The latest surge in the crypto market has made Ethereum’s perpetual swaps open interest to increase, as disclosed by IntoTheBlock.

The data analytic firm explained:

“Ethereum’s Perpetual Swaps Open Interest just reached the highest number since May 19. As Open interest increases with the price of ETH, it points to more longs being opened. Currently, there are $6.16 billion in open positions.”

It, therefore, shows that Ethereum price is positively correlated with open interest.

Ethereum has been experiencing an uptick in different areas. For instance, its crowd sentiment on Twitter recently hit a two-month high after the second-largest cryptocurrency based on market capitalisation jumped above the $2,400 level.

Furthermore, ETH 2.0 validators topped 200.000. Ethereum 2.0 was launched in December 2020 and sought to transit the current proof-of-work (POW) consensus mechanism to a proof-of-stake (POS) framework.

ETH hourly fees skyrocketed to $2.53 million following the sale of Stoner Cats

Meanwhile, the Ethereum network has been in high demand in the non-fungible token (NFT) sector.

For instance, Stoner Cats, an adult animated short series sold in NFTs, clogged the Ethereum network leading to the loss of more than 344 ETH in gas fees. Moreover, hourly fees surged to $2.53 million.

IntoTheBlock acknowledged:

“With the highly anticipated launch of Stoner Cats, over 10k NFTs were sold with a total value of 3,650 ETH. But what’s impressive was the high demand on the Ethereum blockchain, which resulted in over 344 ETH wasted in gas fees. Ethereum Hourly Fees skyrocketed to $2.53 million.”

On July 27, a total of 10,420 Stoner Cats in the form of NFTs were put up for sale at 0.35 ETH each, and the entire supply was sold out in 35 minutes.

NFTs have been playing a pivotal role in the Ethereum ecosystem. Recently, Coca-Cola revealed the launch of the first-ever NFT collectables to honour International Friendship Day, to be held on July 30.

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Global payment provider PayPal Holdings Inc. revealed the company is planning to develop the next market in The United Kingdom to provide its crypto trading services.

Following up the news coverage on Wednesday, more details to reveal PayPal’s upcoming development in the cryptocurrency business.

In response to questions from the analyst of Barclays Investment Bank about PayPal’s upcoming plan on the engaging crypto ecosystem in the quarters ahead, PayPal CEO Dan Schulman said The U.K. is likely to be the next country to provide crypto trading.

“We’re right in the middle of some open banking integration, which will increase the ability to fully integrate it into ACH and do faster payments. We’re going to launch, hopefully, maybe even next month in the U.K., open up trading there.”

ACH is PayPal’s Automated Clearing House, a payment service that enables merchants to electronically collect customer payments by directly debiting their checking or saving accounts.

Schulman spoke at PayPal’s Q2 2021 earning call Wednesday. Per the coverage from FXStreet, Schulman said, “a new ‘digital wallet’ product will be introduced in Q3 this year and believe that cryptocurrency will be critical to PayPal’s growth. He described the upgrade of the super app wallet as “code complete”.

However, Schulman did not confirm the timeline or roadmap of development to third party wallets. ” We’re working right now on transfers to third-party wallets, and we really want to make sure that we create a very seamless process for taxes and tax reporting.”

According to the Cointelegraph report, the new crypto wallet will feature high yield savings, early access to direct deposit funds, messaging capability, and crypto capabilities. “Each wallet would be unique, driven by advanced A.I. and machine learning capabilities,” Schulman emphasised.

Meanwhile, Schulman said the company is working on how to use smart contracts more efficiently and how to develop Defi applications as well.

The payment platform continues to expand its crypto-related business. Earlier this month, PayPal hired Jesse Spiro, a former Chainalysis head of policy and regulatory affairs, to lead the crypto division in PayPal.

Around two weeks ago, PayPal also strengthened its crypto function and experience to its clients. The company has increased the limit of purchase of Bitcoin and other crypto-assets up to $10,000 weekly from $20,000, but also remove the annual purchase limit for qualified customers in the U.S, allowing to have more extensive accessibility on a crypto exchange.

In May, senior management also revealed that the company would enable their customers to withdraw their digital assets to third parties.

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The Custom authority of Finland has announced that it is looking to hire brokers to sell 1,981 Bitcoins seized from illegal drug dealer networks to convert them into fiat currency. At the time of writing, the bitcoins in question are worth about $79 million and currently are held by Finnish Customs.

Pekka Pylkkanen, the director of finances at the Finnish Customs government agency, talked about the development and said that Finland’s customs authority is looking to sell the Bitcoins via a broker, stating that a broker will ensure a reliable and safe selling of the crypto assets.

According to the report, Finland’s customs authority plans to sign up to three brokers for a two-year deal valued at about €250,000 ($297,000). It could reach as much as €2 million if the government agency seizes more Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies. That range takes into account the volatile price movement of cryptocurrencies.

The customs agency confiscated the majority of the seized Bitcoins (1,666 out of 1,981) in 2016 after arresting Finnish drug dealer Douppikauppa.

During that time, the government told authorities that they were prohibited from storing the coins on crypto exchanges and was advised to keep them off digital platforms.

At the time of confiscation, the bitcoins were worth about $860,000, but currently, they are valued at more than $79 million.

In 2018, the customs authority was looking to sell Bitcoins through auction, but the agency did not proceed with the plans because there were concerns that the crypto assets would end back in criminal hands.

Now the price of Bitcoin has skyrocketed, Finland’s customs authority wants to liquidate the seized coins as soon as possible in the coming months.

Direct Seizures and Sales of Cryptos

In recent years, multiple nations have sold crypto-assets seized during criminal investigations, with the US taking the lead in 2020.

In November 2020, the US Department of Justice seized more than $1 billion worth of Bitcoin linked to the Silk Road website’s criminal marketplace.

During that time, the Justice Department moved about 70,000 Bitcoins from an account believed to be linked to the illicit marketplace. Silk Road was an online black market for selling everything from drugs to murderers-for-hire and stolen credit cards.

The US government shut down the online black market in 2013. But the sum mentioned above was the largest amount of cryptocurrency seized to date by the Department of Justice.

In March 2021, the French government also auctioned off €28 million worth of Bitcoins seized from hackers in 2019.

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