Welcome to the NiceHash crypto news digest. Let's see what happened these last few days.

Ethereum Shanghai Upgrade unlocks staked funds

On April 12th, Ethereum completed its Shanghai hard fork. The update, also referred to as “Shapella”, allows validators to withdraw their stake from the Beacon Chain back to the execution layer.

The Ethereum network allows individuals to lock 32 Ether in order to run a validator and participate in the network consensus. Previously, individuals who had locked Ether to run a validator on the Ethereum network were unable to unstake their rewards and exit the network. However, with the implementation of the Shanghai upgrade, validators now have the ability to unlock not only their initial 32 Ether stake, but also any additional staking rewards they may have earned.

Following the fork, the number of validators looking to unstake rewards has surged, resulting in a queue of more than 360,000 validators with partial withdrawals and over 20,000 validators with full withdrawals. Processing all these requests is estimated to take over two weeks.

Twitter partners with eToro to allow users to buy & sell crypto and stocks

With the vision of transforming Twitter into an “everything app” akin to WeChat in China, the new partnership is expected to allow Twitter users to trade crypto and stocks on eToro directly from the Twitter App.

The partnership will also improve the real-time trading data available to Twitter users, expanding the list of $Cashtags that produce live price charts.

Montana’s House of Representatives passes “right to mine” crypto bill

The House of Representatives in the state of Montana, in the United States, has passed a bill (64 to 35) that prohibits local authorities from obstructing the crypto mining operations.

The Bill 178 forbids any discriminatory electricity rates charged to cryptocurrency miners, and also safeguards mining operations that take place at home. Additionally, it also categorizes digital assets (crypto, stablecoins, NFTs, etc.) as personal property and bars any extra taxes when paying with crypto.

The Texas Blockchain Council starts its “Don’t Mess With Texas Innovation” campaign against anti-free market bill

This week, the Texas Blockchain Council has initiated their Don’t Mess With Texas Innovation campaign, with the main goal of stopping the Texas anti-free market and anti-Bitcoin mining bill SB 1751. The TBC urges supporters of the campaign to take action and reach out to their State Senator or the Texas Senate.

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