Zilliqa is entering the world of football with a project involving many important footballers. At the moment, everything is just rumours. In fact, there are no official announcements, but some important partners are confirmed and each has announced it via Twitter.

They are:

Renato Sanches, from Lille;
Rúben Dias, from Manchester City;
Diego Costa (currently untied);
João Félix, from Atletico Madrid;
Keylor Navas, from Paris Saint-Germain;
Radamel Falcao, of Galatasaray;
Diogo Jota, from Liverpool;
Raúl Jiménez, of Wolverhampton;
James Rodríguez, of Everton.
I can’t wait to partner with the brilliant Zilliqa team and show the world how powerful #blockchain can be. Follow me and @zilliqa to find out more! pic.twitter.com/3ZV9OdJwtp

— Rúben Dias (@rubendias) April 27, 2021

All of them tweeted yesterday a video of a few seconds in which they announce their entry into the world of blockchain with Zilliqa, together with two hashtags: and.

At the moment, as anticipated, the project has not yet been officially revealed, but on Reddit, someone has speculated that it could be something related to NFT.

Another clue about the project comes from Polaris Sports, a brand that takes care of the images of many footballers, including those who have already made their partnership with Zilliqa official. At the moment, Polaris has not explained what the project is about.

But the more curious have not missed a detail: Polaris also takes care of the image of another footballer who, if only he joined the project, would certainly make him explode: Cristiano Ronaldo, currently playing for Juventus.

Zilliqa and football
In any case, the various tweets from the players have reached millions of followers who now expect something directly from Zilliqa.

While we wait for everything to be revealed, this is an incredible amount of visibility for the blockchain, which could also lead to an increase in the value of the ZIL token, which not surprisingly is up around 12% today, one of the best performances of the day. ZIL is currently worth 19 cents, and is attempting to recover its all-time high of 24 cents, reached about 10 days ago.

What is certain is that with this secret project (not for long), Zilliqa is increasing the attention on itself and thus on the already growing NFT market, where it plays a leading role.

Zilliqa in the world of football for an NFT project
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Japanese restaurant Okra Hong Kong has joined a queue of firms that accept cryptocurrencies as a means of payment. The company hopes to benefit its clients by making it easier for them to make payments and providing them with enhanced security.

Okra Kitchen is an extension of Okra 1949 in Beijing, China. The izakaya restaurant located in the Sai Ying Pun neighborhood of Hong Kong focuses on preparing Sakes, charcoal-grilled small plates, and sashimi.

The Japanese restaurant is known to seek opportunities to embrace new technologies and is riding the wave of Coinbase’s public listing on the Nasdaq stock exchange to adopt cryptocurrencies.

Retaining an upfront position in pushing the kitchen industry forward, restaurateur Chef of Okra Hong Kong Max Levy continues to look for technological innovations that will give both guests and restaurant owners more flexible, reasonable, secure, and convenient payment solutions.

In light of its latest move to accept cryptocurrencies as payments, the restaurant now accepts Hong Kong dollar equivalent payments in Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Binance Coin (BNB), Binance USD (BUSD), and Ripple (XRP).

Customers who visit the restaurant and pay for their meals with cryptocurrencies will receive 5% off of their total bill similar to the standard fees businesses that use credit card payments have to pay. The restaurant will write the menu prices in Hong Kong dollars and the customers will receive a conversion rate before making payment.

Concerning the restaurant’s latest step into the crypto space, Chef Max Levy stated “We have always tried to pivot with the newest technology outside of social media to help offer a better and more rewarding experience for our guests.”

“The evolving world of digital currency and blockchain is something that will benefit not only our industry by saving us high transaction fees from banks and credit card processing companies, but it will soon become a much more beneficial way for our guests to pay,” he continued

In a similar development, the popular American news magazine and publication Time Magazine, through a partnership deal with Crypto.com now accept cryptocurrency payments from clients.

Popular Hong Kong Resturant, Okra Kitchen Now Accept Cryptocurrencies
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quarter of last year. Canaan said the SHA256 bitcoin mining rig produces a hashrate of 90TH/s with a power efficiency of 38J/TH.
“Backed by our robust supply chain model, we are excited to be partnering with Mawson in their next phase of growth as they ramp up their mining activities,” said Nangeng Zhang, CEO of Canaan.
In March, Canaan reported orders for its cryptocurrency mining machines were rising amid sky-high prices for bitcoin, with increased demand for its equipment from North America and Central Asia since late 2020.
As reported by CoinDesk, bitcoin’s hashrate, which is a way to measure the total power consumption and mining output of the network, has topped new all-time highs as mining firms like Mawson Infrastructure continue to add more hash power.

Canaan to Supply 11,760 Bitcoin Miners to Mawson’s Australian, US Operations
https://www.coindesk.com/canaan-bitcoin-miners-mawson-australia-us-operations?utm_source=CryptoNews&utm_medium=app&utm_campaign=shared

With their abundant renewable energy resources, Iceland, Sweden and Norway have all been popular locations for eco-friendly Bitcoin mining. But per the Economic Times, this could be set to change.

As a result of rising climate challenges, these countries might soon turn their back on the crypto industry, as renewable energy is redirected to face more pressing challenges in the quest for a smaller carbon footprint.

“There could be very little excess energy in 2021 and 2022,” said Hordur Arnarson, chief executive officer at Landsvirkjun, Iceland’s national power company.

Bitcoin mining in the Nordic region
Sweden, Norway and Iceland have an abundance of geothermal, hydro, and wind power—energy sources that have long been touted as cheap renewable options for Bitcoin miners. In contrast, Chinese mining is dominated by coal.

But according to the Economic Times, the Nordic region’s renewable energy will soon be redirected to oil rigs and steelmakers—industries that are also in need of clean energy.

Bitfarms Is Bringing Hydroelectric Bitcoin Mining to Argentina
Arnarson stated that “because of the climate issues we see a lot of very interesting segments that are growing rapidly, and several of them need electricity.”

In fact, the decline in Bitcoin mining is already evident in Norway. Per Cambridge University, Norway’s global share of Bitcoin mining has dropped from just under 1% in the third quarter of 2019, to 0.48% today.

What is Bitcoin mining?
Bitcoin mining is the process by which new Bitcoin is created.

Bitcoin miners use computers to process complex mathematical problems—consuming immense levels of electricity in the process—in order to add new blocks to the Bitcoin blockchain and bring new Bitcoin into circulation.

The exact energy consumption of Bitcoin mining is hard to quantify, but an estimate from Cambridge University has the industry consuming approximately 120 terawatt-hours of electricity per year. This is equivalent to more electricity consumption than most countries.

In turn, that electrical consumption translates into a carbon footprint. Again, Bitcoin mining’s exact carbon footprint is hard to quantify, but Decrypt has previously noted how Bitcoin’s carbon footprint equates to approximately 61 billion pounds of burned coal, 9 million average homes’ average energy consumption for the year, or 138 billion miles driven by an average passenger vehicle.

For some, there are solutions on the table. One of these solutions is to move Bitcoin’s blockchain from its current consensus algorithm, proof-of-work, to the more energy-efficient proof-of-stake mechanism.

Ethereum, the second-biggest cryptocurrency by market cap, is moving from proof of work to proof of stake with its long-awaited ETH 2.0 upgrade. It’s possible that Bitcoin could follow suit or adopt a hybrid approach, Alex Zhao, CEO of Standard Hashrate Group, told Decrypt. He explained that by issuing a hashrate token on the proof of stake Binance Smart Chain, “we are enabling a type of hybrid approach already.”

However, according to a recent study in scientific journal Nature, Bitcoin’s carbon footprint is only going to get worse, with Bitcoin mining in China set to pump out 130 million metric tons of carbon emissions by 2024. That alone is equivalent to 14% of the world’s aviation industry’s carbon footprint in 2019.

Bitcoin Mining Is Going Cold In The Nordic Region
https://cryptonews.net/560854/?utm_source=CryptoNews&utm_medium=app&utm_campaign=shared

We are in an unprecedented period of social, political and economic turmoil. As the decentralized financial infrastructure powering billions of dollars of value and building thousands of companies grows, we need to recognize instability around us. The systems, protocols and incentives we create now can be less susceptible to censorship, government overreach and misinformation.

Ethereum 2.0’s design has a number of attractive attributes that make it exceptionally well-positioned to reliably operate through the choppy waters ahead as a neutral infrastructure, not as a biased platform. Individuals, enterprises and governments can be confident that Ethereum 2.0 will continue functioning in the instance of individual or state-actor level attacks. It is a solid foundation on which to build economic and financial infrastructure.

Related: Ethereum 2.0: Less is more... and more is coming

Eth2’s features are particularly relevant when viewed through a broader socioeconomic context:

Governance through rough consensus.
Robust and performant in the face of censorship.
Reliable money for the decentralized economy.
Empowers and enables self-sovereignty.
Eth2 is credibly neutral
Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, wrote a convincing post suggesting credible neutrality, or “a basic effort to be fair,” which should be a guiding principle in protocol design:

“Note that it is not just neutrality that is required here, it is credible neutrality. That is, it is not just enough for a mechanism to not be designed to favor specific people or outcomes over others; it’s also crucially important for a mechanism to be able to convince a large and diverse group of people that the mechanism at least makes that basic effort to be fair.”

As he continues: “Mechanisms such as blockchains, political systems and social media are designed to facilitate cooperation across large, and diverse, groups of people. In order for a mechanism to actually be able to serve as this kind of common substrate, everyone participating must be able to see that the mechanism is fair, and everyone participating must be able to see that everyone else is able to see that the mechanism is fair, because everyone participating wants to be sure that everyone else will not abandon the mechanism the next day.”

Today, if there’s anything that people tend to agree on (at least in the United States) it is that “The economic system unfairly favors the powerful.” To avoid this fate and remain credibly neutral, Eth2 follows in Ethereum’s footsteps, eschewing on-chain governance, in favor of technical governance through rough consensus.

Related: DeFi-ing the odds: Why DeFi could rebuild trust in financial services

This design decision has two nice properties:

Eth2 has rough consensus (finding general agreement, not simple majority rule) and a lack of on-chain governance (a rejection of plutocratic rule). This makes Eth2 governance difficult to capture. By design, it is much harder for entities to force Eth2 to favor or censor others.
Keeping the community together is one of the highest priorities of rough consensus. Rough consensus largely avoids highly contentious or controversial changes whenever possible, since it is difficult to find rough consensus on them. This leaves the decision space of rough consensus to primarily technical topics, which are grounded in facts and logic, and seek to minimize controversy.
Rough consensus isn’t just applicable to or decided by the core developers, but the entire community. There have been many times in Ethereum’s history when the community made its voice heard on important issues to impact Ethereum’s direction. Programmatic proof-of-work, or ProgPoW, is the most recent example: Core developers achieved rough consensus to implement it, but the community did not, and therefore it was not implemented.

In a world that is increasingly polarized, Eth2 cannot favor or disadvantage any individual, entity or group, as it has no mechanism by which it can do so in the first place.

Eth2 is robust and performant in the face of censorship
Cypherpunks were always worried about censorship by governments, but recent times have shown that censorship can also originate with individuals, enterprises and institutions. Eth2 is starting to underpin an entire parallel financial system, making it more important than ever that Eth2 can remain operational in the face of this type of attack.

Most importantly, Eth2 prioritizes liveness over correctness. Ethereum 2.0 researcher and tech developer Carl Beekhuizen outlined how Eth2 can continue producing blocks, even if there is a massive disruption that knocks a large number of validators offline, preventing the network from reaching finality. This robustness allows essential business functions to continue operating on Eth2, despite massive network disruptions.

Robustness is also why it’s so important that Eth2’s design is incredibly forgiving of downtime. Short amounts of uncorrelated downtime (minutes, or even days) have a relatively minor impact on rewards. Validators can change setups or migrate their nodes with confidence in the event of deplatforming, service interruptions or attacks.

On Eth2, validators default to being anonymous with no delegation. When someone attempts to censor, they will have a difficult time coercing a sufficient number of globally distributed, and mostly anonymous, validators to execute their will over an extended period of time.

Eth2 is reliable money for the decentralized economy
In a time of irresponsible money-printing and rampant asset inflation, experts disagree on how to best protect yourself and where to invest your savings. The Federal Reserve has stated repeatedly that “There is an infinite amount of cash at the Federal Reserve,” and that it can print digitally at will, which leads many to question the long-term viability of the dollar and the safety of their savings.


Related: Bretton Woods 2.0 is knocking at our door, and it’s not here to help

Ether (ETH) incentivizes participation on Ethereum via mining rewards. It also serves as the base asset for the decentralized economy built on top of Ethereum by functioning as a base trading pair, loan collateral and more.

Eth2’s design builds upon and expands ETH’s moneyness characteristics in two ways:

Eth2’s rate of inflation is expected to be less than 1%, one of the lowest inflation rates of any protocol and much lower than the dollar.
EIP-1559 (which will likely be active on Ethereum even before the transition to Eth2) will make ETH more scarce, and therefore potentially more valuable, as Eth2 usage increases.
Related: Ethereum Improvement Proposal 1559: Is the squeeze worth the juice?

The Ethereum community follows a policy of minimum viable issuance to keep the chain secure against attacks, such as double-spending. This approach is markedly different from today’s economies, in which central banks have tremendous control over monetary policy. Users, enterprises and governments can feel confident working with Eth2 because its base unit issuance is only used for one specific purpose: security, and that raison d'être cannot be repurposed to serve alternate goals. Additionally, the entire monetary policy is known and public, so everyone has equal insight and access to understand all protocol rules.

Eth2 empowers and enables self-sovereignty
Many people, across the political spectrum, feel disempowered today, as politics and the economy seem totally disconnected from the real world and our everyday lives. The promise of crypto, for many, is flipping that dynamic on its head and giving power back to the individual. Eth2, in particular, shines here.

Eth2 allows any individual, enterprise or government to run validators, actively opt in to the rules of the protocol and enforce them for all other participants. It enables a sense of ownership, confidence and self-sovereignty that is harder to achieve solely as a consumer. It also enables all entities to trustlessly build and verify the state, which makes us all work from the same set of facts — a rare occurrence in today’s world.

Eth2 does not cap the validator active set, and only requires 32 ETH to spin up a validator. While not equally accessible to everyone, this sum is not unreasonable, as running a validator allows an entity to support the decentralized economy in perpetuity, while earning the crypto equivalent of the risk-free rate of return. And those with less than 32 ETH (most people) can always pool their funds using Kraken, Rocket Pool or other services to participate on Eth2.

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Author thanks Vitalik Buterin for providing feedback on this piece.

Viktor Bunin leads protocol operations at Bison Trails, a blockchain infrastructure provider recently acquired by Coinbase. He previously worked at ConsenSys, a crypto venture studio, where he advised clients on blockchain strategy and designed economic incentives for network stakeholders. Viktor believes the community is the killer feature and helped organize ETHDenver, ETHNewYork, Lightning Summit and other gatherings.

Eth2 is neutral infrastructure for our financial future
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 It’s been revealed that Coinbase insiders and investors sold $5 billion in shares in total during the exchange’s first day of trading on NASDAQ earlier this week, says a series of filings that have been made the other day with the US SEC.

Coindesk reveals that “CEO Brian Armstrong sold 749,999 shares in three batches at prices ranging from $381 to $410.40 per for total proceeds of $291.8 million, according to one filing.”

Armstrong sold about 1.5% of his stake
The same online publication notes that “While a Coinbase representative declined to comment due to the company being in a so-called “quiet period,” based on filings made before the listing, it would indicate Armstrong sold about 1.5% of his stake.”

Another filing discloses that Coinbase’s director and venture capitalist Frederick Wilson sold 4.70 million shares for proceeds of $1.82 billion.

It’s been also revealed that it’s not very clear how much of Coinbase Wilson is still holding he is listed on the SEC filing as holding at least 10% of shares in Coinbase – the exchange’s total market cap is $63.6 billion.

Someone on Twitter brought this up and said:

Exactly.. Dumps always have reasons for it while pumps is naturally coming …
I wonder why Coinbase CEO and CFO sold most of their shares at the top, and why Coinbase listing and CME listing in 2017 were exactly the top of the bull cycle

— Corn-Holio (@Bitcoin_Holio) April 18, 2021

To this, Scott Melker responded with the following words: “they didn’t sell most near the top, that was fake news. They sold the shares they had to for a direct listing, a fraction of their holdings. They had to sell for buyers to have shares to buy.”

Another commenter said: “That is what a direct listing is. They sell their shares directly to the public. I don’t think any new shares were created, so there wouldn’t be a market if they didn’t sell.”

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong Sells $291.8M In Shares On Opening Day
https://cryptonews.net/551942/?utm_source=CryptoNews&utm_medium=app&utm_campaign=shared

After the Central Bank of Nigeria issued a directive targeting the country’s cryptocurrency industry, bitcoin and altcoin trade volumes on centralized exchanges immediately plunged. Nevertheless, the new regulations seem to have succeeded in boosting crypto trade volumes on informal markets or on peer-to-peer trading platforms.

Nigerian Crypto Traders Get Creative
Still, the increasing trades on informal platforms have also led to increased reports of users losing money to con artists. Moreover, with the CBN seemingly eager to see volumes of crypto trades plummet, Nigerian users had to find ingenious but legal ways of getting around the central bank’s imposed restrictions.

As shown in one local report, one such legal way is through an app created by one local crypto start-up, Patricia. According to the report, this application is already enabling Nigerian users to buy or sell their crypto assets securely and without running afoul of CBN regulations. Therefore, in this report, we relist five legitimate ways Nigerians can use this app to safely trade their bitcoins.

Airtime Refill
As explained in the report, users of the Patricia platform are still able to use their BTC balances to pay for regular expenses like airtime, utilities as well as internet data packages. The conversion from crypto to fiat is done seamlessly within the app.

Peer to Peer Exchange
The Patricia platform is also being used to facilitate safe and secure peer-to-peer transactions. According to the report, Patricia’s peer-to-peer platform is powered by Vaunt, an international P2P digital currency marketplace that facilitates faster and easier money transactions.

Receiving Payments
For Nigerian businesses that want to hasten the process of receiving payments from customers abroad, Patricia Business offers this opportunity. As explained in the report, Patricia Business “is a bitcoin payment gateway that allows traders, merchants and business owners across the country to receive bitcoin payments from their customers.” Once received, the crypto will be seamlessly converted to naira and transferred into their local bank accounts.


Patricia Debit Card
Nigerians can also legally use their bitcoin to make purchases locally via the Patricia naira debit card. Additionally, Patricia has a bitcoin debit card option that comes in both physical and virtual forms. This card can be used to shop online or at a bitcoin ATM anywhere in the world.

Gift Card Trading
Patricia users can also buy gift cards with their bitcoin funds on the Patricia app. Converting bitcoins into gift cards enables users to shop on major online marketplaces without necessarily violating CBN regulations.

P2P Bitcoin Traders in Nigeria Think Outside the Box in the Wake of CBN Restrictions
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