Is Bitcoin entering the bull market?

In Weekly Blockchain Insights, we share the most interesting Blockchain Tweets, discussions about crypto from all blockchain ecosystems and various blockchain solutions from the past week. Make sure to sign up for the newsletter below and get all blockchain insights to your inbox.

This week’s blockchain insights focus on Bitcoin, the state of Web 3 and bullish crypto market developments.

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Blockchain basics & market insights

How do we make it easier for people to join the blockchain space, to join blockchain ecosystems and significantly contribute to the growth of the space? James O’Beirne shared a great insight for first-time contributors to core protocols (Bitcoin) including great initial tasks and challenges when working with existing developers. The core of Bitcoin and other blockchain protocols are security-critical. Much needed are quality reviewers – but not many are capable of doing that. If you want to significantly contribute to the core you have to build up reputation.

Great first-time contributions to Bitcoin Core:

– reviewing PRs by building/testing locally,
– adding test coverage, and
– best thing: finding bugs, whether conceptual or in code

Common, well-intended, but often not well-received:

– refactoring,
– reviewing PRs with only nits

— James O'Beirne (@jamesob) August 6, 2020

Chorus One published a report on liquid staking which includes desired characteristics, analyses of approaches, and current solutions, benefits and risks, as well as the impact on liquidity, price discovery and network. What is liquid staking? “We use the term liquid staking to describe protocols that issue on-chain representations of staked assets in a decentralized network. Through tokenization, liquid staking protocols allow users to get liquidity on staked assets and enable the usage of staked assets as collateral in (decentralized) financial applications. Other terms that have been used to describe such protocols are staking derivatives and programmable staking.”

Check operator @ChorusOne's Liquid Staking Report on the implications of proof-of-stake assets in #decentralized #finance and its restrictions and #custodial approaches.

Go to https://t.co/eS4QviolpQ pic.twitter.com/e5IAMftBlC

— Bank Frick (@BankFrick) August 4, 2020

The blockchain oracle problem is well-known and summarized in this writeup. Many blockchain projects face the question of whether to build their own oracle solution, to rely on the leading blockchain oracle provider Chainlink, or to use multiple blockchain oracles. While this part of the industry is still young, more and more projects are evolving. We’ve curated a list of all blockchain oracle solutions.

📢Blockchain Oracles

The execution of automated smart contracts promises efficiency gains. However, often the digital world relies on data from the physical world and we need to bridge the two worlds with oracles.

👉Here's a list of Blockchain Oracles: https://t.co/Uy7gELDe3C

— Blockchain-Comparison.com (@BCComparison) August 3, 2020

Crypto funding, acceleration & investing

Outlier Ventures shared a report on Web 3 funding in Q2. This report shows the massive interest in DeFi but also the uncertainty in markets and a drop in funding. Equity seed funding was most attractive.

Web 3 funding in numbers for 2Q20 are in.

💰 70% less than Q1 across 25% less deals
🌱 56 seed rounds
💳 40% of the deals and half the $$ went to #DeFi
🇺🇸🇨🇦 raised 4x more than Europe-based and 10x+ more than the UK-based companieshttps://t.co/1kWr3fF2kr pic.twitter.com/xrdFcgAKMZ

— ANA.vc 💸 (@ana_yanakieva) August 4, 2020

Genesis Trading also released its Q2 market observations and confirmed the shift in focus towards Defi and lending. Also, professional investors in crypto and in DeFi are looking more and more into derivatives. This growth is expected to continue in Q3 & beyond.

Today, Genesis released our Q2 Digital Asset Market Report, providing a detailed look at our record Q2 with $7.5B in trades and new loan originations. Read the full report here: https://t.co/fJy6xahsuU

— Genesis (@GenesisTrading) August 4, 2020

When discussing the growth of price, it’s also important to understand market sentiment and indicators when the top is reached in order to not miss a good selling opportunity – if you’re not a long-term holder. Coverage by mainstream newspapers & DeFi price discussions in taxis might be signs of reaching the top.

What's your favorite market top indicator?

— Qiao Wang (@QWQiao) August 9, 2020

A new DeFi accelerator program has launched. This connects DeFi startups with liquidity providers and DeFi veterans such as SNX founders, Compound founders & Aave founders. If you’re building in DeFi – check it out!

DeFi Alliance launched an accelerator program dubbed @acceleratedefi

The accelerator is led by @jumpcapital @CumberlandSays @CMTDigitalLtd @volt_cap @QWQiao and I will lead along with ecosystem partners @StaniKulechov @kaiynne @rleshner @loi_luuhttps://t.co/MFsOMvjBko

— Imran Khan (@lmrankhan) August 4, 2020

Dave Portney, Raoul Paul and other traders are currently expressing more and more interest in Bitcoin as an investment or trading opportunity. With their large numbers of followers, active engagements and bullish predictions they may impact the market seriously and onboard new people to crypto.

I’m officially inviting the Winklevi twins to my office to explain bitcoin to me. Have to wear the rowing outfits though. #DDTG pic.twitter.com/owQr0aZVdn

— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) August 4, 2020

My conviction levels in bitcoin rise every day. Im already irresponsibly long. I am now thinking it may not be even worth owning any other asset as a long-term asset allocation, but that's a story for another day (I'm still thinking through this).

— Raoul Pal (@RaoulGMI) August 6, 2020

These are all INCREDIBLY BULLISH long-term chart patterns. The probabilities in the charts suggest that Bitcoin is likely set to be the best performing major asset in the world over the next 24 months and by a big margin.

I remain #irresponsiblylongbitcoin #bitcoin $BTC

— Raoul Pal (@RaoulGMI) August 10, 2020

We hope you enjoyed this weekly update directly from the sources. Make sure to sign up for the newsletter below and join us on Twitter (@BCComparison) and Telegram (@BCinsights) for more updates & insights from all blockchain ecosystems.