The top daily news from the cryptocurrency and blockchain space:
- Another U.S. Congressional hearing for Facebook’s Libra.
- Coin Metrics publishes report addressing Kik’s claims made to the SEC.
- Top Bitcoin analyst studies price effect of block reward halving.
At the time of writing, bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) are trading at $11,300.8 (+4.7%) and $313.1 (+2.1%), respectively. As for the MVIS CryptoCompare Digital Assets 10 Index, it is currently tracking at 4,927.3 (+1.9%).
Facebook’s Libra Subject to Yet Another U.S. Congressional Hearing
The U.S. House Financial Services Committee will host a hearing regarding Facebook and its Calibra subsidiary’s new blockchain-based project, Libra, on July 17, according to Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-CA).
The scheduled hearing will come a day after the Senate Banking Committee discusses Libra. Whilst witnesses have yet to be confirmed, it is widely expected that Libra co-lead David Marcus will testify in at least one of the hearings, according to The Hill.
Coin Metrics Reports on Kin Blockchain
Coin Metrics released a report dedicated to the level and type of activity transpiring on the Kin (KIN) blockchain. Titled ‘An Analysis of Kin’s On-Chain Activity’, Coin Metrics’s publication addresses two claims made to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) by Kik about the level of activity on, and the use of, its blockchain.
In regard to blockchain activity, Coin Metrics concludes that “it depends how you define [it]. Kin could be considered one of the most active blockchains if measured by payments count, but could be considered one of the least active if measured by transfer value.”
As for how Kin’s blockchain is used, Coin Metrics investigates Kik’s claim (i.e., “over 300,000 people earned and spent Kin as a currency” in June) in terms of “active addresses.” Here, the startup found that “although Kin has a relatively high number of active addresses, it has a relatively low amount of addresses with a significant account balance.”
1/ As part of their response to the SEC, Kik made several claims about the usage of the $KIN blockchain compared to other chains. We investigated $KIN's on-chain activity. Do Kik’s claims hold up?
Thread below & check out our report at: https://t.co/Y4bLZjho7n
— CoinMetrics.io (@coinmetrics) June 24, 2019
Top Bitcoin Analyst Studies Price Effect of Block Reward Halving
Vijay Boyapati, a respected bitcoin (BTC) analyst among the crypto community, put together a ten-part Twitter thread to explore the potential effects that next year’s Bitcoin block reward halving may have on the price of the top cryptocurrency.
Concluding that “the Bitcoin halving is a key fundamental driver of Bitcoin’s monetization,” Boyapati – a former software engineer at Google – explained that BTC often begins to trend upward roughly twelve months out from a halving event. This, he surmises, may be the reason for the BTC’s recent surge, given it is just under a year until the next halving.
