Five things in crypto this week
Hedera raids Casper Network, Cardano bridges Bitcoin, Algorand volume blows up and more
It’s been an interesting week in crypto! And it’s been awhile since I posted.
I’ve taken to posting more on Twitter/X lately, so I had to strategize a little about what I was going to post here on this Substack.
So, what I came up with was this kind of post with a roundup of some of the most important crypto news once per week or so. I’ll mix that with occasional long-form thought pieces on the crypto ecosystem.
Hedera raids Casper Network
I recently wrote a post asking why everyone hates Hedera now. It was really surprising to me to see the narrative turn so much. But now, a major move might be turning that around. ProveAI, formerly Casper Labs, announced it is moving to Hedera. This was a major revenue source for the chain and many are wondering where this leaves Casper, whose price tanked following the news. ProveAI is a firm that puts the data for AI on the blockchain… or now, the DLT. And that’s a crucial element: as Hedera’s Charles Adtkins explains, txs on Hedera are FAR cheaper.
Hedera txs drop to almost zero
And that’ll be a big help, because Hedera’s transactions have dropped to almost zero. You can check their dashboard and confirm it yourself. So what about all those metrics you saw before, with billions of transactions? Apparently that was one governing council member putting their transactions on the DLT, and they stopped. ProveAI could turn this around though.
Cardano announces Bitcoin bridge
A major announcement this week came out of the Cardano camp, which explained that it would be partnering with BitcoinOS to bridge Bitcoin to Cardano, bringing smart contract capabilities to BTC. It kind of makes Cardano a BTC layer 2, which is really interesting. That’ll be a big boost for Cardano, which had recently been called a ghostchain.
Algorand sees huge volume increase
Algorand recently saw a huge spike in volume. How much? The 24-hour volume spiked 41% recently. Of course, any time you talk about something positive in Algorand people will say “what about price?” Something important to keep in mind is that last cycle Algorand didn’t start popping off until mid-February, and peaked in July. So stay patient, and good news is still good news.
Tinyman finishes its first vote
Algorand DeFI platform Tinyman finished its first vote recently. The vote was one whether Tinyman should burn leftover tokens from its airdrop or distribute them as rewards. FrugalBC had its criticisms of the process though. The vote was worded as a yes or no question, despite it not being a yes or no question if you read the summary. And something I didn’t like in Algorand governance came up here too: they included vote totals before the voting ended. That can influence the outcomes. But that said, it’s good to see the votes happen on the platform and I’ve had decent luck with the TINY token so far.
More livestreaming
I’ve been doing more livestreaming lately. I’ve been livestreaming Fridays most weeks now, around the noon hour (for me in central time, anyway). Besides YouTube, you can watch them on X or on Kick (where I got my first follower!)
I might have finally found the balance between recorded videos and livestreaming, something I’ve struggled with as a creator. And it lets me talk about other cryptocurrencies besides Algorand and Hedera without the algorithm punishing me.
In the meantime, check out my stream on Gala Games and my general Algorand stream from this week. I also did a bonus stream on Hedera and Casper, and Cardano and Bitcoin, diving deeper into the news mentioned above.
Appearances
I also appeared on The Next Block last week. We had a lively discussion.
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