The cryptocurrency mining market in Vietnam is reportedly reviving amid the renewed crypto rally, where Bitcoin (BTC) has surged above $51,000 for the first time since May. Crypto-related entrepreneurs and enthusiasts in Vietnam have witnessed a significant uptick in demand for crypto mining rigs in the country, local news agency VnExpress reported on Monday. Quang Thuan, owner of a chain store selling cryptocurrency miners across Ho Chi Minh City, said that the company’s sales have tripled in early September over the previous month. He noted that the mining rig market in Vietnam was down before Bitcoin surged back above $50,000 in mid-August.

Union Investment, a $500 billion asset manager, is planning to add Bitcoin (BTC) to several investment funds as part of a targeted pilot program for its institutional clients, offering compelling evidence that crypto is becoming more mainstream in Europe's largest economy.  The Frankfurt-based institution told Bloomberg on Monday that it is considering adding BTC to a small number of investment funds that will only be available to private investors. For each fund, Bitcoin exposure will be limited to no more than 2% of total assets. Portfolio manager Daniel Bathe said the new investment strategy is likely to commence in the fourth quarter, though no fixed timetable was given. Union Investment is the investment arm of DZ Bank Group, an institution with over 800 cooperative banks. As of June 30, Union Investment had $507 billion in assets under management, making it one of Germany’s largest asset managers.

El Salvador president Nayib Bukele confirmed Monday that his government has purchased its first 200 Bitcoin (BTC) ahead of the Sept. 7 rollout of a new law set to make the cryptocurrency legal tender.  “Our brokers will be buying a lot more as the deadline approaches,” Bukele said, referring to the Sept. 7 timetable for fully implementing the new BTC legislation. El Salvador has just bought it’s first 200 coins.Our brokers will be buying a lot more as the deadline approaches.#BitcoinDay #BTC

In a candid open letter, the lead contributor of Cover and Ruler Protocol, “DeFi Ted,” announced the protocol will close its virtual doors in the near future, citing a mass developer exit as the primary reason for the project’s conclusion. Launched earlier this year, the Ethereum-based decentralized finance (DeFi) insurance marketplace enabled users to stake Cover tokens as collateral and receive insurance payouts if their assets in other DeFi protocols are hacked or rug-pulled. In December 2020, the Cover protocol suffered a catastrophic exploit when a hacker minted 40 quintillion tokens, stratospherically increasing the token supply and effectively rendering the project valueless, a hypothesis confirmed with the consequential 97% price plummet.

Nonfungible tokens (NFT) depicting cartoon lobsters in suits have raised more than $4 million to support lobbying efforts supporting the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector. On Aug. 5, NFT platform and community Universe sold out of its Lobby Lobster NFTs in less than one hour, raising roughly $4 million. Wow Already $4m raised for lobbying efforts in DC. Let’s go Lobby Lobsters community. pic.twitter.com/VeT1XymMoL

Regulators must step up protections for consumers who invest in crypto tokens but also keep in mind that overreach could backfire, the chair of the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has cautioned. In a new speech written for the Cambridge International Symposium on Economic Crime, Charles Randell, chair of the FCA and Payments Systems Regulator, said that there is currently a real problem with consumers who delve into the crypto sphere without due awareness of the risks.  He singled out the role of influencers and paid-for advertising, in particular, noting that Kim Kardashian’s recent Instagram promotion of EthereumMax (EMAX), a brand-new token issued by “unknown developers,” “may have been the financial promotion with the single biggest audience reach in history.” 

Institutional demand for altcoin exposure has surged to record levels, with the altcoin market share now representing a record 35% of capital locked in crypto investment products. According to CoinShares’ Sept. 7 Digital Asset Fund Flows Weekly report, nearly 40% of the past week's inflows to digital asset investment products were allocated t instruments tracking altcoins. While $97.8 million was invested into crypto investment products combined between Aug. 30 and Sept. 3 to mark the sector’s third consecutive week of inflows, $38.9 million was invested into altcoin products.

Layer-two scaling protocols for Ethereum have surged in adoption in recent months as gas prices climb again, and the L2 ecosystem is now processing more daily transactions than the Bitcoin network according to recent findings. According to CoinMetrics data collated by industry analyst and Week In Ethereum News founder Evan Van Ness, there were more transactions on Ethereum layer-two than on the Bitcoin network on Sept. 6. Layer-two protocols processed around 250,000 transactions for the day whereas there were around 210,000 on BTC. Fun fact:There are already more daily transactions on Ethereum's layer2 (~250k) than on Bitcoin (~210k yesterday per @coinmetrics) $ETH layer2 is just getting started

After witnessing the parabolic growth of the nonfungible token (NFT) ecosystem since the turn of the year, popular cryptocurrency exchange FTX has become the latest crypto platform to announce the launch of a native NFT marketplace. Exclusive for United States-based customers, the platform will enable users to mint, buy and sell NFTs — all traded cross-chain across the Ethereum and Solana blockchains. Deposits and withdrawals are also expected to be launched in the coming weeks, opening up the capability of depositing external NFTs onto the platform. In a public display of the new feature, the exchange has launched a word-art style image that simply reads “Test.” The image has a current bid of $1,100 and a remaining time of 19 hours.

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission published a new alert about investment scams related to digital assets and cryptocurrency.  The announcement, shared by the SEC’s Office of Investor Education and Advocacy and the Division of Enforcement’s Retail Strategy Task Force, highlighted the “devastating losses” faced by retail investors due to scams. The SEC attributed the “rising popularity” of initial coin offerings, including cryptocurrencies, as the main reason for growing scams and exploits.

Blockchain cybersecurity company GK8 will be offering custody and tokenization services to the Stellar network, a move that could spark institutional interest in the Stellar Lumen (XLM) token.  By integrating with Stellar, customers of GK8 can access XLM investments in a custodial setting, opening the door to offline transactions of the digital currency, the company announced Monday. GK8 has said that its infrastructure eliminates the risk of cyberattacks while also providing scalable, high-frequency transactions. GK8 co-founder and CEO Lior Lamesh said the partnership enables XLM’s institutional investors to “generate new revenue streams, digitize assets, trade, and transform currency as it’s sent.”

According to data from eth.btc.com，ethereum network's hashrate is651,589.78 GH/s，mining difficulty is8,737.76T. ETH's price ：$ 3,922.36 Avg Gas Price：286.00Gwei Pending Txs ：126751

Global cryptocurrency exchange Binance announced Sunday that it will roll back product offerings in Singapore amid warnings from financial regulators that the company may have violated payments laws.  Beginning Sept. 9, Singaporeans will no longer be able to trade cryptocurrencies or receive payments denominated in the Singapore dollar, better known as SGD, according to a Sunday blog post. The Binance mobile app will also be removed from Singapore’s Apple and Google Play stores. The exchange said all SGD trading pairs will be removed at 04:00 UTC on Sept. 9, with users advised to complete all peer-to-peer trades 24 hours in advance of the deadline.

While originally spruiked as a futuristic city inspired by the Marvel movie Black Panther that would emerge as a “beacon of innovation and human development” and bolster the West African and Senegalese economies by Akon in 2018, there are few signs of the city’s development beyond a ceremonial stone that was laid in a field near Mbodiene 12 months ago. According to a report from Agence France-Press, the project has not progressed beyond the stone’s erection, with a small placard promoting Akon City having since fallen from its perch on top of the block. Akon had predicted that the city would boast a police station, waste center, solar power plant, shopping center, hospital and school by 2024, anticipating the project would be completed in its entirety by 2030.

Nonfungible tokens (NFT) depicting cartoon lobsters in suits have raised more than $4 million to support lobbying efforts supporting the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector. On August 5, nonfungible token platform and community Universe sold out if its Lobby Lobster NFTs in less than one hour, raising roughly $4 million. Wow Already $4m raised for lobbying efforts in DC. Let’s go Lobby Lobsters community. pic.twitter.com/VeT1XymMoL

According to data from eth.btc.com，ethereum network's hashrate is656,462.20 GH/s，mining difficulty is8,732.61T. ETH's price ：$ 3,925.51 Avg Gas Price：104.00Gwei Pending Txs ：164336

Bloomberg’s senior commodity strategist Mike McGlone has doubled down on call for six-figure Bitcoin (BTC), arguing that the first-born cryptocurrency is well on its way to becoming a global reserve asset that complements the United States dollar.  The September edition of Bloomberg’s Crypto Outlook called $100,000 BTC and $5,000 Ether (ETH) the “path of least resistance” after the two assets survived a more than 50% correction through the summer. “Crypto-assets appear in a revived and refreshed bull market with the 2H benefit of a steep discount from previous highs at the start,” wrote McGlone, referring to the second half of 2021. He said portfolios lacking BTC or ETH exposure are “naked,” as evidenced by the relative underperformance of gold and government bonds:

According to data from eth.btc.com，ethereum network's hashrate is638,878.21 GH/s，mining difficulty is8,521.01T. ETH's price ：$ 3,891.75 Avg Gas Price：208.00Gwei Pending Txs ：157194

Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky has detected more than 1,500 fraudulent entities targeting potential crypto investors and miners just in the first half of 2021. Kaspersky’s research shows that 0.60% of users from South African countries have already been targeted by malicious crypto miners. The report also suggests that the most common methods of duping unwary users involved false s claiming to sell mining equipment and fake websites posing as crypto exchanges. Kaspersky’s data based on anonymized statistics revealed that 0.85% of crypto investors from Kenya and 0.71% Nigerians were targets of crypto-miner malware, while investors from Ethiopia (3.68%) and Rwanda (3.22%) faced the most number of threats in this regard. Bethwel Opil, Africa’s enterprise sales manager at Kaspersky, warned that the low percentages do not mean that the threat is insignificant:

United States-based e-commerce platform Shop.com is the latest site to adopt cryptocurrency payments.  The company, which is owned by Market America, announced its partnership with crypto payment service provider BitPay, which will allow it to accept payments in several cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC). The new partnership enables Shop.com users to select the BitPay option during checkout to pay via their crypto wallets. Currently, users have the option to pay with Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Ether (ETH), Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), Dogecoin (DOGE) and Litecoin (LTC), as well as five U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins.