1. Bitcoinâs hashrate has climbed to a record-breaking high. According to data compiled by BitInfoCharts, BTCâs hashrate just topped 111,000,000,000,000,000,000 hashes per second. The hash rate measures the processing power of the Bitcoin network.The hash rate indicates the number of times per second that the network can try to solve a puzzle, with a higher hash rate indicating an increasingly robust network that is more secure against an attacker, Bitcoin network has been up and running for over 10 years.
2. American economist Jeffrey Tucker, who serves as the editorial director at the American Institute for Economic Research (AIES), opined that Ripple's XRP is a "brilliant technology". Tucker explained that Ripple's quick rise to the top had been propelled by failing traditional financial systems in the likes of SWIFT. Tucker said that XRP could potentially change the world even though many "man-on-the-street" investors are not interested in this proprietory technology.
3. Japanese online infrastructure giant GMO Internet plans to launch a yen-pegged digital currency. Dubbed GMO Japanese yen, coin is to be released within the first half of next year. The announcement detailed that the internet giant will launch the stablecoin in a proprietary blockchain called GYEN and it is now in a testing phase as the development is already complete. Mentioning the utility of the upcoming stablecoin, GMO clarified that it will be used in borderless trading, payments, and remittance.
4. To celebrate the upcoming holiday season, Binance, has announced a Christmas âGive Awayâ of a Tesla Cybertruck and $50k of TROY tokens. As part of the promotion, new users registering through a referral link will get a 10% discount on trading fees.Receiving the truck will require a shed-load of TROY trading on Binance. Users will be ranked based on the total volume of TROY traded on their Binance account during the competition period. Wherein First place wins a Tesla Cybertruck Double Motor AWD model.
5. Tencent, the operator of Chinese social media app WeChat, is planning to create a digital currency research group for the further advancement of blockchain technology research projects. Chinese internet giant released a statement to its employees saying that the company is currently on the lookout for the new head of the research group. The yet-to-be-established digital currency research group will reportedly focus on Tencentâs further advancement in the digital payment industry by utilizing blockchain technology.
6. United States-based cryptocurrency brokerage BitOoda has secured $7 million in funding from investors including former senior investment exec at JPMorgan. The firmâs operations include registration as a broker-dealer with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. BitOoda founder and CEO Tim Kelly noted that the seed round unlocks major growth opportunities including the companyâs considerations to expand operations both in the U.S. as well as Asia and Europe.
7. In another boost for the XRP ecosystem, Bitrue, a Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange announced that it will soon list 27 new XRP pairs on its platform. With XRP as the base pair, the first 14 coins to be paired with it will be opened for deposits and withdrawals starting on 23rd December. The official blog post also revealed that the trading for the pairs will go live on 25th December. For the remaining 13 XRP-paired coins, deposits and withdrawals will begin on January 9th, 2020 following which trading going live on January 13th.
8. Vitalik Buterin proposed a faster way of transitioning from a proof of work chain to a proof of stake chain. Per proposal Validators who want to participate in the old Ethereum chain(POW) can register themselves as âeth1-friendly validatorsâ. Anyone can register and deregister themselves as âeth-1 friendly validatorsâ, but these validators âwould be expected to maintain an eth1 full nodeâ, in addition to their eth2 node, or âbeacon nodeâ. These validators could then propose âeth1-on-eth2 blocksâ Merging the two together would make the process of upgrading far quicker.