Special purpose integrated circuits (ASICs) for bitcoin mining on 7 nm chips manufactured by the Japanese GMO Internet will come to the market later due to the shortage of components.

Jihan Wu, the head of Bitmain, the largest mining equipment manufacturer, and the worldwide known “face” of the company for years, left the board of directors of Bitmain. Now he will not be able to participate in the decision-making process.

Jackson Palmer, the creator of Dogecoin, criticized the aspirations of many crypto enthusiasts who are waiting for large institutional organizations to enter the cryptocurrency market. According to him, their appearance will deprive the cryptocurrency world of its main advantage.

Paradox of the institutionalization of cryptocurrency

In the author’s column titled “Why “the Institutionalization of Cryptocurrency” is a Paradox,” Palmer outlined three main events that are often considered to stimulate the cryptocurrency market growth. These are NYSE-affiliated Bakkt launching custodial and trading infrastructure, up-for-approval Bitcoin ETFs and large 401k retirement plan service providers such as Fidelity opening crypto trading desks.

If many crypto enthusiasts, including billionaire Mike Novograz, call these events incentives for a sharp rise in the cryptocurrency prices, with bitcoin hopefully returning to $20,000, Palmer draws attention to the fundamental contradiction between the cryptocurrency world and institutional investors. According to Palmer, the three main advantages of cryptocurrency are censorship resistance, transactions in a trustless environment, and verifiable transaction history. These features helped cryptocurrencies to achieve their main goal which is the decentralization. The aspirations of institutional investors, as well as authorities and governments of different countries, are directly opposite to this idea.

“Censorship resistance implies that a user’s ability to interface with the currency should never rely on a potential single point of failure <...> The shift back to reliance on a single corporation (essentially a bank) as your window to a cryptocurrency network introduces a clear single point of failure. If Coinbase.com is hijacked or taken offline, a user relying on that provider essentially loses their access to the decentralized Bitcoin network,” Palmer wrote.

No decentralization, no freedom

Centralized cryptocurrency companies offer “custodial services,” pursues Palmer. Their work contradicts the very idea of transferring assets in a trustless environment. In addition, such services “obscure away the notion of private keys in the name of convenience.”

“Broadly speaking, if you aren’t holding your private keys, you aren’t holding cryptocurrency,” Palmer reminds.

He noted that the community is working to protect decentralization from institutional dominance at the protocol level.

“But for a movement previously described as “the real Occupy Wall Street”, cryptocurrency now sadly resembles a community that instead wants to be occupied by Wall Street itself,” concludes Palmer.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has accused Zachary Coburn, the founder of decentralized EtherDelta exchange, of operating an unregistered stock exchange. He was fined of $388,000.