Watch: The Crypto Mile weekly round-up
Blue chip cryptos rallied on Thursday with bitcoin (BTC-USD) up around 7% and ethereum (ETH-USD) almost 15% in the last seven days.
Today’s weekly crypto news round-up by Yahoo Finance’s The Crypto Mile looks at the hoarding of bitcoin by large mining operations, Shiba Inu’s new stablecoin announcement and dogecoin (DOGE-USD) as a payment on Elon Musk’s Hyper-loop transport system.
Lastly, we look at crisis-laden crypto lending firm Voyager Digital’s (VOYG.TO) recent bankruptcy filing and its association with collapsed crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital.
Dogecoin will be accepted as a payment method for Hyper-Loop travel
Elon Musk’s Boring Company has chosen to accept dogecoin (DOGE-USD) as payment for its Hyperloop service.
The Tesla (TSLA) boss has been a vocal proponent of dogecoin for many years, almost singlehanded driving the popularity of the memecoin with his continuous tweets on its use case.
A report from CNBC on Wednesday said a new payment option will be available via BitPay for using The Boring Company’s (TBC) new Loop station at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
The Boring Company has completed two tunnels in Las Vegas for loop travel and one test tunnel in Los Angeles, with other tunnels planned for major US urban areas.
The Las Vegas loop travel circuits were unveiled in mid-April 2021 with regular Tesla Model 3 and Model X cars used for shuttling passengers between different locations in the city in Nevada.
When asked on Twitter (TWTR) if dogecoin will be used to pay for Hyperloop travel, Musk responded by saying, “supporting Doge wherever possible”.
Watch: Crypto collapses ‘shining a very harsh light’ on industry practices
Voyager Digital files for bankruptcy
Crypto lending firm Voyager Digital (VOYG.TO) announced Wednesday it had filed for bankruptcy, becoming the latest to fall as the crypto crash contagion spreads.
The US company blamed “volatility and contagion” in crypto markets for its collapse.
They have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US, which protects businesses from creditors while it explores strategic alternatives.
Voyager was heavily exposed to recently liquidated Singapore-based crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital.
Bitcoin miners hoarding mined digital assets
North American crypto miner Hut 8 has added 5,800 bitcoin mining rigs to its operations and announced it is currently hoarding all the crypto it mines.
According to Coindesk, the firm mined 328 bitcoins in June, increasing its hoard of the digital asset to 7,406 BTC, or $148m (£124m).
Read more: The Crypto Mile: Has bitcoin reached the dip or will it fall even further?
Miners are one of the largest holders of bitcoin out there, and more hoarding means more price stability.
However, in other parts of the world miners are still dumping bitcoin to fund margin calls on debt, as the collateral on their loans has diminished with the crash in crypto prices.
UK miner, Argo Blockchain, is the latest firm to dump bitcoin. According to Decrypt the firm sold $15.6m in bitcoin this week, which is more than it mined throughout June.
Shiba Inu to launch its own stablecoin
The developers behind Shiba Inu announced plans to launch a stablecoin, called SHI, that according to lead developer Shytoshi Kusama will not be affected by market fluctuations in the same way as doomed projects like Terra/Luna.
In a statement released Tuesday Kusama said, “there is concern after watching other stable tokens collapse and billions in dollars get wiped off the market completely. For Shi, we’ve seen independent development from a group of developers in our decentralised network and they’ve submitted a version of Shi that seems to avoid the issues found in other moonshots.”
Kusama added that if the plans proceed without obstacles, the stablecoin will be available later this year.
The entire cryptocurrency market capitalisation has fallen from its $3tn peak in November 2021.
Currently the crypto market cap is under $1tn, falling rapidly since May when the algorithmic stablecoin Terra/Luna collapsed.
Watch: The Crypto Mile episode 2 – A journey through the Metaverse
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