Marathon Digital CEO warns about Biden’s miner tax proposal
Marathon Digital CEO Fred Thiel warned that Joe Biden’s proposed crypto tax will drive Bitcoin miners out of the country.
In an interview with The Block, Thiel said the proposal to draw revenue from miners is part of an effort to make crypto business untenable in the US.
He indicated that Marathon is already seeking to expand into friendlier jurisdictions outside of the country.
NOW READ: Hearing lays bare deepening partisan cracks in the wake of FTX and Terra scandals
Active NFT trader count plummets to 2021 levels
The number of active NFT traders on Ethereum has fallen to lows not seen since 2021, with roughly 49,000 traders transacting on the network last week.
DefiLlama data shows a 29.5% drop in volume for lead NFT market Blur, while runner-up OpenSea saw 22% less volume over the same time period.
NOW READ: ‘OpenSea is in big trouble’ as Tiger Global cuts valuation by 76%
Iris-scanning Worldcoin project target of Chinese black market
ChatGPT founder Sam Altman’s iris-scanning Worldcoin project is the target of an strange new black market.
Chinese citizens, who are not able to sign up and buy Worldcoin, have purchased iris scans from other countries, BlockBeats reported on Thursday.
Worldcoin is touted as an identity-proving protocol, and is slated to release its proprietary token later this year.
NOW READ: DeFi’s biggest exchange Curve Finance takes a shot at stablecoins
Visa experiments with Ethereum
Visa has experimented with a new way to settle transaction fees on the Ethereum blockchain without using Ether.
The global payments giant unveiled its latest foray into the blockchain in a new report, revealing that it had experimented on Ethereum’s Goerli testnet with smart contracts aimed at transaction-free payments with the help of account abstraction.
Visa explained it wanted to make it easier for users to interact with the Ethereum network. Instead of having to hold Ether to pay transaction fees, the test attempted to make the process more flexible by allowing users to pay so-called gas fees with any token.
NOW READ: Why Ethereum is so dominant — and why it’s not going anywhere
MicroStrategy CEO says Ordinals ‘opens the door’ to new Bitcoin transactions
MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor is interested in how Bitcoin Ordinals can lead to innovation on the network, according to an interview with Decrypt.
Saylor says that Ordinals — a new way to inscribe data on top of Bitcoin transactions — “opens the door” to new use cases for Bitcoin transactions, including digital signatures, registration, or document tracking.
MicroStrategy is the largest private holder of Bitcoin.
More web3 news from around the web…
A Bitcoin-spot ETF is unlikely in US in the near future, VanEck CEO Says — Bloomberg
Bitcoin mining rig maker MicroBT unveils most powerful machine yet — CoinDesk
Beeple, Bitboy, and a ‘dumping’ Bored Ape: How it all hit the fan — Decrypt
