Bitcoin L2 Stacks back after a 9-hour nap

Bitcoin layer-2 network Stacks have resumed producing blocks over the weekend after nine hours of downtime on Friday, June 14.

Stacks said in an X post on the day it saw a delay in its block production “due to unexpected mining behavior combined with a Bitcoin reorg” — when prior confirmed Bitcoin network blocks were invalidated and replaced with new ones.

The Bitcoin scaler went offline at Stacks Block #153,917 at around 4:13 am UTC on June 14, with the next block not being created until 1:20 pm UTC later that day.

The network’s self-named token, Stacks (STX), dropped over 8% to $1.89 in the seven hours after block production resumed, according to CoinGecko.

It’s since fallen further to trade at $1.85 and is down 17.8% over the past week, falling from a June 12 weekly peak of $2.45.

Chinese telco to buy more crypto mining rigs

A Shenzhen-based telecommunications firm, Coolpad Group, revealed it’s spending around $13.5 million on thousands of crypto mining rigs.

Coolpad, which is listed on Hong Kong’s stock exchange, disclosed in a June 13 filing that it’s buying 2,700 “electronic computer servers which are used for crypto mining” from a Hong Kong-based company to be deployed in North America.

It didn’t disclose the manufacturer or exactly where in North America the rigs would go, but it shared that its computing power would be raised from 873,000 terahashes per second (TH/s) to over 1.5 million TH/s.

That’s about 1.5 exahashes per second (EH/s) — for comparison, crypto miner Riot Blockchain reported its hashrate last month was 14.7 EH/s.

It comes after the company last month said it would buy up to $28 million worth of United States-listed spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and shares of crypto miners, including CleanSpark (CLSK).

94% of central banks exploring CBDCs: BIS survey

The so-called “bank for central banks” —the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) — said on June 14 that it had seen a “sharp uptick” in wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) experiments and pilots.

It added that 94% of central banks it surveyed are exploring a CBDC, which it said “suggests that central banks are proceeding at their own speed, taking diverse approaches and considering different design features.”

“The likelihood that central banks will issue a wholesale CBDC within the next six years now exceeds the likelihood that they will issue a retail CBDC,” the BIS said. However, it added that “many CBDC features are still undecided.”

Wholesale CBDCs are mainly used to help institutions with payment and settlements, as compared to a retail CBDC which would be used by the general public.

The BIS said the survey indicated that stablecoins “are rarely used for payments outside the crypto ecosystem,” and two-thirds of respondents “have or are working on a framework to regulate stablecoins and other crypto-assets.”

Bitcoin ETF adoption slow as advisers cautious: BlackRock CIO

The adoption of the U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs has been slowed by cautious financial advisers, says Samara Cohen, BlackRock’s chief investment officer of ETF and index investments.

CNBC reported on June 16 that Cohen told a crowd at Coinbase’s State of Crypto Summit that 80% of Bitcoin ETF purchases have been likely coming from investors making their own buys “often through an online brokerage account.”

BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) was one of the ten ETFs to launch in January which has seen around $17.6 billion worth of inflows.

Cohen called registered investment advisers “wary” of the ETFs but added, “That’s their job.”

“This is an asset class that has had 90% price volatility at times in history, and their job is really to construct portfolios and do the risk analysis and due diligence,” she said. “They’re doing that right now.”

Meanwhile, Coinbase financial chief Alesia Haas said Bitcoin was “on a slow journey of adoption.”

Other news

Over $100 billion has been raised for crypto startups since the end of May 2014, just over 10 years ago.

Presidential hopeful Donald Trump has again bid to court the crypto vote, pledging to “end Joe Biden’s war on crypto” and keep crypto and Bitcoin “made in America.”

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