Coinbase posts $1.1B loss, Polygon dApps rocket 400% in 2022 and Elon Musk says

Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.

Top Stories This Week

Elon Musk: US ’past peak inflation’ after Tesla sells 90% of Bitcoin

With Tesla now having sold 90% of its Bitcoin holdings during the bear market, Elon Musk says the U.S. economy is “past peak inflation” and predicts that only a “mild to moderate” recession could be incoming. “We sort of have some insight into where prices are headed over time, and the interesting thing that we’re seeing now is that most of our commodities, most of the things that go into a Tesla — not all, more than half the prices — are trending down in six months from now,” Musk said at Tesla’s 2022 Annual Meeting of Stockholders.

Coming sooner: ETH devs move up the date for Merge

The long-awaited Merge looks to be ahead of schedule, with Ethereum core developers Tim Beiko and Terence Tsao agreeing on a developer call Thursday to tentatively set the date of the Merge for Sept. 15. The previously estimated date from Beiko was Sept. 19, and suggested that the final preparation work is going smoothly after the final Goerli testnet merge went off without a hitch this week.

Coinbase posts $1.1B loss in Q2 on ‘fast and furious’ crypto downturn

Major crypto exchange Coinbase posted a whopping Q2 loss of $1.1 billion, citing a “fast and furious” crypto downturn during the quarter. The firm noted that Q2 was a “tough quarter” as trading volume and transaction revenue fell 30% and 35%, respectively. It marks the second consecutive quarter of loss for the company this year. “The current downturn came fast and furious, and we are seeing customer behavior mirror that of past down markets,” the firm wrote in a shareholder letter posted on Tuesday.

Decentralized apps on Polygon hit 37,000, rocketing 400% this year

The number of DApps on Ethereum scaling platform Polygon topped 37,000 this week, marking a 400% increase since the start of 2022. The project provided a breakdown of DApp projects built on Polygon, which notably showed that “74% of teams integrated exclusively on Polygon, while 26% deployed on both Polygon and Ethereum.” Polygon also stated that its ecosystem has now seen more than “142 million unique user addresses and $5 billion in assets secured,” with around 1.6 billion transactions processed on the network to date.

Anonymous user sends ETH from Tornado Cash to prominent figures following sanctions

One day after the U.S. Treasury sanctioned crypto mixer Tornado Cash over its alleged role in money laundering operations, intervals of 0.1 Ether transactions began being sent from the smart contract to prominent figures such as Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and American television host Jimmy Fallon. The move appears to be a critique or…