The Daily: Vitalik's EthCC keynote, Germany transfers another $638 million, Starknet token staking

Vitalik Buterin discusses hypothetical Ethereum 51% attacks

• "This is the thing I’m advocating we do more research on and we build," the Ethereum co-founder said in a keynote speech at ETHCC in Brussels on Wednesday.
• A 51% attack is a state in which more Ethereum blocks are produced by a malicious actor (or multiple actors working in coordination) than by honest actors.
• Buterin argued that one of the biggest concerns is that this could result in censorship on the network.
• He suggested that one potential solution would be for honest validators to automatically move to a minority fork of the chain if transactions or validators are censored.
• Buterin acknowledged the challenge of getting the entire network to switch automatically, as there are a lot of limitations, but said partial automation would ease social consensus efforts.
• The Ethereum co-founder also addressed the importance of quantum resistance and pushed for further protocol simplification to make things easier for developers and users.

German government continues bitcoin transfers, moves $638 million to various entities

• The transfers included sending significant amounts of bitcoin to Flow Traders, Coinbase, Kraken, Cumberland DRW and B2C2 Group, according to onchain analytics platform Arkham, with the presumed intent to sell.
• The German government still holds around 13,110 bitcoins, worth over $750 million, though this could all be gone by the end of the week if the transfers continue at the current rate.
• Bitcoin's price remains down around 10% since the German authorities began moving funds to exchanges on June 18.

Starknet native token staking set to hit mainnet by Q4

• Core developer StarkWare submitted the Starknet Improvement Proposal (SNIP) to enable staking on the network, CEO Eli Ben-Sasson said at ETHCC on Wednesday.
• If the proposal passes, staking may be launched on the testnet soon, with a planned mainnet release in Q4, enabling users to delegate to a staker or be stakers themselves with rewards proportional to the amount staked.
• The proposed staking protocol also includes a 21-day time-lock period before funds can be withdrawn.

Dorsey's Block partners with Core Scientific for bitcoin mining chip project

• Since April's bitcoin halving, miners have been seeking ways to expand revenues, with the agreement being one of the largest bitcoin mining ASIC deals in terms of hashrate, according to the firms.
• In May, Block announced it would begin adding more bitcoin to its balance sheet, with plans to invest 10% of its gross profit from bitcoin products into monthly bitcoin purchases.
• As of the end of the first quarter, its original bitcoin investment of $220 million has grown by approximately 160% to $573 million.

Bitcoin's correlation with US equities falls to multi-month low

• The correlation between bitcoin and major U.S. equity indices dropped off sharply since the beginning of June, when the cryptocurrency reached a price of $71,000 before making a U-turn.
• Meanwhile, the equity markets sustained their multi-month rally and remain buoyant ahead of Thursday's U.S. CPI inflation reading, with expectations of a slight year-over-year decrease for June.

In the next 24 hours

• UK GDP data are released at 2 a.m. ET tomorrow.
• The latest U.S. CPI inflation figures follow at 8:30 a.m.
  • Est. MoM 0.1%; Core 0.2%. Est. YoY 3.1%; Core 3.4%.
• U.S. FOMC member Raphael Bostic is due to speak at 11:30 a.m.
• Ethereum Community Conference concludes in Brussels.