[00:00:01] Gareth Jenkinson
Good morning; you’re listening to the Rise’n’Crypto podcast by Cointelegraph with me, Gareth Jenkinson. I’m jumping back into the saddle today for our regular host, Robert Baggs. If you’re looking for the latest news and insights from the cryptocurrency and blockchain space, you have come to the right place. From Bitcoin to memecoins, we’ve got our finger on the pulse. As always, if this is your first time here, I’m going to ask you to smash that like and follow button. Grab yourself a cup of coffee, and let’s get into today’s episode. 

We’ll be diving into a recap of Paris Blockchain Week. I covered the conference last week and spoke to numerous industry insiders, including venture capitalist Tim Draper, who explained why it’s not too late to buy Bitcoin and where it could be headed after the halving. Austin Fodera from the Solana Foundation explained the reasons for Solana’s network congestion issues, and in other stories, a research report from 10x Research suggests that Bitcoin miners could sell up to $5 billion worth of BTC after the halving, the Winklevoss twins became co-owners of Real Bedford alongside Bitcoin podcaster Peter McCormack, investing $4.5 million of Bitcoin into the English football club. Lastly, Cointelegraph investigations team published an exclusive that revealed that cryptocurrency exchange BingX allows sanctioned Iranian users to evade restrictions. Let’s dive into the details. 

Paris Blockchain Week attracted big names to the event hosted underneath the Louvre Museum in France’s capital. The likes of Binance CEO Richard Tang, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse, and VanEck CEO Jan van Eck drew loads of visitors on day one. I was lucky enough to sit down for an exclusive one-on-one interview with venture capitalist Tim Draper on day two, and we spoke almost exclusively about Bitcoin. The approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs in the United States has been a critical driver of renewed interest in capital inflows into the Bitcoin ecosystem. Draper believes the investment products have opened up a new avenue for Bitcoin-curious investors that might be daunted by the prospect of holding Bitcoin in self-custody and also serve as a hedge against devaluing fiat currencies.

[00:02:09] Tim Draper
I think they’re great. I think they’re really helpful to people who didn’t want to go by a ledger and put it away, and I think that it gives people an opportunity to buy some Bitcoin and hold on to it so that they can take care of themselves when there’s a run on the dollar, a run on the euro or whatever because there will be a moment in time. I don’t know when it is. It’s a year, five years, 10 years from now when if I can buy my food, my clothing, my shelter, and pay my taxes all in Bitcoin, I don’t really need to hold on to any fiat currency that decreases in value over time because of political whims or government spending, or politicians that just decide they’re going to spend more money and inflate your money. Well, in Bitcoin, you know, there are only 21 million of them out there ever. And so that is a place of great security. And it’s interesting; I think I’m actually starting to see the lines cross. People feel more comfortable with their Bitcoin than they do with their dollars.

[00:03:18] Gareth Jenkinson

Bitcoin’s finite supply and increasing adoption as a payment option for goods and services would increase its appeal to the masses. At the same time, fiat currencies continue to grapple with inflation and decreased purchasing power.

[00:03:31] Tim Draper

I think if you haven’t bought some Bitcoin by now, I mean, I think you should. Yeah, yeah. Because the future I see is one where if you don’t have some to take care of yourself when the dollars become worthless, there’s going to be a hole in your life.

[00:03:52] Gareth Jenkinson

Yeah. The venture capital investor added that Bitcoin remains a place of great security against inflation. The Solana Foundation has pinned recent network congestion issues on a combination of high demand for Solana block space and a failure to implement patches relating to its networking stack in a timely manner. I spoke to Solana Foundation strategy lead Austin Fodera during Paris Blockchain Week about efforts to address recent issues with user transaction congestion. According to the foundation’s strategy lead, Solana’s consensus layer continues to operate as designed, but there is agreement that the network is not living up to expectations from a user experience perspective.

[00:04:32] Austin Fodera

The goal of the Solana project is to sort of build the world’s fastest network that is open, permissionless and decentralized, and that is a tall order. And, you know, there’s a team of engineers across maybe five or six different core contributor groups that are all working on building, you know, the Solana network, and sometimes they don’t quite get it right.

[00:04:51] Gareth Jenkinson

Network developers have been planning fixes to bottleneck issues in a specific component of its networking stack implementation. However, the roadmap for implementing upgrades and expected demand on the Solana network did not line up, as Fodera explains:

[00:05:06] Austin Fodera

There’s a lot of work that still is being done on the Solana core protocol. And so one of the components here that, you know, there was a known bottleneck, let’s call it that way in it, is in the networking stack implementation with one specific component in that. And, you know, it was on the roadmap for developers to address and fix. But the estimation between what the demand for Solana would be versus when this thing needed to be upgraded and fixed, those things did not line up.

[00:05:34] Gareth Jenkinson

Fodera concedes that a less charitable reading of the situation suggests a failure to plan and implement network upgrades. He added that ecosystem developers may have been able to anticipate the sort of demand spikes based on the network’s past usage.

[00:05:48] Austin Fodera

And so the charitable view of this is a failure of success. There’s huge demand for the Solana block space; there’s huge demand for the network. It’s processing more transactions than all the Ethereum layer 1s and layer 2s combined. The less charitable read is it’s a failure of planning, and both are fair ways to look at it that, you know, at this point, a lot of the developers on Solana should have been able to anticipate these sorts of demand spikes based on the past usage of the network. But demand is not the worst problem to have.

[00:06:15] Gareth Jenkinson

This next story is from Cointelegraph’s Editor’s Choice today and was written by William Suberg. Bitcoin miners could potentially liquidate $5 billion worth of BTC after the halving, according to calculations by the head of research at 10x Research, Marcus Thielen. The overhang from this selling could last four to six months, explaining why Bitcoin might go sideways for the next few months, as it has done following past halvings, an excerpt reads. The analyst said the same could happen again, with crypto markets potentially facing a significant challenge in a six-month summer lull. Bitcoin prices remained range bound between $9,000 and $11,500 in the five months following the 2020 halving. This year, the halving will occur around April 20, just six days away, so markets may not see any significant upward trajectory until around October. Additionally, miners tend to stock up on BTC, leading to a supply and demand imbalance and a subsequent rally in Bitcoin prices leading up to the halving. This has already occurred, with Bitcoin prices surging 74% in 2024 to reach an all-time high of just over $73,000 on March 14 before correcting below $63,000 in mid-April. Thielen also said that altcoins could bear the brunt of this situation. Many of them have been falling back heavily over the past week, and many remain a long way away from their peaks in 2021, he wrote. Even if there is a correlation between the halving and an altcoin rally, as some predict, historical evidence shows that the rally typically begins almost six months later. 

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss have joined as co-owners of Bitcoin podcaster Peter McCormack’s Real Bedford Football Club after investing $4.5 million worth of Bitcoin to support the club’s plans. The Winklevoss twins made the investment and acquisition through their investment firm, Winklevoss Capital.

The funding will be used to establish a Bitcoin treasury for the club, with McCormack telling Cointelegraph the treasury aims to safeguard the club against long-term fiat debasement. The investment helps with the infrastructure. We need this to grow with our ambitions, McCormack explained. The funds will be allocated toward developing a new training center and ongoing support for girls and youth football. In 2021, McCormack acquired RBFC, which is based in his United Kingdom hometown of Bedford, which has a population of just under 200,000 people. He holds ambition for the club — which accepts Bitcoin for game day tickets, merchandise, sponsorships and beverages — to compete in the English Premier League alongside well-known U.K. clubs like Manchester United and Chelsea. While McCormack says the lofty goal of making it into the Premier League will be a league-by-league process, the Winklevoss twins share a long-time vision of helping a Bitcoin-backed football club make it into the English top flight.

Hats off to my colleagues in the Cointelegraph investigations team for uncovering this story we published over the weekend. Crypto exchange BingX is allowing sanctioned Iranian users to evade restrictions. The exchange openly displays an Iranian version of its website, and its officials have made statements in Persian in the exchange’s official Telegram group. According to a translation of one of these statements, the BingX exchange has no problem with Iranian users, and it’s even possible to authenticate with a national card. The exchange also allows Iranian rial to tether swaps in its interface, which are prohibited under the United States Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control rules.

In another post within the official BingX Discord, one user asked if there are any restrictions for registering from Iran regarding the platform’s verification. It should be fine, a BingX representative replied, just follow the instructions on your registration. Iran has been under a variety of sanctions since 1979. The U.S. and the United Nations have accused the country of a wide variety of violations of international law, including seizing property belonging to U.S. companies, funding terrorism and enriching uranium to make nuclear weapons. Iran has denied these claims. The sanctions generally prevent Iranian residents from using centralized cryptocurrency exchanges, and these exchanges risk being blocked from U.S. and global markets if they do business with Iranians. According to OFAC, foreign financial institutions risk correspondent and payable-through account sanctions and blocking sanctions if they knowingly conduct or facilitate transactions involving the purchase or sale of Iranian rials. However, it appears that on the BingX exchange, the Iranian rial, an OFAC-sanctioned currency, is directly swappable for other cryptocurrency assets. You can find that full story on the Cointelegraph website. It’s definitely worth a read. And that is it for today’s episode. Consider yourself informed. Thanks for listening to the Rise’n’Crypto podcast by Cointelegraph. If you are enjoying these daily updates, please make sure you let us know by following, subscribing or leaving a review. Have a great week ahead! Of course, don’t forget that the Bitcoin halving happens on April 20 — that is, this coming Saturday. It’s a big moment for the cryptocurrency ecosystem, and we will be covering that in-depth this week. Robert Baggs will be back with you tomorrow. Until then, take it easy.