BTCS Ethereum 2.0 Staking Operation Producing Revenues From All 200 Nodes

BTCS Ethereum 2.0 Staking Operation Producing Revenues From All 200 Nodes

Launching additional 40 nodes, increasing total staked to 7,680 ETH valued at approx. $13.8M

Silver Spring, MD, March 18, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) – BTCS Inc. (OTCQB: BTCS) (“BTCS” or the “Company”), a digital asset and blockchain technology focused company, today announced its recently expanded transaction verification services operation on ethereum 2.0 is fully operational with all 200 nodes generating revenue. The Company expects to launch an additional 40 nodes, expanding its staking operation to 240 nodes, with the additional nodes anticipated to commence revenue generation before the end of March 2021.

$1.1 Million Revenue Potential from Current Staking Operation

The Company has staked a total of 7,680 ETH in its ethereum 2.0 transaction verification services operation, which has the potential to generate $1.1 million in annual revenue with gross margins exceeding 95%, according to a third-party calculator ( https://beaconscan.com/staking-calculator ).

“We originally set a goal of actively generating revenue from 100 nodes by the end of March 2021. I am excited to report that this goal has been exceeded as BTCS is now actively generating revenue from 200 nodes, and has another 40 expected to come online shortly” stated Charles Allen, Chief Executive Officer of BTCS.

Expanding Transaction Verification Services Business

Allen continued, “We plan to scale up our transaction verification services business line to operate nodes and secure and validate transactions on other disruptive blockchains that we believe allow for greater revenue potential than ethereum.”

Staking-as-a-Service Platform Development

BTCS is actively exploring development of a proprietary staking-as-a-service platform that would enable clients to stake and delegate supported cryptocurrencies through the Company’s platform.

“In addition to the ongoing development of our proprietary data analytics platform, we plan to develop a unique staking-as-a-service platform that will provide additional revenue growth opportunities as “proof-of-stake” verification protocols become increasingly widespread,” added Allen.

On December 1, 2020, ethereum began transitioning to a “proof-of-stake” protocol, ethereum 2.0. Under the “proof-of-stake” consensus algorithm, ETH holders have the exclusive right to operate validator nodes on the network and verify transactions, thereby earning transaction fees for their work. BTCS is the first public company in the US to run validator nodes on ethereum 2.0.

About BTCS:

BTCS is an early entrant in the digital asset market and one of the first U.S. publicly traded companies focused on digital assets and blockchain technologies. The Company through its transaction verification services business actively verifies and validates blockchain transactions and is rewarded with digital assets for its work. The Company is also developing a proprietary digital asset data analytics platform that allows users to consolidate their crypto trades from multiple exchanges onto a single platform, enabling users to view and analyze their performance, risk metrics, and potential tax implications. The Company employs a digital asset treasury strategy with a primary focus on disruptive non-security protocol layer assets such as bitcoin and ethereum. For more information visit: www.btcs.com .

Forward-Looking Statements:

Certain statements in this press release, constitute “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the federal securities laws including statements regarding our belief regarding the potential revenue and gross margins from our transaction verification services business, our plans for our transaction verification services business, revenue potential and growth, and plans for a staking-as-a-service platform. Words such as “may,” “might,” “will,” “should,” “believe,” “expect,” “anticipate,” “estimate,” “continue,” “predict,” “forecast,” “project,” “plan,” “intend” or similar expressions, or statements regarding intent, belief, or current expectations, are forward-looking statements. While the Company believes these forward-looking statements are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on any such forward-looking statements, which are based on information available to us on the date of this release. These forward-looking statements are based upon current estimates and assumptions and are subject to various risks and uncertainties, including without limitation the rewards and costs associated with validating transactions on proof-of-stake blockchains, the third-party calculators failure to be accurate in its formulas, significant decrease in value of ETH and rewards while locked up, loss or theft of the private withdrawal keys resulting in the complete loss of ETH and reward, as well as risks set forth in the Company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission including its Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020. Thus, actual results could be materially different. The Company expressly disclaims any obligation to update or alter statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.

Should You Chase Ethereum Here Or Wait For A Pullback?

Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) – Credit Suisse Group AG raced to contain the widening fallout from the collapse of Greensill Capital as it acknowledged defaults are coming in a $10 billion group of now-frozen funds that the bank touted for their safety.Facing client furor and regulatory probes over the collapse of the short-term debt funds, the Swiss bank demoted one of its top executives, withheld bonuses for some and separated the asset management unit at the center of the scandal from the much more valuable wealth unit.Chief Executive Officer Thomas Gottstein, who has largely shied away from making deep changes since taking over a year ago, is contending with threats of litigation and demands from regulators to hold more capital as the crisis renews questions about risk management and controls. Clients from rich individuals in the Middle East to Swiss pension funds are expressing their anger over potential investment losses, threatening key relationships far beyond the asset management business.“There remains considerable uncertainty regarding the valuation of a significant part of the remaining assets,” the bank said in its annual report on Thursday. “The portfolio manager has been informed that certain of the notes underlying the funds will not be repaid when they fall due.”The bank has so far returned about $3.1 billion to investors and said it has an additional $1.25 billion in cash across the four funds.Shares of Credit Suisse rose 3.1% at 4:18 p.m. in Zurich amid broad-based gains in bank stocks. Before today, the bank had lost more than 8% since freezing the funds March 1.As part of the changes announced Thursday, Eric Varvel, who oversaw asset management from the U.S., will be replaced next month by Ulrich Koerner, until recently the head of the fund unit at rival UBS Group AG. The payout and vesting of variable compensation for a number of senior employees involved in the Greensill debacle – up to and including the executive board – is on hold so the bank can reconsider it.Asset management will become a separate unit, with Koerner reporting directly to CEO Gottstein. Varvel will work alongside Koerner in the coming months and then focus on his other roles as CEO of the bank’s U.S. holding company and chairman of the investment bank. The changes cap two frenzied weeks in which the bank launched an internal probe, brought in outside help to deal with regulators’ queries and sought to calm investors by returning cash portions of the funds.In most cases when an asset manager has to liquidate a fund, losses are borne by the investors. But for Credit Suisse, which sold the products across business units, the case isn’t as clear-cut. The funds were used to invest money for retirees, the bank pitched them to corporate treasurers and insurers, and offered them to rich families as an alternative to cash.Credit Suisse sold a disproportionate amount of the funds – more than $1 billion – through its private banking arm in the Middle East, according to people familiar with the matter. It was part of a push to move rich Middle Easterners, who frequently hold large amounts of money in Switzerland, out of costly cash deposits and into fee-generating investments.Some of the Swiss bank’s most important clients in the Gulf also borrowed against their holdings in the funds to amplify returns, the people said, asking for anonymity to discuss internal information. These clients are now facing the dual problem of potential losses in the Greensill-linked funds and possibly calls to put up more collateral for their borrowings.The situation has left Credit Suisse bankers in the region scrambling to salvage client relationships, without being able to answer key questions about the extent of possible losses and who will end up paying for them.At home in Switzerland, where Credit Suisse is a top provider of investment management services for retirees, at least one pension plan has been pressuring the bank and local politicians to ensure they’re made whole, according to a person familiar with the matter. The pension is asking why the bank didn’t take action despite warning signs, the person said.A spokesperson for Credit Suisse declined to comment.Varvel’s replacement marks the highest-level shakeup so far in the wake of the Greensill debacle, after the bank temporarily removed a number of lower-ranking managers while it conducts the probe. A Credit Suisse veteran of almost three decades, he took over as head of asset management in 2016, pursuing a “barbell strategy” of focusing on alternative investments on the one hand, and cheaper, passive instruments on the other.While he was able to boost assets under management, the unit has been in the spotlight for the wrong reasons recently. On top of the issues with the Greensill-linked funds, setbacks include a $450 million impairment on a stake in York Capital Management, the closure of two re-insurers backed by the unit’s insurance-linked securities strategy, and a 24 million-franc charge on seed capital for a real estate vehicle.The Greensill-linked funds initially invested in loans backed by invoices that would be paid in a matter of weeks or months, making them relatively safe. But as they grew into a $10 billion strategy, they strayed from that pitch and much of the money was lent against expected future invoices, for sales that were merely predicted, Bloomberg has reported.Credit Suisse rated the flagship fund the safest on a scale of one to seven, in part because many of the assets were insured. A high-octane version of the fund that didn’t use insurance was still given the second-safest rating in investor documents. Credit Suisse decided to freeze them after a major insurer of the assets refused to continue coverage.Some investors are now threatening legal options, Credit Suisse said. Edouard Fremault, a partner at Deminor in Brussels, a company that funds investment-recovery litigation, said his firm has already been approached by around 10 investors in the funds. The investors are private and corporate clients of Credit Suisse in the U.K. and Switzerland, according to a person familiar.Credit Suisse earlier this week warned it may take a financial hit related to Greensill. Questions also remain surrounding the bank’s decision to further its exposure to the former billionaire financier by providing a $140 million bridge loan last fall, and whether Chief Risk Officer Lara Warner played a key role. The bank has said she only learned of Greensill’s problems securing insurance cover for its supply chain finance loans on Feb. 22, about a week before Credit Suisse gated the funds.(Adds shares in sixth paragraph.)For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

Valid Points: Ethereum’s Proof-of-Stake May Happen Sooner Than You Think

Eth 2.0 may be coming to a computer screen near you quicker than most anticipated, including the Ethereum developers.

Last week, Vitalik Buterin released a “quick merge via fork choice change” document – a lighter version of the Executable Beacon Chain for quick deployment. While only a loose technical document, the plan ostensibly serves as a notice against any further agitation from Ethereum miners as the merge would allow Ethereum to abandon mining in a rapid fashion.

The Executable Beacon Chain is a proposal to attach Eth 1.x – which we will now refer to as Ethpow (proof-of-work Ethereum) – onto the currently running proof-of-stake Ethereum: the Beacon Chain.

Related: Bitcoin Is Not a Stock

The proposal works by having slightly altered Ethereum software, like Geth or OpenEthereum, point its transaction flow at the Beacon Chain. Instead of miners packaging transactions into blocks, the Beacon Chain’s validators will verify and finalize transactions.

“The only change required on the ethpow side is that the client must have a communication channel with a trusted beacon node and must change its fork choice rule,” Buterin writes.

Why the rush?

A quickened transition schedule is being considered for a few reasons. One recent consideration has been rising tensions between mining parties and Ethereum developers as EIP 1559 and PoS come into focus. The former proposal is highly contested by mining parties, but has achieved enough support among developers to be included in July’s London hard fork. PoS, of course, would see mining done away with completely.

Developers, however, have the high ground in this fight. A quick merge to PoS would only require “at least one honest miner” in order to start the merge. Multiple honest mining parties pointing blocks to the Beacon Chain would entail a smooth transition, Buterin says.

Related: Bitcoin Volatility Index ‘BitVol’ Makes First Trade

Story continues

A quick transition to PoS does preclude the inclusion of multiple highly touted Ethereum tech stacks, at least for the moment.

Yet, at the end of the day a transition to PoS remains the goal of Ethereum developers, as it has been since before Ethpow launched. Any transition to PoS where Ethereum doesn’t lose its top dog position as the go-to platform for decentralized apps would likely be considered a victory.

Pulse check: Validator efficiencies

If you’re new to Valid Points and the topic of Ethereum 2.0 in general, be sure to check out our 101 explainer on Eth 2.0 metrics to get up to speed about terminology used throughout this newsletter.

CoinDesk’s Eth 2.0 validator node, Zelda, is humming along perfectly, earning roughly 0.0073 ETH or $13.12 per day.

While the amount of reward earned by our Eth 2.0 validator has not changed significantly over the past few weeks, I did notice a spike in Zelda’s computer processing power and a subsequent drop in her memory usage.

According to CoinDesk’s data dashboard, Zelda’s central processing unit (CPU) usage almost doubled from around 100% to 200% on Friday, March 12, and has stayed at these heightened levels ever since.

This suggests that Zelda is consuming more electrical energy in order to perform the same tasks it did before. For context, Zelda has four CPUs it can max out before validator operations are negatively impacted. Operating at a level of 200% suggests we’re using the max computing power of two out of four CPUs.

At the same time, Zelda’s usage of random access memory (RAM), which is the component of a computer that is reserved for temporary data storage, has gone down from around 4 GB to rough 2.5 GB.

This suggests the memory capacity needed for running this Eth 2.0 validator has dropped. Zelda has up to 16GB of RAM, enough for an average desktop computer to run various applications and demanding games. For Eth 2.0 validating, we use roughly 15% of total RAM, enough for tablet devices to use.

Ethereum validator rewards vs. mining rewards

It’s important to note that under a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus protocol, whereby transactions and blocks are finalized through the process of mining, the aim would be to consistently max out a computer’s processing power and optimize all unused components of hardware for increasing the probability of earning network rewards.

Under Ethereum’s proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus protocol, there’s no need to do either of these things. Despite operating below its computational capacity, Zelda still maintains an effectiveness of 100%, according to beaconcha.in. This is because, unlike mining, staking isn’t about competing for rewards against other validators through greater hashpower.

All validators who keep their operations up and running are rewarded on a consistent and regular basis in the form of interest on their stake. The only way to substantially increase the amount of rewards earned on the network is to stake more wealth in 32 ETH increments. (More on the reward dynamics of Eth 2.0 validators versus Ethereum miners here.)

The Eth 2.0 network does not reward aggressive increases in computing power nor sneaky optimizations to hardware. If anything, developers of the protocol are working hard to find ways in which the computational burden of being a validator can be reduced even further and updated so that even a mobile device could one day be sufficient for securing the network.

Going back to the mysterious changes in CPU usage and RAM, it turns out a code update was released by CoinDesk Director of Engineering Spencer Beggs last Friday in preparation for Ethereum’s upcoming system-wide upgrade dubbed “Berlin.”

As an Eth 2.0 validator, Zelda’s responsibilities can only be performed by connecting to both Ethereum’s PoW and PoS networks. The upcoming upgrade to Ethereum’s PoW network required Beggs to update part of our software, which likely triggered these changes in our energy consumption and memory usage.

This code update is mandatory for all Eth 2.0 validators and must be implemented by April 14, 2021, at the latest. If you’re a validator and haven’t yet made the upgrade, you can download and install the latest software releases for Berlin here.

Validated takes

Editorial on getting Ethereum to proof-of-stake as soon as humanly possible (Blog post, Ben Edgington)

Associated Press NFT artwork sells for $180,000 in ETH (Article, CoinDesk)

Bitcoin, baseball and new drama in the Ethereum 2.0 timeline (Video, CoinDesk)

DeFi lending protocolAlchemix raises $4.9 million in round led by CMS and Alameda (Article, CoinDesk)

How to create, buy and sell NFTs (Article, CoinDesk)

Factoid of the week

Open comms

Feel free to reply any time and email research@coindesk.com with your thoughts, comments or queries about today’s newsletter. Between reads, chat with us on Twitter.

Valid Points incorporates information and data directly from CoinDesk’s own Eth 2.0 validator node in weekly analysis. All profits made from this staking venture will be donated to a charity of our choosing once transfers are enabled on the network. For a full overview of the project, check out our announcement post.

You can verify the activity of the CoinDesk Eth 2.0 validator in real time through our public validator key, which is:

0xad7fef3b2350d220de3ae360c70d7f488926b6117e5f785a8995487c46d323ddad0f574fdcc50eeefec34ed9d2039ecb.

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