Forbes - Crypto could be currency 💱

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	Happy Friday! Billy Bambrough here with what's driving the day in the world of bitcoin and crypto. 📧 Thank you for reading CryptoCodex! I’d love to hear your feedback, ideas and tips. Email me directly at billy@billybambrough.com.


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24-hour crypto market snapshot

Bitcoin (-4%)

$40,537

Ethereum (-4%)

$3,012

Solana (-7%)

$101.99

Tron (+7%)

$0.06823

Flip the table (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻


	Cryptocurrency prices dived yesterday along with most major stock markets after Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said a 50 basis point interest rate hike is "on the table" for May. The bitcoin price managed to keep its head above the $40,000 level while ethereum briefly dipped under $3,000, both down around 4% on this time yesterday. The rest of the crypto top ten are trending downward, with solana leading the major market lower, off by almost 7%. Further down the charts, tron, an ethereum rival that has fallen out of favor since its 2018 heyday and is now ranked as the 22nd most valuable cryptocurrency on CoinMarketCap, has surged 7% after founder Justin Sun announced he'd be following in the footsteps of luna's Terraform Labs in creating a decentralized algorithmic stablecoin called USDD that will use tron's native coin TRX to help it stay pegged to the dollar—along with $10 billion of crypto as collateral. The Block has a write-up. Look out today... For a big bit of legislation coming out of the European Union that will force the world's largest technology companies to more aggressively police their platforms, cracking down on illegal content. The Financial Times has the details. Don't expect it to make much difference to crypto scam bots on Twitter, however. Meanwhile, Treasury secretary Janet Yellen and European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde can be heard at 11am ET on CNBC this morning. Good to know: Despite the hype, only a few are galleries selling NFTs

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Crypto... but it's currency 🤯


	All that glitters: The narrative that bitcoin is a form of digital gold, useful as a store of value but not as a tool for payments, had seemed ubiquitous after the blocksize war was won in 2017. However, the development of the bitcoin second-layer lightning network and bitcoin payments company Strike working with El Salvador to encourage real-world bitcoin use has reignited an old argument. Wall Street giant Morgan Stanley yesterday published a report that predicts paying with bitcoin could become typical as technology helps reduce transaction fees, speeds up transaction times and helps merchants accept cryptocurrencies as payment. Why it matters: The crypto space has never been able to reach a consensus on what bitcoin, blockchain and cryptocurrencies are for with factions arguing endlessly over store of value, payments mechanism, and decentralized networks narratives. Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey was last week sucked into the never-ending flame wars. Evolve or die: In the report, first reported by Coindesk, Morgan Stanley says partnerships with physical stores are a more important milestone in the "evolution of bitcoin usage as a medium of payment," as over 85% of sales in the U.S. occur in shops rather than online. Analysts at the bank pointed to Strike's partnerships with point-of-sales supplier NCR and payment company Blackhawk Network which will see many stores and restaurants across the U.S. be able to accept bitcoin. Strike CEO Jack Mallers announced the company’s integration with BlackHawk at the Bitcoin 2022 conference, saying "if we can help make the bitcoin network more accessible and usable, we believe we can change the world." Payment problems: Visa and Mastercard, two of the world's biggest payment processors, have come under pressure from cryptocurrencies and more recently decentralized finance (DeFi) projects—with Tesla billionaire Elon Musk and others speculating even the meme-based dogecoin could "truly be the future currency of the internet." Last week, Chamath Palihapitiya, a former Facebook executive who runs the venture capital fund Social Capital, warned there's "a swarm of activity [coming] to dismantle" Visa and Mastercard. The bottom line: Blockchain technology has the potential to seriously undermine the existing payments industry. However, traditional banking and payment companies have themselves grown into the digital world far better than many expected them to be able to do so when Satoshi Nakamoto wrote bitcoin's white paper in 2008. If they're able to continue evolving to meet demand, it's possible the benefits of blockchain networks fail to overcome the traditional industry. Good to know: Russia's central bank is gearing up for a real-world digital ruble pilot in 2023

Crypto mining scrutiny 🕵️



	U.S. lawmaker Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) is leading the efforts to investigate the environmental consequences of cryptocurrency mining. CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images


	🌍 Today's Earth Day, whatever that means, and the environmental effects of cryptocurrency mining are again coming under scrutiny. 📝 In the U.S., California Democrat Jared Huffman, who leads a subcommittee within the House of Representatives’ Natural Resources Committee, has "serious concerns" that cryptocurrency facilities are polluting communities and making an "outsized contribution to greenhouse gas emissions," according to a letter sent this week to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan. Coindesk has a write-up. 📑 Meanwhile, in Europe, documents published by netzpolitik.org, a German website, have revealed EU officials discussed the possibility of banning proof-of-work blockchains, as used by bitcoin, because of the impact on the environment, according to documents Now read this: The 'Ripple' effect—a striking development on defending digital asset securities litigation

	Billy Bambrough
	Forbes Senior Contributor

I am a journalist with significant experience covering technology, finance, economics, and business. I write about how bitcoin, crypto and blockchain can change the world.

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Forbes - Crypto could be currency 💱

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