Qrafty heard that Bitcoin taproot is live, Stellar adds smart contracts and a $131 billion unrealized loss

***Qrafty smiling the biggest smile*** Hey there, digital currency afficionado! I am Qrafty - the crypto lovin’ honey badger 🦡 !

Welcome to Coinqraft – the daily crypto newsletter for busy but curious people who don’t have time for the crypto drama!🌟

🦡   Qrafty has fresh info from the crypto jungle, so let’s dive in: 📰 🌟

1. Taproot Is Live

2. Stellar Adds Smart Contracts

3. Digital Euro Moves Forward

Bonus: BofA reports $131.6 billion unrealized loss

BITCOIN TAPROOT IS LIVE

Lightning Labs, the creative masterminds of Bitcoin's layer-2 infrastructure, have just unveiled their latest marvel: the Taproot Assets protocol has landed on the main scene.

What's the big deal, Qrafty?

Well, this release transforms Bitcoin and the Lightning Network into a playground for crafting your very own stablecoins and an array of digital assets. It’s not just about making a payment anymore, it’s quite a lot more than that.

Ryan Gentry, the Director of Business Development at Lightning Labs, mentioned in a blog post: “This release marks the dawn of a new era for bitcoin. With Taproot Assets v0.3, builders have all the tools needed to make bitcoin a multi-asset network, but in a scalable manner that upholds bitcoin's core values. We believe this new era for bitcoin will see a myriad of global currencies issued as Taproot Assets, and the world's foreign exchange transactions settled instantly over the Lightning Network”

Is that all, Qrafty?

The Lightning Labs crew isn't content with just playing in the sandbox. They've set their sights on a grand mission: rewriting the playbook for foreign exchange transactions, all within the lightning-fast realm of the Lightning network.

Just to have a better idea, the FX market size was $725 billion (yes, with a B) in 2021. Obviously, it’s predicted to grow. Forget the clunky old ways of forex; we're talking about seamless, instant settlements.

And here's the icing on the crypto cake: for developers, it's like Christmas morning. Lightning Labs is granting their most-wished-for request – the power to add stablecoins to their applications. That opens up a whole new world of possibilities and adoption for Bitcoin.

What’s the question mark here, Qrafty?

The question mark is: can the Bitcoin network handle all this? Ordinals congested the network earlier this year with the minting of the BRC-20 tokens. That was a small test. How will the Bitcoin network scale, that’s Qrafty’s question. Guess we’ll have to wait and see. So… popcorn time! 🍿

🙃 Qrafty hopes that today’s main story brought brave badgery value to you! Now it’s time for a break, you deserve a bit of fun! 😇 👇️

Stellar Adds Smart Contracts

Stellar, with its XLM token, is among the older projects of the crypto universe. It’s basically a copy of Ripple’s XRP Ledger, with some small differences. What is lesser known in the industry is that both XLM and XRP were developed by the same person: Jed McCaleb.

XRP was continued by McCaleb, David Schwartz (current CTO of Ripple) and Arthur Britto (a brilliant and very private guy) after taking over the project from Chris Fugger. Chris Larsen came onboard later and started Ripple the company with the McCaleb and Schwartz.

Larsen and McCaleb had a nasty argument and a fallout ensued between them, which led McCaleb to create Stellar the company and XLM the coin. He already knew how to do it himself, since the guy is a genius in his own way. Word around the jungle at that time was that Jed didn’t want to go the corporate route, like Chris Larsen wanted to; which it actually happened with XRP and Ripple.

But that telenovela wasn’t over that fast. Larsen wanted to dump his entire XRP stash to crash the coin, but Ripple won a lawsuit and Larsen was able to sell a finite amount of XRP each month. This lasted for about 9 years.

Fast forward to today, Stellar is still going strong and, although it had its ups and downs, they just announced that they’re implementing smart contracts Ethereum style.

This development is important because Stellar and Moneygram are working together and there is a high chance that smart contracts might benefit Moneygram as well.

The platform for these smart contracts on Stellar is called Soroban and it has been announced for over a year, but they just recently managed to tidy it and finish up the development.

What’s important to note about Soroban (which means abacus in Japanese) is the Stellar Foundation backing it.

You see, smart contracts aren’t really a big deal nowadays. Ethereum is the OG and there are many other blockchains with smart contract functionalities, like Solana, Polygon, Tezos, etc. Except for Ethereum, none of them really lived up to the hype and ran into a world of problems, revealing the huge difference between advertising and production.

Stellar, on the other hand, has a brilliant guy as the founder and the Stellar Development Foundation, which has the capital, the development team and the resources to pull off such a big project.

Aside from that, there’s also XLM, which is extremely fast and transactions costs are negligible, with close to 0 chances for the network to become bloated. After all, this blockchain was invented to process cross border payments, which means it can take on a lot of transactions and do the job effortlessly.

Qrafty thinks Stellar has the chance to become a real strong player in the smart contracts space in the future.

Elizabeth Warren Discovered Terrorists

Oh, it's that time again! Elizabeth Warren emerging from her political lair, making the kind of entrance that's reminiscent of that wild neighbor who screams at squirrels and scares kids off her lawn. She's back at it, yodeling from the mountaintops about how crypto is funding terrorism.

Somebody needs to gently tap her on the shoulder and remind her that the finance world is like a buffet for bad actors – they'll use anything edible. We're talking gold bars, stacks of cash, crypto coins and heck, they'd probably accept Pokémon cards and silver spoons if they could trade 'em for weapons and bombs.

If you really want to look at who’s financing terrorism, the first place one should look at is banks. But it’s better to pretend to bark at them and do nothing, innit?

But, alas, no one seems to be handing out advice on what to do with folks who are past their retirement age and just won't budge from their politically cozy seats, like our favorite crypto-skeptic-in-chief.

Digital Euro Project Moves to 'Preparation' Phase

The European Central Bank has just declared the grand entrance of the "preparation" phase for the Digital Euro project. Now, this doesn't mean we're popping champagne for a full-blown central bank digital currency just yet. By champagne, Qrafty means we’re getting drunk out of dread and horror, not joy, mkay?

In this prep phase, they're honing the rulebook, handpicking the maestros to build the digital euro's platform, and setting the stage.

Picture it: a digital euro, your reliable companion for all things digital in the euro zone, closely monitored and surveilled by the fine bureaucrats sitting in their cozy offices at Bruxelles, completely disconnected from the realities of the European Union countries.

Qrafty, are you ok?

Never felt better! Now, whether you're swiping online or sealing deals in person, they’re saying that the digital Euro will offer “the highest level of privacy“. It’s impossible for Qrafty to understand how this will be true, since it’s a digital coin on a digital ledger without any anonymity features.

This next phase starts on the 1st of November, 2023 and will last two years, to iron out any problems while selecting providers that can develop a digital euro platform with the required infrastructure.

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Tomorrow is like a mystery box of life, wrapped in the enigma of time, waiting for us to unwrap its lessons and surprises, one day at a time.

Qrafty’s thought of the day

Other stories

Bank of America reports $131.6 billion unrealized loss

Qrafty has to be honest and admit that this sounds worse than it actually is, for two reasons:

1. No bank would ever publicly announce a realized loss like this unless they’re bailed out with your money.

2. This is an unrealized loss coming from government guaranteed securities. By the time these mature, there will be no more loss for the bank.

See, the house always wins! It’s just us who lose.

Mike Novogratz’s ETF hopium

Mike Novogratz, the CEO of Galaxy Digital, predicts that a spot Bitcoin ETF will likely receive approval in the year 2023. Maybe he has a crystal ball he’s looking into or maybe he’s bored and needs some attention.

Floki is getting updated

It’s not the best time for memecoins, but at least this one is still being developed and hasn’t rugged… yet.  The developers are making the sheetcoin available on Base and opBNB chains, they’re implementing a referral program and support for native payments aside from USDT while adding staking, NFT support and burn functionality.

Use case? Let’s not get too serious now…

Market Whispers

As mentioned yesterday, Bitcoin wanted to go higher, and it did. It just didn't go enough to short it, barely hit $29,000. Expected a $29,2 - $29,5...

Plan remains the same. Daily candle so far does not look good and we might get the long from ~$27,5k first. First take profit level will be at $28,4k.

As for ETH, the $1,600 resistance level seems pretty hard to conquer. Judging by the daily now, those equal lows at $1,520 don't look safe. Depending on how much BTC will drop, ETH can touch $1,460. Next line in sand? Qrafty's afraid to say it...$1,300.

Qrafty ends channeling his inner trader.

Today is NATIONAL PRAYER DAY!

That’s all from Qrafty 🦡 for today! Qrafty thanks you and wishes you to live each moment as if you are listening to the music you love most!

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