Welcome to the protocol, the weekly envelope of Coindesk of the most important stories in the development of cryptocurrency technology. I am Margaux Nijkerk, a journalist in Coindesk.
In this issue:
- Bitcoin Mining faces an “incredibly difficult” market as power becomes real currency
- Bitcoin Liquid Staking is growing while Lombard launches Bard Token and Foundation
- Optimism draws flashes from the sequencing of the OP Supercharge battery
- Hemi Labs increases $ 15 million to extend Bitcoin programmability
Network news
Bitcoin mining players face a difficult market: Bitcoin minors have long been defined by the rhythm of Boom-et-Coup in the reduction cycle half of four years. But the game has now changed, some of the most eminent executives in the industry said at the Salt conference in Jackson Hole earlier this week. The rise in the funds negotiated on the stock market, the request for the request for power and the prospect of artificial intelligence (AI) Remodement of the infrastructure requires medium minors must find ways to diversify or risk being left behind. “We came here and let’s talk about the hatching rate,” said Matt Schultz, CEO of Cleanspark. “Now we are talking about how to monetize megawatts.” For years, mining companies – whose income arises mainly from the production of Bitcoin – have lived and died by the cycle in half. Every four years, the awards have been reduced in two and the minors rushed to reduce costs or increase to survive. According to these leaders, this pace no longer defines the company. “The four -year cycle is actually broken with the maturation of Bitcoin as a strategic asset, with the FNB and now the strategic treasure and so on,” said Schultz. “Adoption stimulates demand. If you read something on the most recent FNB, they have consumed infinitely more bitcoin than what has been generated so far this year.” Cleanspark, which now operates 800 megawatts of energy infrastructure and has another 1.2 Gigawatts in development, began to draw its attention beyond the proof of work. “Our speed on the market with electricity has created opportunities so that we can now seek means to monetize power beyond Bitcoin exploitation,” he said. “With 33 locations, we now have much more flexibility than ever before.” Schultz is not the only one to call the change in the commercial model of the industry. Patrick Fleury, Terawulf financial director, echoed the feeling and did not succeed in the profit that minors feel. “Bitcoin exploitation is an incredibly difficult business,” he said. He broke the economy of Bitcoin farm in simple terms: with electricity costing five hundred per kilowatt, it currently costs about $ 60,000 to extract a single bitcoin. At a bitcoin price of $ 115,000, this means that half of the income is consumed by power alone. Once companies expenses and other operating costs are taken into account, the margins are tightening quickly. In his opinion, profitability in the mining of dependencies almost entirely on the warranty of ultra-show-coint power. – Helene Braun Learn more.
Bitcoin Liquid Staking increases: For most of its history, Bitcoin was presented by its supporters as a digital organ: an asset to hold rather than using. This passivity has left thousands of billions of dollars of BTC sitting inactive in portfolios, disconnected from yield strategies and composibility that define decentralized finance (Challenge). The rise of liquid stretch tokens promises to change this, positioning Bitcoin not only as a reserve of value, but as a productive asset integrated into the chain capital markets. The liquid stripe allows users to offer their crypto to help secure a network and receive a liquid and negotiable token in return which represents the marked assets and can be used through DEFI while the original tokens continue to win rewards. Lombard Finance has become one of the eminent Bitcoin Liquid Staking projects. Its flagship product, LBTC, is a sustained yield token 1: 1 per BTC. When the BTC is deposited in the Lombard protocol, the underlying parts are dotted, mainly via Babylon, a protocol allowing a stammered of Bitcoin auto-concurrent without confidence. Users receive the LBTC in return, which can be deployed on DEFI ecosystems while the original bitcoin gains shuttle rewards. This double feature is essential. The holders can maintain an exposure to Bitcoin while using LBTC in loans, borrowing and liquidity supply between protocols such as Aave, Morpho, Pendle and Ether.Fi. Designed for interoperability, the LBTC moves on Ethereum, Base, BNB chain and other networks, preventing liquidity fragmentation and ensuring that Bitcoin can participate in a multi-chain deffi environment. – Jamie Crawley Learn more.
Optimism and flashbots combine: Optimism is associated with Flashbots to reorganize the way in which transactions are treated on its OP Stack ecosystem, aimed at making some of the most popular layer 2 networks in Ethereum faster and more customizable. The partnership focuses on sequencing, the behind the scenes process which determines the speed with which a transaction confirms, what exchanges are priority and how much users are paying. Optimism claims that the infrastructure of flashbots, which is already responsible for the construction of more than 90% of Ethereum blocks, will now provide almost instant confirmations and a friendly transaction control to each chain of the so-called superchain. Ink and Soneium. Until now, advanced sequencing features such as ultra-fast settlement, protection against precursions and personalized compliance rules were only available for the biggest chains with resources to build them internally. With flashbots on board, these features will be available via tools for any project that is based on the OP OPTIMIMM battery. – Margaux Nijkerk Learn more.
Hemi Labs increases $ 15 million: Hemi Labs, the Bitcoin programmability network founded by Jeff Garzik, collected $ 15 million in funding to accelerate development and extend its ecosystem. The round included Yzi Labs (Formerly Binance Labs)Republic Digital, Hyperchain Capital, Breyer Capital, Big Brain Holdings, Crypto.com and others, according to an announcement by email. (HVM)A layer that incorporates a bitcoin node into an Ethereum virtual machine – the term for a decentralized system that can perform smart contracts and treat transactions on Ethereum. – Jamie Crawley Learn more.
In other news
- Aave Labs introduced Horizon, a new platform dedicated to institutional borrowers to access stablecoins using tokenized versions of active world (Rwas) Like us, treasury bills as guarantee. During the launch, the institutions will be able to borrow USDC de Circle, Rlusd de Ripple and GHO of Aave against a set of tokenized assets, including the American Treasury and US Cryptate Cryptate funds, Circle’s and Centrifugal’s Riming Products of Janus Henderson. The platform aims to provide short-term qualified investors of short-term funding on their RWA participations and to allow them to deploy yield strategies. – Kristzian Sandor Learn more.
- Google Cloud goes ahead with plans to launch its own layer 1 blockchain, positioning the network as a neutral infrastructure for global finance at a time when Fintech competitors develop their own distributed registers. In a LinkedIn article published Tuesday, Rich Widmann, Google’s Google’s strategy, provided new details on the project, known as Google Cloud Universal Ledger (GCU). He described the platform as a credibly neutral high performance blockchain designed for institutions, supporting Python-based intelligent contracts to make it more accessible to developers and financial engineers. “Any financial institution can build with GCUL,” said Widmann, arguing that even if companies like Tether may be unlikely to adopt blockchain and Circle payment companies, like Adyen, can hesitate to use Stripe, Google’s neutral infrastructure removes these obstacles. – Siamak Masnavi Learn more.
Regulation and Policy
- Washington lobbyists of the crypto industry are trying to trace a line in the sand on the market on the market structure which is steam through the American Senate, claiming that they could not support a law that would not fully protect the developers of software against the manager of the poor actors abusing their technology. The industry pleaded for the banking and agricultural committees of the Senate “with a single voice”, sending a letter Wednesday signed by Coinbase, Kraken, Ripple, A16z, Uniswap Labs and more than a hundred other companies and cryptographic organizations, including almost all the main American lobbying groups. This unified effort occurs the week before the Senate returns to work, and is likely to revive complete negotiations on the language of legislation which represents the best American objective in industry. – Jesse Hamilton Learn more.
- The Commodity Futures Future US Commission Commodity Futures Trading is about to go to one commissioner when Democrat Kristin Johnson leaves the agency next week, and the only other person waiting behind the scenes to join the regulator is President President Donald Trump, Brian Quintenz. Since September 3, the commission of five members will fall to one, because that is when Johnson plans to leave. “By advancing a program in the name of growth, it is essential not to dismantle fundamental resilience which supports financial stability and protects the wider economy,” she said in a farewell declaration encouraging the agency to stick to fundamental principles as new technologies are on board. – Jesse Hamilton Learn more.
Calendar
- September 22-28: Korea Blockchain Week, Seoul
- October 1-22: 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 5-7, 2026: consensus, Miami
