??Bitcoin Daily Transactions Reach All-Time High, EU Passes Crypto Bill

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Ahlan wa sahlan, and welcome to the 71st edition of CoinMENA's weekly newsletter, Kalam Crypto. This week, the EU passed a comprehensive crypto framework, trad-fi companies Visa, Mastercard, and Paypal doubled down on crypto, and bitcoin transactions reached new all-time highs. All that and more, so let's dive into this week's letter, and talk crypto:

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Global News ??

EU passes comprehensive crypto regulation: The EU Parliament has passed the MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation) framework with overwhelming support. MiCA will become effective within 12-18 months and provide a unified set of regulations for the entire EU. MiCA requires issuers of most crypto-assets and stablecoins to publish a white paper with specific information, and crypto companies offering brokerage services to obtain a license with minimum compliance requirements. Decentralized protocols are exempted from MiCA's regulatory scope, but there is no clarity on what is considered "sufficient decentralization." NFTs are largely out of the scope of MiCA, with some exceptions for large series and collections.

The Kingdom of Bhutan confirm they have been mining bitcoin for years: In our last issue, we covered the news that Druk Holding Investments (DHI), Bhutan’s sovereign wealth fund, lost 1,888 BTC on the now bankrupt crypto lender BlockFi. However, news emerged this week that Bhutan has been mining Bitcoin using green energy at a relatively low cost for a few years. A spokesperson claimed that DHI has been mining bitcoin since the price was $5,000. In case you were wondering, we’re now in the “it’s just small countries” phase of bitcoin adoption.

Keep an eye on ??

TradFi doubling down on crypto: While prices get more mainstream attention, it's the rising adoption that we should all care about. Here are a few traditional finance companies that announced launching crypto products this week:

• Visa is seeking to expand its crypto team with experienced backend developers who are knowledgeable about public blockchains and stablecoins. The goal is to drive mainstream adoption of these technologies.
• 萬事達卡 announced it would expand its cryptocurrency payment card program by seeking more partnerships with crypto firms. The payment firms also announced a collaboration with blockchain developers Aptos Labs, Ava Labs, Polygon, and The Solana Foundation to develop a new set of standards called Mastercard Crypto Credential. The aim is to establish defined standards for activities related to web3 environments and ensure that interested parties are meeting those standards.
• PayPal announced expanding crypto transfers to 60 million new users on Venmo. Following the rollout of crypto transfers by PayPal in June, Venmo users in the US are now able to transfer cryptocurrencies and send them to external wallets as well.

Bitcoin transactions reach new all-time highs as inscriptions surge: The daily number of transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain reached a new all-time high of over 408,000 transactions. Meanwhile, daily Inscriptions (Ordinals) also reached a new all-time high of more than 223,000, with more than 2.4 million Inscriptions to date and total fees amounting to over 213 coins.

Tweet Of The Week ??

CoinMENA News ??

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Quiz Corner ??

Last week’s question: ?What does PoW transmute into bitcoin?

Answer: Electricity?

This week’s question: When will the last bitcoin be mined?

A) 2040

B) 2140

C) 2024

D) 2030

See the answer in next week’s newsletter. Or check out our new learning platform https://university.coinmena.com/