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Showing posts from August 6, 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...

Central Bank of Venezuela Announces ‘Digital Bolivar’ Redenomination Plan

The Central Bank of Venezuela announced the new redenomination plan for its fiat currency called “Digital Bolivar.” This new proposal seeks to simplify transactions by slashing six zeroes from the current value of the currency. While it is called digital, it has nothing to do with the proposal of a new central bank digital currency (CBDC), but it claims to have the development of a digital economy in the country as its objective. Digital Bolivar Redenomination Plan Announced The Central Bank of Venezuela issued an official statement yesterday on the implementation of a new redenomination plan for its fiat currency after the measure was leaked by some sources last month. The plan, called by the authorities “Digital Bolivar,” contemplates slashing six zeroes from the current value of the fiat currency to ease the process of making payments and transactions. At the time of writing, there is an exchange rate of 4,000 VES per dollar, which results in uncomfortably large amounts when m...

Hip-Hop Star Megan Thee Stallion Creates ‘Bitcoin for Hotties’ Video to Educate Millions of Fans About Crypto

Award-winning hip-hop artist Megan Thee Stallion has published a video of herself explaining the basics of bitcoin, including what it is, why it is valuable, and how to obtain it. The famed rapper previously gave away $1 million in bitcoin to her fans in collaboration with Square’s Cash App. Famous Hip-Hop Star Breaks Down Bitcoin to Her Fans Popular rapper Megan Thee Stallion, also known as Hot Girl Meg, published a video titled “Bitcoin for Hotties” Tuesday in collaboration with Cash App, a mobile payment service developed by Jack Dorsey’s Square Inc. Megan Thee Stallion has more than 24.1 million followers on Instagram and 6.4 million followers on Twitter. She has received several accolades, including three Grammy Awards. At the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards, she became the second female hip-hop artist to win Best New Artist. In 2020, Time Magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world on their annual list. Her Bitcoin for Hotties video starts with the star ...

Binance US CEO Steps Down as the Crypto Exchange Faces Rising Regulatory Scrutiny

Former acting Comptroller of the Currency Brian Brooks has resigned as the CEO of Binance U.S. after just over three months. He cited “differences over strategic direction.” Meanwhile, Binance is facing regulatory scrutiny worldwide, including in the U.K., Malaysia, Japan, Cayman Islands, Hong Kong, Thailand, Germany, and Lithuania. CEO of Binance US Resigns The CEO of Binance U.S., Brian Brooks, announced Friday on Twitter that he has resigned from Binance. The former acting Comptroller of the Currency and former chief legal officer at cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase tweeted: Greetings crypto community. Letting you all know that I have resigned as CEO of ⁦⁦⁦Binance US. Despite differences over strategic direction, I wish my former colleagues much success. Brooks joined Binance at the beginning of May following his resignation as acting Comptroller of the Currency on Jan. 14, before President Joe Biden took office. Responding to Brooks’s announcement, Binance U.S. posted a me...

Binance Restricts Crypto Derivatives Products in Hong Kong, Existing Positions Have 90 Days to Close

Fresh off the heels of Binance’s last announcement to discontinue crypto derivatives offerings in Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands, the company revealed on Friday crypto derivatives products in Hong Kong will cease as well. Effective immediately, users won’t be able to open new derivatives positions and customers with existing derivatives positions have 90 days to close them. Binance Ends Crypto Derivatives Offerings in Hong Kong Binance revealed on August 6 that the exchange will no longer offer crypto derivatives products to customers. The news follows the company’s current issues with global regulators and large financial institutions ceasing to service Binance. On August 3, Bitcoin.com News reported how HSBC became the latest financial institution to suspend operations with the company. Three days later, Binance revealed it is “restricting derivatives products offerings in Hong Kong.” According to the announcement, the change is aligned with the exchange’s compliance init...

Altcoin Roundup: Hodling Ethereum? Here’s how and where to stake your ETH

The options for earning passive income from staking ETH continue to expand. Here are a few. The overall feel across the cryptocurrency landscape over the past week has been one of bubbling anticipation, with the Ethereum network finally undergoing its London hard fork , which includes reforms to the transaction fee market, thanks to EIP-1559. London is the latest in a series of upgrades that are part of Ethereum’s measured transition from its original proof-of-work consensus model to a proof-of-stake model dubbed Ethereum 2.0 . On Eth2, tokenholders who hold at least 32 Ether ( ETH ) can operate a validator node and verify transactions on the network. With the current price of Ether trading near $2,700, that puts the entry cost of running an Eth2 validator node at $86,400 — a price too steep for most participants in the market. To help combat this issue, several options — including staking pools and centralized exchange staking — have emerged to offer all Ether tokenholders the op...

Crypto space weighs in on proposed amendments to US infrastructure deal

Some are urging U.S.-based crypto users to contact their representatives in support of the amendment from Wyden, Lummis and Toomey. With more than one amendment proposed to the United States infrastructure plan that would modify a provision on cryptocurrencies, some figures in the space are going against the one with White House support. Digital rights advocacy group Fight for the Future said today it would not support the amendment crafted by Senators Mark Warner, Rob Portman and Kyrsten Sinema to address the issue of clarifying the language used concerning crypto in the bipartisan infrastructure bill. According to the group, the proposed amendment gets “a resounding no” as a possible solution to the bill which “fundamentally misunderstands how cryptocurrency and decentralization works.” “The original provision and the Portman-Warner amendment fundamentally misunderstand that decentralized technology is decentralized,” said Fight for the Future. “The law as-written is completely ...

Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin Says EIP 1559 ‘Most Important Part of London,’ Network Is Burning $16K in ETH per Minute

The Ethereum blockchain has completed the highly anticipated London upgrade on Thursday and ether fans have been discussing the protocol’s burn rate with great fervor following the fork. 5.9 Ether Is Burned Every Minute, Vitalik Buterin ‘Confident’ About the future after London At press time, Ethereum is burning 5.9 ether per minute or $16.8K using today’s exchange rates against the U.S. dollar. Meanwhile, in a recent interview from Singapore, Ethereum’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin said the Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) “1559 is definitely the most important part of London.” On Thursday morning around 8:30 a.m. (EDT) on August 5, the long-awaited Ethereum London hard fork took place and the blockchain was successfully upgraded. The community was ecstatic, to say the least, and on Twitter, terms like “ethereum” and “EIP1559” started trending. Of course, the most topical conversation about the London upgrade was EIP-1559: The fee market change for ETH 1.0 chain . The EIP essen...

SEC claims first enforcement action in $30M fraud case involving DeFi project

"The labeling of the offering as decentralized and the securities as governance tokens did not hinder us from ensuring that DeFi Money Market was immediately shut down and that investors were paid back," said the SEC. A Cayman Islands-based company and two individuals may be the first subjects in decentralized finance, or DeFi, to face enforcement action from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. According to a Friday announcement, the Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, said  that this is the first case involving securities using DeFi technology which resulted in an enforcement action. The agency said it charged the company Blockchain Credit Partners as well as Florida residents Gregory Keough and Derek Acree, alleging they were involved in offering and selling more than $30 million in unregistered securities from February 2020 to February 2021. DeFi Money Market, according to the project’s whitepaper, was “a permissionless and fully decentralized protoco...

Oscar Mayer Is Auctioning a 10-Pack of Dogecoin-Themed Hot Dogs, Proceeds Go to Hunger-Relief Charity

After a great number of well known product brands like Burger King, Axe, Snickers, Milky Way, and Slim Jim have been riding the dogecoin hype, the American meat and cold cut manufacturer ​​Oscar Mayer has also jumped on the dogecoin bandwagon. Similar to Axe, Oscar Mayer has also created a dogecoin-centric product and is auctioning a “10-pack of weenies” that features the famous Shiba Inu. A 10-Pack of Doge-Themed Weenies Oscar Mayer is a well known hot dog and cold cuts as the Kraft Heinz-owned firm has been around for years. In fact, the Mayer brothers started crafting bratwurst, liverwurst, and weisswurst products back in 1883. In recent times the Chicago-based company’s official Twitter account has been tweeting about the notorious crypto-asset dogecoin (DOGE) . The company has joined a number of well known brands getting in on the dogecoin hype. Just recently Axe released a limited edition Dogecan “crypto scented” body spray and a few Burger King locations in Brazil came out ...

Price analysis 8/6: BTC, ETH, BNB, ADA, XRP, DOGE, DOT, UNI, BCH, LINK

Bitcoin and most major altcoins are near critical overhead resistance levels, suggesting that the downtrend is very close to ending. Bitcoin ( BTC ) has staged a smart recovery in the past few days and the interest in the crypto sector seems to be picking up. JPMorgan Chase has added access to a new Bitcoin fund created by New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG) for its private banking clients.  The increasing number of traditional financial institutions opening up crypto trading opportunities for their clients shows there is strong demand for the sector. On-chain analyst Willy Woo said recently that strong holders had been scoping up Bitcoin and locking “them away for long-term investment”, resulting in a supply squeeze . Woo added that he had “not seen a supply shock opportunity like this since Q4 2020 when BTC was priced at $10,000 only to be repriced at $60,000 in the months thereafter.” Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360 Billionaire hedge fund...

MyEtherWallet founder notes two key aspects of Ethereum London hard fork

Ethereum's London hard fork made a number of changes to the Ethereum blockchain. Ethereum  underwent an upgrade  on Thursday, bringing with it a number of alterations to the network's blockchain. CEO and founder of MyEtherWallet, Kosala Hemchandra, pointed toward two changes of particular importance.  “The London upgrade adds around 5 changes to the current Ethereum network; however, I believe that only 2 of them are crucial to day-to-day users,” Hemchandra said in comments sent to Cointelegraph. Noting “time bomb delay” as the first of the two, he added: “Since the inception of Ethereum there was a hard coded value basically responsible to make sure Ethereum will move to PoS or ETH 2.0 on time. This value is responsible for making the block difficulty exponentially hard after a certain block number thus making it impossible for miners to mine new blocks and they have to move to ETH 2 network. However, because of development delays this time bomb kept getting delayed ...

Xiaomi retailer in Portugal now accepts Bitcoin payments

The official Portuguese shop of Chinese electronics giant Xiaomi has partnered with Utrust to unlock payments in five cryptocurrencies. Chinese electronics manufacturer Xiaomi is the latest global company to get involved in the cryptocurrency industry as its official Portuguese shop now accepts Bitcoin ( BTC ) payments. Mi Store Portugal, the official Xiaomi retailer, announced Wednesday on Facebook that it now allows customers to purchase devices using five cryptocurrencies, including BTC, Ether ( ETH ), Tether ( USDT ), Dash ( DASH ) and the Utrust (UTK) token. According to the official Mi Store Portugal website, customers can now select the option to pay with crypto at checkout. The new payment option is enabled through a partnership with Utrust, a European blockchain technology payment platform. “Xiaomi is the second-largest phone manufacturer in the world, and now their local branch is accepting the Money of Tomorrow,” Utrust’s official Twitter account said Wednesday. Accor...