Kalam Crypto #60: CoinMENA @ LEAP, NFTs on Bitcoin & more

“The most courageous decision that you can make each day is to be in a good mood.” Voltaire

Ahlan wa sahlan, and welcome to the 60th edition of CoinMENA's weekly newsletter, Kalam Crypto. This week, CoinMENA is at the LEAP conference in Riyadh and we list 21 new digital assets, NFTs on Bitcoin and what is Nostr? All that and more, so let's dive into this week's letter, and talk crypto:

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CoinMENA News 🗞

CoinMENA @ LEAP23: Join us on our LEAP into the future of finance! We are excited to be a part of the award-winning #tech event #LEAP23. Come visit us and meet the team at our booth in the Bahrain Hub Pavilion #Riyadh Front Expo Center from 6-9 February 2023, 10 AM - 7 PM. 

🚀 We added 21 new digital assets: We listed 21 new Trade-Only & Full Listed digital assets on the platform, including SOL, ALGO, and more. Diversify your crypto portfolio now by choosing from 49 crypto assets on CoinMENA!

Global News 🌍

NFTs on Bitcoin: Ordinals, a non-fungible token protocol, has been launched on Bitcoin's mainnet and has caused a debate among the Bitcoin community. Ordinals are digital assets that can track and transfer individual satoshis, the smallest denomination of bitcoin, and can store texts, images, or HTML on-chain. This was made possible by a loophole from the 2021 Taproot upgrade, which enabled "practically unlimited storage." The community is divided over the purpose of Bitcoin and whether the ledger should be used for financial transactions or as a distributed data store for different applications.

XRP buybacks: Ripple Labs' XRP token has seen a 20% decrease since being sued by the SEC in December 2020 over alleged unregistered securities sales. Despite this, the company has invested billions of dollars in buying back the XRP token on secondary markets. This has been reported as a positive indicator of XRP's liquidity and is believed to have contributed to its 27% increase in January. Following the SEC charges, Ripple Labs has invested 75% of the revenue generated from direct XRP sales and 67% of overall sales revenue from the fourth quarter of 2016 into purchasing XRP on the secondary market. Howver, the regulatory outcome of the SEC lawsuit remains uncertain. 

Keep an eye on 👀

Decentralized Social Networks: Nostr, which stands for (Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays), a decentralized social network protocol, has been launched via mobile app stores. Nostr is similar to Twitter, allowing users to publish posts, like, follow, and report content. The network gained popularity after an endorsement from Jack Dorsey, former CEO of Twitter, and was funded with a 14 bitcoin donation from him. Nostr is supported by bitcoiners, and although it doesn't use the Bitcoin blockchain, it supports payments via Bitcoin's Lightning Network. The platform has received support from whistleblower Edward Snowden, Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin, and several high-profile bitcoiners. Nostr's launch is part of a growing trend towards decentralized social media platforms, putting users in charge of their data ahead of corporate control.

Tweet of the week 🐥

Quiz Corner ✅ 

Last week’s question: What is the Proof of Work consensus mechanism?

Answer: Agreement mechanism on transactions

This week’s question: Which is true for the genesis block?

1. It’s the first block in the blockchain

2. It’s the block that controls the entire blockchain

3. It’s a program controlling all blockchains

4. It’s a governance mechanism

See the answer in next week’s newsletter.