Bitcoin Surges Above $60K; Bitcoin ZK Rollup Citrea Raises $2.7M

Before the K roll ups. All the solutions that like previously uh happening in in the Bitcoin ecosystem are depending on multi signatures. Uh Like there are several multi schemes that you can create on Bitcoin. But while you are going to this Moor side chain structure, you are depositing your Bitcoin into multi six which causes a trust issue. You have to trust numbers of death if not to steal your money. Uh This is a huge issue uh with all the side chains besides the mono architecture and unsalable way. Uh But with roll ups, you are basically scaling the block space itself. You are not going to anywhere else. You are not creating another block space. Good afternoon and welcome to first mover on coin desk. I'm Jen Sei. Happy 60 K day. Bitcoin is flying this morning. That's becoming a common theme here on this show every morning. It seems like Bitcoin is climbing higher and higher, sitting above $60,000 as of 10:30 a.m. Eastern time and the monkey cap has reached $1.2 trillion. Meanwhile, the broader coin desk 20 index jumped nearly 3%. So it is a Happy day for all. Let's talk about this Fear and greed index. It flashed 82 today. So let me tell you a little bit about the fear and greed index. It ranges from a scale of zero to 100. And the closer you get to that 100 number, the more extreme greed is implied. The index is a sentiment metric that tracks the rate of change and asset movement against inherent fundamentals. So we're in a greedy environment and you might be asking yourself what that means. This is considered a sign of euphoria which could mean that the market is due for a correction. Now, I don't want to be the bearer of bad news. We don't give financial advice on this show. But if you're trading out there, you know, just beware, the fear and greed index is quite high this morning, regardless some traders out there still expect Bitcoin to cross its previous highs of $69,000 next month. So we'll just have to wait and s now you might be wondering what's been driving all of the excitement in Bitcoin and it's still that spot. Bitcoin ETF, that product is breaking records. Black rocks. Bitcoin ETF is recording volumes of over $1.3 billion for the second consecutive day. This is very, very impressive us listed spot Bitcoin ETF S traded over $2 billion. That's according to data cited by Bloomberg ETF analyst, Eric Balchunas, the large volumes happened as Bitcoin broke from its sideways consolidation on Monday. Remember on Monday, we said Bitcoin wasn't really moving anywhere. Well, it hurt us and it rallied over 10% hitting $57,000 after us. Market closed the same day, uh breaking its highest price since November 2021 and again breaking that record this morning. Now, the last thing I want to talk to you guys about before we get into our interview is Sam Bateman Fried. Where has he been? We haven't spoken about him in a little while and now attorneys have requested a prison term of no more than 6.5 years. Now, you'll remember that Beman Fried was convicted on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy last year. He's due to be sentenced next month. According to a filing submitted on Tuesday, his attorneys are objecting to the present tense investigation report which is recommending a sentence of 100 years in prison. Attorneys are calling it grotesque. The filing said quote, Sam is a 31 year old first time nonviolent offender who was joined in the conduct at issue by at least four other culpable individuals in a matter where victims are poised to recover were always poised to recover 100 cents on the dollar. And quote, the filing is heavily drawing on how the harm to customers lenders and investors is zero because the FTX Bankruptcy Estate has said that it expects to fully repay customers we'll have to wait and see what happens to Saman and Fried. Like I said, his sentencing is scheduled for March and we just have to wait and see what the judge says. All right, let's get to our first interview now where we're going to take a closer look at the Bitcoin ecosystem. The protocol is presented by the Stellar Community Fund Accelerate your Web three project with stellar funding. All eyes are on Bitcoin as the price approaches previous highs but the Bitcoin ecosystem is also experiencing outstanding developments of its own lately. Joining us now is Chain Labs, co-founder and Ceo Orkun Klich to discuss Bitcoin's First Zero knowledge roll up that came out of stealth earlier this month. Orkun. Welcome to the show. Hi John. Hi. Thank you for hosting me today. Of course. Well, I got to ask you what everyone is talking about this morning before we get into this Bitcoin broke $60,000. How are you feeling what's going on? I know you're in Denver right now, Denver. Are there celebrations happening? Yeah, it is very early in the morning but I still saw tweets from people like 4 a.m. five AM people talking about the price of Bitcoin. Yeah, I think it's a great thing to people, make happy about the price of it. Uh But the most important thing like you said is the tech and the development right now happening on Bitcoin and this will uh boost and he, he help the people to like feel the bottom of this price action. So that's uh they can use their Bitcoin in finance and the economy as well. Let's talk about the tech and developments that are happening in the Bitcoin ecosystem before we get into it, lay a foundation for me. Tell us about crea the first ZK roll up on Bitcoin. So, Citra is the first lock on Bitcoin that enhance the capabilities of Bitcoin block space, which you don't know which technology uh why we are saying that because like side chains that dominated the Bitcoin up to today. Uh We are building a roll up on Bitcoin which directly works on uh Bitcoin and have a trans minimized bridge to bridge your BT C into crea and back to Bitcoin. Uh With this way, uh we are processing like large number of transactions, thousands of transactions of the Bitcoin in Crea, but we are generating a succed proof for them, su K proof for them and submitting into Bitcoin for verification by a technology called BIT VM. Uh With this way, we can enable trust minimized breach for people to send their funds and their BC C from Bitcoin to crea and enjoy the finance, enjoy the liquidity that then if they want to come, come back to main chain, they can easily come back to main chain without trusting anyone else. Uh I think this is a great improvement over the existing solutions and this is what we are building. All right, let's go even more. Um a high level here. Breakdown Ziki roll ups. For me. What problem is this solving in the Bitcoin ecosystem before ZK roll ups? All the solutions that like previously happening in in the Bitcoin ecosystem are depending on multi signatures. Uh Like there are several multi schemes that you can create on Bitcoin. But while you are going to this moor side chain structure, you are depositing your Bitcoin into multi six which causes a trust issue. You have to trust the numbers of deaths if not to steal your money. Uh This is a huge issue uh with all the side chas besides the mono architecture and uncal way. Uh but with roll ups, you are basically scaling the block space itself. You are not going to anywhere else. You are not creating another block space. You are still inside the Bitcoin block space and enjoy it secures 100 person while uh no limitations happening on Bitcoin because in roll ups, we can implement anything. And for example, we are building a VKEVM which is a provable version of the EV MS R virtual machine. So it's what we can build on hr M now, we can build it on crea and it will work with Bitcoin security and BT C as the asset. Uh This is what is changing in the Bitcoin landscape you mentioned BIT VM. And there are other projects that we've spoken to here on this show that have mentioned BIT VM in the last few weeks, talk to me about this development. What is this unlock for developers who are building on Bitcoin? Yeah. Uh BVM basically enables us to eliminate this multi signature scheme, the honest majority issue. For example, if you create a multi, you have, for example trust, 60% of the multi or 70% of the multi but BC M architecture, we can basically encode our program into Bitcoin address. Uh So that uh if anyone in the multi sig numbers are honest, uh they can put a fraud through one chain uh to prevent money from stealing with this way, no one can steal the money. Uh If one person is uh the one person is enough in the committee to be honest, if they are honest, they can prevent any money steal and they will only authorize the valid withdrawals from the uh Citroen and Bitcoin roll ups. Uh This is uh the technology that helps us to eliminate multi six schemes uh be so uh up to date. All right, talk me through a developer journey here. Now with crea, what can developers who are building on Bitcoin do um that they couldn't before. Uh Basically cray is a ZKEVM. Uh But like in Italian, you can basically build anything you want with like couple of arteries that you can deploy or uh any program that you can deploy on Italian right now, we can deploy on Bitcoin. Thanks to Crea. This is a great improvement because like what Italian promises to people was programmable architecture of Bitcoin in the first place. But with Crea right now, Bitcoin also has the same program or even more maybe. Uh and you can do it with the real man BT C. Uh This is a great improvement and with the architecture, you can, for example, cus uh deploy your custom applications, for example, Bitcoin back several coins, Bitcoin vex loans or you can deploy futures deck as an out three and they can use trust, minimize BT C and Android Loing BT C in that platform. Uh These are the things you can build but it has nothing to do with that. You know, many of the features that you've mentioned there. Uh Ethereum offers and folks have been building applications that offer these things on Ethereum. Now, with this capability in Bitcoin and so much development in the Bitcoin ecosystem, how do you think we're going to see this grow? Is it possible we're going to see folks building more and more in Bitcoin and Bitcoin becoming the more predominant chain for web three apps in the future? Yeah, it's already started with ordinals. Uh It was like a very primitive way to build applications on Bitcoin. But with the platforms like Bitcoin roll ups, now we can build more complex applications with the same Bitcoin level of security. Uh So like I said we will trouble to see Bitcoin as FP drug in the future as such is to make Bitcoin the Foundation for World Finance. Uh This is our vision and uh it is possible to make Bitcoin as FP track bit Ctera. All right, Crea is out of stealth mode that happened earlier this month. Talk to me about your plans for 2024. Yeah, sure. Uh we like come, come out from start to get some extremely good positive feedbacks and we also recently announced our funding. Uh hopefully in a month, we will open source our code base which probably inspire lots of builders to also build on Bitcoin. Uh And hopefully in Q two, we will enable test nets so that people can see the Bitcoins power as an effort that can uh they can start building their uh unique applications that can be only possible with Bitcoin as is the Bitcoin ecosystem ready to take on an influx of users, maybe an influx of new users who are now interested in it because of the price or how long do you think it will take rather for the Bitcoin ecosystem to be ready for an influx of mainstream users? Yeah, we are working hard for it and hopefully like during the summer, that will be uh lots of apps that people can enjoy. Uh Hopefully we will make our main in the summer. Maybe if we like work really, really hard and we are doing that organ. Thank you so much for joining the show this morning and enjoy East Denver. It's time now to take a look at the chart of the day. The chart of the day is presented by crypto.com, the leading crypto platform trusted by over 80 million users worldwide. Alt coin traders are getting excited due to the falling Bitcoin Ether spread the spread between perpetual funding rights in Bitcoin and Ether markets recently collapsed. Indicating an uptick in investors risk appetite. This suggests continued out performance of alt coins and Ame coins ahead. Data tracked by glass node shows the spread recently collapsed to an annualized level of negative 9%. A sign that investors are willing to pay more to take leveraged long or bullish bets in the Ether perpetual futures market compared to Bitcoin. In other words, risk appetite is rising and investors are willing to pour money into smaller and riskier alt coins to generate large profits. Bitcoin is the world's largest Cryptocurrency by market value and the most liquid with growing mainstream adoption. Ether. Meanwhile is considered a relatively high beta and an alt coin leader. Thus the price or funding rate differential in Bitcoin and Ether markets reflects a broader risk sentiment. Ask the Australian dollar to yen pair does in traditional markets. That's wrap for first mover. Thank you so much for coming on this journey with me and thank you to our guests. As a note, we sometimes edit interviews on the show for length and clarity. Now, as you know, we're going on a journey. If you like this show, please let us know. And if there's something you would fix or do differently, also, let us know and we'll try to get that changed for you. You can DM me on Twitter with all of your feedback comments and compliments. In the meantime, you get all of your crypto news updates on coindesk.com and we'll see you next time.