Republican bill seeks SEC, CFTC ‘clarity’ on crypto, memecoin frenzy drives Uniswap to record

US lawmakers draft bill with first SEC, CFTC crypto guidance

Republican lawmakers in the US drafted a bill Friday that aims to delineate authority between the two agencies currently jockeying for control over the crypto space.

House Representatives Patrick McHenry and Glenn Thompson’s proposed crypto bill would grant spot market authority to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for crypto commodities, and prohibit the Securities Exchange Commission from preventing alternative trading systems from listing crypto securities.

The jury is still out on which digital assets count as securities or commodities, as both agencies have made various legal claims regarding the status of certain assets.

NOW READ: Meet the prosecutor who claws back millions from crypto scams: ‘I’ve had grown men crying on the phone to me’

Bitcoin developers debate Ordinals censorship following memecoin congestion

The developers responsible for maintenance of the Bitcoin network are debating whether to deploy software to prevent memecoins and NFTs from dominating network activity.

The activity has seen a massive uptick since the introduction of Ordinals, a method for the inscription of data onto tiny bits of code Bitcoin’s blockchain, which has seen heightened network activity and occasional network congestion.

Bitcoin developer Ali Shereif wrote an email to his peers earlier in the month which encouraged the network to adopt measures to prevent Ordinals from allowing what he called “worthless” tokens to clog the network.

Other developers defended the innovation, on grounds that it allows developers to execute a wider range of tasks on the network.

NOW READ: Serial ‘pig butchering’ scam victim loses almost $10m in crypto despite warnings

Uniswap sees record activity amid memecoin frenzy

A feverish memecoin market has pushed more people to decentralised exchanges than ever, with leading DEX Uniswap showing record numbers last month.

Blockchain firm Dune Analytics showed over 520,000 individual wallets operate on the platform in May, which beats the previous benchmark set in January 2022.

Network activity also caused record numbers of ETH to be burnt, as activity saw $259 million in ETH permanently burned by the protocol’s deflationary burn mechanism.

The memecoin craze began earlier in the year with coins such as Pepe.

NOW READ: EU regulators flag new crypto risks and weigh rules that may impact Uniswap and Binance

EU telecom giant Deutsche Telekom becomes Polygon validator

Ethereum scaler Polygon has announced that Deutsche Telekom, the largest telecommunications provider in Europe, will become a validator on its proof-of-stake chain.

Deutsche Telekom’s announcement is a milestone for the Polygon Network and blockchain technology in general, as it marks a major integration by an institutional partner.

The partnership comes as Polygon expands into layer two technology with its zkEVM network, which operates on top of Ethereum.

Deutsche Telekom plans to use the Polygon network to offer staking and validation services.

Fed report shows minimal crypto holder decline despite bear market

Despite a tumultuous 2022 bear market, US Federal Reserve data shows that the majority of American crypto holders have retained some or all of their digital assets.

The Fed report which was released this month said that crypto holders among the US population numbered 10%, down from 12% in 2021.

Numbers also showed that unbanked and low income crypto holders tended to use crypto for things like financial transactions and payments at a higher rate than wealthy users, at 5% compared to wealthy users’ 3%.

More web3 news from around the web...

Is Ron DeSantis Right? Only 16% of Americans support a CBDC in latest poll — Decrypt

Crypto Funding: wallet provider Magic Labs takes the cake in $126M week — Blockworks

Rocket Pool launches rETH on zkSync Era — The Defiant