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Showing posts from July 13, 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...

Japanese Police Arrest 4 Men Allegedly Behind $55 Million Crypto Investment Scheme

Four alleged masterminds of the “Oz Project” have been arrested after duping investors across Japan for at least four years. According to investigators, the scheme raked in $55 million from about 20,000 investors, promising 2.5 times returns in four months. Police in Aichi Prefecture, Japan, said Monday that four men have been arrested for defrauding investors in a cryptocurrency investment scheme called the “Oz Project.” The police said the group had amassed at least 6 billion yen (approximately $55 million). According to local media, the number of victims is between 10,000 and 20,000. According to investigators, the four men arrested were Shoji Ishida (59), Yukihiro Yamashita (61), Takuya Hashiyada (46), and Masamichi Toshima (52). Ishida is allegedly the operator of the Oz Project. They allegedly lured investors by promising them that their crypto investments would increase 2.5 times in four months. Investigators suspected that the group began duping people four year...

Uniswap v3 launches Optimistic Ethereum layer two scaling in alpha

Long-awaited layer two scaling is finally being launched on Uniswap v3, albeit in a limited format initially. The long-awaited layer two scaling solutions upgrade for Uniswap has finally been spotted in the wild with the launch of version 3 on Optimistic Ethereum. In a post on July 13, the world’s most popular decentralized exchange stated that it was pleased to finally announce the alpha launch of Uniswap v3 on the Optimistic Ethereum (OΞ) mainnet. The alpha launch is a limited version of the full system which helps developers deploy the system gradually and address any issues that may arise. The blog post elaborated: “Please treat this as an early alpha product. Optimistic Ethereum is a complex Layer 2 scaling solution still in need of rigorous battle testing.” The DEX warned of potential downtime, and stated that withdrawals from OΞ to layer one will take seven days. It also stated that there are limited assets at launch, namely ETH, USDT, WBTC, DAI, and SNX, but more will be...

ChainSwap announces compensation and ‘deep audit’ plan after $8M exploit

The project will airdrop governance tokens to holders according to balances prior to the hack. Cross-chain asset bridge, ChainSwap, has announced a compensation plan for users after suffering an $8 million loss in its second exploit suffered this month.  ChainSwap supports the Ethereum, Polygon and Binance Smart Chain networks. On July 10, the hacker exploited a vulnerability allowing them to steal more than 20 different assets from the liquidity pools of partner exchanges. The incident has impacted the markets for numerous assets, with the tokens of Nord, Razor, Antimatter, and Ora among those taken by the attacker. ChainSwap’s native token ASAP briefly fell more than 99% amid the incident. A separate hack on July 2 saw an attacker make off with roughly $800,000. On July 14, ChainSwap expanded upon its plan to compensate impacted users through an airdrop based on their ASAP holdings prior to the hack, noting tokens held on the BSC and Huobi Eco Chain networks will be airdr...

Blockchain Groups From Major Universities Are Powerful Voters in Defi Governance Protocols

Data shows a number of groups from major universities are participating in decentralized finance (defi) governance. For instance, out of 15 of the largest voters in Uniswap’s last governance proposal, six of the major voters were tied to universities like Harvard, Berkeley, Stanford, Penn, Michigan, MIT, and Columbia University. Blockchain University Groups Identified as Major Players in Defi Governance Decisions Just recently, messari.io researcher Jack Purdy tweeted about an interesting find he discovered while researching defi governance protocols. Purdy’s recent tweet showcased six prestigious universities that were involved in a recent Uniswap governance proposal voting process. “Universities are becoming some of the most active participants in crypto governance,” Purdy said. “Out of the 15 largest voters on Uniswap’s last proposal, 6 of them were Universities. That’s over $600 million of a useless governance token,” he added. Image shared by messari.io researcher Jack Pur...

Billionaire SBF says FTX may one day buy Goldman Sachs and CME

FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has said that acquiring Goldman Sachs and CME “is not out of the question,” if the exchange beats competition from Binance and Coinbase. Hong-Kong-based billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried has stated that FTX may consider buying U.S. financial giant Goldman Sachs and exchanges such as Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) in the future. Speaking with the Financial Times on July 14, Bankman-Fried stated that if FTX can become the top crypto exchange and supplant rivals such as Coinbase and Binance, the idea of purchasing giants such as Goldman Sachs and CME group is not off the table: “If we are the biggest exchange, [buying Goldman Sachs and CME] is not out of the question at all.” The 29-year-old has an estimated net worth of $8.7 billion and is the founder and CEO of quantitative trading firm Alameda Research and CEO of the FTX crypto exchange. According to data from Macrotrends, Goldman Sachs has an estimated market cap of $129 billion and the CME group has ...

Thales raises $2.5M for binary options platform in Synthetix ecosystem

Binary options and sports betting will soon be launched on the Synthetix-based Thales platform. A decentralized finance project providing binary options style trading has just completed a $2.5 million seed round. Binary options are financial instruments that allow traders to speculate on the price movement of the underlying market or cryptocurrency. There are two possible outcomes which is why they are considered binary. At launch, Thales will support markets for more than 60 different assets including cryptocurrencies, commodities, equities, and index products, before expanding into sports markets. At the time of writing, there was no mention of the specific launch date. The strategic investment round for the Thales platform was led by Framework Ventures and Apollo Capital. There were several other venture capital contributors including LD Capital, Honey DAO, the LAO, Zee Prime Capital, IOSG Ventures, D64 Ventures, and Koji Capital. The announcement added that there will be a ...

Concern as Uniswap-backed 'DeFi Education Fund' dumps $10M worth of UNI

The recently formed DeFi Education Fund has come under fire for abruptly announcing it had liquidated half of the 1 million UNI tokens donated to it through UNI governance. The controversial Uniswap-funded DeFi Education Fund has liquidated half of its donated funding into stablecoins, attracting condemnation from many in the crypto community. On June 12, the fund tweeted that it was selling 500,000 UNI to Genesis Trading for 10.2 million USDC in an over-the-counter (OTC) trade, despite the Uniswap proposal for the fund indicating it would liquidate the 1 million UNI over four to five years. In May, the student organization, Harvard Law Blockchain and Fintech Initiative, launched a governance proposal advocating for the creation of the fund and allocation of 1 million UNI (worth roughly $18 million at current prices) to the entity to support educational initiatives and policy lobbying for the decentralized finance sector. At the start of this month, the proposal was passed and ...

A Group of Users Is Battling Binance to Get Their Money Back After May’s Crash

A group of Binance customers are seeking to get their funds back after the platform froze in May. These users had leveraged positions and were unable to reduce them or close them. On May 19, Binance’s app crashed for more than one hour, leaving customers unable to manage their funds. These users are now pursuing legal action against the exchange in France and Italy. Users Organizing to Recover Funds From Binance A group of users affected by outages in the Binance service is organizing to battle the exchange. Hundreds are pursuing legal action in France and Italy after the exchange froze on May 19. This is the case for Anand Singhal, a freelance coder who entered a leveraged position with more than $50K dollars. When Singhal started checking prices and perceived the incoming fall, he tried to get out of his position. But he couldn’t. Due to the precipitous price fall that bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies experienced at that time, Binance’s platform was unable to cope with the tran...

Bit Mining raises $50M to take operations out of China

Bit Mining is looking to exit China’s market in response to the recent government crackdown on mining. Shenzhen-based crypto mining firm, Bit Mining, is raising $50 million to fund an expansion out of the Chinese market. Announced on July 12, the firm has entered into an agreement with select institutional and accredited investors to raise $50 million through a private placement. Bit Mining is raising the funds in response to the Chinese Communist Party’s crackdown on crypto mining in May, noting plans to “acquire additional mining machines, build new data centers,” and expand its infrastructure overseas. US$50 Million Private Placement! Ready for greater expansion! — BIT Mining Limited (@BITMining_BTCM) July 13, 2021 Bit Mining is owned by NYSE-listed Chinese lottery service provider 500.com and operates the major mining pool, BTC.com. As part of the private placement, Bit Mining will offer 100 million Class A ordinary shares at a purchase price of $5.00 per 10 shares. Ea...

Bitcoin Will Eventually Be Transacted More Than Fiat Currency, Say 35% of Australians Surveyed

A new survey finds that 35% of Australians believe bitcoin will eventually be transacted more than fiat currency. Almost the same number of respondents believe that bitcoin “has a significant role to play in the future of currency.” Comparison platform Finder published Tuesday the results of a cryptocurrency survey, which it described as a “nationally representative survey of 1,012 Australians.” The respondents were asked whether they agreed with various statements about bitcoin. They must either agree or disagree. One of the statements was “Bitcoin will eventually be transacted more widely than traditional money.” The company commented: The research revealed that 1 in 3 Australians (35%) believe bitcoin will eventually be transacted more than fiat (traditional) currency. Kate Browne, a personal finance expert at Finder, opined: “While only 17% of Aussies own cryptocurrency, twice that amount believe it has a significant role to play in the future of currency.” Overall, Gen...

Uncertainty prevails as December 2021 Bitcoin futures show an inverted pattern

The inverted pattern in the Bitcoin futures curve is a signal that investors’ confidence in BTC price continues to slump. It's not yet known whether Binance's recent news of  being temporarily suspended from the U.K.’s financial system  is the main driver behind today's Bitcoin (BTC) price drop. As Cointelegraph reported, the exchange sent emails to affected customers but has not given any details. Regardless of the reason behind the price weakness, derivatives contracts started to display some oddities, and this could be a troubling sign. Bitcoin quarterly futures are the preferred instruments of whales and arbitrage desks. Although it might seem complicated for retail traders due to their settlement date and price difference from spot markets, their most significant advantage is the lack of a fluctuating funding rate. When traders opt for perpetual contracts (inverse swaps), there is a fee usually charged every 8-hours that will change depending on which side demands...

UAE Central Bank Unveils Plan to Launch Digital Currency

The Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates has unveiled its plan to launch a digital currency as part of its 2023-2026 strategy to become one of the world’s top 10 central banks. A growing number of central banks worldwide are working to launch central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). The Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates (CBUAE) revealed Monday its plan to issue a state-backed digital currency within the next five years. The announcement was part of the central bank’s “2023-2026 strategy” to “position it among the world’s top 10 central banks.” There are seven objectives in total, according to Gulf News. Among them was “issuing a digital currency and driving digital transformation in the UAE’s financial services sector, by utilizing the latest artificial intelligence and big data solutions.” The UAE’s Securities and Commodities Authority (SCA) published its decision on cryptocurrency regulation on Nov. 1, 2020, after consulting with the crypto industry and the ...

Bulls largely absent as Bitcoin price slips to the bottom of its range near $32K

Traders appear to be sitting on their hands even as Bitcoin price drops closer to a critical support level at $32,000. Within the past few hours, a fresh wave of selling pushed Bitcoin ( BTC ) price close to the $32,000 support level as the low trading volume and general disinterest from traders saw the price revisit the lower section of its current range. BTC/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView The price of Ether ( ETH ) also fell under pressure alongside Bitcoin as the building momentum ahead of the network’s upcoming London Hard Fork failed to support a price above $2,000, resulting in a daily low of $1,918. Bitcoin's compression range tightens Some insights into the current market conditions were offered by Gas Fring, a pseudonymous Twitter account, who posted the following tweet highlighting previous instances of range-bound trading for BTC. 1/ Here's a chart showing occasions when $btcusd has remained rangebound. Bitmex funding regimes help determine the ...

New York Fed Survey Shows Inflation Expectations Highest Ever Recorded

American inflation expectations have surged according to the results of the latest New York Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Expectations. The presumed inflation rate tapped the highest point since 2013 and alongside the forecast of lower purchasing power, consumer debt and fears of a housing bubble in the U.S. are on the rise. New York Fed’s Consumer Expectations Report Expects Inflation to Be 4.8% Over the Next Year U.S. citizens are worried about inflation after the government locked down the nation for more than a year and the Federal Reserve increased the M1 supply by 30%. Inflation has been so bad in recent times, American supermarkets are buying up to 25% more supplies to get ahead of inflation and higher supply chain costs that could arise. From 2020 up until today, bacon is up 14%, bread is up 7%, milk increased by 8%, and oranges are up 8% as well. There’s been a significant rise in lumber costs, the cost of gas has jumped, and the real estate market is frothy from th...

21Shares partners with German brokerage to offer crypto ETPs for savings accounts

“We are very excited to offer German clients who wish to add Bitcoin and other crypto assets to their savings plan a compelling option to do so thanks to comdirect,” said Hany Rashwan, CEO of 21Shares. Investment product issuer 21Shares has joined forces with comdirect, a leading online brokerage in Germany, to bring its cryptocurrency exchange-traded products, or ETPs, to savings accounts.  The partnership means that comdirect’s nearly 3 million customers will be able to integrate physically-backed crypto ETPs into their Spar savings accounts. 21Shares claims this is the first such instance where investors can gain crypto exposure in their savings accounts. Marco Infuso, a managing director at 21Shares, said the new product offering will enable comdirect clients to include crypto in their retirement planning and will also help onboard investors who have been apprehensive about dabbling in Bitcoin ( BTC ) and other cryptocurrencies due to a lack of investment options. “Empowe...

Whale From 2012 Transfers 740 Bitcoin Worth $26M After BTC Sat Idle for 9 Years

On July 12, an old whale from 2012 spent 740 bitcoin worth roughly $26 million at the time of transfer after nine years of choosing not to move the coins. The whale acquired the bitcoin on May 31, 2012, when the stash of crypto was only worth $3,700. Old School Whale Moves 740 ‘Sleeping Bitcoins’ Bitcoiners noticed a whale move 740 bitcoin ( BTC ) on Monday after the coins sat idle for over nine years. The bitcoin sat for approximately 3,330 days as the BTC was acquired on May 31, 2012. The address saw life in the spring of 2012 and the wallet has been stacking small increments of BTC since the first large deposit of 740 BTC nine years ago. At the time of acquisition, bitcoin ( BTC ) was trading for $5 per coin so the 740 BTC was worth $3,700. Today, however, the stash was worth over $26 million when it transferred on Monday. The whale movement was caught by whale-alert.io that stated on Twitter that a “dormant address containing 791 BTC (26,147,621 USD) has just been act...

Nonfungible tokens soar even as Bitcoin price drops close to $32,000

Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro shows NFT-related platforms like AUDIO, AXS and SLP as the top 24-hour gainers of the day. Today the wider cryptocurrency market finds itself looking for something to spark some momentum as Bitcoin ( BTC ) price dropped to $32,300 and altcoins sustained 2% to 5% losses. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that the top three performers over the past 24 hours are Audius (AUDIO), Axie Infinity (AXS) and Small Love Potion (SLP). Top-performing assets over the last 24-hours. Source: Cointelegraph Markets Pro The multifaceted use cases and applications of nonfungible tokens continue to be a source of strength for the NFT sector as a whole, primarily because they open the door for different sources of revenue via gameplay, music and art sales. Audius pulls in new artists and users According to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro, the outlook for AUDIO has been climbing for the past few days after new users and popular bands...

Oldest US Bank BNY Mellon to Provide Grayscale Bitcoin Trust With Asset Servicing and ETF Services

Grayscale Investments has engaged the oldest bank in the U.S., BNY Mellon, to provide asset servicing for its bitcoin trust. The bank will also provide ETF services for the bitcoin trust upon its conversion to an exchange-traded fund (ETF). Grayscale Teams up With BNY Mellon Grayscale Investments announced Tuesday that it has selected the Bank of New York Mellon (BNY Mellon) as an asset servicing provider for Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (OTCQX: GBTC). The announcement explains: Through this agreement, BNY Mellon will provide Grayscale Bitcoin Trust with fund accounting and administration effective October 1, 2021. Additionally, it is anticipated that BNY Mellon will provide transfer agency and ETF services for the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust upon its conversion to an ETF. “The agreement will offer Grayscale improved scalability, resiliency, and automation through BNY Mellon’s market-leading platform,” the company claims. Michael Sonnenshein, CEO of Grayscale Investments, commented: “En...

UK Advertising Watchdog to Crack Down on ‘Misleading’ Crypto Ads

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), the U.K. advertising watchdog, declared it would crack down on misleading ads promoting cryptocurrency investments. The organization will include cryptocurrency campaigns as a “red alert” priority in the financial marketing department. The organization will be more proactive regarding these ads, it claims, contacting companies and issuing warnings in the future. UK Advertising Watchdog to Increase Vigilance on Crypto Campaigns The U.K. advertising watchdog is not happy about how cryptocurrency campaigns are being carried in the country. The Advertising Standards Authority said it will toughen its standards to crack down on ‘misleading’ cryptocurrency ads. Consequently, any ad that doesn’t comply with the standards issued by the regulator will be taken down. Miles Lockwood, director of complaints and investigations at the ASA, stated: We see this as an absolutely crucial and priority area for us. Where we do find problems we will crack do...