Weekly Blockchain News, October 11, 2021

Welcome back in the weekly summary of leading developments in the crypto/blockchain space, presented from Billon's point of view. Check what happened in the last days when it comes to CBDC and other enterprise uses of blockchain. Enjoy the read!

Blockchain company accidentally gives out $90 million, begs people to give it back.  It’s just another day in the Wild West of cryptocurrency markets. Users of the blockchain startup Compound got an unusual surprise. Millions of dollars worth of COMP tokens, rewards for crypto mining, were mistakenly given out Wednesday night — and the exchange is now groveling and threatening for its money back. Whoops!

Universities are flunking blockchain tech. As higher education shifted online through the global pandemic, issues of trust, identity and fraud crippled learning and research. Blockchain technology has emerged as a potential solution to these long-standing problems and might even offer opportunities for novel and emerging use cases. However, despite being an important driver for the blockchain industry, universities have failed to realize the potential of blockchain technology for their own use. This may be a chance for us?

Bitcoin price rally fueled by whales’ $1.6B buy, blockchain data shows. One or a group of large bitcoin buyers, also called bitcoin whales, appeared to be behind Wednesday’s price pop, based on data that showed large bitcoin purchases on exchanges during early U.S. trading hours. But why the whale – or whales – placed bitcoin buying orders of nearly $1.6 billion in a few minutes on a centralized exchange remains unclear.

El Salvador has just started mining bitcoin using the energy from volcanoes. El Salvador has mined 0.00599179 bitcoin, or about $269, with power harnessed from a volcano, in a first for the country. President Bukele indicated in his tweet that the mining project was still a work in progress and that they are in the process of “testing and installing” new mining equipment.

Texas poised to be a world leader in bitcoin and blockchain? Texas has seen the upside of China’s decision to cancel bitcoin mining, in what set off the ‘Great Mining Migration’ to Austin, With the GDP size currently making Texas the 9th or 10th largest economy in the world, there should not be any underestimation with respect to just how large Texas could grow with crypto - "Forbes" predicts.

Fed prepares to launch review of possible CBDC The Federal Reserve plans to launch a review of the potential benefits and risks of issuing a U.S. digital currency, as central banks around the world experiment with the potential new form of money. Officials will release a paper and solicit public comment, but are unlikely to decide soon on government-backed cryptocurrency - "WSJ" notices.

Nigerian central bank to launch digital currency within days. The Central Bank of Nigeria will launch the eNaira, its digital currency, in a couple of days from now, Governor Godwin Emefiele told a conference on Thursday. He said this would make Nigeria "one of the first countries in Africa, and indeed the globe, to adopt the digitisation of its national currency".

The top universities for blockchain.  If you want to study blockchain, Singapore is your best choice. This year’s Coindesk ranking of 230 schools worldwide sees Asian names dominate and European universities rise up the board.

And that's it for now. See you next week!