Today in crypto, the Changpeng Zhao-backed YZi Labs grows stake in stablecoin issuer Ethena, Bitcoin mining difficulty hits new all-time high, while Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has outlined plans to build a crypto super app to rival traditional banks.
Changpeng Zhao’s YZi Labs deepens stake in stablecoin issuer Ethena
Tech-focused venture capital firm YZi Labs has increased its stake in Ethena, the stablecoin issuer behind USDe, which will assist the digital dollar’s adoption across decentralized and centralized platforms.
The investment will assist Ethena USDe’s (USDe) expansion on BNB Chain while enabling Ethena to continue building its USDtb stablecoin and an institutional settlement layer, Converge, Changpeng Zhao’s YZi Labs said in a statement on Friday.
USDtb is backed by short-duration treasury assets, including BlackRock’s BUIDL, while Converge is an Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible chain focused on tokenizing real-world assets.
The move supports YZi’s mission to “support open, scalable digital dollar infrastructures that can serve as a backbone of efficiency and liquidity for the entire financial ecosystem.”
Ethena Labs CEO Guy Young added: “The holy grail of digital dollar distribution has always been embedding stable, yield-bearing assets directly into the core of the crypto economy. With USDe now scaling across exchanges, DeFi protocols, and global user bases, that vision is becoming a reality.”
Bitcoin mining difficulty hits a new all-time high
The Bitcoin (BTC) mining difficulty, a measurement of the relative challenge of finding and adding new blocks to the Bitcoin ledger, hit a new all-time high of 142.3 trillion on Friday.
Mining difficulty continues to climb, forming a long-term ‘up-only’ trend due to the growth of the protocol and the need to expend ever-greater computing resources to mine blocks in the face of mounting competition.
Bitcoin’s hashrate, the total computing power deployed by miners on the network, also hit an all-time high of over 1.1 trillion hashes per second on Friday, according to CryptoQuant.
The rising mining difficulty and the need to expend energy resources in a process that is only becoming harder over time have raised concerns that Bitcoin mining is becoming increasingly centralized and cost-prohibitive, pushing out smaller players.
Coinbase CEO sets sights on replacing banks with crypto super app
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has said his company’s most ambitious vision is to replace traditional banks by turning Coinbase into a full-service crypto “super app.”
Speaking during a recent interview with Fox Business, Armstrong confirmed the company’s plans to offer a full suite of financial services, from payments to credit cards and rewards, all powered by crypto rails.
“Yes, we do want to become a super app and provide all types of financial services,” Armstrong said. “We want to become people’s primary financial account and I think that crypto has a right to do that.”
Armstrong criticized the current banking system as outdated and inefficient, pointing out high transaction fees as one of the main pain points. “It kind of boggles my mind. Like, why are we paying two to three percent every time we swipe our credit card?” he asked. “It’s just some bits of data flowing over the internet. It should be free or close to it.”
