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Showing posts from January 28, 2021

MLB Team Washington Nationals Partners With Terra Blockchain Community, Ballpark Plans to Accept UST

On February 9, the American professional baseball team based in Washington, D.C., the Washington Nationals, announced the team has partnered with Terra, the open-source blockchain platform and decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). The Washington Nationals detail that the team is a “leading innovator” and is “consistently introducing new technologies to enhance the fan experience.” Washington Nationals Ink Long-Term Deal With Terra Major League Baseball (MLB) team the Washington Nationals has partnered with the blockchain platform and DAO Terra, according to an announcement published by the team on Wednesday. The deal with Terra follows a slew of sports-related deals with crypto firms, but the MLB team will be the first to partner with an open-source blockchain project. In addition to the partnership, the algorithmic stablecoin UST that’s issued on the Terra blockchain will be “accepted as a payment method at Nationals Park as early as next season.” “The Nationals continue t...
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BIS Chief Banker Criticizes Bitcoin as Inherently Risky, Says BTC Vulnerable to 51% Attack

Bank for International Settlements (BIS) general manager Agustin Carstens has criticized bitcoin saying the asset was inherently risky and “increasingly vulnerable” to a 51% attack. A long time bitcoin (BTC) skeptic, Carstens stressed that only central banks should be issuing digital currencies. “Investors must be cognizant that bitcoin may well break down altogether,” he opined, in a speech delivered at Hoover Institute on January 27, 2021. “Scarcity and cryptography alone do not suffice to guarantee exchange,” Carstens stressed. Carstens, who runs the Basel-based central bank for central banks, speculated that the Bitcoin network becomes “increasingly vulnerable” to majority attacks as the cryptocurrency approaches its maximum supply of 21 million coins. With fewer coins being produced, rewards to miners for processing transactions will also decline, he said, and confirmation wait times will increase. As a result, bitcoin’s vulnerability to majority attacks will go up. Carste...
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Statera – a Global Deflationary Asset

PRESS RELEASE. Since its inception, Statera has had a singular goal: “to put cryptocurrency into every portfolio”. Statera is a first-of-its-kind asset that offers a unique exposure for any user: an immutable, global, decentralised and deflationary asset. On top of this, Statera threads through multiple liquidity pools, allowing users to easily and instantly diversify into digital assets. This also created a first of its kind: the Deflationary Index Fund. Statera possesses many of Bitcoin’s traits and in some aspects, even surpasses them; it’s cheaper to transfer, more decentralized, and more upgradeable (Statera runs on the Ethereum chain which is constantly upgrading, as opposed to Bitcoin’s stationary development timeline). Statera also has positive benefits for users and economies, due to its deflationary and immutable nature (read more in the whitepaper under: “A Deflationary Currency”, or read this article and linked research). Bitcoin has thrived due to its relative simpl...
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Study: 60% of Digital Asset Holders Store Funds on Exchanges While Half Derive an Income From Crypto

Despite the risks that come with storing crypto assets with third parties, the findings of a new study suggest many cryptocurrency holders still trust exchanges with the safekeeping of their funds. Conducted by Binance Research, the study finds that 60% of “the general population store their cryptocurrencies on an exchange.” In contrast, 26% of the respondents use cold wallets and only 11% are using hot wallets. Security of Funds Remain a Key User Concern Dubbed the 2021 Global Crypto User Index, the study’s findings “are based on a global survey issued to over 61,000 crypto users across 178 countries and regions.” The study survey, which ran from September 15 to October 25, 2020, explored questions surrounding the respondents’ demographics. Researchers also sought to understand the crypto holders’ attitudes, preferences, adoption, and motivations 
towards cryptocurrency investment. Meanwhile, the study findings show that despite the high percentage of the respondents who prefer...
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Hundreds of thousands watch as AOC takes on Robinhood on Twitch

AOC and guests explored the conditions that led to the GameStop short squeeze and the ramifications of the institutional response to it. Hundreds of thousands tuned in to a Twitch stream today as U.S. congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez discussed Robinhood’s controversial decision to suspend trading in GameStop after the short squeeze engineered by r/WallStreetBets. Hours earlier, Ocasio-Cortez, who sits on the House Financial Services Committee, slammed Robinhood for favoring the interests of the ultra wealthy at the expense of ordinary investors. “This is unacceptable. We now need to know more about @RobinhoodApp ’s decision to block retail investors from purchasing stock while hedge funds are freely able to trade the stock as they see fit.” The live stream, hosted on Ocasio-Cortez’s personal Twitch channel , was only announced a few hours earlier and drew more than 300,000 viewers. During the hour long event, Ocasio-Cortez took in the opinions of guests while contributing ...
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Grayscale is buying BTC 54% faster than it is mined so far in 2021

Grayscale is continuing its BTC accumulation spree, snapping up more than 40,000 BTC in just 16 days. Digital asset manager Grayscale is showing little signs of slowing down its Bitcoin accumulation, adding around 40,000 BTC to its stash since January 13. That's around $1.36 billion worth of Bitcoin in just 16 days. The dramatic accumulation was noted by Rafael Schultze-Kraft, the CTO of crypto analytics firm Glassnode, who noted that only 26,000 BTC have been mined into existence since the start of the year. That means Grayscale has purchased Bitcoin at a rate that is 54% faster than new BTC supply has been created during 2021 so far. However the vast majority was purchased in the last 16 days, meaning that for the past two weeks Grayscale has been buying around 170% more Bitcoin than was mined over the same period. Bitcoins mined in 2021: ~26,000 BTC Grayscale holdings in 2021: +40,000 BTC That's who you're selling to, when you're selling now. #Bitcoin pic....
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Monstercat dance label sells $180K of musical NFTs in two minutes

Major EDM record label Monstercat sees NFTs as a new way to provide alternative revenue streams. Major EDM record label Monstercat has highlighted how non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, can be a successful new revenue stream for artists and the music industry, generating $180,000 in the first two minutes of an NFT collection release. The collection consists of animated video clips with music backing and was created in collaboration with Australian-based digital artist Giant Swan, renowned for his use of VR technology, and Platinum producer Varien, who recorded “The Crown”. It was released on the Winklevoss-owned Nifty Gateway yesterday. The collection included 500 Constellations packs which were sold out in one second flat at $0.50 each, and approximately 470 NFTs containing one of four unique video clips in the Origins Collection . Each edition sold for between $350 to $450 each. The total amount of sales and resales generated from this collection totaled $250,000. Based in Canada...
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SushiSwap is eating into Uniswap’s market share following Yearn merger

Since merging into the Yearn ecosystem, the sometimes controversial decentralized exchange SushiSwap has been consistently eating into Uniswap’s dominance of the sector. Following its merger into the Yearn ecosystem , SushiSwap has been making significant inroads into the market share of leading decentralized exchange Uniswap. On Jan. 29, Messari researcher Mira Christanto tweeted data illustrating that Uniswap’s share of the Automated Market Maker sector has declined as Sushi’s share expanded from mid-December until last week. Relative market share of AMM Dexes: Messari Christanto asserts the Yearn merger has given Sushi a newfound legitimacy, allowing the project to move past criticism of the project that launched in August as a clone of Uniswap and secured TVL early on via a so-called “vampire” liquidity attack. In November, Sushi attracted further liquidity away from Uniswap by introducing yield farming rewards for pairings that had been previously incentivized by the lead...
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Crypto crime dropped 57% in 2020 but DeFi hacks surged: CipherTrace

Crypto crime rates are dropping despite a massive increase in attacks targeting the DeFi sector, reports security firm CipherTrace. Crimes targeting the virtual currency sector decreased by more than half in 2020 according to blockchain security firm CipherTrace. The firm’s 2020 cryptocurrency crime and anti-money laundering report revealed that losses from cryptocurrency theft, hacks, and fraud fell 57% in 2020 to $1.9 billion, due mainly to improved security systems. The same figure in 2019 hit a record $4.5 billion. CipherTrace said that “massive exit scams” such as the PlusToken Ponzi dominated crypto crime over the past two years, with that scam alone netting $2.9 billion. In 2020, a similar scheme by some of the same culprits called WoToken defrauded investors out of $1.1 billion, accounting for 58% of the year’s major crime volume. The report found that fraud is the dominant cryptocurrency crime, followed by theft and ransomware. Dave Jevans, CipherTrace’s chief executive...
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LuaSwap using TomoChain for backend transactions

Automated token exchanger LuaSwap is cutting costs by employing a second-layer alternative to transacting on the heavily crowded Ethereum mainnet. The number of projects adopting layer-two solutions for Ethereum’s scaling woes is increasing, with  LuaSwap rolling out a new, TomoChain-based exchange engine yesterday. The change will enable the Uniswap inspired exchange to perform token swaps with greater speed and efficiency than many rival Automated Market Maker ERC-20 exchanges. 1/ #LuaSwap version on @TomoChainANN blockchain is live, entirely open to all $TOMO and Ethereum projects Users can now experience another $LUA version with: ✔️ Super speed ✔️ Near-zero gas fees ✔️ No network congestion Details: https://t.co/Be8claDkgT — LuaSwap (@LuaSwap) January 27, 2021 While LuaSwap remains an Ethereum-based application, transactions related to conversion processes are now performed using the TomoChain blockchain, instead of Ethereum. TomoChain employs block lengths...
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A Look at Facebook’s Diem Wallet- Token Sale Accepts 3 Cryptos, Strict KYC, Hefty Data Collection

During the last two years, there’s been a lot of interest in Facebook’s cryptocurrency diem (formally libra) and rumors of a nearing launch date went viral last November. Now the social media giant is advertising the crypto asset’s pre-sale heavily on the platform, as people can now purchase diem with U.S. dollars and three different cryptocurrencies. Facebook Is Selling Diem Coins for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Bitcoin Cash Facebook is in the midst of the company’s token sale where individuals can invest funds in order to purchase the social media firm’s upcoming cryptocurrency. Last November, news.Bitcoin.com reported on the launch date rumors, and following the discussions, Facebook rebranded “Libra” and called the project “Diem.” Now the crypto asset was expected to launch in January, but it seems the company is now planning to sell tokens for the next 18 days into February. Facebook has also been advertising the token sale on the social media platform regularly, in order to entic...
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Ethereum dev must face jury for allegedly helping North Korea evade sanctions

Virgil Griffith, a crypto developer accused of helping North Korea evade sanctions through speaking at a Pyongyang crypto conference in 2019, must now face a jury. A New York federal judge has denied an Ethereum developer’s motion to dismiss criminal charges over allegations he assisted the North Korean regime to bypass U.S. sanctions. The developer and former-hacker, Virgil Griffith, is accused of helping North Korea evade economic sanctions by delivering a speech during a Pyongyang blockchain conference in April 2019. Law360 reported that in his motion, Griffith had claimed the speech he delivered at the Pyongyang Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Conference was protected by his First Amendment right to free speech . Griffith also requested a bill of particulars, claiming he was unable to prepare for the hearing as the four-page indictment against him was “short and vague,” and lacked specific detail outlining his criminal conduct. However, the judge also rejected this request, ...
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Network-Attached Storage (NAS) Devices Infected by Bitcoin-Mining Malware

A Taiwanese hardware company has warned its clients about a targeted crypto mining attack against their storage devices. The malware infects NAS devices connected to the internet by installing a crypto-miner named Dovecat. Threat Actors Install Malware That Illicitly Mines Bitcoin According to the advisory revealed by Bleeping Computer, the malware mines bitcoin ( BTC ) on NAS devices without alerting its operators. The company elaborates on the findings: QNAP NAS can become infected when they are connected to the Internet with weak user passwords. The malware campaign launched by unknown threat actors has been surfacing over the last three months. Some customers report that the bitcoin miner uses all the CPU and memory resources of the device, rendering it almost unusable. Per a knowledge base article, Qnap says that unless the Dovecat process encounters a recent firmware (4.4.x), the system could have been compromised by the miner. The company recommends updating all NAS de...
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Finance Redefined: What can you do about those gas fees? Jan. 20–27

Fees are a DeFi user’s nightmare. How can you pay less? This is a repost of Finance Redefined's latest installment, where Cointelegraph unpacks the latest developments in DeFi. The newsletter is delivered to subscribers every Wednesday. DeFi was reasonably quiet in terms of major fundamental developments, instead letting prices do the talking. Many tokens rallied, both the popular and the almost forgotten . Save for a few hiccups due to Bitcoin’s shaky price action, we are still well into DeFi season. This price action, unfortunately, means that using DeFi is pretty much impossible. Ethereum gas fees steadily hovered above 100 Gwei, which to any veteran will seem like an impossibly large number. While we’re not quite at the 300 Gwei seen in the summer of DeFi, it’s worth remembering that Ether is also worth about 3-4 times as much. For a fun exercise, try inputting your wallet address in fees.wtf and marvel at just how much money you threw to miners. Average gas prices in ...
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Analyst: Chinese New Year could drive Bitcoin selling pressure

Stack Funds’ analysis suggests that Bitcoin’s floor price has yet to be found as the Chinese New Year approaches. The upcoming Chinese New Year holidays on Feb. 12 could have an indirect impact on the Bitcoin ( BTC ) price and drive sell-offs on the market, according to a recent analysis.  Per a Jan. 28 report by cryptocurrency investment firm Stack Funds, the ongoing selling pressure on the Bitcoin price is likely to continue in the short term due to Asian miners increasingly offloading their funds amid the upcoming week-long holiday. With more than 60% of global Bitcoin mining pools are located in China, Stack Funds head of research Lennard Neo suggested that a lot of selling pressure is coming from Chinese miners. The researcher stated that the Miner Position Index, or MPI, has seen a massive surge recently, indicating a subsequent pullback of Bitcoin price. As Cointelegraph reported, MPI surged to its highest levels since 2019 in mid-January 2021. Neo concluded that the ...
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Central banks must play ‘pivotal role’ in digital money, says BIS exec

An exec at the Bank for International Settlements wants central banks to helm the evolution of digital money. With central bank digital currencies — or CBDCs — on the agenda in many countries, the general manager of the Bank for International Settlements has weighed in on the role of the mainstream financial establishment in the emerging digital currency landscape. Speaking at the Hoover Institution policy seminar on Jan. 27, Agustín Carstens argued for central banks to be front and center in issuing and controlling digital money: “If digital money is to exist, the central bank must play a pivotal role, guaranteeing the stability of value, ensuring the elasticity of the aggregate supply of such money, and overseeing the overall security of the system. Such a system must not fail and cannot tolerate any serious mistakes.” For Carstens, central banks and the existing financial architecture is better suited to ensuring trust and stability for digital currencies than a purely decentr...
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Why a trader says Bitcoin is short-term bearish despite holding $30K

Bitcoin is short-term bearish, traders say, as the options market hints at consolidation. A pseudonymous trader known as “Byzantine General” is short-term bearish as Bitcoin ( BTC ) continues to test the same $30,000 support area. Although the price of Bitcoin is staying above a key support level, the trader said the price action is not bullish. He wrote: “In the midst of all this chaos, here's a bitcoin chart. Not much to do. It's bearish no matter how you look at it. But we're sitting on support, so no swing short opportunity either... It's just waiting now. > YO needs to hold.” "Options market is signaling a short-term bearish view" Analysts see a similar trend from the options market and previous Bitcoin fractals. Fractals are technical candle chart patterns that analysts typically use to compare the current price action of Bitcoin to previous cycles. According to analysts at the data analytics company Laevitas, the options market signals are sh...
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Reddit partners with Ethereum Foundation to boost scaling and resources

The social media network says the aim of the partnership is to bring Ethereum to "Reddit-scale" production. Popular social media network Reddit, which counts over 1.7 billion monthly visits , is deepening its ties with the Ethereum Foundation in what it has formalized as its first-ever blockchain partnership. According to an announcement from Reddit admin u/jarins, the aim of the partnership will be to increase the site's  “commitment to blockchain, accelerating scaling and resources for the Ethereum ecosystem, and bringing the value and independence of blockchain technology to millions of redditors.” In 2020, Reddit had already initiated two, large Ethereum-focused projects. The first, an application called Community Points , was a rewards system that awarded redditors with ERC-20 tokens for contributing engaging content to the platform. Reddit then followed this up with a competition — The Great Reddit Scaling Bake-Off — seeking submissions of Ethereum scaling tech...
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Dogecoin to 1 dollar? Reddit turns to DOGE after GameStop surges 1,600% in 2 weeks

Dogecoin may have a long way to go to hit $1, but the stock market may not be in the mood to doubt the power of r/Wallstreetbets. Dogecoin ( DOGE ) is up 80% in a day and trading volume has spiked more than 800% as the altcoin sees a publicity surge with a familiar source. DOGE/USD 1-day candle chart (Binance). Source: Tradingview DOGE to $1? Data from Cointelegraph Markets , CoinMarketCap and  Tradingview showed a transformation taking place in the DOGE ecosystem overnight on Jan. 27, with DOGE/USD hitting $0.0138. In a matter of hours on Thursday, the pair added over 80% to its spot price before correcting, still holding 1 cent support at the time of writing. The gains accompanied a similar surge in interest on social media, with Twitter activity up by more than 300%. The source, it appears, is the same Reddit group that sparked a dramatic but highly controversial bull run in the stock price of U.S. consumer electronics firm GameStop. A parody Twitter account posing a...
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