Market Watch | Bitcoin | $12,356 | 7 day: +4.8% | | Ethereum | $439 | 7 day: +11.2% | | All cryptocurrencies | $385b | 7 day: +5.8% | | Bitcoin dominance | 58.7% | 7 day: -1.9% | Prices as of 5:15 p.m. ET
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 Binance's CoinMarketCap launches its own Earn program to compete with Coinbase Earn. The Binance-Coinbase rivalry intensifies. Background: - Binance acquired CoinMarketCap on March 31.
- Coinbase is the largest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange.
- Binance is the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange.
- Earn courses are duplicitous: educational courses rewarding customers with free cryptocurrencies, while actually encouraging trading activity so that the exchange earns commissions and fees.
Earn, the most lucrative course in crypto: Messari 
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 A message from SLACK A chat with Slack's CSO Please join Slack on August 19th for a live webinar with our Chief Security Officer, Larkin Ryder as she will discuss Slack’s security posture, cover some of our recent security feature releases and give a sneak peek into our product roadmap. Enterprise-grade security is built into every aspect of how users collaborate and get work done in Slack. And we’re continuing to invest in security to help keep your data protected.
What you’ll learn: - Slack’s security posture
- Compliance certifications, including FedRAMP Moderate
- Data protection capabilities - Slack Enterprise Key Management (EKM) and support for data loss prevention (DLP)
- Mobile security innovations
- App security
- Other roadmap features desired by security-conscious or regulated organizations
Register Now
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 Curve DAO Token (CRV) The third DeFi project to attract $1b in total value locked (TVL) is Curve (CRV). Curve's decentralized autonomous organization (CurveDAO) is a decentralized finance (DeFi) system that powers a stablecoin cryptocurrency exchange. What is Total Value Locked? - TVL specifies how much cryptocurrency is locked within DeFi lending and money markets of the protocol.
- It is a common metric for comparing the market dominance of DeFi protocols.
- CurveDAO depositors collect CRV token rewards for their contributions.
- TVL is the aggregate money within the protocol's liquidity pools, which is a measure of the popularity of the protocol and how much money users are willing to dedicate to its operations.
- A popular TVL tracker is DeFi Pulse.
Is $1b a lot? - Curve (CRV) is the third DeFi protocol to crest $1b TVL.
- The first was Maker (MKR) which still retains a 23% market dominance of the $6.4b industry. The second was Aave (LEND), which hit $1b on Saturday.
What is DeFi? - Although DeFi seems like a broad term, in practice, it has come to refer to a specific $16b subset of the crypto industry.
- The largest DeFi cryptocurrency is oracle provider Chainlink (LINK) which commands 46.6% of the industry.
- Other notable DeFi members include Synthetix (SNX), Aave (LEND), Compound (COMP), and Maker (MKR).
- DeFi is experiencing exponential growth, with protocols gaining and losing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of TVL within days.
- DeFi's TVL has quintupled from $1b three months ago to $6.4b today.
- The DeFi boom started with the yield farming phenomenon of locking cryptocurrencies for rewards — similar to staking yet focused on liquidity providers of decentralized exchanges (DEXs).
- Many attribute the launch of Compound's (COMP) token and its June 25 listing on Coinbase as the earnest beginning of the DeFi boom.
More about Curve: - Launched in January 2020, Curve operates a DEX and associated liquidity pools powered by Ethereum (ETH).
- It competes directly with Uniswap (31.1% market share by volume). Curve's share of DeFi trading activity is currently 18.6%.
- An anonymous developer forced Curve (CRV) to launch its governance platform and CRV token this week by deploying its smart contracts without Curve's consent. Curve's official FAQ can be accessed here.
- CurveDAO's token (CRV) is trading at $4.78, 91% lower than its $53 price three days ago.
The Block Crypto
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Blockchain.com will offer 12% annualized interest to stablecoin depositors. The new rate bests competitors BlockFi (8.6% for USDC, GUSD, and PAX) and Celsius (8.69% for various stablecoins). Binance is also expanding its stablecoin lending business. Interest-bearing crypto accounts: - Blockchain.com claims to have attracted $100m in new assets since launching interest-bearing retail accounts in June.
- Blockchain.com is increasing its stablecoin interest rate from 7% to 12%.
- Blockchain.com claims to originate $500m in new cryptocurrency loans per month. Its competitor, Genesis Global Trading, originates $2.2b.
- Reporters from The Block Crypto claim to have reviewed Blockchain.com's unaudited financials which show a profitable loan book. Despite the generous 12% rate, it loans cryptocurrencies to institutions at an even higher percentage.
- Blockchain.com investors include Roger Ver, Barry Silbert, Lakestar, and Google Ventures.
The Block Crypto
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U.S. Federal Reserve publishes details of a Hyperledger Fabric payment trial. On August 6, Fed Governor Lael Brainard confirmed that the Fed will debut its instant payment service within a few years. Project FooWire: - The Fed named its small-scale experiment "FooWire" and based its work on a permissioned chain of the Linux Foundation's chartered organization, Hyperledger.
- The Fed plans to continue researching distributed ledger technologies "to identify risks and weaknesses associated with their use."
- The Fed contextualized its work alongside other Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) initiatives such as Canada's Project Jasper, Singapore's Project Ubin, and the Japanese-European Project Stella.
The Fed's takeaways: - Distributed Ledger Technology is a viable technology.
- Distributed Ledger Technology networks are quick to implement.
- Writing smart contracts was relatively easy in Fabric.
- The prepackaged smart contract, Fabric's chaincode, was less complex than expected.
- Fabric has a range of extended capabilities, some of which have associated tradeoffs.
U.S. Federal Reserve
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Quick Hits: - Binance experienced a "system spike issue" this morning.
- U.K. citizens have forwarded more than 1.8m scam reports to the U.K.'s National Cyber Security Centre (report@phishing.gov.uk) resulting in 8,400 cryptocurrency scam takedowns. In total, the Centre has seized over 300,000 websites linking to fake celebrity-endorsments.
- Dan Morehead's Pantera Capital has raised an additional $165m.
- Barry Silbert announced that Grayscale funds added a record $217m last week, following its TV ad buy. Grayscale has four offerings on U.S. exchanges: Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (OTCQX:GBTC), Grayscale Ethereum Trust (OTCQX:ETHE), Grayscale Ethereum Classic Trust (OTCQX:ETCG), and Grayscale Digital Large Cap Fund (OTCQX:GDLC).
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 |  | Written and curated by wide-eyed bitcoin watcher since $1, Aaron Wise. Streaming headline junkie, Associated Press fanboy, eye-strained news terminal watcher, 2017 founder of Cryptocurrency Newsfeed. Temporarily based in Florida while awaiting the construction of cryptopia. |  | | Editor | Edited by Eduardo Garcia in New York. Eduardo is a graduate of the Columbia Journalism School M.A. Science program and writes regularly for the New York Times Climate Fwd: newsletter. In one of his previous lives, Eduardo worked as a Reuters correspondent in Latin America for nearly a decade. | |
Enterprise-grade security is threaded through all of Slack. Learn what that means for your org from Slack’s own CSO. | |
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