 Welcome to Digital Asset News. They get top stories in crypto, currency and digital assets, and break them down to bite sized pieces. Today, I've got some interesting things. First up, Starbucks is going to let customers trace their coffee's providence from bean to brew using blockchain technology. And at first glance, this looks pretty good, but in the end, it really kind of sucks. Also the AVE protocol beats Maker and Compound to become the number one in DeFi rankings. And we're going to talk about the total value locked or the TVL, and AVE is beating everything out there. And finally, there's an article by Cointelegraph, which talks about the death spiral. And what it's really getting to is to the Bitcoin mining difficulty actually rose by 9%. And this is a different aspect that I thought would totally go in the opposite direction. And I can tell you right now, I was completely wrong. Before we get into that, let's take a look at the market. And today, it is August 25th, it is 6 p.m. Texas time, just a long day, just couldn't get going, a lot of other things for the other businesses. But here we are. So right now, let's see what we got. Bitcoin down pretty good amount actually, 3.4%. And 7.5 almost for 7 days. So we're looking at 11,356. That's quite a jarring number. I thought it was going to, you know, increase just a little bit, maybe hit the 117, 118. But hey, here we are, Ethereum slides below the 400, really disappointed to see that. But here we are. But hey, good news, Tether retakes the third spot. Nobody cares because Tether's Tether. SRP is just like Tether, pretty much a stable coin and it's sitting here at around 27 cents, down 3.7. And for the week, down 12%. Who knows when it'll actually go up. Chainlink also down, down 6%, 14%. And we're getting that territory now, where we might see like $13, $12. Who knows? But I got to tell you, Chainlink was up massively, but here we are, Bitcoin cash down. The one shining light, the nice grace that is out there, the darling of the cryptocurrency market is Polkadot, up 20%. And I got to tell you, it was, it rose massively. I remember when it first came out, it was like 285, then 315, then 346, 347, 425. Now here we are, 546. How high will it go? Who knows? But I can tell you, it does look kind of promising. However, I will always say the same thing, don't dump all your money into it right now. Dollar cost, average end, because you never know. Litecoin, Bitcoin SV, still in the top 10, no idea why. And Cosmos up a little bit. But nothing really fantastic. OKB breaks in the top 20, interesting. And that's pretty much about it. It's pretty much read throughout the whole cryptocurrency market. Anyhow, hopefully this week it turns around, but I do see some more slide action. I do not think we're going to rise too tremendously, so we'll see. Anyhow, let's break into today's top stories. First up, before I get to the top story about Starbucks, there was a pretty important little message I want to talk to you about, which is the IRS. If you don't know, these letters are going out from the IRS. And this was sent to me by Shian Shandrasakara. He is a CPA. And he's informing me. He goes, look, this is what's going on. IRS is sending out these letters to people. If you had checked off this box right here, and this is only for U.S. citizens. If you're in Australia or Canada or Europe, this does not apply. This is only for U.S. citizens. If you had actually invested in cryptocurrency, which, if you're watching this channel, pretty good chance you did in 2019. If you checked off, no. And you went through a Coinbase, a Kraken, a Gemini, a Binance, any kind of exchange where you had to do some type of AML or KYC where you uploaded your information, chances are the government knows. So you might be getting a letter and just talk to your CPA about that. That's all I'm going to say. So real quick, this was a letter that was sent on August 14, 2020. So you know it's recent. And this is exactly from the IRS. And it says, why we're writing to you, which is never good when you get this from the IRS, but they stayed here. We have information that you have or had one or more accounts containing virtual currency, but may not have properly reported your transactions involving virtual currency, which include cryptocurrency and not crypto virtual currencies. What you need to do after reviewing the information, if you believe you didn't accurately report your virtual currency transactions on a federal income tax return, you should file a matter of returns or to link returns if you didn't file a return. So again, make sure you talk to your CPA. I am just a messenger. Do not shoot me. And this is just the information that I got. If you are looking to drastically minimize your taxes in the description of every one of my videos, there is a link that's going to look like this. And it's going to link you to a video that I just did a couple days ago, which talks about how to drastically or colossally actually minimize your taxes using I trust capital. Click and watch that video and go forward from there. But just a warning for the day, let's move on to top story. So first up, Starbucks let customers trace their coffee's providence from bean to brew. When I first saw this, I'm like, great. Looks like VeChain is taking names and kicking ass, whatever you want to call. But I got to tell you it's not the case. So here it all is in a nutshell. Starbucks, the biggest coffee shop chain in the world, now allows its customers to trace the origins of its coffee using Microsoft's blockchain solution. Let me say that again, Microsoft's blockchain solution. What a bummer, you know, you come into this space and you invest into different projects that you think are going to be good. And what do these, you know, huge conglomerates do? Huge corporations, they just team up together. So now they got Microsoft blockchain solution, which uses Azure, I believe, and that is what is going on. But what's gonna, what's happening here is that customers will be able to scan codes on the bags of coffee they purchase to discover their origins. So this is kind of a bummer, but you gotta understand, these big corporations, they're going to get in where they fit in. And what's gonna happen is that, you know, they're going to say, hey, we can have a blockchain, we can have a blockchain, but here's the thing. They are, all these huge corporations, they are not very nimble. They have multiple layers of management. They have to go through a lot of hoops and just to get into the land one account. So these types of things, I'm like, okay, well, that sucks. I kind of hoping that they would go another route. But of course, unfortunately, they went for Microsoft. But I truly believe if you just look at history and business, I mean, just take a look at Blockbuster. They tried to pivot on a dime when they found out that people were streaming services. And actually Netflix came to us and said, hey, you want to buy us? And I'm like, no, we don't want that because we're Blockbuster and we're awesome and we'll always crush you. And we know what happened there. But when you're new and you're young and you can kind of do these things because you don't have these huge layers of management, you can get out there and you can really change the world. So I don't see this as being a pop-off for every type of thing. I think Microsoft, I think IBM, they will get in for these different places. But I do not see them be the majority because they are just so darn big and they can't be like the smaller, different types of blockchain projects that are out there, the ones that you and I invest in. So that's what we have. Let's move on. Next up, Ave Protocol beats Maker and Compound to become number one in D5 rankings. And I gotta tell you, AVE has been on quite the tear. So this is talking about the total value locked or TVL and decentralized finance are being rocked by AVE. It's a lending protocol that has now taken Maker-dow's mantle as the most popular destination for Ethereum-based assets. And this is one of the reasons why I'm also very bullish on Ethereum because everything's built on it. So I've got a good amount of Ethereum, I will just say that, and I can only see it doing very well. But after reading this article, I think I'm gonna have to take a look at AVE a little more closely. Anyhow, according to data from D5 Pulse, AVE, or AVE, I wanna say it, holds 1.4 billion in assets as of press time, slightly edging out Maker's 1.4 billion. For the longest time, Maker was the king of the hill. Here we are, already overtaken, but that's how things move in cryptocurrency. Compound, another one that was the darling of cryptocurrency and now has fallen to fifth place, overtaken by Y-earn and curve, or yearning curve. AVE offers a wide range of assets for borrowing and depositing with various stable coins like Tether, true USD, USD coin accounting for the majority of its value locked. The protocol's value locked measurement, thus appears to be partially dependent on the price of its token. This is the big thing, you have to understand. When they put out these native tokens, it seems like half of it comes from the native token itself, and the other half is kind of like the lending platform when they talk about USDT, USD coin, TUSD. So it's kind of interesting how it all works, but we'll get into that right now. However, liquidity mining incentives, like on compound or curve, resulted in the yield farming phenomenon, which inflates TVL and a positive feedback loop with token prices. I gotta tell you, I am not a fan of this. I just think it's creating something from nothing and I don't see the value of it at all. I just think it's people chasing people chasing, we don't money, and I don't see the value of it. I am a big believer in putting my money into something that can actually create value, not just a never ending loop of money just coming in. I mean, what are you actually doing? I see decentralized finance as the big motivator or the big mover with small businesses like myself, because if I can get loans against my cryptocurrency, fantastic, that means I don't have to sell my cryptocurrency as it actually gains in value over the six months, 12 months, two years, five years, or 10 years or whatever else it is for the loan I'm gonna take out, I can leave it in there, I can get cash, I can pay for different types of units or any kind of overhead that I have or mortgages or different parts for the land. I can do a lot of different things that money and cryptocurrency gonna sit there. For small businesses, I'm telling you right now, DeFi will be big once the small businesses just figure it out, because if you've ever gone through a bank, hint, hint, banks suck and it's very hard to get a loan. So I am big on DeFi for small businesses and for the private loan as well. Anyhow, finishing up here, some researchers have highlighted that the market's overall TVL is prone to double counting. For example, any die liquidity on a lending platform like Aave, how do you say it, is a second counting of the original assets supplied as collateral to make or to mint the stablecoin. Now, although these issues have led to some to propose alternative methods of measuring the success of DeFi, the metric still remains the most quoted in the industry so I don't understand that. Yeah, I mean, look, DeFi's gonna be big regardless. I don't know how we wanna count it, if we wanna double count or triple count or how we wanna do it, it's going to be big but I think it has its place for the right individual and the right businesses, but that's just my opinion. What do you think? Let me know in the comment section of how you see DeFi actually increasing the value going forward over the next five, 10, 30 years. All right, that's it. But there's one thing I wanna do, I wanna take a look at the actual website. This is app.av, a-a-v-e or ave.com and when you go here, you can connect your wallet right away. So if you got a ledger like I do, you can click on that but if you're using the Brave browser, you can set up your Ethereum based wallet right in the Brave browser, which is pretty cool. So all you gotta do is you can't see it but in the top left-hand corner if you're using the Brave browser, just click on Brave and then you'll click on preferences and then right here on the top right there, it'll say crypto wallets and then you put in your password and there it is. Wham, look at that, 0.15 ETH, I'm loaded. Then I got Celsius, 35.18 and you can do this, you just set it up right here and it'll walk into the whole thing. So it's pretty cool, you can just do this and then just pay for things as you use the Brave browser and instead of using your ledger or any kind of hot wallet, so it's right there but just be aware, I don't keep a lot of money on these wallets, these are kind of like just incidental type of things that I wanna do and just test out, so just a little bit and that's okay and there's your Ethereum based wallet, you just copy clipboard and off you go. That is your public key, so anybody can take a look at that. Anyhow, jumping back, let's, instead of star crypto wallets and reload, let's do that and there it is, browser wallet, interesting. Now welcome back, you do this again and I got a couple here, we'll use the one that actually has money in it, oops, I can select them all, I don't want to, next. And then connect to, they're connecting and boom, there we are. So here's where we can get in and we can start to play, we can do all these different things with DeFi. See what they got? So they got that, Ethereum, ETHLAN, that, Chainlink, a lot of different things here, this is nice. And then you got the deposit APY, the percentage yield and then the borrower. So this is what the borrower's gonna pay, this is not a 30-day average, 6.24, if they're using true USD, not too bad, 1.9, 2.15, I'll take that, yeah, I'll take that for sure. This is where it gets a little crazy, basic attention token, 91%. So again, if you want something like that, go right ahead, take a look at AVE or Aave. Me personally, I just use Celsius, that's my one-two punch. I use Voyager to buy cryptocurrency assets and then I use Celsius to transfer it over there and then I get interest on all the different cryptocurrencies that I have and I've actually taken a loan out and it's very easy. So I mean, I like to do that, it just makes sense to me. So if you want to take a look at all the different wallets and exchanges that I recommend, there's gonna be a link in the description, it's gonna look like this and it goes over everything from Coinbase to Kraken to Gemini to Atomic Wallet to Voyager to Celsius to eToro, do not recommend them. Crypto.com, everything you think of are some of the big names out there. I've used them all and I give you recommendations and I give you the fees and the interest and all that stuff, so go ahead and take a look at that. So last, this caught my attention, this is from Cointelegraph, it says, what death spiral Bitcoin mine difficulty rises by 9% says having. So before the having, which was around May 11th, I had thought that there was going to be a massive capitulation of all the Bitcoin miners and they were going to shut down their rigs because instead of actually getting 12 and a half Bitcoin, they were only gonna get 6.25 for every block that was mined and the price of the electricity had gone up and I just thought, well, if that's the case then these Bitcoin miners are gonna say, well, I can't make that much money because everything's cut in half, I'm doing the same amount of work, but I get in half the pay, so I'm just gonna shut off, but I was wrong, that was just, just didn't hit that one, but that's a good thing, right? So a rising hash rate is a positive for Bitcoin, so the thing about hash rates, this is the great thing about the Bitcoin network, it keeps everything in equilibrium. So the more mining rigs that are out there, the more that are chunking along, mining those blocks, the more that they have, the higher the hash rate actually is and the more difficult it is. And then inversely, if miners would have shut everything down or at least half of them would have shut down, then the difficulty would have dropped dramatically and it'd been easier for all the ones that were left on. I always thought that the bigger corporations, the big mining pools would just dominate and all the small guys would be pushed out, but did not happen and according to data from Glassnode, the mining difficulty of Bitcoin actually increased by 3.6% on August 24th and is now at an all-time high. So that is good for the network. So I can go over the rest of it, it goes through some data in some different points, but it's pretty boring. The only thing that really I got out of this is that this is a good thing for Bitcoin because I mean, it is good to have competition in a market and if you're gonna have, just these huge mining pools just swallow up everybody, that's not great. Now, it's gonna happen anyhow, at some point, let's just be honest because I mean, you've got these big, huge mining pools in China and that's just the way it is. And then you've got, there's some in actually layer one, which is in Central or Southwest Texas. And that is the one that is being financed by Peter Thiel and that one's supposed to be enormous. There's also some other mining operations in Texas as well because the electricity is so cheap. So I like to see that, I'd like to see more come out and I'd like to see more smaller operations get into the game, but yeah, you know how it goes. Sometimes you just gotta get the bigger players dominate. Okay, and that's it for today's top stories, but before we take off, I just wanna say thanks to everybody who has signed up for Digital Asset News. There is a Join Now button at the very bottom right. Just so you know, you don't get anything special. It's just like a tip, it's like a buck 99 and I just give random shout-outs. So random shout-outs to Tommy Maples, Jeremy Schwartz, Sam Vasquez and Crow 24-7. We also got Patrick Mai, Fulja, either Black, Chuck C, Azrael's Pack, passage. Barry Belasco, Bill Bajerke, Sam Rossman, Igor Pustzin. That's a good one. And Moe, Moe Zainal. So thanks everybody, I really appreciate it. If you like those types of videos, there's gonna be two more that's gonna pop up on your left and right. Don't know, YouTube has control of those. And also, they also have control over all the ads you saw. So if you saw a scam ad, not my fault, don't shoot the messenger. Actually, go talk to YouTube, they'd love to hear from you. And that's it, so thanks for watching and I'll see you on the next one.