Welcome to the protocol, the weekly COINDESK envelope of the most important stories in the development of cryptocurrency technology. I’m Margaux Nijkerk, reporter in Coindesk.
In this number:
- Bitcoin Mining faces the ‘incredibly difficult’ market as power becomes the true currency
- Bitcoin Liquid Staking wins impulse when Lombard launches Bard Token and Foundation
- OPTIMISM TAKES FLASHBOTS TO OVERCOME THE PILA SECUENCING
- HEMI Labs raises $ 15 million to expand Bitcoin’s programability
Network news
Bitcoin’s mining players face the challenging market: Bitcoin miners have long defined themselves by the rhythm of boom and fall of the mid -four -year cycle. But the game has now changed, some of the most outstanding executives in the industry at the Salt Conference in Jackson Hole said earlier this week. The rise of funds quoted in exchange, the growing demand for power and the perspective of artificial intelligence (AI) Remodeling infrastructure needs means that miners must find ways to diversify or risk being left behind. “We used to come here and talk about the HASH rate,” said Matt Schultz, CEO of Cleanspark. “Now we are talking about how to monetize the megawatts.” For years, mining companies, whose income was mainly derived from Bitcoin’s production, lived and died from the cycle of half of half. Every four years, the rewards were reduced to half and the miners rushed to reduce costs or climb to survive. According to these executives, that rhythm no longer defines the business. “The four -year cycle is effectively broken with the maturation of Bitcoin as a strategic asset, with the ETF and now the strategic treasure and other things,” said Schultz. “The adoption is promoting demand. If you read something about the most recent ETF, they have infinitely consumed more bitcoin than they have generated so far this year.” Cleanspark, which now operates 800 megawatts of energy infrastructure and has another 1.2 Gigawatts in development, has begun to direct its attention beyond the work test. “Our speed to market with electricity has created opportunities in such a way that we can now look for ways to monetize energy beyond Bitcoin mining,” he said. “With 33 locations, we now have much more flexibility than ever before.” Schultz is not just to call the change of industry in the business model. Patrick Fleury, CFO of Terawulf, echoed the feeling and did not hit the profits that the miners are feeling in sugar. “Bitcoin Mining is an incredibly difficult business,” he said. He broke the Bitcoin mining economy in direct terms: with electricity that cost five cents per kilowatt hour, it currently costs about $ 60,000 to extract a single bitcoin. At a Bitcoin price of $ 115,000, that means that half of the income is consumed only by power. Once corporate expenses and other operating costs are taken into account, margins harden rapidly. In his opinion, profitability in mining depends almost completely on ensuring the power of ultra -low cost. – Helene Braun Read more.
Bitcoin Liquid Staking Rises: During most of their history, his followers have promoted Bitcoin as digital gold: an asset to keep in place. That passivity has left billions of dollars in BTC in wallets, disconnected from the performance strategies and composability that define decentralized finances (Defi). The increase in liquid rethinking tokens promises to change that, positioning Bitcoin not only as a value reserve but as a productive asset integrated in capital markets in the chain. Liquid Staking allows users to offer their cryptography to help ensure a network and receive in exchange for a liquid and negotiable token that represents the assets staked and can be used through defi while the original tokens continue to gain rewards. Lombard Finance has become one of the prominent projects in Bitcoin Liquid Staking. Its flagship product, LBTC, is a performance token backed 1: 1 by BTC. When BTC is deposited in the Lombard protocol, the underlying currencies are stabilized, mainly through Babylon, a protocol that allows a Bitcoin de Autodial commitment without trust. Users receive LBTC in return, which can be implemented in defi ecosystems, while the original bitcoin gains rewards. This dual functionality is key. Holders can maintain exposure to Bitcoin while using LBTC in loans, loans and provision of liquidity for protocols such as Aave, Morpho, Pendle and Ether.fi. Designed for interoperability, LBTC moves through Ethereum, Base, BNB chain and other networks, avoiding liquidity fragmentation and guaranteeing that Bitcoin can participate in a defi environment of multiple chains. – Jamie Crawley Read more.
Optimism and flashbots bind: Optimism is being associated with flashbots to renew how transactions in its OP Stack ecosystem are processed, with the aim of making some of Ethereum’s most popular layer 2 networks faster and more customizable. The association focuses on the sequencing, the process behind the scene that determines how fast a transaction confirms, what operations are prioritized and how much users pay. Optimism says that Flashbot infrastructure, which is already responsible for building more than 90% of the Ethereum blocks, will now bring confirmations close to the moment and the order of easy to use transactions to each chain of the so -called superchain. This matters because the OP of OPS more than 60% of all layers of Ethereum-2, the claims of the optimism team, including some of the best known layers of the opinion, the opinion, the basina, the bases, the optimism claims, include some of the bases, the optimism claims, including some of the best known layers, however, however, the basis, the basis. Chain, ink and sono. Until now, advanced sequencing characteristics, such as ultra fast settlement, front protection and personalized compliance rules, were only available for larger chains with resources to build them internally. With flashbots on board, these characteristics will be available through tools for any project that is built in Optimism’s Op Stack. – Margaux Nijkerk Read more.
HEMI Labs raises $ 15 million: Hemi Labs, the Bitcoin programability network founded by Jeff Garzik, raised $ 15 million in funds to accelerate development and expand its ecosystem. The round included Yzi Labs (previously Binance Labs)Digital Republic, Hyperchain Capital, Breyer Capital, Big Brain Holdings, Crypto.com and others, according to an announcement sent by email. The company said the funds will support applications for loans, loans and businesses in Bitcoin while further develop their HEMI virtual machine (HVM)A layer that embeds a bitcoin node within a VM Ethereum, the term for a decentralized system that can execute intelligent contracts and process transactions in Ethereum. – Jamie Crawley Read more.
In other news
- Aave Labs introduced Horizon, a new dedicated platform for institutional borrowers to access Stablecoins using tokenized versions of real world assets (RWAS) As US treasures. UU. As a guarantee. At the launch, the institutions can borrow the USDC of Circle, the Ripple Rlusd and the AAVE GHO against a set of tokenized assets, including the treasury and Crypto funds of Circy Dentu of Supermans, and the Janus Henderson products of Janus Henderson de Circifge and Centrifuge. The platform aims to offer short -term financing in investors in their RWA holdings and allow them to display performance strategies. – Kristzian Sandor Read more.
- Google Cloud is moving forward with the plans to launch its own layer 1 block chain, placing the network as neutral infrastructure for global finances at a time when Fintech competitors are developing their own distributed accounting books. In a LinkedIn publication published on Tuesday, Rich Widmann, head of Google Strategy of Web3, provided new details about the project, known as Google Cloud Universal Ledger (Gcul). He described the platform as a high -performance high performance block chain designed for institutions, which support Python -based intelligent contracts to be more accessible to developers and financial engineers. “Any financial institution can build with GCUL,” said Widmann, arguing that, although it is unlikely that companies such as Tether adopt the block chain and Circle’s payment companies such as Adyen can doubt in using Stripe’s, Google’s neutral infrastructure eliminates those barriers. – Siamak Masnvi Read more.
Regulatory and political
- The Washington lobbyists of the cryptography industry are trying to draw a line in the draft structure of the sand on the market that is being seen through the United States Senate, saying that they cannot support a law that would not completely protect software developers to be responsible for the bad actors that abuse their technology. The industry presented its case to the Senate Bank and Agriculture Committees “with one voice,” sending a letter on Wednesday signed by Coinbase, Kraken, Ripple, A16z, Uniswap Labs and more than one hundred other companies and cryptographic organizations, including almost all the main head groups of the US Probable that the complete negotiations about the language of the legislation that represents the objective of the United States of the industry will revive. – Jesse Hamilton Read more.
- The United States Public Future Trade Commission is about to fall to a single commissioner when Democrat Kristin Johnson leaves the agency next week, and the only other person waiting on the wings to join the regulator is the president of President of President Donald Trump, Brian Quintenz. As of September 3, the commission of five members will fall to one, because that is when Johnson plans to leave. “By advancing in an agenda in the name of growth, it is essential not to dismantle the fundamental resilience that supports financial stability and protects the broader economy,” he said in a farewell statement that encourages the agency to follow the foundations as new technologies are on board. – Jesse Hamilton Read more.
Calendar
- September 22-28: Korea Bloquchain Week, Seoul
- October 1: Token2049, Singapore
- October 13-15: Digital Asset Summit, London
- October 16-17: Blockchain European Convention, Barcelona
- November 17-22: Devconnect, Buenos Aires
- December 11-13: Solana Breakpoint, Abu Dhabi
- February 10-12, 2026: Consensus, Hong Kong
- May 5, 2026: Consensus, Miami
