Today in the cryptocurrency space, the Bitcoin Policy Institute published a paper arguing that Bitcoin should be a central bank reserve asset, and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin announced the future path of blockchain networks. The 5th installment of the blog series about “The Purge” has been published. aims to reduce data bloat and simplify Ethereum’s protocol, and insists that Polymarket is not trying to be a political website.
Bitcoin Policy Research Institute argues that Bitcoin should be a reserve asset
The Bitcoin Policy Institute recently suggested that central banks should consider Bitcoin BTCUSD as a reserve asset to hedge against rising inflation, geopolitical risks, capital regulation risks, sovereign defaults, bank failures, and international sanctions imposed by the US government. Published a paper making the claim.
Economist Matthew Ferranti, author of the paper, argues that the scarce digital asset’s limited supply, lack of counterparty risk, and self-custody of keys make Bitcoin a strong hedge against a variety of geopolitical and economic risks. He strongly argued that it would be a hedge.
US lawmakers and presidential candidates have also floated the idea of establishing a strategic Bitcoin reserve and acquiring 5% of the total Bitcoin supply (approximately 1 million BTC).
Former President Trump also proposed using Bitcoin to pay down the national debt. The national debt is now over $35 trillion and rising, and interest payments on the debt alone exceed the annual defense budget.
“Purge” — Vitalik’s plan to reduce Ethereum bloat
In his latest blog post, Buterin said The Purge will trim unnecessary data storage and eliminate outdated features to make Ethereum more efficient while preserving blockchain “persistence.” He said he is focusing on
The purge is not expected to directly impact Ethereum gas prices. However, the proposed changes could improve network performance and reduce operational costs.
A key element of The Purge is to address the growing barrier that new nodes face when trying to join the Ethereum network: increased storage requirements.
Purging is also intended to reduce storage requirements for clients “by reducing or eliminating the need for all nodes” to permanently store all history.
Buterin’s Purge blog post follows the introduction of The Verge on October 23rd, which aims to make running nodes on the Ethereum network more secure and accessible.
Polymarket’s vision is ‘not yet’ for a political website, says founder
Cryptocurrency prediction market platform Polymarket is taking “main stage” as the US presidential election approaches, yet its founder insists it has no intention of being recognized as a political website.
“Polymarket is not about politics. The vision was never to be a political website, and it still isn’t.” Shayne Coplan, founder of Polymarket, posted on October 25th has stated that their goal since launch day has been to “harness the power of the free market to demystify the real-world events that matter most to you.”
Coplan also dismissed rumors that those behind the platform are “Democrat operatives” or have any political bias.
“Unfortunately, the story isn’t all that appealing. We’re just market geeks who think prediction markets provide the public with a much-needed alternative data source,” Coplan said.
“Polymarket is strictly nonpartisan. On some days, we can be called Democratic operatives or MAGA.”
He claimed he was “tired” of people trying to make sense of experts and “discordant polls” as the US presidential election approached this November, and that the platform was “pulling back into the spotlight”. He explained that he was being served.
Koplan further argued that “polymarket’s rise in popularity correlates with correctly predicting Biden dropout.” He hopes that “politics is the first step in helping the public understand the value of market-based predictions.”
