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Tackling Bitcoin MEV Opportunities With Rebar Labs

Published

5 days ago

June 28, 2024

Rebar Labs, a team of seasoned veterans from the cryptocurrency industry, is bringing their expertise to Bitcoin to tackle the emerging challenges posed by on-chain Maximal Extractable Value (MEV). The company has successfully raised $2.9 million in seed funding, led by 6th Man Ventures, with participation from ParaFi Capital, Arca, Moonrock Capital, and UTXO Management.

Carl Vogel of 6th Man Ventures commented, “As the ecosystem of the world’s largest digital asset grows, Rebar’s products will enable good MEV for fair and efficient markets, creating more value for users and miners and enabling the foundation for a flourishing ecosystem.”

Rebar Labs’ Focus Areas

Rebar Labs has unveiled three key areas of focus in their quest to enhance the Bitcoin ecosystem:

Infrastructure: An alternative to the public mempool via private transactions will allow miners to capture potential MEV revenues and optimize block construction and fees. Other ecosystem participants affected by the issues created by MEV will be able to leverage wallet integrations provided byRebar’s upcoming products
Products: To highlight the growing MEV-generating activity on the Bitcoin protocol, the company is expected to build data products and dashboards allowing for easy access to the relevant information.
Research: Rebar Labs intends to produce analysis, articles, and reports on new, unexplored activities on Bitcoin, with a focus on MEV.

What is MEV?

Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) involves various techniques used by market actors to capture additional value by exploiting price inefficiencies in blockchain transactions. This concept has become increasingly relevant in Bitcoin with the rise of on-chain activities such as NFTs and token protocols like BRC-20s and Runes.

We cover the idea in more detail here.

The announcement comes at a curious time as Bitcoin on-chain activity has significantly subsided following a significant ramp-up earlier this year. Runes, a new token proposal launched during the halving last April has faced significant headwinds since its release. Concern over MEV has also led to significant research efforts looking to move most of this activity to secondary layers to improve user experience and avoid miner incentives issues.

In a conversation with Bitcoin Magazine, the team expressed confidence in the idea that activity involving MEV would continue to grow moving forward.

Earlier this year, US-based Marathon Digital Holdings announced their own proprietary service for users to submit transactions to their MARA pool.

Rebar Labs hopes that harnessing MEV can help mitigate the impact of diminishing block rewards by offering opportunities to subsidize mining revenue through MEV activity. Users could also benefit from Rebar’s infrastructure to defend themselves against frontrunning, sandwich attacks, and other strategies that could impact market fairness.

The company plans to launch its first products this summer.

“Bitcoin is entering a new era of programmability and increased trading activity,” said Alex Luce, CEO of Rebar Labs. “Our mission is to develop infrastructure and products that help the Bitcoin community — its users, miners, and developers — navigate the emerging MEV landscape on Bitcoin, ensuring a more equitable and transparent ecosystem.”

Rebar Labs is a portfolio company of UTXO Management, a regulated capital allocator focused on the digital assets industry. Bitcoin Magazine is owned by BTC Inc., which operates UTXO Management. UTXO invests in a variety of Bitcoin businesses, and maintains significant holdings in digital assets.

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cryptocurrency

Taliban jailed 8 traders for holding and using crypto

Published

1 hour ago

July 3, 2024

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Afghanistan’s government, under the Taliban’s control, arrested eight cryptocurrency traders in Herat, a city on the Northwest side of the country.

One of the crypto traders who prefers to stay anonymous told crypto.news that the Taliban arrested him and seven others for using crypto in May. They were imprisoned for 28 days in Herat’s central prison, he added.

It’s important to note that the Central Bank of Afghanistan banned using cryptocurrencies in August 2022 — closing more than 30 crypto-related businesses in the region. The government called digital currencies and Forex trading “haram,” an Arabic term used for forbidden things in Islam.

Another crypto dealer says that he earned a small commission of between 1% and 2% for selling USDT to traders and could barely feed his family. He says:

“Now I don’t know what to do. The prices of goods are very high, and the economy is on the brink of a collapse while there’s nothing else to do.”

He added that selling USDT might put his life in danger, but “there’s no other way.”

Both traders claim the Taliban didn’t seize any of their crypto assets. However, people familiar with the matter told crypto.news that a group of cryptocurrency dealers were recently arrested, with the government taking all their digital holdings.

People familiar with the matter said that the government might put some of the crypto traders to six months in jail.

Another individual claimed that before the Taliban banned crypto in the country, he used to receive his family’s expenses from his brother who lives in the U.S. via Bitcoin (BTC) and USDT. Now that cryptocurrencies are “forbidden,” it sometimes takes weeks for him to receive and withdraw the money. He added:

“It’s all because this country, with thousands of years of history, doesn’t have access to standard banks and bans its only way out.”

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Bitcoin mining

Digital Shovel Sues RK Mission Critical for Patent Infringement on Bitcoin Mining Containers

Published

4 hours ago

July 3, 2024

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Digital Shovel Holdings Inc. has filed a lawsuit against RK Mission Critical LLC, RK Mechanical LLC, and RK Industries LLC in the US District Court for the District of Colorado, accusing them of patent infringement, according to a press release sent to Bitcoin Magazine. The dispute revolves around Digital Shovel’s V-Shape technology, designed to increase miner density in crypto mining containers.

Digital Shovel developed the V-Shape technology in 2018, securing patents in 2022, 2023, and 2024. These patents enable a 30% increase in miner density, providing significant operational advantages. According to the complaint, Compute North, a client of RK Mission Critical, initially sought to license this technology from Digital Shovel in 2019 but was refused. Despite this, RK Mission Critical allegedly produced containers strikingly similar to Digital Shovel’s, with some staff initially mistaking them for their own products.

“Instead of competing fairly, defendants are exploiting the innovative technologies that Digital Shovel has worked hard to develop and protect through patents,” the complaint stated.

Digital Shovel’s CEO, Scot Johnson, stated that based on RK Mission Critical’s marketing, they believe they’ve sold approximately 850 units which were sold for over $200,000 per unit, resulting in sales of $170 million worth of product.

“A variety of publicly traded mining companies are using the product from RK,” Johnson said. “However, our focus is not on them or any other end user at this time. It’s on enforcing our intellectual property on the company that is building products using our technology and stealing customers from us.”

Despite being aware of the pending patents since 2021, Digital Shovel claims RK Mission Critical continued its production without authorization, and their refusal to engage in settlement negotiations has led Digital Shovel to seek legal redress. The company aims to obtain compensation and a court order to prevent further sales of the infringing containers.

Bitcoin Magazine will be interviewing Johnson in an upcoming spaces on X later today at 1:15PM EST, where those interested in learning more about this lawsuit are encouraged to attend.

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Bitcoin

crypto will get positive regulation ‘no matter who wins’ election

Published

5 hours ago

July 3, 2024

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Galaxy Digital founder and CEO Mike Novogratz told CNBC’s ‘Squawk Box’ on Tuesday that the US crypto sector is headed for positive regulations regardless of who wins the upcoming election.

Mike Novogratz, one of the biggest crypto bulls, shared his outlook during an interview that touched on the current US political scene, Biden’s disastrous debate and crypto. The billionaire asserted that despite the current status of crypto regulation in the US, he believes the next regime will take a positive stance and help the industry grow.

“I am not a single issue voter and I do fundamentally believe crypto should be a bipartisan and needs to be bipartisan. We cannot have one party that likes this and another party that doesn’t like it,” Novogratz said.

Crypto regulatory landscape “shifting”

According to Novogratz, crypto is already largely a bipartisan issue in the US, with only a small group of Democrats taking a negative stance against this burgeoning industry. While it’s been frustrating, in terms of lack of regulatory clarity or the negative impact of government crackdown on the industry, Novogratz believes it’s “all shifting.”

“I’ll tell you that most Democrats, outside of Elizabeth Warren and a small group of people, are pretty pro-innovation and pro-crypto… Listen, no matter who wins the next election, we are going to get positive crypto legislation. I know that” he added.

Novogratz says BTC is a core holding

Commenting on Bitcoin following the ETF-buoyed upside that pushed prices above $73k in March, Novogratz referred back to earlier comments he shared about BTC price post-ETF approval. In his opinion, the benchmark cryptocurrency was likely to stay in the $55k-$73k range until the market got a dose of new news.

“It takes a while for things to digest,” he noted, adding that Bitcoin’s surge to its all-time high this year was “a huge move up.”

Novogratz believes BTC as a core portfolio holding makes sense, especially as the US debt balloons amid the government’s “spending like drunken sailors.”

Bitcoin traded around $61,862 at the time of writing, about 9% down in the past 30 days. However, its up 44% year-to-date and 102% in the past year.

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