🔜 Elon Musk predicts a “mild” recession

🔜 Elon Musk predicts a “mild” recession 🔵 Circle (USDC) says it will not support any proof-of-work Ethereum forks 💳 Binance Card adds SHIB, XRP and AVAX as payment methods

GM. vEmpions! If you need a little pick-me-up for the middle of the week, just remember: life is too short to be anything but happy. Here’s what we have to talk about today:

🔜 Elon Musk predicts a “mild” recession 🔵 Circle (USDC) says it will not support any proof-of-work Ethereum forks💳 Binance Card adds SHIB, XRP and AVAX as payment methods

Elon Musk predicts a “mild” recession

It looks like Elon Musk is finally seeing the writing on the wall: the US economy is headed for a recession. And as the world's richest man, he should know – after all, Tesla needs to order commodities several months in advance, so they have a pretty good idea of where prices are headed.

Though this news will come as a relief to consumers, since Musk says that the prices Tesla is seeing are trending downward. This "suggests that we are past peak inflation," he said. And he expects inflation to "drop rapidly" from here – although he did acknowledge that the situation could change.

"I'm just guessing here, this is total speculation. But I would guess it's a mild recession for, I don't know, 18 months or something like that," Musk said.

So there you have it: the world's richest man is predicting a recession, but he's still optimistic about the future. In the meantime, we'll all just have to make do with our measly incomes and hope that the markets won't crash.

Circle (USDC) says it will not support any proof-of-work Ethereum forks

Circle, the issuer of the USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin, has pledged its full support for the transition of Ethereum to a proof-of-stake, or PoS, blockchain after the much-anticipated Merge upgrade. The firm views the Merge as an important milestone in the scaling of the Ethereum ecosystem.

"USDC has become a core building block for Ethereum DeFi innovation. It has facilitated the adoption of L2 solutions and helped broaden the set of use cases that today rely on Ethereum’s vast suite of capabilities. We understand the responsibility we have for the Ethereum ecosystem and businesses, developers and end users that depend on USDC, and we intend to do the right thing.”

USDC is the latest in a long line of companies that are ditching proof-of-work and embracing Ethereum's proof-of-stake consensus algorithm. The move comes as no surprise, given the advantages that PoS offers over PoW.

With PoS, there is no need for expensive mining hardware or large amounts of electricity. This makes it more environmentally friendly and also cheaper to operate. In addition, PoS is more secure than PoW, as it is much harder for an attacker to "51% attack" a network that uses PoS.

USDC is not the only company that is pledging their support for PoS. The day before, Chainlink announced that it would not support any proof-of-work forks after the upgrade. This is a significant move as well, as Chainlink is one of the largest projects in the space.

With more and more companies pledging their support for ETH PoS, it is clear that this is the true future of Ethereum.

Binance Card adds SHIB, XRP and AVAX as payment methods

SHIB, XRP and AVAX are now accepted as payment methods at over 60 million merchants worldwide, thanks to the Binance Card program.

This is a big win for those who have been holding onto their Shiba Inus, XRP and AVAX, as they can now finally use them to buy things other than memes and speculation. With the Binance card, these cryptocurrencies can be used to pay for everyday items like food, drink, and even rent.

It looks like Binance is trying to make a big splash in the crypto world with its Binance Card. The card, which is only available to users living in the European Economic Area (EEA) and Ukrainian refugees residing in a country belonging to the EEA, allows users to spend different cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin ($BTC), BNB ($BNB), $BUSD, Polkadot ($DOT),FC Porto Fan Token ($PORTO), $USDT, and Cardano ($ADA).

Some argued that using Shiba Inus, XRP or AVAX to pay for rent was nothing but a speculation, but at least now there’s a use case other than holding and hoping the price goes up.

Meanwhile, the Binance Smart Chain, or “BSC”, as it is also known, has been absolutely killing it in the NFT space. According to a report from Messari, BSC’s NFT sector has seen exponential growth so far this year, with a significant rise in secondary sales volumes and the number of unique NFT buyers on the network.

One of the popular traders on Twitter has also said that the Binance Coin is currently in a price discovery stage and it is an actual "tank". The coin has been outperforming Bitcoin by a huge margin in the last few weeks. This is quite the turnaround for a project that was once seen as nothing more than an also-ran in the Ethereum-killer race.

In general, Binance seems to be doing a lot of things right lately, and its users are reaping the benefits.