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The Bank of Thailand (BoT) will begin piloting its retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) in the second quarter of 2022, according to a published report.

• Thailand’s central bank assistant governor announced Friday it is open to accepting public feedback on its retail CBDCs by 15 June this year.
• BoT said the main objective of the currency is to provide citizens with access to more convenient and secure financial services.
• The bank is planning to fully implement the currency over the next 3-5 years, according to a Reuters report.
• The CBDCs will be aimed at providing access to convenient and secure financial services and, “it will not affect the Thai financial system,” Vachira Arromdee, the assistant governor of the financial markets operations group, Bank of Thailand, said at a briefing, according to Reuters.
• In March, BoT said it will issue regulations on asset-backed stablecoins later this year after warning against the illegal use of a baht-denominated stablecoin that was created outside the country.

Read more: Thai SEC Backtracks on Unpopular Proposal for New Crypto Investor Qualifications

• Former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton Warns of New Bitcoin Regulations
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• Bitcoin Decoupled From Stocks in Q1 as Institutional Demand Strengthened: CoinDesk Research
• U.S. Added More Than 900K Jobs In March, Blowing Past Estimates

The U.S. added 916,000 jobs in March, far above the expectations for 675,000. The unemployment rate edged down to 6% from 6.2% 

The gains were led by leisure and hospitality, public and private education, and construction. 

The pandemic-hit leisure and hospitality sector added a whopping 280,000 jobs.

Related: Former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton Warns of New Bitcoin Regulations

With increased vaccination rates, macroeconomic uncertainty for the U.S. labor market is decreasing. While institutions have been providing the largest inflows to high yield assets like bitcoin recently, the decrease in uncertainty could bode well for retail investors in digital assets. 

While many investors treat bitcoin as a hedge against inflation and in some cases a hedge against macroeconomic uncertainty, a recent survey of European households by an economics professor at the University of Texas, Olivier Coibion, and four other economists showed that households reduced their share of assets allocated to crypto by 0.5 percentage points during times of elevated macroeconomic uncertainty. 

One notable difference between economic recovery in a pandemic-induced recession and recovery in previous recessions is the large fraction of unemployment caused by temporary layoffs, said Robert Hall, an economics professor at Stanford University. 

“In the previous recessions, the unemployed on temporary layoffs were a tiny fraction of all the unemployed,” Hall said. “The distinction is important because the unemployed on temporary layoffs typically have a much higher rate of returning to employment than the other unemployed.”

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• Thai Central Bank to Pilot Its Retail Central Bank Digital Currency in 2022: Report

The U.S. added 916,000 jobs in March, far above the expectations for 675,000. The unemployment rate edged down to 6% from 6.2% 

The gains were led by leisure and hospitality, public and private education, and construction. 

The pandemic-hit leisure and hospitality sector added a whopping 280,000 jobs.

Related: Former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton Warns of New Bitcoin Regulations

With increased vaccination rates, macroeconomic uncertainty for the U.S. labor market is decreasing. While institutions have been providing the largest inflows to high yield assets like bitcoin recently, the decrease in uncertainty could bode well for retail investors in digital assets. 

While many investors treat bitcoin as a hedge against inflation and in some cases a hedge against macroeconomic uncertainty, a recent survey of European households by an economics professor at the University of Texas, Olivier Coibion, and four other economists showed that households reduced their share of assets allocated to crypto by 0.5 percentage points during times of elevated macroeconomic uncertainty. 

One notable difference between economic recovery in a pandemic induced recession and recovery in previous recessions is the large fraction of unemployment caused by temporary layoffs, said Robert Hall, an economics professor at Stanford University. 

“In the previous recessions, the unemployed on temporary layoffs were a tiny fraction of all the unemployed,” Hall said. “The distinction is important because the unemployed on temporary layoffs typically have a much higher rate of returning to employment than the other unemployed.”

• FinCEN Names Former Chainalysis Executive Acting Director as Blanco Resigns
• Bitcoin Decoupled From Stocks in Q1 as Institutional Demand Strengthened: CoinDesk Research
• Thai Central Bank to Pilot Its Retail Central Bank Digital Currency in 2022: Report

Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) could potentially facilitate powerful, directed “money drops” and raise inflation expectations, according to a March 31 report by Bank of America.

“CBDCs could boost the future transmission of monetary and fiscal stimulus,” the bank’s analysts wrote.

While the report doesn’t mention bitcoin (BTC), the analysis might show how countries’ adoption of CBDCs might indirectly create extra demand for the largest cryptocurrency as an investment hedge against inflation.

Related: Former SEC Chairman Jay Clayton Warns of New Bitcoin Regulations

The Bank of America report, titled “Digital Love: Central Bank Digital Currencies,” explained the benefits of CBDCs, including the potential to increase the speed of domestic and international payment systems, while lowering costs.

Those advantages could make it easier for governments and central banks to distribute stimulus money, according to the report.

• “CBDCs represent the next frontier for central bank stimulus, potentially acting as a potent conduit for policies such as stimulus checks, emergency lending programs, UBI (universal basic income), inducing a more powerful, directed ‘money drop.’ The evolution of central bank digital currencies is likely to increase inflation expectations, boosting the case for inflation assets in the 2020s.”
• “Disruption from cryptocurrencies is prodding central banks to secure their role as the dominant means for settlement of payments, and their ability to supervise banks and conduct monetary policy,” wrote Bank of America.
• Digital currencies issued by central banks could provide disadvantaged populations with greater access to financial services without bank intermediation, according to the report.
• “CBDCs could also speed the delivery of directed stimulus or helicopter drops. For example, many of the Fed’s recent pandemic credit programs were hampered by legal and logistical issues,” including the Main Street Lending Program, which has extended only $31 billion of its $600 billion authorization.
• “The existence of a CBDC would likely have allowed simpler designs and facilitated the targeted extension of credit. In cooperation with fiscal authorities, stimulus could be surgically tailored. In contrast to broad fiscal measures like the recent $1,400 stimulus checks issued by the U.S. Treasury, governments could credit smaller amounts to specific populations or industries to achieve their policy aims.”
• However, the report also lists potential drawbacks. Governments could obtain access to private individual spending data.
• There’s also a crowding-out effect: “CBDCs could compete with banks and money funds by providing another option to store value, curtailing cheap deposit funding for banks and reducing margins on money funds.”
• Bank of America expects the evolution of CBDCs to increase inflation expectations, boosting the case for inflation assets over the next few years.

Also read: Debate Rages on Whether a Digital Dollar Will Unleash Inflation

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BTIG began coverage of MicroStrategy, the business intelligence firm/bitcoin storehouse, with a “buy” rating Wednesday, saying the company’s adoption of the cryptocurrency as its primary treasury reserve asset represents a “rational action” to protect the firm’s value in the long run.

• BTIG, which also praised the company’s core business, said it views bitcoin as a form of digital gold and that buying Microstrategy (Nasdaq: MSTR) provides investors a way to gain exposure to it.
• MicroStrategy’s strategy lets it benefit from the rise of bitcoin driven by its adoption by institutional investors worried about inflation.
• BTIG said its valuation is partly based on an assumption that the price of bitcoin will rise to $95,000 by the end of 2022 and on the company’s shift from a product licence model to a cloud-first, SaaS subscription one.
• MicroStrategy has reported owning 91,326 bitcoin it bought for $2.21 billion, BTIG noted, with that stash worth now more than $5 billion. Given that MicroStrategy shares are just over half where they’d reached in early February, BTIG says the current price is an attractive entry point.
• BTIG said it has an $850 per share price target on MSTR’s shares. No time frame was provided.
• Shares of MicroStrategy closed Wednesday at $703.56, up $24.76 or 3.65%. On Feb. 8, they reached an all-time high of $1,315.

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• The MIT Bitcoin Expo: A Free Educational Event for Anyone Who Wants to Gain Some Crypto Tech Chops

JPMorgan issued a note Thursday that bitcoin could fetch a long-term price of $130,000 if its volatility continues to decline.

• According to JPMorgan, Bitcoin is becoming more appealing to institutions seeking low-correlation assets that diversify portfolios, Business Insider reported Thursday.
• The U.S. investment bank noted that high volatility “acts as a headwind towards further institutional adoption.”
• The signs that bitcoin’s volatility is diminishing could see it “crowding out gold” as a portfolio diversifier and suggests a long-term price target of $130,000, JPMorgan’s note said.
• This target is based on the notion that bitcoin’s volatility will meet gold’s, which for the time being is still some way off. Bitcoin’s realized volatility in the last three months stood at 86% compared to 16% for gold.
• A separate JPMorgan report issued to ultra-high-net-worth clients in March played down the comparison between bitcoin and gold, arguing that the crypto’s “volatility characteristics and correlation profile refute the comparison to the traditional safe haven asset.”

See also: Veteran Analyst Peter Brandt Expects Bitcoin to Reach $200K

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• The MIT Bitcoin Expo: A Free Educational Event for Anyone Who Wants to Gain Some Crypto Tech Chops

Ether jumped 5% Friday to a new all-time high as the second-biggest cryptocurrency extended its winning streak to five days.

• The cryptocurrency traded as high as $2,097 around 20:41 UTC, according to CoinDesk 20 data, surpassing the previous high of .
• The price has rallied 24% this week in the wake of Visa’s decision to facilitate crypto-based settlements on the Ethereum blockchain network.
• Ether, the native cryptocurrency for Ethereum, has nearly tripled in price this year.
• In an announcement on Monday, the payments giant said it is working on a program to settle transactions in stablecoin USD Coin (USDC) over Ethereum with its partner Crypto.com.
• Billionaire investor Mark Cuban, who hosts the CNBC show “Shark Tank” and owns the Dallas Mavericks professional basketball team, said on a recent podcast episode that he’s bullish on cryptocurrencies including bitcoin, but that Ethereum is “the closest we have to a true currency.”

• Ether’s daily chart shows a symmetrical triangle breakout. The pattern indicates that the multi-week consolidation has ended, and the broader uptrend has resumed.
• The options market is making big bets on the second-largest cryptocurrency, as seen below.

• According to data tweeted by options analytics platform Genesis Volatility, traders are aggressively buying the $25,000 call option expiring on Dec. 31, 2021, listed on Deribit, the world’s largest crypto options exchange by trading volumes and open interest.
• Seasonality favors a more substantial rally in ether than bitcoin over the near term.
• “Ether has outperformed bitcoin in every May till date,” Timothy Peterson, an analyst at Cane Island Alternative Advisors, told CoinDesk in a Twitter chat.

Also read: This Ether Options Play by Institutions Has Lottery Ticket Potential

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Ether jumped 5% Friday to a new all-time high as the second-biggest cryptocurrency extended its winning streak to five days.

• The cryptocurrency traded as high as $2,074.46 around 15:00 UTC, according to CoinDesk 20 data, surpassing the previous high of .
• The price has rallied 18% this week in the wake of Visa’s decision to facilitate crypto-based settlements on the Ethereum blockchain network.
• Ether, the native cryptocurrency for Ethereum, has nearly tripled in price this year.
• In an announcement on Monday, the payments giant said it is working on a program to settle transactions in stablecoin USD Coin (USDC) over Ethereum with its partner Crypto.com.
• Billionaire investor Mark Cuban, who hosts the CNBC show “Shark Tank” and owns the Dallas Mavericks professional basketball team, said on a recent podcast episode that he’s bullish on cryptocurrencies including bitcoin, but that Ethereum is “the closest we have to a true currency.”

• Ether’s daily chart shows a symmetrical triangle breakout. The pattern indicates that the multi-week consolidation has ended, and the broader uptrend has resumed.
• The options market is making big bets on the second-largest cryptocurrency, as seen below.

• According to data tweeted by options analytics platform Genesis Volatility, traders are aggressively buying the $25,000 call option expiring on Dec. 31, 2021, listed on Deribit, the world’s largest crypto options exchange by trading volumes and open interest.
• Seasonality favors a more substantial rally in ether than bitcoin over the near term.
• “Ether has outperformed bitcoin in every May till date,” Timothy Peterson, an analyst at Cane Island Alternative Advisors, told CoinDesk in a Twitter chat.

Also read: This Ether Options Play by Institutions Has Lottery Ticket Potential

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Ether jumped above the $2,000 mark on Friday, extending a four-day winning run.

• The cryptocurrency traded at $2,004 at 07:30 UTC, the level last seen on Feb. 20, gaining 4% over the previous 24 hours, according to CoinDesk 20 data.
• The prices has rallied 18% this week in the wake of Visa’s decision to facilitate crypto-based settlements on its network.
• In an announcement on Monday, the payments giant said it is working on a program to settle transactions in stablecoin USD Coin (USDC) over Ethereum with its partner Crypto.com.

• Ether’s daily chart shows a symmetrical triangle breakout. The pattern indicates that the multi-week consolidation has ended, and the broader uptrend has resumed.
• The immediate resistance is seen at $2,036.55 – the record high reached on Feb. 21.
• The options market is making big bets on the second-largest cryptocurrency, as seen below.

• According to data tweeted by options analytics platform Genesis Volatility, traders are aggressively buying the $25,000 call option expiring on Dec. 31, 2021, listed on Deribit, the world’s largest crypto options exchange by trading volumes and open interest.
• Seasonality favors a more substantial rally in ether than bitcoin over the near term.
• “Ether has outperformed bitcoin in every May till date,” Timothy Peterson, an analyst at Cane Island Alternative Advisors, told CoinDesk in a Twitter chat.

Also read: This Ether Options Play by Institutions Has Lottery Ticket Potential

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• The MIT Bitcoin Expo: A Free Educational Event for Anyone Who Wants to Gain Some Crypto Tech Chops
• The MIT Bitcoin Expo: A Free Educational Event for Anyone Who Wants to Gain Some Crypto Tech Chops

Bitcoin’s mining difficulty hit an all-time high today after a roughly 6% increase, a move that follows a record month in earnings for Bitcoin miners as new-generation ASICs come online.

“Difficulty” refers to the relative measure of the amount of resources required to mine bitcoin. This measurement climbs or falls depending on the amount of power consumed (or “hashrate” produced) by the network at a given time. Bitcoin is programmed to adjust its difficulty level every 2,016 blocks, or roughly every 2 weeks to ensure that new blocks are mined at a stable rate.

This difficulty is measured on a relative scoring scale where Bitcoin launched with a mining difficulty of “1,” the lowest it’s ever been. (Difficulty kind of works like Google Search scores in that the scoring system is internal and has no reference point or unit for measurement outside of the networks themselves).

Related: The MIT Bitcoin Expo: A Free Educational Event for Anyone Who Wants to Gain Some Crypto Tech Chops

As of today’s adjustment, Bitcoin’s current mining difficulty is 23.1 trillion, according to data pulled from this CoinDesk journalist’s Bitcoin node. Per figures from BTC.com, this is a roughly 6% increase from its last level of 21.8 trillion, which makes it the second largest adjustment of the year and the fifth upward adjustment in the last six difficulty periods.

The difficulty adjustment is arguably one of Bitcoin’s most important features as it ensures block times remain relatively stable while also preventing a large miner from eating up too much hashrate.

This latest adjustment is a notable bump, Compass mining CEO Whit Gibbs told CoinDesk, because it’s likely attributable to tens of thousands of new machines coming online that were previously on backorder in the ASIC supply chain.

He said the current adjustment is just a sampler of the flood of hashrate that will come online in 2022 as more back-ordered shipments are filled.

Related: The Bitcoin Community is Your Community. How the MIT Bitcoin Club Participates and You Can Too

“Today’s moderately large difficulty increase is not surprising, and I expect it’s only a taste of what will come later in this year and into 2022, as delayed machine shipments start arriving and being deployed. The pending flood of hashrate about to enter the market will only continue pushing bitcoin’s mining difficulty higher, which should track with bitcoin’s price,” Gibbs said.

As bitcoin’s price has gone stratospheric, mining investments are shooting the moon along with it. North American miners like Hut 8, Marathon, Blockcap and others have used 2021 as an opportunity to aggressively expand operational capacity. As these machines come online, Bitcoin’s hashrate and difficulty are rising in step with miner revenues, which hit a record $1.5 billion in the month of March.

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The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) can move forward with its efforts to unmask high-value customers at Circle Internet Financial, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

The judge authorized a request from the IRS to issue a “John Doe Summons” on all Circle and Poloniex customers who transacted $20,000 or more in crypto between 2016 and 2020. Such summons are a tactic the IRS uses to demand information on people it can not identify by name. (Circle spun out Poloniex in 2019 after buying the exchange for $400 million in 2018.)

The IRS told the court it needs the documents to ensure crypto users are paying their taxes. It believes many have not, and will now issue summons on the records to prove it. The IRS said this does not necessarily mean Circle has broken the law.

Related: Retail Gains Amid Institutional Influx in Q1: CoinDesk Quarterly Review

It does represent a continuation of the U.S. tax collector taking crypto investments more seriously for tax year 2020.

“Tools like the John Doe summons authorized today send the clear message to U.S. taxpayers that the IRS is working to ensure that they are fully compliant in their use of virtual currency,” IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig said in the press statement, adding:

“The John Doe summons is a step to enable the IRS to uncover those who are failing to properly report their virtual currency transactions. We will enforce the law where we find systemic noncompliance or fraud.”

The agency has previously used John Doe summons to go after Coinbase, which fought the order for more than a year before ultimately complying, divulging nearly 14,000 customer records.

Related: CoinDesk Quarterly Review 2021 Q1

Requests for comment sent to Circle were not returned by press time.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

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• Bitcoin (BTC) trading around $58,916.75 as of 20:00 UTC (4 p.m. ET). Slipping 0.02% over the previous 24 hours.
• Bitcoin’s 24-hour range: $57,973.35-$59,458.98(CoinDesk 20)
• BTC trades between its 10-hour and 50-hour averages on the hourly chart, a sideways signal for market technicians.

Bitcoin retreated after failing for a second day to break through price resistance at $60,000, a key psychological level that has also proven a formidable stopping point during this year’s powerful rally.

A major missing ingredient from the market recently? Spot trading volume.

Thursday’s volume has trended lower since bitcoin broke a record high on March 13, according to data from eight leading crypto exchanges tracked by CoinDesk.

Related: Retail Gains Amid Institutional Influx in Q1: CoinDesk Quarterly Review

“We still see the highest volume when the market sells off, which is a concern,” Arcane Research wrote in its weekly newsletter on March 30.

But to bitcoin bulls, the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization is likely to test a new all-time high very soon.

“Bitcoin is poised to retest the $60,000 level again,” said Jason Lau, chief operating officer at San Francisco-based crypto exchange OKCoin. “The reason for this recent rally is that bitcoin and crypto have gone mainstream.”

Despite the effete price action over the past few weeks, there’s been little slowdown in news and developments related to mainstream adoption of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies: BlackRock disclosed it has been trading bitcoin futures, PayPal said it will enable crypto payments, Goldman Sachs is getting close to offering bitcoin to its wealth management clients, and burrito chain Chipotle is doing a bitcoin giveaway.

Related: CoinDesk Quarterly Review 2021 Q1

“The normalization of crypto in daily chatter and usage is increasingly obvious,” Lau said.

Read More: Bitcoin Newbies Are HODLing as Prices Rise, Blockchain Data Suggests

• Ether (ETH) trading around $1,974.18 as of 20:00 UTC (4 p.m. ET). Climbing 3.55% over the previous 24 hours.
• Ether’s 24-hour range: $1,888.64-$1,983.45 (CoinDesk 20)
• Ether trades above its 10-hour and 50-hour averages on the hourly chart, a bullish signal for market technicians.

Ether has outperformed bitcoin in the past 24 hours, which could be “a signal of crypto asset rotation,” according to OKCoin’s Lau.

Alternative cryptocurrencies mostly outperformed during the first quarter, based on CoinDesk 20 data. While bitcoin logged an extraordinary 102% return, that level of performance was only good enough for 14th place in the CoinDesk quarterly ranking.

Cardano (ADA) was the top performer in terms of percentage gains, with a staggering 560% return.

The token is now the No. 5 cryptocurrency by market capitalization, behind only bitcoin, ether, Binance’s BNB token and the stablecoin tether, per Messari data.

ADA, which is the native token for the smart-contract blockchain Cardano, tripled in February alone as traders bet on the success of “Ethererum Killers.”

In March, Cardano received a price boost thanks to the so-called Coinbase effect. The U.S. cryptocurrency exchange giant listed ADA on both its institutional platform Coinbase Pro and more retail-centered Coinbase exchange in March, sending the price higher.

Read More: Cardano Becomes a Multi-Asset Blockchain With Today’s Hard Fork

Other digital assets on the CoinDesk 20 are mostly in the green Thursday. Notable winners as of 20:00 UTC (4:00 p.m. ET):

• eos (EOS) + 22.94%
• tezos (XTZ) + 14.3%
• chainlink (LINK) + 8.58%
• kyber network (KNC) + 8.05%

One notable loser:

• omg network (OMG) – 4.63%

Equities:

• Asia’s Nikkei 225 closed in the green 0.72%.
• The FTSE 100 in Europe was up by 0.35%.
• The S&P 500 in the United States closed 1.18% higher.

Commodities:

• Oil was up 3.50%. Price per barrel of West Texas Intermediate crude: $61.23.
• Gold was in the green 1.24% and at $1728.48 as of press time.

Treasurys:

• The 10-year U.S. Treasury bond yield fell Thursday in the red 1.687%.

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Coinbase will begin the public trading of its stock on April 14, it said Thursday.

The crypto exchange will also hold a first-quarter earnings call on April 6, providing a financial outlook for 2021, Coinbase said in a press release.

There’s been much anticipation about the Nasdaq listing. Prices for the shares are predicted to fall between $300 and $350, valuing the trading platform at about $100 billion. The listing would put Coinbase atop an emerging class of publicly traded firms dealing in bitcoin. Further, a $100 billion debut would make Coinbase more valuable than traditional tech stocks such as Uber.

Related: Retail Gains Amid Institutional Influx in Q1: CoinDesk Quarterly Review

Based on the average price of $343.58 of shares traded on Nasdaq’s private market last month, CNBC calculated Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong’s 39.6 million shares will be worth $13.6 billion, catapulting him into the “decabillionaire” rankings alongside the likes of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Bill Gates.

The price of bitcoin increasing tenfold over the course of the last year has caught the market by surprise, with banks and institutions now scrambling to get a piece of the action. 

Investors in Coinbase’s early fundraisings, a close-knit group of Silicon Valley investment firms and early crypto believers, have increased their investments by 100-fold in some cases. The windfall could spread much further, however: The endowment fund of Duke University will be a beneficiary of Coinbase’s public listing, CoinDesk reported last week.

Armstrong was paid a salary of $1 million last year, though his total compensation topped $59 million with all his option awards, CNBC also reported.

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Canadian digital asset manager 3iQ Corp announced Thursday it has inked an agreement with investment firm CoinShares to launch a new bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF). 

In an announcement, 3iQ Corp said CoinShares has partnered with the firm to launch the 3iQ CoinShares Bitcoin ETF. Trading under the ticker BTCQ, the vehicle for investing in bitcoin without holding the digital asset itself will be listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) in early April, pending regulatory approval.  

Canada has taken the lead in North America in approving three bitcoin ETFs for crypto-curious investors. The Securities and Exchange Commission has been reticent to give the green light to a similar vehicle in the U.S., having shot down dozens of proposals in recent years. Last month, Brazil got into the act with the approval of its first bitcoin ETF.

Related: Retail Gains Amid Institutional Influx in Q1: CoinDesk Quarterly Review

3iQ has more than C$2 billion (US$1.59 billion) in assets under management and listed a bitcoin fund on the TSX in April last year. The 3iQ CoinShares Bitcoin ETF will have a 1% annual management fee.

In March, CoinShares began trading on the Nasdaq First North Growth Market, an alternative stock exchange for small and medium-sized growth companies in Europe, trading under the ticker CS.

Canada is ahead of the U.S. market with a number of bitcoin ETFs already listed on the TSX. In February, Evolve Funds Group and Purpose Investment both listed bitcoin ETFs on the exchange. 

CI Global Asset Management received regulatory approval earlier this month for its final prospectus for the “CI Galaxy Bitcoin ETF” – which is now listed on the TSX under the ticker BTCX.

Related: CoinDesk Quarterly Review 2021 Q1

“We have followed 3iQ’s incredible growth closely since they received a landmark decision in Canada to allow listed bitcoin vehicles,” CoinShares CEO Jean-Marie Mognetti said of the tie-up.

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Decentraland, the decentralized virtual world, has added usability with Ethereum layer 2 project Polygon to address gas fees that are currently plaguing Ethereum’s blockchain, according to a blog post Thursday. 

The move comes a day after decentralized finance (DeFi) firm Aave also said it was exploring scalable sidechains with Polygon. The Ethereum ecosystem continues to look for methods to avoid the congested network, where fees can sometimes be higher than the transactions themselves. 

“As of today, the Decentraland dapps suite now features an account portal where you can move your [Decentraland token] MANA from the Ethereum blockchain to Polygon’s Matic Network (and back),” the post states. 

Related: Retail Gains Amid Institutional Influx in Q1: CoinDesk Quarterly Review

The idea behind a layer 2 solution is that users can transfer their tokens to a sidechain link to the Ethereum blockchain, where they can transact more quickly and with much lower fees than on Ethereum itself. 

“Ethereum’s popularity and usage is increasing at an incredible rate, but this added demand on the network means users are forced to pay higher and higher gas fees in order to make sure their transactions are successful,” said Samuel Hamilton, Community and Events lead at Decentraland, in an email. “This is unsustainable for any dapp that makes use of thousands of microtransactions.”

Hamilton said users cannot be expected to pay tens of dollars (or more) for common, everyday actions, so dapp providers are looking for ways to scale their services. While this isn’t a new problem, he said, scalability solutions like Polygon’s are now able to provide the speed, affordability and usability (both for developers and end-users) to make a real difference.

The account portal is part of a more holistic effort to integrate all Decentraland dapps with Polygon. with the goal of letting users claim, buy, sell and trade wearables for their avatars entirely on Polygon without transaction fees. 

Related: CoinDesk Quarterly Review 2021 Q1

“While today’s release adds the ability to transfer assets in Decentraland from Etherum to Polygon, we won’t see the full effects until Decentraland’s Builder and Marketplace have been updated to support transactions on Polygon, which we can expect to see this coming May,” continues the post. 

“At that point, the wearables marketplace will be open to all creators with new wearables being minted on Polygon’s Matic network.”

Hamilton said the use of sophisticated L2 solutions like those provided by Polygon are a key component of providing applications with a true use-value, and their adoption is a trend we will see continue.

“Games and virtual worlds especially benefit from the higher throughput of sidechains,” he said. “Yes, the Ethereum developer community is taking steps toward more sustainable and manageable gas fees, and yes, we are on the way toward PoS, but [layer 2] solutions still have a role to play.”

The post contains further details about how to use the portal. 

(Note: Digital Currency Group, parent of CoinDesk, is an investor in Decentraland.)

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Mainstream finance professionals are making the move into crypto in growing numbers, from middle-size asset managers to the high ranks of the Financial Action Task Force. A Russian bank executive is the latest to make the leap.

Konstantin Shulga, former head of brokerage at Russia’s largest bank, Sber (formerly Sberbank), joined crypto over-the-counter (OTC) service Finery Markets in late March as its new chief executive. The firm is building an institutional peer-to-peer trading marketplace, Shulga told CoinDesk in an interview. 

He went full crypto after more than a decade in institutional finance in Russia, including at a branch of UniCredit, the Moscow Exchange and Sber, which is the leading retail bank in Russia and is half-owned by the country’s central bank. 

Related: Retail Gains Amid Institutional Influx in Q1: CoinDesk Quarterly Review

Sber itself is actively exploring the blockchain space and recently announced launching a digital settlement token for corporate clients, but Shulga wouldn’t say if those efforts sparked his curiosity for crypto.

He first bought bitcoin during the bull run of 2017 but sold it at around $18,000, he said, with no second thoughts afterward. 

“I don’t really have time for gambling, so I don’t regret [selling],” Shulga said.

He joined Finery at the invitation of his former coworker at the asset manager ATON, Finery co-founder Ilia Drozdov. Finery’s small team, according to LinkedIn, now employs a handful of former ATON and Moscow Exchange employees. 

Related: CoinDesk Quarterly Review 2021 Q1

Finery Markets is a Cyprus-based startup that aims to be something like LocalBitcoins for institutional investors. Except it’s not just bitcoin – Finery is offering funds and asset managers trading pairs between a number of cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies including U.S. dollars, euros, pound sterling, Canadian dollars and Japanese yen, Shulga said. 

He said that since its launch in April 2020, Finery has brought on 30 clients so far, including asset managers, high-frequency trading firms, crypto exchanges and crypto-related services, mostly in Europe. 

Using Finery, the firms’ trading volume in March reached $200 million, Shulga said. Growth has been steady: in January, volume was only $100 million, Shulga said.

Finery’s main competitors are centralized exchanges and OTC desks, Shulga said, which are also catering to institutional investors. However, “we want to convert them into our allies,” he added, explaining that integrating with Finery would provide them with more liquidity options. 

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Bitcoin miners collected $1.5 billion in revenue in March, a monthly record for the 12-year-old blockchain network, as the price of bitcoin (BTC) broke above $50,000.

• “Few had anticipated the scale of this bull run in September 2020. Back then, the monthly miner revenue sat at $329 million. Since then, the revenues have increased by 373%,” according to a new report by Arcane Research, a Norwegian analysis firm.
• Miners are awarded bitcoin whenever they add a new block of transactions to the blockchain, which they can later sell on the market to fund operating costs or simply just to cash out. Transaction fees are another source of revenue.
• “The recent mining revenue spike is rewarding miners who already had a well-established setup before the bitcoin bull run, or great foresight in Q3 2020.”
• New mining equipment is estimated to be delivered around November 2021 and January 2022, which could contribute to greater computational power (hashrate) used to mine and process transactions, according to Arcane.
• Publicly listed mining stocks have largely tracked the price of bitcoin in March. RIOT Blockchain, a bitcoin mining company (NASDAQ: RIOT), is up about 23% versus BTC’s rise of 26% for the month to date at the time of writing.

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Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has signed a sponsorship deal with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS: GO) esports tournament organizer BLAST Premier. 

Headquartered in Denmark, BLAST Premier’s CS: GO professional esports league launched in 2020. It is primarily based in two regions: North America and Europe. The series is split up into two seasons, the Spring and Fall seasons.

In an announcement, BLAST Premier said the partnership means the Coinbase branding will feature across the Spring Showdown from April 13-18 and the finals from June 15-20.

Related: ‘There’s a Sense of Vindication’: A NFT Pioneer Looks to the Future

Last year, BLAST Premier was live streamed around the world in 105 territories to over 151 million households, according to the esports media network.

Coinbase’s sponsorship of the CS: GO events is yet another sign of the recently increasing integration of the cryptocurrency industry into the mainstream sports – and now esports – worlds alike. 

In March, Crypto.com secured a partnership with the National Hockey League’s Montreal Canadiens to have its logo brandished on the ice at its home arena, the Bell Centre.

Earlier this week, crypto exchange FTX secured the naming rights to the arena that houses the Miami Heat, the city’s professional basketball team. 

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“Esports and cryptocurrency both share a strong relationship with technology and innovation. BLAST Premier is enjoyed on a global scale with an audience that is known to be tech savvy,” said Oliver Clarke, head of brand partnerships for BLAST.

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A new atomic-swap powered wallet, Liquality, just released a feature for users to spend bitcoin and other coins at online crypto merchants without having to manage addresses or QR codes.

Liquality is a browser extension wallet like Metamask, except instead of supporting only ether and its tokens, Liquality can hold bitcoin, ether, crypto dollars like DAI, USDT, USDC and UNI, and now “bitcoin DeFi” tokens from the RSK network. 

The ConsenSys-backed wallet launched last autumn and allows users to swap coins in their wallet, thanks to an old trick known as “on-chain atomic swaps.” These swaps use complex cryptography to trade assets from different blockchains between two or more parties without a user having to relinquish their keys to a counterparty.

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For Liquality, this means its users can trade between bitcoin and ether (or crypto dollars like USDC) right on the wallet.

“Our goal has always been to give people secure and easy tools to interact with this new digital economy,” the wallets founder, Alex Min, told CoinDesk.

With this update, the wallet now also provides “one-click” transactions with popular bitcoin-accepting gift-card vendor Bitrefill and payment portal OpenNode, among others. When checking out using these services, the wallet automatically fetches the receiving address for the user.

The one-click pay feature works with any wallet that has integrated URI schemes for bitcoin, Min told CoinDesk. This includes popular open-source processor BTCPay Server, as well.

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“We believe this upcoming release will not only improve the in-browser bitcoin experience for users, merchants and app developers (most of whom are still transacting on-chain), but also help the nascent Bitcoin web app ecosystem grow with an easy-to-use-and-develop-with, in-browser hot wallet,” Min said.

Liquality currently acts as the counterparty for the wallet’s swaps. Min told CoinDesk the wallet processed $4 million in swap volume in March from 4,000 active weekly users. 

When asked if Liquality will look to adding Lightning Network support in the future, Min said it’s not high up on the wallet’s roadmap.

In lieu of Lightning, Liquality recently integrated with RSK, a Bitcoin sidechain built by IOV Labs, and supports the dollar on chain (DOC) crypto dollar from Sovryn, a decentralized lending market built on RSK.

These networks offer cheaper, faster transactions than Bitcoin’s primary network using special trade-offs and tricks; Lightning is a tech stack built on top of bitcoin that is trustless and non custodial, while RSK is an independent network run by a federation of trusted counterparties.

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