Unraveling Blockchain Drama Amidst Bitcoin ETF Chaos

• A Positive Start to the Year for Crypto Markets
• Spotlight on Fox Corp's Verify Tool and Cryptocurrency
• Github Rejection!
• Network news highlights
• Protocol Village: Blockchain developments
• Fundraising developments
• Data and Tokens: Latest updates
• Upcoming events

A Positive Start to the Year for Crypto Markets

As the new year kicks off, the mood within the crypto markets has taken a decidedly bullish turn. This is largely due to speculation that U.S. regulators may finally approve a spot Bitcoin$42,260 -0.64% ETF after years of denials. Should this occur, it's estimated that around $100 billion of capital could potentially flow into these products.

Sceptics wonder just how many of these potential investors truly grasp the complexities of how Bitcoin functions, not just in terms of its technical aspects but also its governance. In a recent edition of Network News, we explore a proposal by a prominent Bitcoin developer which could have greatly reduced a significant source of recent traffic on the blockchain. However, this effort was ultimately stopped in its tracks by a maintainer of the open-source Bitcoin Core software project.

Spotlight on Fox Corp's Verify Tool and Cryptocurrency

In our featured article of the week, we examine the new Verify tool from Fox Corp. (parent of Fox News) and Polygon$0.967 -3.65%, the Ethereum$2,315 -2.42% scaling project. This tool purportedly aids in the detection of deepfakes.

Github Rejection!

While the world was entranced by speculation surrounding the potential approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF by U.S. regulators, another debate was raging on the open-source developer platform, GitHub. This debate concerned the future of the Bitcoin blockchain and whether data-oriented applications such as Ordinals inscriptions - often labelled as NFTs on Bitcoin - should be permitted on a network that purists argue should be conserved mainly as a settlement layer for peer-to-peer payments.

Network news highlights

This week saw a fake Bitcoin ETF approval post on SEC's Twitter account due to unauthorized access, Grayscale stood firm on their GBTC bitcoin trust fees amidst an ETF price war, and infamous ‘Bitcoin Rodney' was arrested on charges of fraud.

Protocol Village: Blockchain developments

The first week of the year has seen several major developments and improvements in blockchain technology, including launches from Metis$91.2 24.48%, Parallel$1.09 0.15% Network, AQUA by JAN3, C3.io, and Libre.

Fundraising developments

Various notable funding efforts have taken place recently, including a substantial $20 million capital injection into Tune.FM, a Web3 music platform, from the alternative investment group LDA Capital. In addition, Bracket Labs recently raised $2 million in a pre-seed round led by Binance Labs and NGC Ventures.

Data and Tokens: Latest updates

Among the key highlights this week, Solana$104 5.03% Meme Coins experienced an 80% price drop following December's frenzy, and Bitcoin took the lead over Ethereum in NFT sales volume with $881 million in December, according to recent data from Messari.

Upcoming events

A number of key events are set to occur in the crypto world within the coming months, including the Crypto Finance Conference in St. Moritz, Stellar's upgrade for Soroban smart contracts, and the next expected Bitcoin halving in April 2024.

Edited by Jonathan Stoker