From bustling trading platforms to cutting-edge innovations in blockchain technology, the crypto landscape is a dynamic and fast-paced ecosystem rife with opportunities and challenges. Here is a look at what happened today, Monday, in the crypto ecosystem.
The most recent information on daily trends and events affecting the Bitcoin price, blockchain, DeFi, NFTs, Web3, and crypto regulation has set the tone for what DeFi investors should be on the lookout for in the coming days.
Crypto markets performance in a jiffy
To put things into perspective, Coinbase’s CEO visited Washington, D.C. last week to meet with US politicians. Meanwhile, the Worldcoin project, founded by Sam Altman, premiered its ecosystem token on July 24, claiming to provide a decentralized and private mechanism to validate human identification online in the face of the advent of artificial intelligence technologies.
Meanwhile, Twitter rebranded to “X” in order to become an “everything app” that accepts crypto payments.
Coinbase’s CEO continues his regulation hunt in DC
As a result of Ripple’s partial victory in its lawsuit against the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong believes U.S. legislators are pursuing crypto regulations with a new sense of urgency.
Armstrong stated, during a July 20 meeting with Representatives Maxine Waters and Patrick McHenry, that Congress members are re-engaging with crypto. “I think the Ripple case drove a lot of urgency,” he said. Similar to the recent bitcoin ETF filings from Blackrock, Fidelity, and other significant financial services providers.
The SEC has charged Coinbase with operating as an unregistered securities platform, broker, and clearing agency, which has prompted Coinbase to file its own lawsuit against the regulator.
Worldcoin introduces a token to differentiate humans from bots
The ecosystem token for Worldcoin, an initiative co-created by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, was released on July 24. Some in the crypto community and in Silicon Valley have lauded the project’s ambition, while others have called it eerie and dystopian.
The initiative continues to pursue its objective of addressing income inequality and online identity authentication despite these criticisms.
The initiative was launched for the first time on March 14, accompanied by a waiting list for its software development kit (SDK). The World ID, according to its team, will be a global digital passport that users can maintain on their mobile devices.
The initiative also asserts that the World ID will allow users to demonstrate they are not robots without providing personal information such as their phone number to websites.
The project’s gas-free crypto wallet was made available to verified humans on May 8. This enabled users to take advantage of gas-free transfers by registering for a World ID, for which they were required to provide a phone number or iris scan.
According to the developers, the initiative does not store user-supplied information. It generates a zero-knowledge proof to verify that the user is a human without disclosing the data used to create the proof.
Several crypto exchanges have also announced that they will list the token on their respective trading platforms. Binance, Bybit, OKX, Gate, and Huobi were among the crypto exchanges that announced the listing of the token as it was being introduced.
Elon Musk officially rebrands Twitter X
As part of a significant rebranding effort, Twitter’s iconic blue bird logo has been replaced with an “X” as part of the social media platform’s rebranding efforts.
Musk hinted in a succession of tweets on July 23 that the platform will be renamed “X.”
According to Musk’s tweets and a poll, the rebranding could involve changing Twitter’s color scheme to black, removing the blue bird logo, and using a different website to access the platform.
Twitter is, however, one of the crypto community’s strongholds, and many have expressed displeasure with the impending name change. It’s worth noting that with that move, Elon Musk has regained his position as the world’s richest man.
Elon Musk reclaimed the title of world’s richest person this week in a back-and-forth battle with French luxury goods magnate Bernard Arnault, according to Forbes’ real-time billionaires list, as a rebounding Tesla stock propelled the eccentric billionaire into the No. 1 position.
Musk’s astronomical net worth increased by an additional $4.1 billion on Monday, according to calculations by Forbes, bringing it to a comfortable $240.7 billion as of noon EDT, an increase of more than 1.75 percent.
Musk’s net worth now surpasses that of Arnault, the CEO of luxury goods conglomerate LVMH, which owns Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, and Tiffany, after Arnault’s net worth fell by more than 1% ($2.4 billion) to $234.9 billion on Monday due to declining LVMH shares.
Musk, 52, and Arnault, 74, had lunch at an LVMH Mot Hennessy Louis Vuitton-owned luxury hotel in Paris last month. At the time, Arnault told the French publication Quotidien that he wanted to dine with Musk because he considers him to be an exceptional entrepreneur.
