Here is your lowdown on everything that has happened in the world of crypto since yesterday. Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest just snagged another $15.6M of BitMine Immersion Technologies (BMNR) shares. The US government’s diving into blockchain. They tapped Chainlink and Pyth to bring economic data on-chain.
ARK Invest Increases Investment in BitMine Immersion Technologies
ARK Invest, led by Cathie Wood, has acquired an additional $15.6 million in shares of BitMine Immersion Technologies (BMNR), bringing its total investment in the company to over $300 million.
The ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK) purchased 227,569 shares, the ARK Next Generation Internet ETF (ARKW) acquired 70,991 shares, and the ARK Fintech Innovation ETF (ARKF) obtained 40,553 shares. This investment in BitMine, a company closely tied to Ethereum, represents nearly half of ARK’s $676 million holding in Coinbase.
ARK Invest began significantly increasing its BitMine position on July 21, purchasing $174 million in shares across its funds in a single day.
On August 20, the firm invested $21.2 million in Bullish and $16.2 million in Robinhood Markets, bringing its total Robinhood holdings to approximately $543 million.
Despite these investments, BitMine’s stock experienced a decline, closing at $46.03 on Wednesday, a decrease of nearly 8%, with a further 2.22% drop to $45.01 in after-hours trading. However, the stock has risen by 490% year-to-date.
Chainlink and Pyth Partner with U.S. Commerce Department
Chainlink and Pyth Network have partnered with the U.S. Department of Commerce to deliver official macroeconomic data on blockchain. Following the announcement, Chainlink’s LINK token surged over 5%, while Pyth’s PYTH token soared nearly 50%.
- Key U.S. economic indicators, including
- Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP)
- Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) Price Index
- Real Final Sales to Private Domestic Purchasers are now accessible via Chainlink Data Feeds across ten blockchains.
The data feeds will align with traditional release schedules, updating monthly or quarterly.
Pyth will initially provide quarterly GDP data for the past five years, with plans to expand to additional dataset
This initiative enables developers to build innovative blockchain applications, such as DeFi protocols that adjust interest rates based on GDP trends or prediction markets leveraging the PCE Index for inflation forecasts.
dYdX Crypto Exchange Unveils 2025 Roadmap
Decentralized exchange dYdX has released its 2025 roadmap, introducing a Telegram-based trading integration and a series of software upgrades. This initative has been taken to address declining earnings and boost competitiveness.
Following the July acquisition of Pocket Protector, a social trading app, dYdX is now aiming to bring trading features that can be accessed through Telegram. Besides this, the platform will also introduce software upgrades like:
- Partner Fee Share: This program allows contributors who drive trading volume and liquidity on dYdX to earn up to 50% of protocol fees. In DeFi, protocol fees are typically generated from trading activities (e.g., a small percentage of each trade).
- Scale and TWAP Order: dYdX is introducing new order types to give traders more flexibility and control.
- Scale Orders: These allow traders to place multiple limit orders across a range of prices. For example, instead of placing a single buy order at $100, a trader could set orders at $95, $97, and $99, spreading their risk and potentially improving execution in volatile markets. This is particularly useful for large traders who want to avoid moving the market with a single large order.
- TWAP Orders (Time-Weighted Average Price): These orders split a large trade into smaller portions executed over a set period, aiming to achieve an average price close to the market’s average during that time.For instance, a trader looking to buy $1 million worth of a token could use TWAP to break the order into smaller chunks over hours or days, reducing price impact and slippage (the difference between the expected and actual execution price).
- Designated Proposers: This feature focuses on reducing end-to-end trading latency, which is the time it takes for a trade to be proposed, validated, and executed on the blockchain. In dYdX’s system (built on a layer-2 solution for faster transactions), validators are responsible for processing trades.
By assigning specific validators (designated proposers) to handle certain transactions, dYdX can streamline the process, minimizing delays caused by network congestion or validator competition.
Lower latency means faster trade execution, which is crucial for high-frequency traders and improves the overall user experience.
By offering these software upgrades and Telegram integrated trading dydX is set to turn a new page and bring more users on the exchange. By offering investor friendly UX, the exchange strives to boost revenue and scale the platform.
