3 snippets to begin your day: Bitcoin’s difficulty, Kraken’s latest and more

Bitcoin ups the ante

Bitcoin recorded one of its highest difficulty jumps yesterday, its highest since January 2018, after the network adjusted its difficulty level by 14.95%. Consequentially, it would now seem that Bitcoin miners will be facing one of the toughest periods in mining history, with the added disadvantage of block rewards having been slashed by 50% after the halving in May.

What is interesting to note here, however, is the fact that the present difficulty jump follows two difficulty adjustments that saw the levels drop significantly. The last two difficulty adjustments had attempted to compensate for many miners leaving the network post-halving and the network hashrate subsequently falling down.

Such a major hike in difficulty levels was last seen in January 2018, the month immediately following the heyday of Bitcoin’s 2017 bull run. It will be interesting to see now how miners react as many expect them to sell BTCs in case the cryptocurrency’s price rises, to cover operational costs.

Canada is serious about CBDCs

While it is obvious to many that China seems to be leading the CBDC race (That is, if it still is a race), many countries around the world have been recently active in pursuing similar projects. Canada is one of these countries, and it seems to be taking this ‘race’ way more seriously than others.

According to a recent job posting, the Bank of Canada is looking to hire a project manager for CBDCs. The Bank of Canada, the posting revealed, “is embarking on a program of major social significance to design a contingent system for a central bank digital currency (CBDC),” adding that it intends to design a CBDC that is private, universally accessible, resilient, and secure.

This is an interesting development as apart from the aforementioned job posting, the Bank of Canada has not come forward with any other details of its plans. In fact, just a few months ago, the central bank’s Deputy Governor had claimed that there is no immediate need for a Candian CBDC.

Kraken embraces the Kangaroo

In what is a major development, especially for crypto-users in the land down under, popular crypto-exchange Kraken has announced that it will now be supporting Australian Dollar [AUD] trading pairs. These pairs will be available against some of the market’s major cryptos, including Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ether, XRP, Bitcoin Cash, and Tether.

The exchange announcing support for Australia’s fiat currency comes on the back of Kraken acquiring the country’s legacy crypto-exchange, BitTrade, a few months back.

It’s not hard to see why Kraken is taking such big steps in Australia since this news follows other exchanges such as Binance and Coinbase noting significant developments in the country too.