Taproot unlocks Bitcoin opportunities; Mintable aims big

Transcript

Is Bitcoin’s Taproot upgrade something to write home about? Lots to cover.

Welcome to The Daily Forkast November 18 2021. I’m Angie Lau, Editor-in-Chief of Forkast.News, covering all things blockchain.

Bitcoin’s Taproot upgrade offers greater privacy and better efficiency, but will it change how investors view Bitcoin in the long run? We’re going to take a look at that and a whole lot more coming up.

Let’s get you up to speed from Asia to the world.

Well, let’s kick off with some of the top stories out of Asia today.

New York-based Bitcoin mining company Bit Digital says the exit of its mining fleet from China is now complete, with all of its miners having arrived in North America. The company started the migration back in October 2020, but accelerated the move after China’s clampdown on the sector began earlier this year.

By the way, Bit Digital was established in 2015, it was formerly known as Golden Bull with a focus on P2P car rentals in China. But after a clampdown on P2P lending in 2018, it struggled, eventually making a pivot into crypto mining in 2020.

Seems like they’re kind of used to being big footed by Chinese regulators.

And over in South Korea, the National Tax Service, or NTS, seem to be courting controversy by changing the way crypto related businesses are categorized.

Now, at the moment, these unregistered firms are categorized as software developers, but the NTS has told local tax offices to reclassify these South Korean businesses as virtual asset operators.

And the reason this has upset the industry there is that many of these firms are struggling to comply with the latest crypto regulations in South Korea and can’t even get accredited by the government there as licensed crypto businesses, and that could make the road ahead for them essentially untenable, putting them all out of business.

You can find out more on those stories and a whole lot more at Forkast.News.

All right, taking a look at The New Economy now, where every week we take a deeper dive into the current crypto landscape, the opportunities, the challenges and we explore the hottest questions in crypto right now.

In the hot seat once again, Michael Wu, CEO and founder of Amber Group.

Angie: OK. This week, Michael, Bitcoin’s Taproot update has finally gone live. What exactly does the update do for the coin and its users?

Michael: Taproot is very exciting for the Bitcoin community and broadly for the cryptocurrency industry to simplify, you know, essentially it’s a major upgrade that will allow better transaction privacy and efficiency on the Bitcoin network.

And more importantly, it will then unlock more power for smart contracts on Bitcoin, which means developers can start to build what we call layer-2 applications.

Angie: Ok, so how will this update change the way Bitcoin is used in real life then? Do you see this dramatically increasing the uptake on Bitcoin given its impact on smart contracts?

Michael: As of right now it’s recognized both within the crypto community and for the broader investment community as mostly a storage of value. You know, a digital gold is is the easiest way to put it, probably.

However, with that said, we are already entering a multichannel world. You know, I think there are a lot of protocols that are going to be specialized in different areas of the decentralized economy or the what we call the Web 3.0 economy.

In Bitcoin’s case. You know, I think the Taproot will enable and unlock some further utility on the network.

Angie: It is all about the competition, but in this world it is, after all, the new economy we are talking about.

Thanks, Michael Wu, CEO and founder of Amber Group.

Meanwhile, Singapore based Mintable has set its sights on becoming the world’s largest NFT marketplace.

In a major platform upgrade, it will catalog all the NFTs ever minted on Ethereum, as well as introducing a new rarity meter feature.

Forkast.News Carolyn Wright has more on what that means for NFT investors.

Mintable’s new rarity meter puts NFTs in categories ranging from common to holy grail, according to how unique their attributes make them. Users will also be able to see information on an NFT’s transaction history as well as seller reviews.

The platform’s founder and CEO told Forkast.News that such information is vital for appraising and NFTs value.

“You need to be empowered when you’re on the page, so that you can make an informed decision. Like, in some cases, you’re spending more money than it costs to buy a car, but you don’t get any information, right? And so we want to provide every bit of information we can, because you’re doing a 20, 50, 100,000 dollar purchase, you need to know everything.”

Burks says the new features will cut down on the hours of research that both regular traders and new users would have needed to do in the past, and with 20% to 30% of Mintable users being brand new to crypto, he hopes it will be a game changer.

But while Mintable currently has 300,000 users, OpenSea dominates the NFT marketplace sector at present, holding a market share of over 90%.

For Forkast.News, I’m Carolyn Wright,

And that’s The Daily Forkast from our vantage point right here in Asia.

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For more, visit Forkast.News. I’m Editor-in-Chief Angie Lau. Until the next time.