3 snippets to begin your day: UNICEF invests ETH, Bitcoin’s realized cap and more
Crypto shines for charity
UNICEF, one of the United Nations’ foremost agencies, made news last year after it launched a cryptocurrency fund that would be able to receive, hold, and disburse crypto-donations in Bitcoin and Ether, two of the market’s top digital assets. The agency is once again in the spotlight after it announced a 125 ETH donation to eight tech companies across the world, all of which are working towards developing open-source technology to benefit children and young people.
The 125 ETH donation, or investment as some have called it, worth $28,650 at the time of writing, follows another donation made in fiat currency by the agency to the same tech companies. These include India’s StaTwig and Turkey’s Ideasis, among others.
The development comes at a critical juncture since the world these days is struggling to contain the effects of the raging COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, UNICEF’s crypto-funded venture comes on the back of other entities like Binance using blockchain and crypto to tackle charitable causes.
Bitcoin not “new type of money”
Over the years, institutions, both financial and regulatory, seem to have warmed up to the idea of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. However, this hasn’t been the case across the board, with economists at New York’s Federal Reserve recently coming out to prove otherwise. In a recent blog, Michael Lee and Antonie Martin claimed that Bitcoin is “just another type of fiat money,” comparing it to the likes of Ithaca Hours and Rai Stones.
As expected, the aforementioned post and its contents weren’t taken very well by many in the crypto-community, with most members pointing out that the said post underlined institutional inability to understand the true nature of Bitcoin, and cryptocurrencies, by extension.
The economists’ commentary on Bitcoin comes on the same day as when the world’s largest cryptocurrency’s realized cap touched a new all-time high, breaking the previous one set in March.
#Bitcoin's Realized Cap has hit a new all time high.
At $106.63 billion, it has now passed the previous record set just before the Black Thursday crash three months ago.
Live chart: https://t.co/Cs5PVyt4h8 pic.twitter.com/gbv7G6EdUo
— glassnode (@glassnode) June 19, 2020
How healthy is Tron?
Tron has for long been accused of being a marketing gimmick, a hype project for the likes of the Tron Foundation’s Justin Sun. In fact, many have even accused Tron of being worthless, alleging that there might not be any utility behind it. However, a recent analysis seems to suggest otherwise.
An analysis by Flipside Crypto examined whether Tron is a scam or not, while looking at a host of different metrics such as TRX’s active supply, staking, and supply concentration.
Concluding that Tron has a very healthy and active ecosystem, the report noted that the regularity of staking services and the even distribution of TRX’s supply among Tron’s whales and regular users means that Tron is a real business.
