With inflation at an all-time high in the United States, it is no surprise that investors are actively searching for an investment vehicle that would help them to properly hedge against this rising tide. Bloomberg, in one of its recent articles, has revealed that the choice investment asset for many of these investors is the leading digital asset, Bitcoin.

US Dollar inflates as Bitcoin’s value deflates

Bloomberg Opinion’s John Authers who carried out research comparing US prices against Bitcoin made an interesting discovery. According to him while the value of Bitcoin has been deflationary in nature, the consumer price index (CPI) in the country has been inflationary. Per the data, BTCs value has deflated by over 99.996% within the last decade whereas the CPI has risen by nearly 30% within the same period.

Over the last decade, the headline consumer price index has risen roughly 28%, and denominating that gauge in Bitcoin shows deflation of 99.996%. In other words, what cost one Bitcoin 10 years ago would now cost 0.004 satoshis, or a smaller unit of the cryptocurrency that now trades at around $65,000.

An interesting argument was made for Bitcoin during the previous week when the authorities released data on inflation in the country. Per the information, inflation rose by over 6% within the last year and it becomes more worrisome when the 1980’s measure for CPI is used, this metric places the inflation level to around 15%.

The rising inflation has led many new investors into investing in Bitcoin because they see it as a viable hedge against the continued rise of inflation.

Economists at Bloomberg corroborated this view as they said that the current rise of BTC to its new ATH was fueled by “inflation fears, with the other half coming from market exuberance and momentum trading.”

Notably, investors in the digital coin, before now, have severally labeled the asset as a viable edge against inflation.

MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor, for example, has revealed that the reason his company is investing in Bitcoin is because of the Federal Reserve’s relaxation of its policy on inflation. Another notable investor in the space, Paul Tudor Jones, once called Bitcoin a “store of wealth.”

Pollen DeFi, the decentralized protocol that facilitates ‘hivemind’ weighting of asset pools that back up market-tradable tokens, today revealed their upcoming ‘Incentivised Beta’ platform release and details on how the ‘DeFi 2.0’ protocol will enable its unique community-managed financial instrument.

The ‘Beta’ release, which goes live in December, will initially enable users to contribute to the continual balancing and rebalancing of a singular central asset pool that will back up a tradable asset token.

The protocol will be open to whitelisted users who can begin building community credibility (in the form of a ‘reputation’ score), compete for a position on the community leaderboard, and, in turn, will have a chance to earn mainnet Pollen ($PLN) governance tokens.

Inside Pollen DeFi

Pollen DeFi aims to push ‘DeFi’ into the ‘DeFi 2.0’ era by moving beyond institutional imitation and removing centralized “middlemen”; the platform instead empowers user-curated cryptocurrency asset pools that are constantly refined via a merit-based balancing of users’ portfolio suggestions.

Community members are rewarded for making good decisions and subsequently gain more influence over the dynamically-rebalancing portfolio. Alternatively, users who would prefer to turn to more qualified traders (based on proven reputation, scored by the platform) can delegate their voting power accordingly.

These ‘hivemind approved’ asset portfolios then back up ‘asset pool tokens’ listed as easily accessible financial instruments capable of outperforming market fluctuations.

Boosted earlier this year by strategic backers, The Graph and AlphaBit, Pollen DeFi is focused on building the ultimate ‘crypto meritocracy’; the salient, DAO-driven ‘DeFi 2.0’ experience leans on the fact that the leadership team merely creates and hones the core technology and UI, ensures platform security, and facilitates user governance and ease of accessibility, while the diversity of opportunities presented within the financial instrument itself result from decentralized, community-contributed portfolio suggestions.

Pollen DeFi is powered by two new tokenized assets built specifically with DeFi 2.0 in mind, the Pollen ($PLN) governance token and the native Portfolio Asset Index token ($PAI) which is backed by the total value locked (TVL) of the first and core asset pool on the platform.

Other crypto-communities, influencers, and even top-ranking Pollen DeFi users will be able to propose additional asset pools that will be continually re-balanced by user proposals and support new asset-backed tokens, similar to the $PAI token.

Pollen DeFi’s move from Alpha to Beta with a dramatically upgraded protocol design is supported by an already strong community of followers wishing to begin the process of actively contributing to the balancing of the asset pool.

Pollen DeFi’s open-source protocol and merit-based system empower the brightest minds in its community and incentivizes them to continually contribute. This means that the $PAI token is backed by a continually rebalanced and optimized asset pool that aims to out-smart market fluctuations with overall global community intelligence ideal for the 24/7 nature of the cryptocurrency market.

Pollen DeFi Project Lead and Co-Founder, Philip Verrien, explained in a statement:

“Our focus has been on rebuilding asset management from the ground up; reducing risk and volatility, while also maximizing yield and creating dynamic opportunity for anyone, regardless of their experience level; [Pollen DeFi] aims to be the embodiment of what we believe will be the next step in DeFi, and reflect the core principles of truly decentralized finance.”

How tokens $PAI and $PLN work

Pollen DeFi focuses on user participation and utility. It is designed to tackle governance and centralization issues commonplace in today’s DeFi ecosystem. Focusing heavily on developing community participation incentives, and processes that build toward true decentralization, us...

With the announcement of their roadmap to launch Pollen DeFi has revealed they have been building an advanced update of the platform. The project is ready to launch its countdown after closing a round of private funding, raising $5 million US with key strategic backers, including The Graph and AlphaBit. The team has identified market conditions and consumer sentiment toward decentralised finance that it believes are suited to the launch of a product designed to attract a broader audience to DeFi, and so has commenced its launch roadmap.

Community members now have the opportunity to manage a fully decentralised portfolio of assets. Pollen DeFi allows for the creation and distribution of dynamically managed index tokens (called ‘asset pool tokens’). Users can now crowdsource the construction of a new portfolio of assets, similar to a traditionally managed investment portfolio but without the middlemen. Allowing for increased user autonomy, Pollen DeFi enables users to build their reputation on the platform and receive rewards for taking more calculated risks.

Community driven asset indexes

Pollen DeFi is a merit-based DAO. It provides a reputation-based governance protocol with incentives that leverage the community’s collective wisdom. The community curates the portfolio that is represented by the asset pool tokens. In this system, all users of the platform stand to benefit from the contribution of the best-performing participants. The PAI (Portfolio Asset Index) token will be managed 24-7 by the DAO community and is designed to be a low volatility ‘DeFi Lego’ which can be used in other protocols in the decentralised finance ecosystem.

The Pollen (PLN) token is the governance token users will hold in their wallet in order to actively propose portfolio rebalancing and earn rewards for good performance if they are a trader, or to passively delegate their power to the best performers to passively earn rewards. All rewards are earned in PLN tokens.

Communities will be able to create and manage alternative asset pool tokens after Pollen DeFi launches. Well-known traders and investors, online communities or other groups will be able to launch their own asset pool token backed by a portfolio of assets that they manage collectively through the platform. Portfolios managed on the Pollen DeFi platform are governed and continually optimized by a community governed consensus layer. The platform allows users to decide how they wish to engage with digital assets.

Pollen DeFi Project Lead and Co-Founder, Philip Verrien explained:

“We identified the need for easily accessible, mature decentralized financial products with appeal to a broader audience. The next generation of DeFi. We have been building what we believe will be the central DeFi 2.0 product: the first truly decentralized asset management protocol, Pollen DeFi. It will challenge the way people approach their crypto portfolio and give them dynamic new options.”

Future Plans

Pollen DeFi is re-thinking asset management to offer 24-7 dynamic portfolio management by the most skilled in the community, reduce risk from individual trading and having 100% crypto exposure, and create a safe platform for managing digital assets leveraging the power of community intelligence.

As part of its roadmap, it will partner with a major launchpad and go live on the Ethereum and Polygon networks (other layer 2 solutions are being developed). It has a planned community product release for Q4 of this year with mainnet in Q1. ’ More information will follow later in October on the launchpad and how to join the community release.

The team has confirmed that the Alpha test release of the Pollen DeFi product will be removed from the site on Friday 15th October ahead of revealing a significant upgrade to the user experience of the platform.

More insights on Pollen DeFI here

According to the latest research, one of the industry’s largest DeFi protocols is facing an incentive crisis. In his report, Alex Kroeger, an Ethereum researcher, found that most Compound’s liquidity miners have little to no economic interest in the protocol and do not participate in the protocol’s governance.

The report analyzed the top 100 accounts by accrued COMP from liquidity mining in order to demonstrate that liquidity mining on Compound needs serious fixing.

Compound’s miners aren’t hodlers

One of the first protocols to introduce liquidity mining, Compound quickly grew to become a DeFi powerhouse. With over $12 billion in total value locked (TVL), it’s the fifth-largest DeFi protocol according to Dapp Radar.

But, paying out incentives to users to those that contribute liquidity to the protocol comes at a cost. Researcher Alex Kroeger argues that liquidity incentives dilute token supplies and rewards users that contribute nothing to a protocol’s governance.

Kroeger analyzed the top 100 accounts by accrued COMP from liquidity mining and found that they accrued a total of 808,825 COMP tokens, equivalent to around $270.9 million. These accounts represent 69% of all COMP mined, which means that they make up the majority of COMP holders.

However, very few of these accounts actually end up holding the tokens. According to the report, only 19% of the accounts have kept more than 1% of the COMP they claimed, dumping 99% of their liquidity incentives on the market. A tiny 7% of the accounts kept more than 50% of their liquidity incentives.

When it comes to participating in the protocol’s governance, the numbers paint a much bleaker picture—out of the top 100 addresses, only one ever voted on a protocol proposal.

“Liquidity mining programs merit more attention in DeFi governance more broadly–are they achieving their intended objectives? In the case of Compound, it seems clear that liquidity mining incentives are a poor way to turn users into stewards of the protocol.” the report concluded.

Nonetheless, there is a solution to Compound’s problem.

Kroeger proposes only incentivizing lending on the protocol to discourage liquidity miners from recursive borrowing and lending. Lenders tend to be more interested in passively earning yield and participating in good governance in the long run.

To better align incentives of these liquidity miners, he also proposes introducing a vesting schedule for accrued tokens—COMP tokens with a vesting schedule could then themselves be tokenized and these tokens could retain governance rights.

And finally, as an alternative to liquidity mining, the protocol could completely revamp its model to “governance mining.” Instead of distributing tokens to users that lock up capital in the protocol, Compound could distribute tokens based on contributions.

Regardless of what you think the goal of liquidity mining should be, I think the scale of the program means it merits more careful measurement and consideration of its costs of and benefits.

DeFiCorgi.eth (@alex_kroeger) November 15, 2021

On November 12th, the United States’ Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) has again rejected VanEck’s Bitcoin spot ETF application citing a number of reasons including the need to protect investors from the volatile nature of the flagship digital asset.

SEC rejects VanEck again

Crypto enthusiasts had hoped that the leading financial regulator was going to finally approve the listing of VanEck’s spot application after it had approved a number of Bitcoin futures ETF last month.

However, their morales were dampened as the SEC insisted that it would not be approving an ETF that provides direct exposure to BTC due to its volatile nature alongside the fact that it is unsure if the ETF would be able to prevent fraudulent trading and also protect investors.

“This order disapproves of the proposed rule change. The Commission concludes that BZX has not met its burden under the Exchange Act and the Commission’s Rules of Practice to demonstrate that its proposal is consistent with the requirements of Exchange Act Section 6(b)(5), in particular, the requirement that the rules of a national securities exchange be “designed to prevent fraudulent and manipulative acts and practices” and “to protect investors and the public interest,” the Friday notice reads.

Crypto community reacts to SEC recent rejection

With news of the SEC’s latest rejection greeting the airwaves, members of the crypto community were quick to register their displeasure with many of them questioning why the commission would be willing to accept a Bitcoin futures ETF while rejecting a Bitcoin spot ETF.

A Bitcoin futures ETF is different from a Bitcoin spot ETF in the sense that the latter provides direct investment exposure to the digital asset while the former allows investors to gain indirect exposure to the asset through buying stocks via brokerage accounts.

One of the responses to the SEC decision came from Blockchain Association who wrote that it was “disappointed” by the decision made by the Gary Gensler-led agency.

We are disappointed in today’s update from the SEC declining approval of our physical bitcoin ETF. We believe that investors should be able to gain #BTC exposure through a regulated fund and that a non-futures ETF structure is the superior approach. @tyler @gaborgurbacs

Jan van Eck (@JanvanEck3) November 12, 2021

Jan Van Eck, the CEO of the firm, also tweeted about his disappointment with the new decision. According to him, “investors should be able to gain #BTC exposure through a regulated fund and that a non-futures ETF structure is the superior approach.”

After rallying to new highs, the value of popular meme coin, Shiba Inu, has witnessed a significant drop, however, despite this huge loss, over 70% of investors in the digital asset are in profit according to data from Intotheblock.

SHIB holders are in profit

The Intotheblock data also shows that 17% of the holders are in loss. This is probably due to their late investment as they could be among investors who bought the dip following its crash from the all-time high. However, their investments have the potentials for higher gains when the token begins to rise again.

It continued that 78% of the total supply of the tokens are being held by whales. Some analysts have argued that these whales play a significant role in the price movement of the meme coin.

The increased popularity of SHIB resulted in profit for a host of the wallets holding the asset as it drew many new investors into the fray. It is also worth adding that Coinbase listing of the asset also helped to increase its popularity in recent weeks.

Equally, the high-profit potentials of the digital coin caused a surge in the number of holders (wallets) within the space of a month. Going by the data provided by ITB, SHIBA holder’s wallet addresses rose from 706,808 on October 10 to 926,684 on November 8, 2021.

An interesting aspect of this is the fact that the value of Shiba Inu grew by over 100% within this same period.

Shiba is a very volatile asset

Despite all of these positives, Shiba remains a very volatile asset. To put this in perspective, the value of the meme coin dropped by over 1% within the last 24 hours, 9% within the last 7 days and by over 40% from its ATH. Not only that, the asset has lost over $7 billion from its market cap.

Notably, this volatility was as a result of four huge transactions from investors who could be taking profits from their investment. Recently, about ten trillion SHIB tokens (worth $586 million) were transferred to different wallets.

This volatility may see a brief stop, and the price could equally surge if the token earns a listing from Robinhood, as there are currently over 500 thousand individuals who have signed a petition urging the platform to list the asset.

Have you found your tribe? Working alongside other entrepreneurs in a similar field can help to stimulate increased productivity and inspire new partnerships. Research conducted by the Harvard Business Review found that people who co-work demonstrate higher levels of thriving than their counterparts.

Why? Increased autonomy, well-designed work environments, and a well-curated work experience. A co-working space in London’s financial district Canary Wharf known as Level39 offers all three of these attributes.

While co-working spaces are plentiful around the world, Level39 has developed a strong reputation within the blockchain and overall fintech community. Its premier location, in the heart of London’s financial hub in Canary Wharf, gives it a luxurious edge and is the perfect showcase area for friends and clients alike.

In addition to the physical environment, it serves as a co-working community that genuinely cares about the growth of its members. As there is an application process to become a member of Level39, they have developed criteria for the companies that can benefit from the thoughtfully designed ecosystem they have created.

Level39 is a community of 1250 leaders in fintech. It is home to some of the world’s leading fintech organizations.

For people who want to be a leading player in the fintech ecosystem, Level39 offers the space and connections to join the future of finance. Membership benefits include top-class office space, meeting rooms, wifi, networking events, and one-to-one support for office requirements.

Samantha Yap, founder of blockchain-focused PR firm YAP Global reflected on the support on offer:

“The Level39 team is there to support the members. And I really do feel like they check in on us often. Amy, who is head of Level39 engagement, is always busy connecting people with one another. If I ever needed anything. I know that she would be putting me in touch with people. So I think that this is one of the few workspaces that actually care about the growth of your company.”

A Global Reputation with Leading Fintech Players

Sitting alongside some fintech giants, Level39 is the perfect place to meet fellow entrepreneurs and grow innovative teams. In addition to fintech heavyweights, such as Revolut, Level39 has become home to people from all over the globe. Originally from Melbourne, Australia, Samantha of YAP Global joined Level39 in 2019. She told us why:

“I always knew about Level39 being a FinTech hub for London. One of my clients back in Australia was FinTech Australia and through them I heard of Level39’s reputation. A lot of countries who want to send delegations to learn about what the UK is doing, and FinTech, send them here.”

Samantha noted the networking opportunities of the space:

“It’s a great Launchpad. A lot of events happen here. You meet all sorts of people, and it’s also a space where people need to be, like a breeding ground. So networking opportunities are pretty good.”

Adi Ben-Ari of Applied Blockchain is no stranger to the world of blockchain. With over 25 years of experience as a solutions architect and developer for blue-chip companies and graduating from the Barclays Techstars technology accelerator program with Tallysticks, he has firmly established himself as a leading voice in the fintech space and had heard all about Level39 before getting his office space. Adi told us:

“After going through Techstars with a start-up I was familiar with the different networks.”

Organizations calling Level39 home include some of the brightest minds in the fintech arena. Companies include Applied Blockchain who is designing and developing next-generation business applications, Satoshi Systems, a fintech startup tackling some of the biggest issues facing international trade, Coinjar, one of the longest-running digital currency exchanges, and recently FCA approved and TAUcoin who are developing a perishable proof of transaction consensus.

A Place to Connect with members of the Fintech Tribe

Level...

After several months of research, a report from Protos managed to identify exactly who acquired 70% of all USDT ever issued. The report looked at every single USDT ever sent to and from Tether across eight blockchains and layers it currently exists on, finding that the company distributed $108.5 billion in USDT since 2014.

The majority of the funds were sent directly to market makers and liquidity providers—a staggering $96.98 billion went to just six companies.

Alameda Research is Tether’s biggest buyer

Analyzing USDT flowing out of Tether Treasuries and linked blockchain addresses to specific entities, Protos divided the distribution into three categories—market makers, funds and companies, and individuals. For research purposes, market makers were defined as entities that received multiple transactions from Tether Treasuries of over $100 million USDT.

Tether supplied these market makers with 89.2%, or just over $97 billion, of all the USDT it sent. Trading funds companies received $9.2 billion, while individuals received just $2.35 billion.

Market makers Alameda Research and Cumberland Global were found to be the biggest fish in Tether markets, receiving around 55% of its total outbound volume. Over $49 billion of their USDT was acquired in the past year alone.

Tether sent $36.7 billion in USDT to Alameda Research, with $31.7 billion received in the past year. Out of the $36.7 billion, over $30 billion was sent directly to FTX, while Alameda’s accounts on Binance, Huobi, and OKEx received $2.1 billion, $1.7 billion, and $115 million.

Cumberland Global is the crypto-trading subsidiary of markets powerhouse DRW and counts VanEck among its clients. The company received $23.7 billion in USDT from Tether, with $17.6 billion received in the past year alone. As Cumberland is one of Binance’s primary liquidity providers, 79% of all of the USDT it received was issued directly to Binance.

iFinex, the mother company to Bitfinex and Tether, received at least $4.5 billion in USDT, but most of the transfers occurred before 2021. DeFi platform Nexo accounted for around 2% of Tether’s all outbound volume, receiving $2.6 billion in USDT, out of which roughly $1.45 billion went to Binance.

Neutral market maker Heka bought $1.5 billion worth of USDT from Tether, $1.1 billion of which was distributed in 2021 and utilized on Binance. Chicago-bound trading giant Jump Trading received $1.1 billion in USDT on Solana this year.

Yes, Bitcoin mining does consume a lot of energy — about 110 terawatt hours per year, the energy equivalent of a small country. Considering that a single Bitcoin mining farm might be running hundreds or thousands of mining rigs (roughly the equivalent of running a space heater) all day, every day, it’s easy to see how that much energy can be created. It’s also easy to see why keeping energy costs low becomes the main concern of Bitcoin miners.

The good news for large-scale Bitcoin mining operations is that the cheapest sources of energy are also the cleanest and most sustainable, like wind, solar, and hydropower, which are all cheaper sources than gas and coal. Additionally, the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance estimates that 76% of miners are already using sustainable energy sources.

Still, with recent questions in the news around the source of Bitcoin’s energy usage, and whether it can be sustainable going forward, there’s still more to do to grow awareness and adoption of renewable sources of energy.

If you’re looking to start a mining operation, switch electricity sources, or invest in a mining company and want to know more about where they’re getting their energy, here are the top sources of renewable energy that will fuel the industry in years to come.

Solar Power

Solar is the most widely used renewable energy source, and is also one of the most straightforward: Capture energy from the sun’s rays through photovoltaic cells in solar panels. They’re easy to install and maintain, and it doesn’t require any drilling or mining, or anything to be burned. Additionally, solar energy costs have only dropped in recent years, with the cost for electricity from utility-scale solar photovoltaics (PV) down 82% from 2010 to 2019.

Recently, Square and Blockstream announced that they would be investing in a $5 million fully solar-powered Bitcoin mining facility, as they say, in order “to show that a renewable mining facility in the real world is not only possible but also prove empirically that Bitcoin accelerates the world toward a sustainable future.”

Wind

Renewable energy sourced from the wind is another option. This involves setting up large wind turbines in open areas to capture the energy from air movement and turn it into electricity. Again, it’s a renewable energy source that doesn’t require drilling or mining — simply the construction of wind turbines — and the energy produced can power single homes, cities, or even countries. Wind power costs one to two cents per kilowatt-hour, and prices tend to be fixed over long periods of time. No fuel costs or usage and job creation also make wind attractive.

In the wake of the Chinese crackdown on Bitcoin mining operations, there’s speculation that many miners may move to Texas, due to the abundant wind power available, as wind provides upwards of 20% of Texas’s energy.

Hydropower

Capturing energy from water currents is one of the oldest types of renewable energy sources (think water wheels powering mills or the Hoover Dam). It’s also an incredibly consistent source of energy, as constantly running waterfalls can provide steady, endless power, whether it be captured through running rivers or simulated through damming and turbines. As for costs, it’s also one of the cheapest at 85 cents per kilowatt-hour, and upwards of 90% of the energy can be converted into electricity.

One of the biggest advantages Chinese mining operations had before the nationwide crackdown was that they were able to tap into massive amounts of hydroelectric power available to them, specifically in the Sichuan province, wherein the rainy season, 95% of electricity can come from hydro.

Geothermal

El Salvador president Nayib Bukele made news when he tweeted an invitation to Bitcoin miners to use their volcano energy, which is in fact geothermal energy, another renewable resource. Geothermal energy comes from heat stored within the Earth’s crust, which can include energy that escapes through steam, or even thr...

Over half of the blockchain industry’s overall activity in October came from game dApps. This is the conclusion made in DappRadar’s State of the Blockchain Game Sector October 2021 report, which analyzed activity and the number of users blockchain-based games saw last month.

According to the report, rising cryptocurrency prices and booming interest in the metaverse were responsible for the huge growth in the gaming industry, which saw over 2 million unique active wallets (UAW) per day on average.

Blockchain-based games have never been more popular

The rise in popularity DeFi has seen in the past several months fades in comparison to blockchain games. According to the latest report from DappRadar, the number of unique active wallets (UAW) connected to games represents 55% of the blockchain industry’s total, keeping up the dominance that began in September.

And while the positive usage trend spread across almost all networks that offer games, it was Polygon that showed the biggest growth. The Layer-2 solution increased its UAW connected to games by 242% month-over-month (MoM), and by 982% when compared to August. With over 125,000 daily UAW, game transactions doubled in October when compared to last month, despite the number of DeFi associated transactions decreasing by almost 52%.

Most of this growth was fueled by Arc8, a mobile play-to-earn game launched by a subsidiary of Animoca Brands. The game showed that with the right projects using Polygon as their core infrastructure, the blockchain will soon stop being dependent on DeFi.

Another major finding from the report was that virtual world games like The Sandbox and Decentraland were gearing up to become true powerhouses of the game dApp ecosystem. Both of the games’ respective tokens tripled since Facebook announced its rebranding to Meta Platforms, despite a lack of significant activity growth on the platforms.

In all, virtual world dapps generated over $21.8 million in trading volume in October, up 31% on September numbers, the report found.