On Fire

Chart of the Day

The bulls are in town and you’d better believe it. The price of Bitcoin has reclaimed $45k and started a fresh rally, eyeing $48k in the near term. Ether has established a firm foothold above $3,000 and is gearing for another lift-off. The EIP 1559 upgrade indeed lives up to expectations as a driving force behind Ethereum’s transformation toward a deflationary economy. Since the activation of EIP 1559 on Aug. 5, over 20,000 ETH has been burnt, while miners’ earnings from “tips” is a little shy of 8,000 ETH. Top contenders in the burning match are OpenSea, Uniswap, and Axie Infinity — proving that August is bound to be another Month of NFTs. 

Talk of the Town

Good news, bad news. An amendment to crypto reporting rules in the infrastructure bill, championed by the crypto industry, was blocked in the U.S. Senate on Monday, leaving the language for broad oversight still in the legislation that is set to pass the Senate. The original language sparks concerns over the requirements for entities such as miners and software developers to report tax data to the Internal Revenue Services (IRS), which may suffocate innovation, according to some advocates. The amendment’s failure is undoubtedly a blow to the crypto industry. However, there may be other ways to clarify the bill’s language, and the infrastructure bill with the broad crypto language is still a long way from becoming law.