WhiteboardCrypto Newsletter - Apr 12

Welcome back to this week's edition of our WhiteboardCrypto Newsletter!

Bitcoin reaches 1 Zetahash

If you’ve never heard that word, it’s totally fine. Most of us haven’t because it’s a huge number that describes how much computational power is being used to process and validate transactions. Remember, Bitcoin is a proof-of-work chain where miners compete to solve complex puzzles by generating hashes, which secures the network and wins them rewards; the hashrate tells you how many of these guesses (hashes) are being made per second. So if the hashrate is 1 zetahash, this tells us that there are a sextillion (that's a 1 followed by 21 zeros!) guesses being made per second. That’s a TON of computational power, and it means that the Bitcoin blockchain is getting much more secure.

Learn more here.

Solana’s new token extensions

Solana devs released Confidential Transfers in June 2024, which uses zero-knowledge proofs to keep transaction amounts private. Now they are expanding it to three use-cases including “encrypted balances and transfers, the ability to mint and burn tokens while keeping the total supply ‘discrete’ and private fee handling.” These upgrades are especially useful for businesses that need privacy, compliance, or more customizable token behavior, but will be useful for everyone who cares about on-chain confidentiality.

Learn more here.

Regulatory clarity in the US

While the markets are giving us all quite a ride, the US SEC and IRS are actively fixing regulations that affect the crypto industry, including nullifying the IRS broker dealer rule that would have required decentralized exchanges to collect and share user information with the government, and proper guidance about how securities laws might be used in relation to crypto. These are all good signs because it shows a shift away from ‘regulation by enforcement’ that we were seeing earlier into proactive regulation.

Thanks for reading and I hope you learned something!

- Theodore