Crypto derivatives platform Delta Exchange announced Wednesday that it has launched futures trading on Solana (SOL) and Cardano (ADA), giving investors a new access point to the leading altcoins. The initial rollout of SOL and ADA call and put options will have daily maturities, with weekly and monthly maturities to be made available at a later date. Options give owners the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell a specific security at a specified price within a pre-defined timeframe. Call and put options are used heavily in traditional markets but have become more prevalent within crypto markets.

El Salvador’s Bitcoin (BTC) adoption drive met its first roadblock after citizens reported problems downloading and operating the state-run Chivo wallet.  While the wallet was taken down soon after it went live, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele later announced that all the issues related to the BTC wallet have been fixed. He tweeted: Soon after El Salvador’s implementation of the Bitcoin Law, Chivo wallet was reportedly launched on major app stores, including Google Play, Huawei AppGallery and Apple App Store.

The crypto market is back to major price swings followed by a Bitcoin (BTC) price crash on Tuesday, the day the largest cryptocurrency became legal tender in El Salvador. But it was not unexpected for many crypto veterans, including Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz. Speaking to Bloomberg, the billionaire Bitcoin bull said that crypto is still dominated by retail investors who are “too excited” by the recent interest from institutions such as Visa and Amazon. People are realizing that “crypto is not just Bitcoin being bought as a hedge against bad monetary fiscal policy,” he said. “But maybe, more importantly, it’s Web 3.0. It’s the internet of value transfer.”

Following El Salvador’s historic adoption of Bitcoin (BTC) as legal tender on Tuesday, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson predicted that a lot more countries will eventually follow in the Latin American nation’s footsteps. El Salvador’s Bitcoin acceptance further legitimizes the belief that people should be in control of their money, Hoskinson said in his “Congratulations Bitcoin” YouTube video on Tuesday. The Cardano founder expressed confidence that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are the future of money as the younger generation will inevitably trigger mass adoption of crypto. “The majority of people under the age of 25 have a positive view on cryptocurrencies, and a lot of them own them. That’s the future. Their children will grow up with those values and those beliefs about the nature of money,” he said.

Crypto-related companies and figures have provided evidence about being de-banked by Australian financial institutions to a Senate inquiry. Crypto investment firm Aus Merchant, global remittance provider Nium and small peer-to-peer crypto brokerage platform Bitcoin Babe were speaking on a panel as part of the senate inquiry into “Australia as a Technology and Financial Centre” on Sept. 8. All three are registered with financial intelligence regulator AUSTRAC and are subject to reporting requirements, however they all echoed similar sentiments of being de-banked without a concrete explanation as to why.

Ethereum transaction protocol Eden Network has raised $17.4 million in seed funding from some of blockchain’s biggest venture funds, underscoring the need to address ongoing challenges facing the block production economy.  The funds will be used to support the adoption of Eden Network among developers, miners and users, the company announced Wednesday. The network claims all users will benefit from its ordering rules thanks to an improved block production system. The investment round was led by Multicoin Capital with participation from Alameda Research, Jump Capital, Wintermute, GSR and DeFiance Capital. Genesis Capital executive Joshua Lim and Andre Cronje of Yearn.finance also participated as angel investors.

Industry experts see Tuesday’s crypto market plunge as a “false dip” while reiterating the $100,000 Bitcoin (BTC) price for the end of the year.  In a new report by Standard Chartered’s cryptocurrency research unit, Bitcoin is predicted to hit $100,000 “in late 2021 or early 2022,” accompanied by a huge Ether (ETH) price spike. The research team said that Ether is “structurally” valued at $26,000–$35,000 — 10 times its current price — but BTC must reach $175,000 for that to occur. 

Australian buy now pay later (BNPL) giant Afterpay — now part of Jack Dorsey's Square — has said that it is likely to pursue cryptocurrency services once the regulatory framework is clear. Following on from Afterpay’s submission to the Senate inquiry into “Australia as a Technology and Financial Center” which posited that merchants could slash payment costs by utilizing cryptocurrencies, representatives spoke to the inquiry on Sept. 8. Afterpay’s vice president for public policy and communications Damian Kassabgi said that “this idea of being able to exchange currencies from person to person or to a merchant without going through the traditional rails could create a lot of efficiencies.”

Chinese mining hardware giant Bitmain will be bringing 56,000 of its latest Antminers to the southeastern U.S. state of Georgia. The influx of mining rigs is part of a three-way deal between Nevada-based tech firm ISW Holdings, crypto mining datacenter Bit5ive, and Bitmain. The total cost of the hardware deployment will be around $62 million according to ISW and is expected to generate monthly revenue of $10 million when running at full capacity. ISW Holdings has already parted with $6 million towards the purchase that will see Bitmain's Antminer S19J mining rigs deployed under its new BlockQuarry brand using Bit5ive’s infrastructure. Bitmain reportedly suspended orders of new miners in June amid a booming secondhand market.

A U.S. District Judge has dismissed amended racketeering allegations brought by traders against the parent company of derivatives exchange BitMEX, HDR Global trading, noting that many of the plaintiff’s accusations had been copy and pasted from a different lawsuit filed against the platform. On Sept. 7, Judge William Orrick dismissed the plaintiff’s claims that BitMEX had engaged in market manipulation, fraudulent inducement, and violated both the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO) and Commodity Exchange Acts. According to Law360, Judge Orrick concluded the filings were “conclusory” and “prolix” in nature, stating:

Crypto Gaming United, a startup aiming to build a global community of nonfungible token (NFT)-focused play-to-earn gamers, hraised $5 million in an oversubscribed seed funding round. A Sept. 8 announcement notes the round was led by famed Australian venture capitalist Mark Carnegie and Chrono.tech CEO Sergei Sergienko — with the pair having co-founded the crypto-focused asset manager MHC Digital Finance. Australian investment managers Shaw and Partners and Blockchain Assets also participated in the round.

Blockchain infrastructure developer Blockstream has partnered with Macquarie Group, an Australian multinational investment bank, to launch a new pilot for a Bitcoin (BTC) mining facility with a mandate to explore carbon-neutral alternatives.  As part of the pilot project, Macquarie Group is investing in one of Blockstream’s enterprise-grade mining facilities, the companies announced Wednesday. This will allow Macquarie Group to uncover new opportunities in renewable energy that can be bootstrapped for more sustainable Bitcoin mining initiatives.  Macquarie Group is one of the largest institutional investors in the renewable energy infrastructure, with 44 gigawatts of generation under development or construction as of March 31, 2021.

According to data from eth.btc.com，ethereum network's hashrate is664,913.71 GH/s，mining difficulty is8,839.60T. ETH's price ：$ 3,492.77 Avg Gas Price：128.00Gwei Pending Txs ：116753

El Salvador’s recognition of Bitcoin (BTC) as legal tender has opened up new payment options for its citizens, with fast-food empire McDonald’s reportedly accepting payments in the cryptocurrency through Lightning Network.  Journalist Aaron van Wirdum broke the news Tuesday after he visited a McDonald’s restaurant in El Salvador, where he was presented with a printed QR code directing him to an invoice page on Lightning Network. McDonald’s had 19 locations across the Latin American country as of 2019. Just walked into a McDonald's in San Salvador to see if I could pay for my breakfast with bitcoin, tbh fully expecting to be told no.But low and behold, they printed a ticket with QR that took me to a webpage with Lightning invoice, and now I'm enjoying my desayuno traditional! pic.twitter.com/NYCkMNbv7U

The former Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has spoken out about the nation’s financial and crypto ecosystem and stated that digital assets need to be accepted. Speaking at the inaugural HODL ’21 virtual conference organized by the Blockchain and Crypto Assets Council (BACC) of the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) on Sept. 7, Rama Subramaniam Gandhi said that crypto could be used for payments for economic activities but he sees them more as an asset class. The regulatory situation in India remains unclear with bills and legislation still being mulled by politicians. Earlier this month, the government announced that it was working on a draft bill to define cryptocurrencies as commodities where they could be taxed. If passed, it would not allow them to be used for payments, but traded and invested in as assets instead.

In a recent interview with local Brazilian news outlet Seu Dinheiro, Eduardo Abreu, vice president of new business at payments giant Visa, revealed the company’s intentions to integrate crypto assets onto its platform for both payments and as a store of value, including the leading cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (BTC). Back in March 2021, Visa’s CEO of Brazil, Fernando Teles, introduced the concept of adopting tokenized payments, as well as an application programming interface, or API, designed to bridge the gap between traditional financial institutions and crypto services. In the interview, Abreu shared his belief that greater adoption will require the integration of traditional banking activity within the cryptocurrency ecosystem so that customers can transact with fiat and crypto within the same environment.

In an interview with local media, Javier Argueta, the legal counsel to the Presidential House of El Salvador, clarified the obligations of businesses the day before the country’s controversial Bitcoin Law recognizing BTC as legal tender took effect. The legal counsel to the President of El Salvador has stated that businesses are mandated to accept Bitcoin from customers — but they are able to choose whether or not they will receive BTC or U.S. dollars once the transaction is settled. According to a rough translation, Agueta emphasized that it is mandatory for businesses “to have the electronic wallet” to receive Bitcoin, however “In the transaction [...] you have the will to receive Bitcoin or dollars, that is why it is voluntary.”

The European Commission's blockchain initiative has selected the Iota Foundation as one of seven projects to participate in the preliminary stage of designing an EU-wide distributed ledger technology platform.  The initiative seeks to increase the efficiency and accountability of the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI), a network of nodes dedicated to facilitating the efficiency of EU-centric transactions, as well as the expansion of the region's supply chain through the adoption of emerging technologies, all the while reducing European carbon footprint. The Iota Foundation — a non-profit organization supporting the Tangle, an open-source DLT platform — will support EBSI in cross-border relations between governments, businesses, and citizens for the “digital management of educational credentials, the establishment of trusted digital audit trails and document traceability, SME financing, data sharing among authorities, and digital identification.”

Taiwan’s police administration has reportedly arrested 14 people for running a $5.41-million (150 million New Taiwan dollars) investment scam over the past year, involving more than 100 cryptocurrency investors. CIB investigator Kuo Yu-chih said that the scam was led by a local businessman named Chen, who ran the operation on social media platforms. Chen was also reportedly running Azure Crypto Co, a Taipei-based platform that offered various investment services, including cryptocurrency transactions. He explained: According to the report shared by Taipei Times, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) has charged the suspects with fraud, money laundering and breaches of the Organized Crime Prevention Act.

Despite the Russian state maintaining a mostly unfriendly stance on cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC), a major state-backed museum is benefiting from the industry by raising hundreds of thousands of dollars with nonfungible tokens, or NFTs. The Russian State Hermitage Museum, the largest museum in the world, has finished its first auction on the NFT platform by Binance — the world's largest crypto exchange — selling five tokenized collectibles depicting masterpieces from artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Vincent van Gogh. The auction included five NFT copies of Hermitage-hosted artworks, including Wassily Kandinsky’s "Composition VI," Giorgione’s "Judith," Da Vinci’s "The Madonna and Child," Claude Monet’s "Corner of the Garden at Montgeron" and van Gogh’s "Lilac Bush."