on Bitcoin using the Omni Layer protocol and were called Realcoin, but the project was soon rebranded. Tether has since expanded its horizons by adapting the stablecoin to other blockchains, such as Ethereum, TRON, and TON. With a market cap of $120 billion, USDT remains the largest stablecoin on the market.
