Ethereum’s final testnet merge has been scheduled to occur in early August. The new testnet comes shortly after the Sepolia testnet successfully activated its Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism and will precede the mainnet Merge.

Spanish banking giant Santander is set to offer cryptocurrency trading to its clients in Brazil in the coming months, according to the company’s CEO Mario Leão. The bank plans to launch crypto-related services and provide further news on the initiative in its next earnings release.

In letters sent to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) has asked both tech companies to explain their processes in reviewing and approving cryptocurrency wallets for their app stores.

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• Ethereum’s Final Testnet Merge Scheduled for Early August
• Santander Brazil to Launch Crypto Trading
• Apple and Google Under Scrutiny Over Crypto App Fraud
• Crypto Market Movers – BOND, ETC, OP

Ethereum’s Final Testnet Merge Scheduled for Early August

Ethereum’s final testnet merge has been scheduled to occur in early August. The new testnet comes shortly after the Sepolia testnet successfully activated its Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism and will precede the mainnet Merge.

The Ethereum Merge describes the network’s current mainnet merging with the Beacon Chain’s PoS system, setting the stage for future scaling upgrades, including sharding. The move is expected to reduce Ethereum’s energy consumption by 99.95%.

The Goerli testnet merge is the third and final merge to occur before Ethereum transitions on the mainnet.

Tim Beiko, an Ethereum protocol support engineer at the Ethereum Foundation, made a projection the mainnet merge could occur in September at a PoS Implementers Call. Beiko has noted that the Merge timeline is very likely to change over time.

Santander Brazil to Launch Crypto Trading

Spanish banking giant Santander is set to offer cryptocurrency trading to its clients in Brazil in the coming months, according to the company’s CEO Mario Leão. The bank plans to launch crypto-related services and provide further news on the initiative in its next earnings release.

Leão was quoted saying:

“We recognize that it is a market that is here to stay, and it is not necessarily a reaction to competitors positioning themselves, it is simply a vision that our client has demand for this type of asset, so we have to find the most correct and most educational way to do it.”

In March, Santander launched loans in Argentina for farmers, collateralized with tokenized commodities. The move comes shortly after Brazilian fintech PicPay announced plans to launch a cryptocurrency exchange and a Brazilian real-tied stablecoin, and after digital bank Nubank announced it reached one million cryptocurrency traders one month after launching its crypto trading solution.

Apple and Google Under Scrutiny Over Crypto App Fraud

In letters sent to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) has asked both tech companies to explain their processes in reviewing and approving cryptocurrency wallets for their app stores.

The inquiry follows a report released by the FBI, warning that 244 investors have been scammed out of over $42 million in under a year through fraudulent cryptocurrency apps claiming to be credible investment platforms.

The senator wrote:

• “While cryptocurrency apps have offered investors easy and convenient ways to trade cryptocurrency, reports have emerged of fake crypto apps that have scammed hundreds of investors.”

In the letters, the senator asked both CEOs to detail their crypto app review and monitoring processes in a bid to prevent apps from “transforming into phishing” scams.

Crypto Market Movers – BOND, ETC, OP

Several tokens are leading the charge in the last 7-day period. Some of these are well-known cryptocurrencies with more liquid trading pairs, so we’ll be focusing on these over low-cap cryptos that may have higher percentage changes.

BarnBridge (BOND) - BarnBridge is a risk tokenizing protocol. It allows hedging yield sensitivity and price volatility. BarnBridge does this by accessing debt pools on other DeFi protocols, and transforming single pools into multiple assets with varying risk/return characteristics.

Ethereum Classic (ETC) - Ethereum Classic is an attempt at keeping the Ethereum blockchain unaltered by the part of the community that opposed the hard fork and the return of The DAO funds. ETC is a different cryptocurrency with different goals than Ethereum, with a focus on immutability.

Optimism (OP) - Optimism is a layer-two smart contract network that aims to enable low-cost, near-instantaneous Ethereum transactions. Optimism speeds up Ethereum transactions and cuts their costs by settling them on another blockchain.

State of the Crypto by Top Tier Exchange Volume

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