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Showing posts from March 12, 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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Japanese Court Convicts Bitcoin Tax Evader- Trader Gets a Year in Prison Plus Fine for $200K

Japanese authorities aren’t hesitating in hunting down anyone considered a crypto tax evader. A court in Ishikawa has sentenced one of them, a 56-year-old man that will spend one year in prison, plus pay a $200,000 fine. Sentenced Man Didn’t Disclose His BTC Trading Activity of the Period 2017-2018 According to Chunichi , a judge at the Kanazawa District Court imposed a fine of over 22 million yen ($200,000) and gave a one-year-long sentence to Hideji Matsuda, an office worker in Ishikawa, for violating the Income Tax Law. The judge concluded that the man didn’t file accurate tax declarations knowingly on his bitcoin (BTC) trading activity. Per court documents, Matsuda didn’t declare the period 2017-2018. Moreover, the court stated that the office worker falsified data on his tax submissions because he claimed to had just earned 1.2 million yen ($11,000) in profits. In reality, he received a total income of 74 million yen ($678,000) and he didn’t pay any tax whatsoever. When hi...
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The Congolese Mountain of Gold: Surprise Discovery in Africa Shows Metal’s Scarcity Is Hard to Prove

A myriad of gold bugs like to compliment the yellow precious metal for its ostensible scarcity, as estimates say only 2,500 to 3,000 tons of new gold is produced annually. While new gold discoveries have seemingly slowed, investigative studies also show that in some areas, gold is being smuggled into the economy by the ton, and often never accounted for as far as per annum issuance estimates. Recently, reports show a whole mountain of gold was discovered in the Congo, as the Democratic Republic of the Congo is well known for being a region that sees tons of smuggled gold filtered into the global financial system unreported. Surprise Gold Deposits Continue to Crack the Precious Metal’s Scarcity Proposition It has always been said that the precious metal gold (Au) is scarce, and some reports even say that gold mining on earth will end by the year 2050 . Additionally, estimates also show that there’s roughly 2,500 to 3,000 tons of new gold that is accounted for and enters into the fin...
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Coinbase effect and strong fundamentals send Polygon (MATIC) and Skale higher

The explosive rally from Skale and Polygon proves that the Coinbase effect continues to be a potent price mover for small and large-cap altcoins. In previous bull markets, one of the most consistent price movers for cryptocurrency projects was being listed on Coinbase, a phenomenon that became known as the 'Coinbase effect’.  The recent announcement that Polygon (MATIC), SKALE (SKL) and SushiSwap (SUSHI) would be added to the exchange and begin trading on March 11 has proven that the Coinbase effect remains potent as the tokens witnessed record trading volume and double-digit price movements since the listing took place. MATIC/USDT vs. SKL/USDT vs. SUSHI/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView Data from Cointelegraph Markets and TradingView shows that SKL has been the biggest beneficiary of the Coinbase effect, increasing more than 200% since the announcement on March 9, while MATIC has grown by 88% and SUSHI has gained a modest 7%. SKL/USDT SKALE describes itself as an...
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Spanish Ministry of Economy Proposes to Create a Financial Customer Ombudsman for Crypto-Related Matters

Crypto regulation in Spain remains on the political talks amid the current bull-run seen in the bitcoin prices. Now, the country’s Ministry of the Economy is about to create a new Financial Customer Ombudsman for crypto-related matters. Independent Financial Customer Body Will Abide by the MiCA Ruling Per La Información , Minister Nadia Calviño seeks to extend its guardianship to the financial body to cover topics such as protecting consumers in cryptocurrency services. To make it a reality, the minister will submit the initial proposal to a public consultancy “as soon as possible.” Overall, Calviño also wants to canalize all conflicts between banks and their customers through the Financial Customer Ombudsman, including all businesses in the fintech sector. However, the Ministry clarified they’re expecting to abide by the rulings of the future “Regulation Of The European Parliament And Of The Council On Markets In Cryptoassets and the Markets in Crypto-assets Regulation” (MiCA). S...
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Alameda Research invests $20M in Reef Finance

The investment will reportedly allow Reef to implement more cross-chain integrations with Serum and Raydium on Solana. After investing in travel app Maps.me and decentralized finance protocol Oxygen, Alameda Research will be putting $20 million into Reef Finance, the Polkadot-based DeFi platform. According to Reef Finance, Alameda Research will be purchasing $20 million worth of the firm’s native tokens, REEF — roughly 528 million at the current price of $0.03787. The investment will reportedly allow the two companies to collaborate on technology and strategy “in the near future.” Reef CEO Denko Mancheski added the additional funds would help the firm develop DeFi applications for the Reef blockchain. The $20 million in Reef comes after a $40 million investment in Solana-based lending platform Oxygen and $50 million in Maps.me, a travel and mapping application with more than 140 million users worldwide. With Reef, Alameda said it was aiming for more cross-chain integrations with S...
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Cointelegraph Consulting: Who is winning the battle of the DEXs?

Analysis of the user behaviors captured on DEXs across the various layer one and two networks. Decentralized exchanges have continued to increase their market share, spurred on by high Ethereum gas prices, a rapid release of decentralized token sales, and layer two networks incentivizing developers to make their protocols accessible to users on different networks. The latest findings by Covalent in Cointelegraph Consulting’s biweekly newsletter indicate that the top DEXs on Binance Smart Chain, Avalanche C-Chain, and Polygon (formerly Matic) began to rise in volume as Ethereum gas prices pushed higher. PancakeSwap became the first DEX on BSC to breach the $1 billion mark in volume over a 24-hour period, despite entering February with only around $75 million per day. Pangolin on Avalanche C-Chain and Quickswap on Polygon also set new highs in 24-hour volume, with $35 million and $6 million respectively. Taking a closer look at the state of gas fees on Ethereum, the average gas cos...
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Dropping GBTC Premium: Anonymous Group Claims Blockfi Facing Solvency Issues Due to Exposure to the BTC Trust

An anonymous group has claimed that Blockfi, which has an estimated $1.8 billion in customer assets invested in Grayscale Investment’s GBTC, is facing potential insolvency issues associated with the negative premium on the GBTC shares. Using the negative premium of minus 7.89% on the GBTC shares to illustrate the extent of the problem, the anonymous group posits that Blockfi faces a loss of $232 million. Anonymous Group Alleges Blockfi Insolvency Threat According to a statement posted on the anonymous group’s website, Blockfi, which is promising its investors an annualized interest rate of 6%, can make only make a profit for its investors if the premium on GBTC shares is above 8%. This happens because Blockfi still has to pay a management fee of 2% on top of the 6% that it promises to pay its investors. Yet, as recently reported by Bitcoin.com, the premium (or discount) on the GBTC briefly dropped to a record low of nearly minus 12% on March 4. At the time of writing, however, t...
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Binance reportedly under CFTC investigation over US-based trading activity

The world's largest cryptocurrency exchange is reportedly being probed by the CFTC over concerns it facilitated crypto derivatives trading for U.S.-based customers. Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trade volume, is reportedly under investigation by the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission regarding possible trades made by U.S.-based customers. Binance Holdings Ltd is being investigated by the watchdog concerning possible derivatives trades made by American customers, Bloomberg  reported  on Friday, after being tipped off by an anonymous source. The exchange has not yet been accused of any wrongdoing, however, regulators are now reportedly seeking to determine whether cryptocurrency derivatives were bought and sold by U.S citizens on the Binance platform. A Binance spokesperson told Cointelegraph, “We do not comment, as a matter of policy, on communications with any regulators. What we can say is that we take a collaborative approach in...
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SBI Holdings subsidiary continues XRP benefit program

SBI Holdings subsidiary Morningstar started its XRP shareholder benefits in 2019. Morningstar, a financial information services subsidiary of Japanese financial giant SBI Group, will continue its XRP shareholder benefits program. According to an official announcement Friday, Morningstar has approved year-end shareholder benefits in the form of XRP. The new dividend payout option comes as part of the company’s year-end reward program to thank its shareholders for their continued support in addition to interim shareholder benefits. Under the program, Morningstar will provide XRP rewards of 2,500 Japanese yen ($23) units per 100 shares owned by shareholders as of March 31, 2021. The exact amount of XRP offered to shareholders will be determined in accordance to a market price of XRP recorded on June 30, 2021, SBI noted. As part of the initiative, Morningstar will ask shareholders to open crypto accounts via SBI Group’s crypto subsidiary SBI VC Trade. As previously reported, Mornin...
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China’s blockchain ambitions set in stone after mention in national five-year plan

China's latest five-year plan mentions blockchain technology specifically and signals an increasing focus on the research of emerging technologies. China’s determination to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to the utilization of blockchain technology was evidenced again this week, after the release of the country’s latest five-year development plan. The word “blockchain” was reportedly mentioned for the first time in the 14th of China’s regular five-year plans, which lay out the country’s economic priorities for the period from 2021 to 2025, according to local news outlet Pingwest . China’s exploration into new technology has been unceasing in recent years. From its ongoing scheme to roll out a central bank digital currency to its utilization of digital biometric hardware wallets for the digital yuan, China’s is already regarded to be at the forefront of national currency issuance. All of this is despite a general distrust of open-source, decentralized cryptocurrencies wi...
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Dogecoin mining announcement crashes streaming company's website

A massive online traffic surge temporarily overloaded a website back in February after the company announced that it invested in Dogecoin. Hello Pal, a Canadian social platform has said that its website suffered a temporary outage back in February. According to a press release issued by the company on Thursday, the incident occurred shortly after it announced significant investments in Dogecoin ( DOGE ) and Litecoin ( LTC ) mining. At the time, Hello Pal outlined the acquisition of a 15% stake in a Dogecoin and Litecoin mining facility. According to reports, the mining farm in question is the largest in the world dedicated to mining DOGE and LTC with a capacity of 70 megawatts and housing over 90,000 rigs. Also, the social platform revealed that it had taken delivery of over half of the planned 12,500 mining rig inventory dedicated to DOGE and LTC mining. According to Hello Pal, news of the Dogecoin and Litecoin mining investment triggered a massive spike in online traffic on it...
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Ripple execs refute SEC investigation of personal finances as overreach

“How much they spend at the grocery store” isn't relevant to the SEC's ongoing XRP securities lawsuit, argues the legal team for Bradley Garlinghouse and Christian Larsen. Ripple executives Bradley Garlinghouse and Christian Larsen have rejected demands by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission to provide personal financial information as part of the ongoing investigation into a possible XRP sales securities violation. On March 11, lawyers for the Ripple Labs co-founders requested a protective order regarding their personal information and called for the court to quash subpoenas issued to six of the defendants’ banks. The banking institutions named specifically were SVB Financial Group, First Republic Bank, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Silver Lake Bank, Silvergate Bank and Citibank. Lawyers for Garlinghouse and Larsen argued that the SEC had overreached the proper breadth of its investigations when it asserted that the defendants had intermingled ...
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Russian protest group Pussy Riot sells NFTs for latest single 'Panic Attack'

The Russian protest group Pussy Riot is auctioning four non-fungible tokens tied to a new single in order to support a shelter for victims of domestic violence. Russian punk feminist group Pussy Riot has released a new music video and is auctioning a series of four, non-fungible-tokens to accompany its release and raise funds for their art projects and local activism. The group first rose to prominence in 2012 after staging a guerilla performance of an iconoclastic feminist punk song in Moscow's Christ the Saviour Cathedral in protest against the Orthodox Church's complicity with Vladimir Putin's regime. Shortly after, the group's members were arrested for "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred" and later sentenced to two years in a penal colony.  The music video for the group's latest single, Panic Attack, features co-founder Nadya Tolokonnikova as an avatar journeying through a dystopian virtual wasteland, culminating in her battle with an omino...
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Major Israeli Investment House Invested $100 Million in the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust Fund in December 2020

One of the biggest asset managers in Israel allocated millions of dollars into the shares of Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust (GBTC). Altshuler Shaham is now gaining exposure to bitcoin by investing $100 million in shares, according to a local media outlet. Altshuler Shaham Currently Holds $150M Worth in BTC Per Globes Israel , the multi-million-dollar investment yielded a return of almost 100%. That’s because the exposure was made by the investment house in December 2020, when bitcoin ( BTC ) prices were hovering around the $21,000 level. Afterward, Altshuler Shaham took profits when BTC hit new all-time highs in February. According to Global, the investment house closed its position on about a third of its holdings in GBTC fund. Gilad Altshuler, CEO and co-founder of the asset manager, stated that Altshuler Shaham currently holds $150 million worth in bitcoin as of press time. He added: The $100 million investment has become $200 million, and of the $200 million we have already sold...
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Binance crypto exchange launches payments app in alpha

One of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchanges is further expanding into the payments sector. Binance has released its payments app, Binance Pay, in public alpha. The app is a contactless peer-to-peer cryptocurrency payment feature that lets users send and receive payments in cryptos like Bitcoin ( BTC ). Binance initially rolled out Binance Pay in a soft launch in February 202 for P2P payments, enabling 250,000 users to interact with the product. Today, Binance Pay is launching in alpha with new features like merchant-based transactions and is available to all users. A spokesperson for Binance told Cointelegraph that the new service is not limited to certain jurisdictions and is “currently available to all eligible users on Binance.com.” In order to get started with Binance Pay, users need to sign up on Binance and complete their identity verification. “Users need to go to the Pay function on their Binance app to initiate the Pay account to start using the service. Once ...
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Bitcoin miner sell-off fears as Puell Multiple nears ‘red zone’ last seen at 2017 peak

A return to the peak of the 2017 bull market could signal “major macro highs” for Bitcoin, but this time, institutions are here, says analyst Philip Swift. Bitcoin ( BTC ) miners are selling less and less BTC, but if one metric is correct, they could soon start causing a major price correction. In an update on March 11, Philip Swift, creator of on-chain data resource LookIntoBitcoin, flagged familiar warning signs from the Puell Multiple. Developed by David Puell, the Puell Multiple tracks when miners are likely to start selling en masse in order to realize profits from participating in the Bitcoin network. It divides the value of “new” BTC issued per day by one-year moving average issuance, both in U.S. dollars, to give an insight into where selling would be most profitable for miners. A look at the multiple’s historical performance shows that highs — when its value enters an upper red zone on the chart — coincide with Bitcoin price peaks and subsequent sell-offs. For Swift, w...
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