Mastercard and Paxos help banks offer crypto, Jack Dorsey describes new social platform and Tesla hodls BTC: Hodler’s Digest, 16-22 increased.

by Arthur · October 22, 2022

Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every important news that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more – a week on Cointelegraph in one link.

Table of Contents

Top stories this week

Mastercard taps Paxos to launch crypto trading for banks

Banks will soon be equipped to offer their customers crypto trading and custody thanks to a new program called “Crypto Source” from Mastercard and Paxos Trust Company. As part of the program, Mastercard will cover some of the compliance, security and interface details while Paxos handles crypto storage and trading. Expected in the last quarter of 2022, the Crypto Source program will essentially provide the foundation that will allow banks to offer crypto trading and custody to their customers.

Jack Dorsey unveils decentralized social with algo choices and portable accounts

Overseen by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, a new social media platform called “Bluesky Social” has entered its private beta phase after years of anticipation. The platform is based on a protocol known as the Authenticated Transfer Protocol (formerly ADX). The protocol essentially removes the walls around user data, allowing users to move their accounts from platform to platform instead of having profiles and information locked on a single platform.

Hodl! Tesla is hanging onto all of its remaining $218M in Bitcoin in Q3

After offloading 75% of its Bitcoin holdings in Q2, Tesla decided to keep its remaining BTC in Q3, according to the company’s latest earnings report. The third quarter earnings report described Tesla’s balance sheet with $218 million in digital assets. In February 2021, Tesla notably unveiled $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin, but sold most of its holdings the following year due to China-related COVID-19 concerns.

Not like China: Hong Kong reportedly wants to legalize crypto trading

Although Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China, Hong Kong is reportedly looking to ease its crypto regulations to favor the industry. China has taken regulatory steps to discourage activity in the crypto industry in the past. Crypto trading in Hong Kong itself is largely restricted to professional investors, thanks to Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC). However, the SFC is now taking steps to allow retail crypto trading, as well as other crypto-friendly pursuits.

“Performs as expected” — Aptos Labs defends Day 1 criticism

Aptos, a blockchain constructed using programming languages once intended for Meta’s Diem project, launched its mainnet on October 17. The well-funded blockchain created by Aptos Labs claims a processing capacity of 160,000 transactions per second (TPS). However, only 4 TPS were observed at the time of Cointelegraph’s reporting on October 18th. The first low numbers were expected, according to Aptos on Twitter. Reporting on October 20 revealed that the numbers for the blockchain had risen to 16 TPS.

Winners and losers

At the end of the week, Bitcoin (BTC) is at $19,115Ether (ETH) on $1299 and XRP on $0.44. The total market value is at $916.20 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.

Among the top 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin winners of the week are Casper (CSPR) of 32.19%, Lido DAO (I DO) of 16.23% and Maker (MKR) of 16.07%.

The top three altcoin losers of the week are TerraClassicUSD (USTC) at -24.65%, Axie Infinity (AXS) at -16.18% and EthereumPoW (ETHW) of -15.52%.

For more info on crypto prices, be sure to read Cointelegraph’s market analysis.

Most memorable quotes

“Well, I mean, there are a few reasons [for having Bitcoin in space]. One, because it’s cool and you can.

Adam Back, co-founder and CEO of Blockstream

“Now is the time to tell your friends and explain the benefits of crypto because when they FOMO cost $70,000 [per Bitcoin] you should tell them not to enter the market.

Marcel Pechmann, market analyst and Cointelegraph contributor

“Right now, hacking is absolutely the biggest issue that we think of happening in the industry that is a real threat to security.

Kim Grauer, Director of Research at Chainalysis

“We believe in everything [in museums] will be an NFT, just like a serial number, for each product there will be an NFT.”

Hussein Hallak, CEO and founder of Next Decentrum Technologies

“PoW was a dead end for Ethereum.

Tansel Kaya, CEO of Mindstone Blockchain Labs

“Price manipulation is a cousin of misrepresentation, and in many jurisdictions engaging in misleading and deceptive conduct is illegal and grounds for legal action.

Michael Bacina, Partner at Piper Alderman

Prediction of the week

Bitcoin price ‘easy’ due to reach $2 million in six years – Larry Lepard

Bitcoin’s price traded relatively sideways for most of this week again, according to Cointelegraph’s BTC Price Index.

Equity Management Associates founder Larry Lepard sees Bitcoin reaching $2 million per coin in the next five or six years, he said on a Quoth the Raven podcast episode published on October 16. “Bitcoin may go to zero, but I personally believe that Bitcoin is going to go up 100x,” according to Lepard. However, he also noted the possibility of Bitcoin falling to $14,000 before then.

FUD of the week

Report: Half of all DeFi exploits are cross-bridge hacks

Cross-chain bridges are the weakest security point in decentralized finance (DeFi), according to a Token Terminal report. The crypto data provider described that cross-chain bridge exploits, mainly on Ethereum Virtual Machine blockchains, accounted for around $2.5 billion in lost funds over the past two years. Cross-chain mining represents about half of all DeFi hacks during this period.

77.1% of Salvadorans polled believe the government should “stop spending public money” on Bitcoin

Most Salvadorans are not happy with the government’s Bitcoin spending, according to residents polled as part of a study by El Salvador’s José Simeón Cañas Central American University. The country made Bitcoin legal tender in September 2021, although only 24.4% of Salvadorans surveyed have used Bitcoin for payments since then, as of the September 2022 poll. Additionally, less than 40% of respondents favored El Salvador’s decision to make Bitcoin legal tender.

4,400 Disgruntled Investors Hunt Terra’s Do Kwon

Previously organized to initiate lawsuits by Terra investors, the UST Restitution Group (URG) has now shifted its focus to search for Terra CEO Do Kwon. The URG Discord group has 4,400 participants discussing and searching for Kwon as a result of the Terra project’s collapse earlier in 2022. The authorities have taken various measures to find the Terraform Labs co-founder. Kwon said security measures drove him to leave Singapore, according to an interview published this week by journalist Laura Shin.