Users are even eligible for up to $50 in bonuses.
Cryptocurrency exchange ByBit now lets its users exchange over 20 fiat currencies for cryptocurrency.

According to an announcement shared with Cointelegraph on June 22, ByBit users can trade their U.S. dollars, Australian dollars, Canadian dollars, euros, Singapore dollars, British pounds sterling and many others for crypto of their choice. ByBit CEO Ben Zhou said that it was two partnerships that came together to make it possible:
Read on: https://cointelegraph.com/news/crypto-exchange-bybit-launches-a-fiat-gateway-supporting-over-20-currencies

Bitcoin’s price is rallying and traders also increasingly see investment opportunities on the Ethereum network.

Bitcoin (BTC) was trading around $9,563 as of 20:00 UTC (4 p.m. ET), gaining 2.5% over the previous 24 hours.

At 00:00 UTC on Monday (8:00 p.m. Sunday ET), bitcoin was changing hands around $9,298 on spot exchanges such as Coinbase. It began making gains around that time, appreciating 3% to over $9,600. The price is now well above its 10-day and 50-day moving averages, a bullish signal for market technicians.
Read on: https://www.coindesk.com/market-wrap-bitcoin-hits-9-6k-as-bullish-crypto-sentiment-returns

Bitcoin is one of the only sources of funding available for the “pirate” science site, Sci-Hub, which is quietly engaged in war against copyrights.

Despite Bitcoin’s ability to disintermediate money from politics, a new quantum computer may eventually crack its code. Here’s the story:
A Quiet Revolution
Alexandra Elbakyan, the founder of Sci-Hub, a database of over 80 million articles from academic journals usually locked behind subscription services, is fomenting a quiet rebellion against copyright funded by bitcoin. The website has been sued by two science publishing houses and reportedly investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice, effectively cutting Elbakyan off the mainstream financial services in the West. Elsewhere, Honeywell unveiled the most powerful quantum computer to date, again opening questions over Bitcoin and most cryptocurrencies’ security models. “According to a June 2017 paper, a quantum computer would need to have around 2,500 qubits of processing power in order to break the 256-bit encryption used by Bitcoin,” Decrypt’s Liam Frost reports.
Read on: https://www.coindesk.com/blockchain-bites-bitmains-4b-valuation-cambodias-cbdc-and-btc-es-bust

The National Bank of Cambodia revealed the technical details of its upcoming blockchain-based payments system dubbed ‘Project Bakong’ this week.

The central bank, which has been building Project Bakong since 2017, views its quasi-digital currency project as a high-tech revamp of the Khmer Riel, Cambodia’s official currency but hardly its de facto cash choice, as locals have favored the U.S. dollar for decades, according to the white paper published Thursday.

The central bank said Bakong will help challenge the dollar’s reign by inducing Cambodians to pay instead via QR codes and a mobile app, with a Hyperledger Iroha blockchain facilitating real-time fund transfers between e-wallets.
Read on: https://www.coindesk.com/cambodia-de-dollarization-project-bakong-blockchain

The third part of a series of articles on the advantages and challenges of the usage of blockchain technology for collecting and sharing information, without violating users’ privacy.
Some entrepreneurs have been trying to increase data privacy by combining encryption and blockchain technology. There are projects like Oasis Labs and Enigma that focus entirely on preserving users’ privacy. Meanwhile, others have been focusing on preventing data retention by companies. Thus, there is no way to guarantee that personal data is deleted in a company’s data system. Blockchain technology’s reliable consensus ensures that people’s data is used correctly.
Read on: https://cointelegraph.com/news/blockchains-are-an-excellent-solution-for-privacy-part-3

A solar energy trading trial run by blockchain startup Power Ledger has found the initiative to be “technically feasible” for real world use.

The trial, which was partly funded by the Australia government, surveyed 48 households in Fremantle, Western Australia, and found blockchain energy peer-to-peer energy (P2P) trading delivered lower costs “desired by consumers.”

“Power Ledger has demonstrated how peer-to-peer energy trading can incentivise the right outcomes for the grid in a more cost-effective way,” Power Ledger chairman Jemma Green said in a press release.
Read on: https://www.coindesk.com/power-ledgers-blockchain-p2p-energy-trial-technically-feasible-it-says-in-new-report

Ethereum’s consensus algorithm is not the only thing changing with the launch of Eth 2.0. The underlying cryptography itself is getting an overhaul based on leading research out of the Electric Coin Company.

Called BLS12-381, the new elliptic pairing curve will securely coordinate transactions on the proof-of-stake (PoS) Eth 2.0 network, while opening up opportunities for data savings and privacy-tech solutions.

Currently, the ins and outs of that curve are being baked into the network with Ethereum Improvement Proposal 2537. That EIP is slated for delivery with the protocol’s 10th hard fork, Berlin, tentatively scheduled for July.
Read on: https://www.coindesk.com/the-zcash-privacy-tech-underlying-ethereums-transition-to-eth-2-0

If, in the compressed time of blockchain existence, the “crypto winter” of 2018-2019 was Ethereum’s Dark Ages, then we’re now in its Renaissance.

But it’s an open question whether the blockchain platform and its enthusiastic community can take the wider world into the next era: the decentralized equivalent of the industrial revolution.

As Ethereum prepares to celebrate the five-year anniversary of its mainnet launch on July 31, billions of dollars in value rest on that question. Specifically, on whether the all-important Ethereum 2.0 scaling project can be successfully launched and integrated into its existing architecture.
Read on: https://www.coindesk.com/money-reimagined-ethereums-renaissance-creates-an-opportunity-major-test