The U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase has made headlines with the launch of its new Ethereum layer-2 network, Base. This is possibly the first of its kind to be launched by a publicly traded company, and could be the start of a new era. Sam Kessler takes a look at the past two weeks’ debacle involving the decentralized stablecoin exchange Curve, and the lingering risks the industry still needs to address.
PayPal, the peer-to-peer payments platform, unveiled its own stablecoin, PayPal USD (PYUSD), to be backed by U.S. dollar deposits, short-term Treasuries, and cash equivalents. Built atop the Ethereum blockchain using the ERC-20 token standard, PYUSD is the first stablecoin to be launched by a large traditional financial company. The issuer of the stablecoin is Paxos, whose original stablecoin Pax dollar (USDP) has failed to gain significant market share compared with leaders like Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC. “Customers’ assets are protected, including if Paxos were to go bankrupt,” said Walter Hessert, head of strategy at Paxos Trust.
Huobi, the crypto exchange advised by Tron’s Justin Sun, saw its stablecoin reserves decline by $49 million in a week. Then, on Tuesday, blockchain data showed that a large investor made two large deposits into Huobi worth more than $200 million.
Matter Labs, developer behind the Ethereum layer-2 network zkSync, was accused by rival Polygon of copying part of its open-source code without providing proper attribution. Matter Labs quickly acknowledged that some code was copied, but insisted that the attribution had been provided.
David Rubenstein, billionaire private-equity titan, says bitcoin is here to stay, notes that there’s demand for a form of money that can’t be controlled by governments, and regrets not buying BTC at $100.
Decentralized finance or DeFi ecosystems are still suffering through crypto winter, according to the analysis firm Messari. As a whole, the industry’s total value locked, or TVL – a key metric that represents collateral and deposits put into blockchain protocols – has been declining.