Block Completes Design for ASIC Chip and New Memecoin Enters Top 100 Largest Coins by Market Cap
May 1, 2023
Market Update Crypto had a choppy weekend, which concluded in prices falling last night. At the time of writing, $BTC is down 3.68%, and $ETH is down 2.15%. Altcoins were also down across the board, $SOL is down 4.75%, and $ARB is down 3.66%. An exception to this market correction is a new meme coin called $PEPE which has rapidly made its way into the top 100 coins by market cap. $PEPE is up 66.05% today and we discuss it later in this report. Another altcoin that has held up relatively well is $BNB, down 2.0% today and rose ~6.0% over the weekend. Binance is holding a launch event for Layer 1 Blockchain $SUI and in order to participate, users must stake BNB and TUSD tokens to farm SUI over a 2-day period. This as well as other successful Binance Launchpool events this year has been a tailwind for BNB. Traditional markets are mostly flat today, SPX is up 0.16%, and NDQ is down 0.11%. Jack Dorsey's financial services and technology company, Block, has completed the design for its new prototype ASIC chip that it says will fast-track its plan for an "open source" Bitcoin mining rig. Dorsey claims this is key to decentralizing the supply of Bitcoin mining rigs. Block wrote in a blog post last week that developing Bitcoin mining ASIC rigs is both financially and technically challe