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Showing posts from March 24, 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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Coinbase hiring in India despite potential crypto crackdown

Coinbase plans to base some of its “IT services” in India, including engineering, software development, and customer support. Leading U.S. cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has announced it is “establishing a business presence in India” despite uncertain regulatory headwinds for crypto in the country. In a March 25 blog post , Coinbase revealed it is planning to house “some IT services, including engineering, software development and customer support operations in India,“ noting the country’s “huge pool of world-class engineering talent.” “India has long been known as a hub for engineering and technology innovation, and we look forward to finding that world-class talent to help the Coinbase group develop new ways for our customers to interact with the cryptoeconomy.” Despite the announcement, no job positions appear to have been uploaded to Coinbase’s careers portal that are country specific to India, and a search of the site for the term 'India' came up empty at the time ...
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Instagram influencer charged over duping followers out of $2.5M BTC

A social media influencer known for “cash giveaways” has failed to show the money in alleged Bitcoin wire fraud scheme. An Instagram influencer has been charged with wire fraud, after he allegedly scammed followers out of $2.5 million worth of Bitcoin. Social media influencer Jay Mazini, who boasted of a net worth of $33 million and is known for “cash giveaways”, is accused by the Department of Justice of operating a wire fraud scheme in which he duped some of his 1 million followers to send him Bitcoin in exchange for inflated cash offers, which he failed to pay properly. The DoJ announced the charges on March 24, following a complaint filed in Brooklyn Federal Court the day before. The FBI investigation into the case is still ongoing, with FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge William F. Sweeney noting: “Igbara’s social media persona served as a backdrop for enticing victims to sell him their Bitcoin at attractive, but inflated, values. A behind-the-scenes look, however, revealed ...
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Alchemy Chooses Flow Blockchain to Accelerate Game-Changing Developer Ecosystem

PRESS RELEASE. The leading blockchain developer platform, Alchemy, will bring its best-in-class suite of APIs and tools to Flow blockchain, empowering Fortune 500 companies as well as thousands of independent developers building on Flow. Alchemy is the leading API platform for blockchain developers, already powering more than $25 billion in annual transaction volume on the Ethereum blockchain. Flow blockchain will be a milestone expansion beyond Ethereum for the San Francisco-based team. Home to leading consumer experiences like NBA Top Shot and upcoming titles such as Dr Seuss, MotoGP and UFC, Flow is witnessing unprecedented momentum in terms of developer traction, with over 1,000 developers and teams actively building on top of the network. “Alchemy’s mission is to enable blockchain developers to build the future, so the activity on NBA Top Shot and explosive growth of the overall ecosystem made the need to support Flow obvious.” said Nikil Viswanathan , CEO of Alchemy. “The d...
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John McAfee’s Bodyguard Pleads Not Guilty in the $13M Crypto Fraud Case

The legal tussle between the U.S. authorities and John McAfee continues as his associate Jimmy Watson has entered a plea. The former antivirus tycoon’s bodyguard has pleaded not guilty to the alleged cryptocurrency fraud case. McAfee and Watson Jr. Are Accused of Having Built a ‘Pump and Dump’ Scheme According to court documents , Jimmy Gale Watson Jr. entered his plea before the Magistrate Judge Kevin Fox at the Southern District of New York. Watson Jr., a former navy seal, was arrested in Texas early this month, as the authorities indicted him with multiple charges that include money laundering and securities fraud. Law enforcement stated both McAfee and Watson allegedly “raked in more than $13 million” from crypto investors. The personal bodyguard of McAfee ostensibly served as an “executive adviser” of the “McAfee Team,” which was the website built to offer tips targeted to crypto traders, allegedly endorsed by the controversial tech entrepreneur. The DoJ announcement publish...
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Metaco partners with IBM for secure digital asset orchestration system

Metaco will use IBM Cloud to provide robust security-critical technology for institutional investors entering the digital asset space. Digital asset security infrastructure outfit Metaco has partnered with tech conglomerate IBM to utilize the latter’s cloud platform for enterprise-grade digital asset custody solutions. According to a press statement issued on Thursday, Metaco will leverage IBM Cloud and IBM Cloud Hyper Protect Services for its digital asset orchestration system. The goal of the partnership is to provide adequate digital asset custodial services for banks and other highly regulated financial services firms looking to participate in the digital asset ecosystem across use cases like tokenization, custody, and transaction management among others. As part of the announcement, Metaco will reportedly utilize IBM’s confidential computing and “Keep Your Own Key”, or KYOK, encryption to ensure that the firm’s clients retain sole access to their private keys. The press state...
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Bitcoin market cap back below $1 trillion as correction deepens

More than $140 billion has exited Bitcoin markets over the past seven days. As Bitcoin markets begin to form another daily red candle, its market capitalization has dropped back below $1 trillion once again. The third major correction in the current bull market is deepening and prices are already down 12.5% from their all-time high of $60,100 on March 13. According to CoinGecko, the BTC market capitalization is currently $980 billion, having dropped $140 billion over the past seven days since last Thursday, March 18. The move comes just a few days after analyst Willy Woo predicted that its total capitalization would not fall back below these levels again. “$1T is already strongly supported by investors. I'd say there's a fair chance we'll never see Bitcoin below $1T again.” The BTC market cap first surpassed a trillion dollars on Feb. 19 but did not remain there long, falling back below it after just four days. The second time it topped ten figures was on March 9, a...
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Are emerging markets missing out on DeFi due to gas fees?

Developed economies dominate the traffic rankings for the top DeFi protocols by TVL, with the U.S. and U.K. topping the charts. Despite grand visions of enabling farmers in Vietnam access to the world of global finance via Decentralized Finance, emerging markets could represent as little 10% of visitors engaging with the top DeFi DApps.  Proponents have long hoped crypto and DeFi would allow citizens around the world a means to circumvent the barriers created by economic underdevelopment , however the data suggest users from the world’s largest economies dominate the DeFi rankings by online traffic. A new report from The Defiant examines the top five geographical sources of traffic for the 10 largest DeFi platforms by Total Value Locked in February, with the data provided by web traffic aggregator SimilarWeb. The analysis finds that U.S. traffic dominates eight of the 10 largest DApps by TVL, representing between roughly 10% and 27% of traffic on MakerDAO, Compound, Aave, Sus...
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Livepeer Token Surges After Grayscale Investment Announced Creation of Trust to Invest in LPT

Following the announcement by Grayscale Investments that it will be offering a trust that invests in Livepeer’s LPT, the token surged from just over $6 on March 17, 2021, to an all-time high (ATH) of $32.35 on March 21. LPT’s Four Day Surge The token’s four-day rally briefly saw its market capitalization rising to over $630 million up from just under $120 million. However, at the time of writing, LPT had retreated to $21 and the token’s market capitalization had similarly dropped to approximately $400 million. In addition to the LPT trust, Grayscale Investments had revealed the creation of Basic Attention (BAT), Decentraland (MANA), Chainlink, and Filecoin trusts. Yet only LPT appears to have responded more favorably to the announcement than the rest. To illustrate, MANA, which traded at $0.79 on the day of the announcement, briefly rose to just over $1. However, at the time of writing, MANA had retreated to $0.93. Similarly, BAT, which started March 17 trading at approxim...
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Florida man escapes paying a $4.5M SEC penalty over a crypto Ponzi scheme

The founder of the Argyle Coin Ponzi scheme has escaped paying a $4.5 million penalty to the SEC for operating a “web of fraudulent companies.” The founder of a multi-million crypto Ponzi scheme has escaped paying a $4.5 million penalty to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. On March 23, the U.S District Court of Southern Florida initially ordered Jose Angel Aman to pay the SEC more than $4.2 million in disgorgement, and $300,000 in prejudgement interest. However, the court deemed the bill was satisfied that same day due to restitution paid in a parallel case from 2019. According to an emergency order obtained by the SEC in May 2019, Florida-based Aman operated three consecutive Ponzi-schemes which made up a “complicated web of fraudulent companies in an effort to continually loot retail investors and perpetuate the Ponzi schemes as well as divert money to himself,” pulling in roughly $30 million from an investor base of more than 300 people based in the U.S, Canada, an...
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Hedge FUD manager: Ray Dalio says ‘good probability’ of a US Bitcoin ban

The U.S. could repeat its 1930s ban on gold ownership but for Bitcoin. As the Bitcoin correction deepens, the fear, uncertainty, and doubt has returned, with billionaire hedge fund manager Ray Dalio adding a whole bunch more of it. In an interview with Yahoo Finance’s editor-in-chief on March 24, the founder of the $150 billion hedge fund Bridgewater Associates stated that there is a “good probability” that the U.S. government could ban Bitcoin just as it did with gold ownership in the 1930s. That happened because government leaders at the time did not want gold to compete with fiat money and credit as a store of wealth, Dalio added. “They don’t want other monies to be operating or competing because things can get out of control. So I think that it would be very likely that you will have it, under a certain set of circumstances, outlawed the way gold was outlawed.” The billionaire hedge fund manager and philanthropist, who called Bitcoin “one hell of an invention” and compared i...
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Bitcoin In Contango: How Pricing Differences Can Foreshadow Further Gains

Major differences in the spot price for bitcoin and the cost of buying the cryptocurrency in the futures market create unique opportunities for traders. Several factors may be behind this development, but it could be bullish for the bitcoin price outlook no matter the catalyst. Curious Developments Could Highlight Supply Shortage or Heightened Derivatives Demand As bitcoin gradually matures and the ecosystem surrounding it expands further, the original cryptocurrency is increasingly behaving like a commodity. Thanks to a robust futures market that continues to grow, derivatives contracts on bitcoin also gain popularity and meaningfully impact its pricing structure. This has resulted in a unique development that has unfolded over the last several months. Known as “ contango ,” bitcoin futures contracts to be settled months down the road are trading at a significant premium to spot prices. This delivers a serious arbitrage opportunity that could temporarily result in relatively high ...
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Russia's money laundering watchdog monitoring crypto to ruble transactions

Rosfinmonitoring has informed the Russian parliament that it is paying close attention to transactions involving the conversion of crypto to rubles. Russia’s Federal Financial Monitoring Service, or Rosfinmonitoring — the country’s Anti-Money Laundering body — is policing crypto to fiat transactions. The federal executive body responsible for AML oversight made this known while addressing the members of parliament on Tuesday, according to a report by Russian news agency Regnum. In a meeting with members of the State Duma Committee on the Financial Market, Herman Neglyad, deputy chief of Rosfinmonitoring revealed that thAML watchdog was working with commercial banks to police crypto to fiat transactions, stating: “Banks have already begun to pay attention to exchange operations, that is, when they see that an operation has come after the exchange of virtual assets for hard currency, they have already begun to evaluate them and actually inform us about these operations.” According...
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Blockchain.com raises $300M in crypto industry's third-largest capital raise

The investment round was led by DST Global, Lightspeed Venture Partners and VY Capital and gave Blockchain.com a $5.2 billion valuation. London-based cryptocurrency services provider Blockchain.com has raised $300 million in a new investment round that valued the firm at $5.2 billion — up from a $3 billion valuation just one month ago. The investment round was led by DST Global, Lightspeed Venture Partners and VY Capital, and is the crypto industry's third-largest capital raise to date. The sum is equal to that raised in a single round by Bakkt in March 2020 , trailing only behind BlockFi's $350 million earlier this year and Bitmain Technologies' $400 million back in 2018. Just one month ago, Blockchain.com raised $120 million  at a subsequently reported valuation of $3 billion. The Wall Street Journal notes that while capital raising in the crypto space declined from a total of $4.5 billion in 2018 to $2.7 billion by 2020, this year has already seen three of the si l...
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Most asset managers still in ‘education mode’ on crypto, says Fidelity

Michael Derbin, head of Fidelity Institutional, says that while some wealth managers are by now “sophisticated” and “comfortable” with crypto, many others are still playing catch up. Michael Derbin, head of Fidelity Institutional, thinks that many wealth managers and financial advisors still lack the requisite in-depth knowledge when it comes to digital assets. Whereas some wealth managers are by now “sophisticated” and “comfortable” with cryptocurrencies and their underlying technology, he said, many others lag behind. In an interview at Reuters Digital Asset Week, Derbin noted: “They know what they are doing, and more importantly their end investor base also knows what they are doing — but the vast majority are still in the education mode.” Fidelity Institutional is a division of Fidelity Investments, whose $9.8 trillion in client assets (as of the end of 2020) make it one of the world's top investment managers. It has also been one of the first to take cryptocurrencie...
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Vitalik Buterin: NFTs can be a social good, not just a casino for rich celebrities

There's little social value in helping make Elon Musk another $1 million in the NFT market, but the technology can still be put to good use, says Ethereum's Vitalik Buterin. Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin believes NFTs can be applied to socially relevant causes such as charities and funding public goods, but not while the technology is still viewed as a “casino that largely benefits already-wealthy celebrities.” The author of the Ethereum whitepaper said there was little social value in helping celebrities like Elon Musk add another $1 million to their bank balance by selling NFTs. But he does believe that with support and coordination, non-fungible tokens could have a significant impact on other areas of society. In a blog post titled “The Most Important Scarce Resource is Legitimacy,” Buterin said public attention and resources are often allocated to whatever most people perceive to have legitimacy — a game theory term which he defines as: “A pattern of higher-ord...
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Hermez Network launches zk-rollups on Ethereum mainnet to process cheap payments

Hermez users will be able to transact with ETH, USDT, WBTC on a scalable layer-two network. Hermez Network has announced on Wednesday the launch of its zk-rollup mainnet release. This means that the network is now open for users, who can benefit from the rollup’s much lower transaction costs than Ethereum. Zk-rollups use zero knowledge proofs to verify the correctness of a large batch of transactions. An outside ecosystem executes these transactions and generates proofs for them, which are then posted directly on the Ethereum blockchain. The result is a saving of over 10x in terms of block space, with Hermez transactions weighing just 10 bytes on the main chain, compared to more than 100 bytes for a standard Ether transfer. Hermez supports several major tokens including Ether ( ETH ), Wrapped BTC ( WBTC ), Tether ( USDT ), Dai and HEZ, Hermez’s token. The zk-rollup requires depositing funds to a smart contract and withdrawing them to use in the Ethereum mainnet. Unlike optimistic...
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Bitcoin tackles $56K as Tesla 'Elon candle' hits days before record options expiry

Elon Musk is "astutely aware" of the impact of options expiry, Zhu Su claims as Tesla sparks an unlikely uptick after a week of losses. Bitcoin ( BTC ) recovered above $56,000 on March 24 after a new "Elon candle" put a familiar spring in the step of bulls. BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: Tradingview Crunch time at $58,000 Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and Tradingview  showed BTC/USD gaining 3.3% over several hours during Wednesday on news that Tesla will accept — and keep — payments in Bitcoin. As with the company's initial announcement of a treasury allocation last month, the news immediately translated into spot price gains, as the gloom of this week's price action lifted. Analysts were thus interested in whether Tesla would spark a new phase in Bitcoin's bull market or whether the rally would be confined to lower timeframes. For popular Twitter account Rekt Capital, support lay at $53,000 as before , with resistance ...
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South Korea faces strict crypto regulation and fears of centralization

The growing cost of compliance in South Korea could push smaller crypto businesses out of the country. From real-name account trading to investigating individuals using cryptocurrencies to evade taxes, government officials in South Korea are enacting stricter regulations to oversee the cryptocurrency industry in the country. These measures often require digital currency businesses to provide detailed customer data and transaction information to the relevant authorities. With these stringent measures often comes an increase in the cost of compliance for exchanges and other crypto service providers. Privacy concerns are another issue amid the swath of information being provided to government agencies. However, this strict regulatory climate has done little to dampen the enthusiasm for cryptocurrencies in South Korea. Crypto trading in the country continues to gain more traction, with exchange investors in line for significant price gains in shares amid the current upsurge in digital...
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Tesla Begins Accepting Bitcoin — Elon Musk Says BTC Payments Will Not Be Converted to Fiat Currency

Elon Musk’s electric car company, Tesla, has started accepting bitcoin payments. Musk, whose title is now Technoking of Tesla, also confirmed that all “Bitcoin paid to Tesla will be retained as bitcoin, not converted to fiat currency.” Tesla Now Accepts Bitcoin Tesla has begun accepting bitcoin payments. Elon Musk, who recently changed his title from the CEO of Tesla to the Technoking of Tesla , announced via Twitter Wednesday morning, “You can now buy a Tesla with bitcoin.” The bitcoin payment option has also been added to the Tesla website along with a page explaining how to pay with the cryptocurrency. Musk further tweeted that the “pay by bitcoin capability” will be available outside the U.S. “later this year.” In addition, the Tesla technoking confirmed, “Bitcoin paid to Tesla will be retained as bitcoin, not converted to fiat currency,” noting that his company “is using only internal & open source software & operates bitcoin notes directly.” A page about paying with...
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Tesla confirms Bitcoin hodl strategy as new report says BTC should 'comfortably' hit $100K

Analysts at Decentrader point to encouraging hodler behavior that suggests that BTC/USD is far from its cycle top at $56,000. Bitcoin ( BTC ) shouldn't have a problem reaching $100,000 during the current cycle thanks to impressive behavior from hodlers. In their latest newsletter seen by Cointelegraph, analysts from trading suite Decentrader including Cointelegraph Markets contributor filbfilb sought to allay fears that Bitcoin's bull run is running out of steam. HODL Waves stay bullish Backing their optimism, they said, is data showing that more and more investors are hodling BTC for the long term — one year or more.  Taken from the popular "HODL Wave" indicator, this suggests that there is less desire to sell Bitcoin at short notice at a certain price, providing a solid foundation for further growth. "The 1Yr+ HODL Wave suggests that Bitcoin should comfortably reach the $100,000 level during this cycle," Decentrader summarized. "The greater t...
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Elon Musk says Tesla now accepts Bitcoin from US customers

Tesla initially hinted at accepting Bitcoin for payments in an SEC filing earlier this year. Elon Musk has announced that Tesla cars can now be purchased using Bitcoin ( BTC ). The electric car company’s CEO and “ Technoking ” said the firm would operate Bitcoin nodes directly, and would hold on to the Bitcoin it accumulates without converting it to fiat. You can now buy a Tesla with Bitcoin — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 24, 2021 Tesla first signaled its intention to start accepting Bitcoin for products in early February, following its purchase of $1.5 billion worth of the digital asset, an SEC filing showed . The option to buy a Tesla using BTC will only be extended to U.S-based customers for the time being. Elon Musk’s insistence that the Bitcoin earned through the sale of the firm’s vehicles won’t be converted to fiat suggests it is not just being utilized as a transactional medium, but also an investment tool. Tesla is using only internal & open source software & ...
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