In the first hours after Ethereum’s long-awaited Merge was completed, over 40% of the network’s blocks were added by two entities: Coinbase and Lido. The move to Proof-of-Stake was partly framed as a way to defeat centralization on the network.

SEC Chairman Gary Gensler has said that Proof-of-Stake cryptocurrencies, which allow holders to passively earn returns while securing the network through staking, could be securities. This would mean cryptocurrencies like Solana, Cardano, and Ethereum could be included.

Analysts at JPMorgan Chase have said that Binance’srecent decision to convert existing balance and new deposits of USDC, USDP, and TUSD into its own stablecoin, BUSD, will benefit Tether.

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• Ethereum Centralization Concerns Grow Post-Merge
• SEC Chairman Says Proof-of-Stake Assets Could be Securities
• Binance’s Stablecoin Move Could bolster Tether’s Importance: JPMorgan
• Crypto Market Movers – LUNA. VGX, ATOM

Ethereum Centralization Concerns Grow Post-Merge

In the first hours after Ethereum’s long-awaited Merge was completed, over 40% of the network’s blocks were added by two entities: Coinbase and Lido. The move to Proof-of-Stake was partly framed as a way to improve the decentralization of the network.

The co-founder of Gnosis, Martin Köppelmann, pointed out on social media that at one point, out of the last 1,000 blocks on Ethereum 420 had been built by Lido and Coinbase, with seven payers accounting for more than two-thirds of the stake on Ethereum’s network.

Lido is a decentralized protocol that users liquid staking services. Whenever users stake ETH through Lido, they receive stETH, a token representing their staked ETH they can use elsewhere in the cryptocurrency space.

Coinbase is the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency exchange and allows its users to stake ETH through its platform. Using Coinbase’s services, users can stake any amount of tokens, instead of having to meet the 32 ETH threshold to become a validator on Ethereum.

If a single entity controls more than 66% of the network’s staked ether, it could be able to make it more difficult for other to write transactions on the cryptocurrency’s ledger.

SEC Chairman Says Proof-of-Stake Assets Could be Securities

SEC Chairman Gary Gensler has said that Proof-of-Stake cryptocurrencies, which allow holders to passively earn return while securing the network through staking, could be securities. This would mean cryptocurrencies like Solana, Cardano, and Ethereum could be included.

Whether an asset is a security is determined through the Howey test, which determines whether an asset qualifies as an “investment contract,” which is considered if investors pledge their money to fund an enterprise in a bid to generate returns. Gensler was quoted saying:

“That’s another indicia that under the Howey test, the investing public is anticipating profits based on the efforts of others.”

Gensler’s comments come shortly after Ethereum’s move to Proof-of-Stake. The SEC Chair had previously refused to comment on Ethereum, but said he believes Bitcoin is not a security

Binance’s Stablecoin Move Could bolster Tether’s Importance: JPMorgan

Analysts at JPMorgan Chase have said that Binance’s recent decision to convert existing balance and new deposits of USDC, USDP, and TUSD into its own stablecoin, BUSD, will benefit Tether.

Binance’s move will also see it end trading pairs for the three stablecoins being converted to BUSD. JPMorgan’s analysts believe the move will increase Tether’s importance in cryptocurrency trading.

The investment bank noted that -Tether’s market share of the stablecoin ecosystem has been declining over the past 18 months, which shows its importance has been dwindling. The company added:

“In our opinion, Tether’s importance is not only confined to its market cap share in the stablecoin universe but also depends on its usage, in particular in trading.”

JPMorgan also sees the importance of Binance’s BUSD increasing after the conversion as well.

Crypto Market Movers – LUNA. VGX, ATOM

Several tokens are leading the charge in the last 7-day period. Some of these are well-known cryptocurrencies with more liquid trading pairs, so we’ll be focusing on these over low-cap cryptos that may have higher percentage changes

Terra (LUNA) – After the collapse of the Terra’s ecosystem, the community voted for  governance proposal 1623, and a new chain was created. The new chain is a Cosmos chain and does have the treasury, oracle, or market modules of the original/classic chain. It does not have algorithmic stablecoins.

Voyager (VGX) - The Voyager Token is the native cryptocurrency of the Voyager cryptocurrency broker, which provides investors with secure access to cryptocurrencies with a solution that allows them to get the best price on their assets out of several cryptocurrency exchanges.

Cosmos (ATOM) - Cosmos is a network of many independent blockchains, called zones. The zones are powered by Tendermint Core, which provides a high-performance, consistent, secure PBFT-like consensus engine, where strict fork-accountability guarantees hold over the behaviour of malicious actors. Tendermint Core’s BFT consensus algorithm is well suited for scaling public proof-of-stake blockchains.

State of the Crypto by Top Tier Exchange Volume

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