Today’s top headlines in the crypto roundup: CoinShares Bitcoin Mining Report estimates that renewables make up 74% of Bitcoin mining energy mix, Zilliqa launches first-ever smart contract platform built on sharding and Binance offers early access to ‘Last round of margin testing’.

Litecoin (LTC) has fared the best out of the top ten cryptoassets and is trading at $113.95 up 9.97% in the past 24 hours with a total volume of $1.13 billion. Litecoin’s halving event is estimated to take place on August 6th, 2019 and is thought to be the driving force behind LTC’s impressive run this year: the altcoin is up 428% in the last 6 months.

At the time of writing, bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) are trading at $7,935.7 (+2.76%) and $245.9 (+3.81%), respectively. The MVIS CryptoCompare Digital Assets 10 Index, it is currently tracking at 3,878.29 (-0.05%).

CoinShares: Renewables Make Up 74% of Bitcoin Mining’s Energy Mix

A new study by cryptocurrency investment and research firm CoinShares estimates renewable energy is powering almost three quarters – 74.1% – of Bitcoin mining operations. This percentage is slightly down from the number in their November 2018 report, where they estimated renewables power 77.6% of the Bitcoin mining network.

The latest CoinShares Bitcoin Mining Report also found that Bitcoin mining operations tend to be geographically concentrated in areas where renewable energy sources are abundant. What’s more, CoinShares calculated that the market-average, all-in marginal cost of mining bitcoin had decreased since November; suggesting that, “at current prices, the average miner is highly profitable.”

Zilliqa Launches World’s First Sharding-Based Smart Contract Platform

The team behind Zilliqa (ZIL) – a public blockchain platform that harnesses a scaling technique known as sharding – announced that smart contract functionality had gone live on the Zilliqa mainnet. The Singapore-based team working on Zilliqa plans to elaborate on their project’s new smart contract functionalities during the two-hour-long Zilliqa Day event on June 18.

Zilliqa president and chief scientific officer, Amrit Kumar, wrote in a blog post released on Monday:

“This launch enables developers to write and deploy smart contracts on the Zilliqa blockchain using our safe-by-design smart contract language Scilla.”

Binance Offers Early Access to ‘Last Round of Margin Testing’

Binance announced they are offering 1,000 people the opportunity to partake in its final round of testing for its forthcoming margin trading product. Per the application form shared by Binance, “users that are able to commit to providing feedback based on their experience [and] hold 10 BNB (Binance Coin) or more will be given priority.”

The form – which is only available to users who own a Binance account that is “level 2 verified” – requires the applicant to divulge the email address and referral ID of the Binance account they would like margin trading enabled on. It also asks the applicant if they are willing to commit to providing feedback based on their experience testing the crypto margin trading product.

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