The most important crypto news of the last week

EU Parliament votes against BTC ban

A decision that took the breath away of the crypto space in Europe: The de facto BTC ban is off the table for the time being. The EU Parliament has decided against the problematic paragraph, which was submitted as an amendment shortly before the vote.

However, the European crypto space cannot feel completely safe. There is still work to be done before the MiCA guidelines make it through the entire process. The vote could be described as a “stage victory” – that’s how Stefan Berger (CDU), chairman of the responsible committee for economics and currency (ECON), sees it.

Instagram soon with NFT feature?

The popular influencer platform Instagram will soon be adorned with NFTs. This was announced by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at a conference in Austin, Texas. However, Zuckerberg did not reveal exactly how the feature should be designed.

Other social media platforms have already integrated non-fungible tokens. The premium version of Twitter now allows its users to use NFTs as profile pictures, which differ from “normal” pictures in their hexagonal shape. It remains to be seen how Meta wants to approach the topic around NFTs.

SEC to stifle crypto companies with paperwork

The fact that the US stock exchange supervisory authority is now cracking down on violations should all be after the cause BlockFi and the hefty $100 million fine. Now, however, there are critical voices from Congress who fear that the SEC will take action too harshly.

In one letter to SEC boss Gensler, a total of eight congressmen from both the Republicans and the Democrats expressed their concern about the overwhelming information requests from the agency. There is even talk of a violation of the so-called “Paperwork Reduction Act” (PRA).

ETH on the proof-of-stake home stretch

The DeFi top dog is currently well on its way to transitioning to the Proof of Stake consensus mechanism. The last test network called “Kiln” was successfully implemented.

Now the participants of the ETH network should check the last public test network before the changeover to ensure that everything runs smoothly. The crypto scene expects the final conversion to ETH 2.0 this year.

End the Ukraine war with crypto technology?

Internet computer founder Dominic Williams shared a slightly different suggestion in one blog post with. According to this, smart contracts and a verification process called “People Parties” are to be used to educate the Russian population about the terrible events in Ukraine.

The idea is to pay Russian citizens $50 each in crypto to incentivize them to watch the informational videos. He hopes that the Russian population will subsequently oppose Putin.