Welcome to another new crypto news summary. Read on to find out what happened last week!

Government supports European proposal for digital euro

In late June, the European Commission announced the long-awaited legislative proposal for the digital euro. This project is very controversial, yet the proposal is already with the various national governments to be assessed individually. This week, the Dutch government expressed support for the proposal.

This is evident from a letter the government sent to the rest of the House of Representatives. The government, like the European Commission, believes that the digital euro should be the single currency in the European Union. This should ensure confidence and use of the euro. The digital euro is the European version of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) and will be issued directly by the central bank.

The new version of the euro would simply be offered through commercial banks, these banks must offer consumers a free account. This is new compared to the current system, because partly because of the still relatively low interest rates, banks have been charging money for several years to offer a checking account.

Chinese official gets life sentence for Bitcoin mining

On Aug. 22, 2023, a Chinese official was sentenced to life in prison for corruption and abuse of power. Xiao Yi, the Chinese official, allegedly helped a company finance and forge documents to mine bitcoin (BTC). China banned all forms of bitcoin and crypto mining in May 2021.

The Chinese court ruled that the offenses were particularly serious and that the defendant's actions harmed the interest of the Chinese people. In addition to the life sentence, the man's political rights were also stripped for life.

China is currently banning almost everything related to cryptocurrencies. However, possession of digital assets is still allowed. The Chinese government is cracking down on all crypto-related activities. That while China promotes its own central bank digital currency (CBDC), a cryptocurrency issued by the central bank.

Cardano beats superpowers based on activity

In the world of cryptocurrency, there are many projects competing with each other. Ethereum (ETH), for example, is the first smart contract platform and still the largest. Yet more and more projects have been added, such as Cardano (ADA) and Solana (SOL). Polkadot (DOT) and Chainlink (LINK) are also jointly trying to innovate through unique use cases. The blockchain analysis company Santiment recently researched developer activity between competing platforms.

According to Santiment's data, one project is well in the lead in terms of developer activity, and that is Cardano. The project thus overtakes previous leaders Polkadot and Kusama. Interestingly, Ethereum does not appear in the top 10. With a market capitalization of $9 billion, Cardano is 20 times smaller than Ethereum's network.

The development activity on Cardano is working well for the platform, as Bitcoin (BTC) has recently become deployable on Cardano's network thanks to Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) technology. Wrapped Bitcoin is a synthetic representation of BTC created through a smart contract. This process is completely transparent, this is because the process takes place on-chain. Through this technology, users can deploy bitcoin in DeFi protocols, among others.