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Showing posts from July 30, 2021

Bank of America, Coinbase, FTX Invest in Paxos Series D Funding Round

Paxos, a blockchain services and tokenization firm has added Coinbase Ventures, FTX, Bank of America, and Founders Fund as backers in its Series D funding round that started last April. These institutions were listed as “strategic investors,” but the amounts of their contributions were not disclosed. Paxos has now raised more than $540 million in funding. Bank of America, FTX, and Coinbase Invest in Paxos Two leading cryptocurrency exchanges and the second-biggest U.S. bank invested in Paxos, a New York-based blockchain infrastructure firm that focuses on offering clearing and tokenization services to other traditional firms. Bank of America, FTX, and Coinbase participated as “strategic investors” in the latest Series D funding round that the company started last April. The interest of Bank of America in the firm is not strange. The company included the bank in its Paxos Settlement services, a blockchain platform that allows third parties to settle equity transactions. But for it ...

Global Cryptocurrency Adoption Doubled Since January Reaching 221 Million Users: Report

A new report issued by Crypto.com, a cryptocurrency exchange and fintech services firm, discovered that the number of people using cryptocurrencies has more than doubled since January, reaching 221 million last June. The report states that the rise of the defi movement, institutions like Tesla, Visa, Mastercard, and Microstrategy adopting cryptocurrency, and El Salvador establishing bitcoin as legal tender, were important events that helped to popularize crypto even more. Cryptocurrency Userbase Jumps to 221 Million Worldwide, According to Crypto.com Report Crypto.com’s “Measuring Global Crypto Users” report found that the number of cryptocurrency users more than doubled during the first half of the year. Cryptocurrency adoption went from 106 million in January to 221 million in June, principally powered by the bull market that took bitcoin ( BTC ) to all-time highs during Q1. The report included information from the leading crypto exchanges in the market, including Binance, Bitfin...

Traders forecast $3K Ethereum price but derivatives data suggests otherwise

ETH might have rallied 35% off its $1,750 low but derivatives data shows pro traders are not so bullish. Ether ( ETH ) rallied 35% over the past ten days and reclaimed the critical $2,300 support, but the crucial $2,450 local top hasn't been tested since June 17. Part of the recent recovery can be attributed to the London hard fork, which is expected to go live on Aug. 4. Traders and investors view the EIP-1559 launch as a bullish factor for Ether price because it is expected to reduce gas fees. However, Ether miners are not thrilled with the proposal because the proof-of-work model will no longer be necessary after ETH2.0 goes live. The network fees will automatically be set, although users can choose to pay extra for faster confirmation. Miners (or validators in the future) will receive this additional fee, but the base fee will be burned. In a nutshell, Ether is expected to become deflationary. Ether price in USD at Bitstamp. Source: TradingView While it's difficul...

Central Bank of Ireland Governor Talks Crypto, Praises ‘Secure, Decentralized’ Technology

Gabriel Makhlouf, the governor of the Central Bank of Ireland (CBI), has published a blog post in which he shares his views on the digitalization of finance. While echoing concerns expressed by his counterparts regarding cryptocurrencies, the official has also highlighted some of their positives. Don’t Ignore the Positive Elements of Crypto Technology, Central Bank Governor Says The article titled “Digital Money” was published on the bank’s website on Thursday. In the post, Gabriel Makhlouf discusses the project to issue a digital version of the common European currency. The European Central Bank (ECB) recently launched its “Investigation Phase” and although a final decision is yet to be taken, the governor believes that it is not a question of “if” but rather “how and when” a digital euro will be introduced. Central Bank of Ireland Governor Gabriel Makhlouf. Source: CBI Besides central bank digital currencies ( CBDCs ), Makhlouf devotes attention to the rise of decentralized...

5 easy ways crypto investors can make money without needing to trade

Want to get paid to HODL? Here are five easy ways crypto investors make money without trading. Large price jumps and 100x gains get a lot of attention from pundits and influencers in the cryptocurrency community because they offer the hope of overnight riches. In reality, these opportunities are few and far between. Not to mention, only a handful of traders actually manage to catch these waves and cash out in time to lock in life-changing money. Fortunately, catching a large price surge is far from being the only way for crypto investors to make a buck, and the recent rise of decentralized finance (DeFi), nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and the slow march of mainstream crypto adoption provides a near endless stream of investment opportunities . Let’s have a look at five different ways crypto holders can make an easy buck without actually having to trade. Staking Staking, which rewards users for locking tokens on a protocol as collateral for transaction validation, is one of the b...

Breaking NFTs to Pieces: These 4 Projects Are Fractionalizing Grimes, Banksy, Cryptopunk NFTs

While non-fungible token (NFT) collectibles have been all the rage, a few projects have been developing the concept of fractionalized NFTs so investors without deep pockets can purchase shares of an expensive collectible. On Thursday, the firm Otis revealed that people can invest in an NFT created by the world-famous Canadian musician and record producer Grimes. The platform allows anyone to purchase a small fraction of the recording artist’s artwork called “Newborn 1 & 3.” Grimes’ Artwork ‘Newborn 1 & 3″ Gets Fractionalized During the last 30 days, statistics from nonfungible.com’s market history show that there was $219 million in NFT sales. Over 48,000 active wallets recorded 214,654 sales which is a steady increase in sales from the start of the month’s 120,150 sales. The website also shows that a Meebits NFT recently sold for 1,000 ETH or $2.1 million and a Cryptopunks NFT character sold for 450 ETH or a touch over $1 million. Unicly offers a dex that allows people...

Price analysis 7/30: BTC, ETH, BNB, ADA, XRP, DOGE, DOT, UNI, BCH, LTC

Traders expect altcoins to move higher now that Bitcoin price finally pierced the $41,000 resistance. Bitcoin ( BTC ) and most major altcoins seem to be faltering near their respective overhead resistance levels. This suggests that some investors are continuing to sell at higher levels. However, 21st Paradigm co-founder Dylan LeClair said that on-chain data shows “big transfer volumes from over-the-counter (OTC) desks over the last week.” Cointelegraph also recently highlighted a historic 57,000 BTC outflow from exchanges on July 28. Ecoinometrics also cited on-chain data to show that "whales" and “small fish'' accumulated Bitcoin when the price recovered from $29,400 to over $40,800 this week. Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360 Institutional investors are also not to be left behind in their plans to accumulate more Bitcoin. MicroStrategy, which holds about 105,085 Bitcoin, said in its second-quarter report that the company intends “t...

Report Suggests Robinhood Owns Largest Dogecoin Address and Third-Largest BTC Wallet

Last February the crypto community was obsessed with a specific dogecoin address that happens to be the largest dogecoin holder today with over 36 billion DOGE. One armchair sleuth studied a number of onchain transactions and suspected the company Robinhood owned the wallet. Now the individual has researched the topic again and claims the latest findings help confirm the dogecoin wallet does belong to Robinhood. Alongside this, the person suspects Robinhood controls the third-largest bitcoin wallet as well. Onchain Research Suggests Robinhood Not Only Owns the Mysterious Doge Whale Wallet, but Also the Third-Largest BTC Wallet Two days ago, the Reddit account u/Andreifromalberta published research that claims the company Robinhood ( Nasdaq: HOOD ) holds more bitcoin (BTC) than the firm Microstrategy. The Redditor Andrei is the same sleuth that published research four months ago on the notorious dogecoin (DOGE) wallet dubbed “DH5,” which happens to be the largest DOGE wallet tod...

GoldenTree Asset Management is reportedly investing in Bitcoin

At least three executives at the $45 billion firm have participated in a funding round for the blockchain-focused VC group Borderless Capital. New York-based asset management firm GoldenTree has reportedly added Bitcoin to its balance sheet, though the amount of this supposed investment remains unknown. According to a Friday report from financial news outlet The Street, the firm with roughly $45 billion in assets under management has purchased some Bitcoin ( BTC ) but has seemingly shied away from other cryptocurrency investments. Citing two sources with knowledge of the matter, the publication reported the BTC purchase followed discussions between executives regarding hiring staffers familiar with crypto investments. Executives at the firm, including founder Steven Tananbaum and partners Deeb Salem and Joseph Naggar invested in a funding round this month for Borderless Capital, which previously helped launch an accelerator program from Algorand. Borderless also participated in a...

Finland Looking for Brokers to Sell Seized Bitcoins Worth $80 Million

Finland’s customs authority is looking for brokers to sell 1,981 bitcoins seized in drug cases. The coins are currently worth nearly $80 million. Finland’s customs authority announced Thursday that it is seeking brokers to sell 1,981 bitcoins seized in drug busts, Bloomberg reported, noting that the coins were forfeited to the state by court order. At the time of writing, the bitcoin stash is worth $78.75 million. Most of the seized coins were accumulated in raids before 2018. The Finnish State Treasury set out guidelines for handling crypto assets that year. It prohibited authorities from storing cryptocurrencies at exchanges, requiring them to keep the coins offline. Pekka Pylkkanen, Finnish Customs’ director of financial management, explained that the authorities want a permanent solution to “safely and reliably” sell cryptocurrencies forfeited to the state coffers in the future. The customs agency described in a statement: The main aim of Finnish Customs is to make sure t...

Binance completes Polygon wallet integration

The company indicated that transactions should now be cheaper than utilizing the traditional Polygon-Ethereum bridge. Binance has fully integrated the Polygon (MATIC) mainnet onto its platform, according to a press release. From now on, Binance traders can deposit and withdraw MATIC through their Binance accounts while also interacting with decentralized applications, or DApps, like Sushiswap, Balancer, Aave, and more. This integration is meant to ensure that traders can utilize said DApps cheaply and efficiently without using the existing Polygon bridge. Related: Polygon announces scalable data availability infrastructure Avail While this announcement specifically focuses on the MATIC mainnet token, Binance also intends to support ERC20, BEP2, and BEP20 MATIC associated tokens. Binance marks Polygon’s latest integration, as the network has already worked with Huobi and Coinbase Wallet, among others, to the same effect. The scaling solution is supported by various Et...

Digital Yuan to Promote International Use of Chinese Currency, Experts Say

The new digital yuan, currently undergoing trials, can help to increase the international usage of China’s national fiat, experts have stated. As the renminbi (RMB, CNY) is becoming one of the world’s most important currencies, the People’s Bank of China is planning to conduct cross-border tests with the yuan’s digitized version, the e-CNY. Digital Yuan to Facilitate ‘Renminbi Internationalization’ The digital yuan will further promote the process of “internationalization” of the renminbi, Chinese experts believe. This can happen when the Chinese yuan becomes the world’s third-largest currency — in terms of pricing, settlement, and international reserves —current and former officials said Wednesday, quoted by the China Internet Information Center portal. The e-CNY, arguably the most advanced central bank digital currency ( CBDC ), is still being tested primarily in domestic retail payment trials. However, cross-border e-commerce could provide the next use case scenario for the “na...

Large VCs are sidelining smaller crypto investors, PwC crypto lead says

Inflated valuations for crypto businesses have raised the bar for small investors to participate in the ongoing innovation. As cryptocurrency continues to take over mainstream finance, formerly cautious investors across the globe are rethinking their stance of counting crypto as a bad investment. This change of heart leads to a higher market valuation of crypto businesses due to increased funding from goliath investors. Citing this trend, PricewaterhouseCoopers crypto leader Henri Arslanian claimed that larger players from venture capital, private equity and pension funds are outplaying smaller boutique firms and family offices from participating in the latest innovations around crypto. Arslanian sided with smaller VC firms as he shared an example stating that a deal worth $10 million is now seeing “large VCs come in and put a bid in for a higher valuation.” He opined: “This is happening a lot with very early-stage companies, say, $5 million to $20 million — the prices ...

State Street to launch crypto services for private funds clients

After leading Lukka’s Series C funding round in late 2020, State Street partners with the firm to offer new digital asset services. Major American financial services and bank holding company State Street Corporation is expanding its push into the cryptocurrency industry by launching new digital asset services. State Street, the second-oldest operating bank in the United States, announced Thursday that it would provide digital and crypto asset administration services for the company’s private funds clients. The bank will enable its private fund clients to access a set of institutional-grade middle- and back-office offerings that support diversified portfolios, including crypto-related features like collection, standardization, reporting, processing and reconciliation. To unlock the services, State Street signed an agreement with Lukka, a U.S.-based blockchain data and software provider focused on reporting audit-ready data on cryptocurrency transactions. State Street is known as a ...

How yield farming on decentralized exchanges can become less risky

DeFi brings an opportunity to access the yields unseen in traditional finance, now with the competitive risk levels. The DeFi industry has been gaining momentum since 2020, offering a new perspective on the world of finance and a new way for investors to make money. In its essence, DeFi, also known as Decentralized Finance, is an ecosystem of applications and services built on public blockchains. Yield farming and staking are gaining momentum on the DeFi market right now. Farming, but with yields Yield farming, often referred to as “liquidity mining,” is a lucrative way to make money using the cryptocurrency you already have. Simply put: you lend your crypto assets to a decentralized platform through smart contracts and without intermediaries, and you get rewarded for it. This process is a so-called automated market maker (AMM) model, but in crypto: it involves liquidity providers, users who deposit their assets, and liquidity pools, all the assets at decentra...

Ghana Vice President Praises Central Bank’s CBDC Initiative, Says Digital Currencies Can Boost Intra-African Trade

The Ghanaian Vice President, Mahamudu Bawumia, has implored African governments to start exploring digital currencies as such alternatives have the potential to enhance intra-African trade. In addition, such digital currencies allow African countries to carry out all cross-border payments smoothly, the leader explained. Ghana Government Backing for CBDC According to a report, Bawumia made these comments while addressing guests at the opening ceremony of the Ghana International Trade and Finance Conference (GITFIC) in Accra. The report also quotes Bawumia commending the Ghanaian central bank’s e-cedi project. He said the Ghanaian government is ready to “give it the needed credibility and legal backing for usage.” As previously reported by Bitcoin.com News, the Bank of Ghana (BOG) is one of the first African central banks to announce the start of the pilot phase of its central bank digital currency (CBDC). However, final approval of this CBDC will depend on the outcome of the pilot...