🗺️ Solana partners up with Google, unveils new products

🗺️ Solana partners up with Google, unveils new products  💪 Crypto community comes together to support Ripple in its battle against the SEC 😏 The Chinese government is one of the biggest crypto whales

Good morning, $VEMP kings. Thank you for believing in us. We know how important it is for you to get the most out of your crypto investments, and we are here to help you do just that. Hopefully, your week is off to a great start and you are ready to take on the challenges that await you.

Here's a recap of what happened during the weekend:

🗺️ Solana partners up with Google, unveils new products  

💪 Crypto community comes together to support Ripple in its battle against the SEC 

😏 The Chinese government is one of the biggest crypto whales

Solana partners up with Google, unveils new products

Crypto community members from all over the world gathered in Lisbon (including, but not limited to, the vEmpire team ;]) for the Solana Breakpoint conference, and it clearly was more than just an event for blockchain and cryptocurrency enthusiasts.

With over 13,000 attendees and four simultaneous venues, the event was a massive success. The conference saw a series of launch announcements from Solana, as the company prepares to go fully mainstream. The CEO and founder of Solana Spaces, Vibhu Norby, delivered an interactive presentation that included a QR code giveaway.

Among other things that have been announced, the much-anticipated Solana Store in Miami is now open, Solana-powered smartphones are now available for pre-order and will be shipping in early 2023, the company has launched GeoNFTs, a nonfungible token implementation that allows users to geo-tag an area in their city, and, to top it all off, Google Cloud is soon to become a Solana node validator.

For those who are not familiar, Google Cloud is a cloud computing platform that provides a wide range of services, including storage, computing, and analytics. This partnership with Google Cloud is a big deal for Solana because it will help the company gain more mainstream adoption, as well as provide it with the resources it needs to grow bigger. And let's not forget that Google is one of the most well-known and trusted companies in the world, so this partnership gives Solana a lot of credibility.

All in all, it was a very eventful conference and we are excited to see what the future holds for Solana. We will definitely be keeping an eye on this company and its progress.

Crypto community comes together to support Ripple in its battle against the SEC

Ripple's lawsuit against the US SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) is getting more support from the crypto community every day. More than 12 companies have now pledged legal support for the fintech firm, and the list is growing.

The SEC has been coming down hard on Ripple, accusing the company of selling unregistered securities in the form of its XRP token. The jury is still out on whether or not Ripple will prevail in its lawsuit against the SEC, but it seems to have the support of the crypto community - XRP might not be a security, but it's still a popular coin. And innovators don't like when the government tries to shut them down.

Ripple has received support from 12 companies in the form of amicus briefs. Amicus briefs are legal documents that provide extra relevant information or arguments to aid the court. So in effect, these 12 companies are telling the court that the SEC is wrong about Ripple and XRP.

The list of supporters includes some big names in the crypto world, such as Coinbase, the Chamber of Digital Commerce, the Blockchain Association, and the Crypto Council for Innovation. These companies are joined by Valhil Capital, I-Remit, Spend The Bits, Tapjets, and John E. Deaton representing 68,700 XRP investors.

The government might be trying to crack down on Ripple, but it looks like the crypto community is not going to let that happen without a fight. We can only hope that the SEC will see reason and drop its lawsuit against Ripple, but even if it doesn't, it's good to know that the crypto community has Ripple's back. Together, we can fight back against overzealous regulators and keep the crypto revolution alive.

The Chinese government is one of the biggest crypto whales

We usually think that whales are just big, rich investors who can manipulate the market. But it turns out that there's one whale that's even bigger and richer than all the others combined: the Chinese government.

According to Ki Young Ju, Co-founder & CEO of crypto analytics firm Cryptoquant, the President Xi Jinping administration now holds about $3.93 billion worth of BTC alongside a list of other cryptocurrencies.

“FUN FACT: The government of China is a crypto whale. Chinese authorities seized 194k BTC, 833k ETH, and others from the PlusToken scam in 2019. They forfeited these $6 billion-worth assets to the national treasury.” - Ki Young Ju tweeted.

The CCP probably got hold of these digital assets through seizures and crackdowns on illegal Ponzi schemes like PlusToken, which was responsible for bilking billions of dollars worth of crypto from gullible investors, but these are just guesses.

The thing is, we'll probably never know for sure how much crypto the Chinese government actually owns because they're not exactly forthcoming about these things. China cracked down on crypto exchanges and ICOs back in 2017 and on miners in 2020, so it's entirely possible that they've seized even more BTC than we know about. But even this small amount of BTC is enough to make them the biggest whale in the market, just behind Grayscale, which currently holds 643,572 BTC worth around $13 billion.

But whatever the source, it's now clear that the Chinese government is a major player in the cryptocurrency space whether we like it or not. This might be not good news for those who believe in decentralization and freedom from government control, but it's definitely something we should be aware of.