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Showing posts from September 19, 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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Russian Court Confirms Arrest Warrants for 3 Finiko Founders

Tatarstan’s highest court has rejected appeals against arrest warrants issued for three co-founders of the notorious Finiko crypto pyramid. The top representatives of the Ponzi scheme, accused of large-scale fraud in Russia, are still hiding abroad, media reports reveal. Three Finiko Ponzi Scheme Members Still Wanted The Supreme Court of Tatarstan, a republic of the Russian Federation, has confirmed the arrest warrants issued in absentia for Zygmunt Zygmuntovich and Marat and Edward Sabirov. The three wanted men are close associates of Finiko’s founder Kirill Doronin. Doronin, an Instagram influencer whose name has been linked to other fraudulent schemes, was arrested in July. Then in September, authorities detained the pyramid’s vice president, Ilgiz Shakirov, as well as two women , Lilia Nurieva and Dina Gabdullina, who have allegedly lured thousands of investors with promises for high returns. Zygmuntovich and the Sabirov brothers, however, managed to leave the country and avo...
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Cross-Chain Bridges That Connect 5 Different Blockchains to Ethereum

During the last few months, cross-chain bridge technology has grown a great deal and users can now swap assets between a myriad of networks. Today, between eight different bridges there’s $7.6 billion total-value locked across these platforms. Cross-Chain Bridges There’s a decent quantity of cross-chain blockchain bridges these days and it has allowed users to do a variety of different decentralized finance (defi) techniques. Interestingly, a great deal of bridges connect to the Ethereum ( ETH ) network, as they have Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility. Since these connections have been made, a great deal of value has been flowing between a myriad of chains and the Ethereum blockchain. The following post mentions a number of bridges cryptocurrency participants can use to achieve cross-chain swaps. Tezos Wrap Protocol Bridge The Tezos (XTZ) blockchain is a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain network that leverages validating nodes often referred to as bakers. XTZ users have...
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Ripple Has No Plans to Settle With SEC Over XRP, Confident Gensler Will Drop the Lawsuit

Amid the ongoing lawsuit with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Ripple’s legal team reportedly said that they have no plans to settle with the securities watchdog. They are confident that SEC Chairman Gary Gensler will be convinced that pursuing the case is picking winners and losers in the crypto business to the detriment of innovation. No Plans to Settle With SEC, Says Ripple’s Legal Team Ripple’s legal team told Fox Business that it has no plans to settle the lawsuit with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Charles Gasparino reported. He tweeted Friday: Ripple’s legal team tell Fox Business they have no plans to settle with SEC over lawsuit on XRP , confident they can show Gary Gensler in pursuing the case is picking winners and losers in the crypto business to the detriment of innovation. The SEC sued Ripple Labs, its CEO Brad Garlinghouse, and co-founder Chris Larsen in December last year over the sale of XRP . In January, Garlinghouse was...
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Ex-Head оf Wex Crypto Exchange Reportedly Arrested in Poland, Faces Extradition to Kazakhstan

Dmitry Vasiliev, former chief executive of Russian cryptocurrency exchange Wex, has been detained in Warsaw, the Polish press reported. Vasiliev is wanted in Kazakhstan where he is accused of fraud related to the now defunct trading platform, successor of the infamous BTC-e exchange. Former Wex Executive in Polish Custody as Prosecutor’s Office Reviews Extradition Request Ex-owner and CEO of Wex Dmitry Vasiliev was detained at the Warsaw airport on Aug. 11, the leading Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza revealed this week. According to sources quoted by the publication, the 34-year-old native of Belarus has been placed under arrest for 40 days. Poland’s National Public Prosecutor’s Office is now considering his extradition to Kazakhstan. Authorities in the Central Asian country have been looking for Vasiliev through Interpol for several years as part of ongoing investigation on fraud charges. In its report on the case, the BBC Russian Service said Polish police had declined to c...
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NFT Market Sales Begin to Improve After Last Week’s Massive Market Slump

Seven days ago, non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces saw sales nosedive after reaching all-time highs during the month of August. A week later sales have rebounded to a degree and NFT marketplaces like Opensea, Rarible, and Superrare have seen improvements in terms of seven-day trade volumes. Opensea, Rarible, Hic et nunc, Makersplace, Superrare See NFT Weekly Volumes Improve On September 12, 2021, Bitcoin.com News reported on the fact that non-fungible token (NFT) sales had plummeted 86% on September 10 from a mid-August all-time sales high. The report noted that the top NFT marketplace by sales volume, Opensea, saw its seven-day sales slide 52.47%. A variety of NFT markets and popular collections had seen sales slow down dramatically between September 10th to the 13th. NFT marketplaces Aavegotchi, Superrare, and Foundation. However, a week later, NFT sales are rebounding to some degree and popular markets and collections are picking up steam. Statistics from dappradar.com ...
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AT&T Sued by Customer After Security Breach Led to Theft of Cryptocurrency

An AT&T customer filed a lawsuit against the company last week accusing it of failing to provide “reasonable and appropriate security to prevent unauthorized access to its customer wireless accounts.” This has led to the theft of cryptocurrency from the plaintiff’s crypto exchange account. AT&T Sued by Crypto Investor An AT&T customer, Jamarquis Etheridge, filed a lawsuit in the district court for the Southern District of Texas against AT&T Inc. and AT&T Mobility LLC Wednesday. Etheridge, a resident of the U.S. state of Texas, has been a customer of AT&T since 2009. He claims to be a victim of “SIM swapping,” also known as “SIM hijacking.” SIM swapping is a common scam that AT&T is no stranger to. The company was involved in a bigger case involving this scam last year with crypto investor Michael Terpin. The court document filed by Etheridge’s attorney, Richard E. Brown, states that on or about Sept. 10, 2020, AT&T “allowed wrongdoers access to pl...
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US Court Sentences Cryptocurrency Hedge Fund Founder to 7.5 Years in Prison

The founder of two cryptocurrency hedge funds in New York, Stefan Qin, has been sentenced to 7.5 years in prison and three years of supervised release. He is also ordered to forfeit about $55 million. The Department of Justice (DOJ) said that he “engaged in a scheme to steal assets” from his hedge funds and defraud investors. Crypto Hedge Fund Founder Gets 7.5 Years in Jail Stefan Qin, the founder of two cryptocurrency hedge funds in New York, has been sentenced to 7.5 years in prison, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced last week. Qin, a 24-year-old Australian national, founded the Virgil Sigma Fund and the VQR Multistrategy Fund, which claimed to have over $100 million dollars in investments. He pleaded guilty to one count of securities fraud on Feb. 4 after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against him in December last year. According to the DOJ, Qin was sentenced Wednesday to 90 months in prison. The Department of Justice explained...
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Bitcoin Hashrate Climbs 128% Over 83 Days, Network’s Mystery Miners Disappear

Bitcoin’s hashrate has been climbing higher during the last two weeks, hitting 174 exahash per second (EH/s) on two occasions since June 28. Currently, Bitcoin’s network hashrate is coasting along at 158 EH/s, up 128% since the low 83 days ago when it hit 69 EH/s. Meanwhile, unknown hashrate has subsided a great deal as 96% of the mystery miners recorded at the end of June have disappeared. Bitcoin Hashrate Gathers Strength Since the End of June Approximately 83 days or over two months ago, Bitcoin’s hashrate had slid to a low of 69 exahash per second (EH/s) on June 28. The slide was initiated by the crackdown in China against Chinese mining operations and a great majority of facilities were forced to relocate. Even well before the Chinese government’s crackdown, Chinese miners were already relocating and the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI) project’s research indicated that by April 2021, China’s hashrate dominance was down to 46%. Bitcoin ( BTC ) hashrat...
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ADALend: New Wave of DeFi Loans on Cardano

ADALend is building a scalable and decentralized lending protocol on Cardano, governed by the community. Cardano is the market leader in PoS as a collection of protocols for economic support to billions of people. Over the last decade, the decentralized Finance (DeFi) space has been forced to evolve to keep pace with the development of the digital asset market. ADALend protocol will power foundational the new wave of flexible financial markets by providing a layer for instant loan approval, automated collateral, trustless custody, and liquidity. What is Cardano? Cardano aims to be the world’s financial operating system by establishing decentralized financial products. Cardano ADA is the market leader in PoS as a collection of protocols for economic support to billions of people. ADALend protocol will power foundational the new wave of flexible financial markets by providing a layer for instant loan approval, automated collateral, trust-less custody, and liquidity. What’s the b...
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Ukraine Officials Fail to Account for Millions in Declared Crypto Assets

Personal asset declarations filed by politicians and government officials in Ukraine have indicated that many have made significant investments in cryptocurrency. However, some of them have been unable to prove ownership or account for their digital holdings, local media reported. Lawmaker Loses Over 40 BTC With Stolen Vehicle in Ukraine Dmitry Gurin, a member of Ukrainian parliament from President Zelensky ’s Servant of the People party, has allegedly lost a serious amount of cryptocurrency to car thieves, according to an audit of his 2020 declaration quoted by the “Slovo i Dilo” portal. The deputy claims the digital money was stored on a hardware wallet that disappeared with his car which was stolen earlier this year. Data filed by the lawmaker revealed his wife, Maria Saltykova, had 42 BTC last year worth an estimated 22.5 million hryvnia (around $840,000 at current hryvnia rates or over $2 million at BTC prices at the time of writing), Forklog reported. Ukraine’s National ...
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Cardano price dips after smart contract launch, Walmart working with Litecoin is fake news, Coinbase raises $2B from junk-bond sale: Hodler’s Digest, Sept. 12-18

Coming every Saturday, Hodlers Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more a week on Cointelegraph in one link. Top Stories This Week Cardano launches smart contracts after successful hard fork After years of anticipation, Charles Hoskinsons brainchild, Cardano, finally launched its smart contract functionality via the Alonzo hard fork on Monday. Youd think the result of this would be some bullish price action for ADA but, alas, its price dropped 10% following the rollout. While Cardano was keen to celebrate the milestone, it also emphasized in a blog post that its still in the early days of the project, adding that now is when the mission truly begins. The team also urged its community to not be overzealous in boarding the hype train just yet, and to be patient with the smart contract functionality in its formative stages: Ther...
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Directors of Collapsed South African Crypto Investment Firm to Testify via Virtual Platform

Ameer and Raees Cajee, the two directors of the South African crypto-investment platform, Africrypt, are set to participate in an inquest that seeks to seal the fate of the collapsed firm. The Death Threats According to an Itweb report , the Cajee brothers — who have agreed to testify on October 19 and 20 — will only do so virtually. The report confirms that both Ameer and Raees, who have already received several death threats, were initially scheduled to appear before the inquiry in the second week of September 2021. However, this was postponed after the lawyer for the Cajee brothers requested “an extension in order to consult further with their clients.” The report also reveals that other Africrypt executives like the former compliance officer, Daniel Opperman, Wayne Naidoo (director), and Steve Miller (manager) have already given their testimony via a virtual platform. For instance, in his testimony, Opperman is reported to have told the inquiry that he only became aware of the ...
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Here's why Bitcoin might be safe from a global stock market crisis

BTC’s lack of integration with traditional finance and its inability to be forcefully sold to cover financial losses mean the price might not ‘collapse’ if there is a global stock market meltdown. One of the reasons behind Bitcoin's ( BTC ) volatility, the substantial price oscillations that occur regularly, is the discrepancy of its use cases. Some pundits deem it "digital gold," a truly scarce and perfect store of value (SoV). Others consider Bitcoin a technology project or a type of software with a corresponding network. El Salvador's adoption as legal tender will likely evidence the means of exchange (MoE) functionality that the Lightning Network provides. The Layer-2 scaling solution allows instant and insanely cheap transfers, although it requires regular on-chain transactions to enter or exit this parallel network. As these narratives about Bitcoin shift over time, so does BTC's correlation to traditional assets. For example, there have been sustained p...
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Bitcoin is great, but real crypto innovation has moved elsewhere

Bitcoin will always be the boss, but the real innovative and groundbreaking developments are happening in layer-2 solutions, DAOs, NFTs with utility and the emerging Metaverse. Something is brewing, and those with finely tuned noses can smell it. As traders have come to expect, Bitcoin ( BTC ) is doing “Bitcoin things” by bouncing around between the usual “key” support and resistance levels, and to be honest, it’s all starting to feel a bit boomerish. Bitcoin’s long-awaited “moon” depended on institutional investor buy-in, breaking the previous all-time high at $19,000, and a set of other firmly held beliefs. Well, all that happened, and the run to $64,900 exceeded many investors’ wildest dreams. But despite this, the entire BTC situation just feels predictable and boring if you are of the opinion that the top-ranked cryptocurrency will eventually top out around $100,000 in the current bull market. So, back to what else is brewing… Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are...
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Bank of Russia to ‘Slow Down’ Payments to Crypto Exchanges, Curb Russians’ Impulsive Investments

Central Bank of Russia is now working with commercial banks in order to delay payments made to digital asset exchanges. The move aims to limit “emotional” cryptocurrency purchases made by “unqualified” Russian investors, a CBR official revealed. The move is likely to affect peer-to-peer and over-the-counter trading platforms. Central Bank of Russia Skeptical of Cryptocurrency Investments Bank of Russia remains skeptical about the acquisition of cryptocurrencies and will not support increasing access to crypto markets for Russian investors, most of whom are not accredited, the bank’s Deputy Chairman Sergei Shvetsov stated this week, quoted by Prime business news agency. Speaking at the “Banks of Russia – XXI Century” international banking forum, the high-ranking official elaborated: When it comes to buying [cryptocurrency] for investment purposes, we are skeptical about this idea. We believe it’s different from traditional assets, it’s highly risky and has signs of a pyramid scheme...
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100 years ago, Henry Ford proposed ‘energy currency’ to replace gold

Bitcoin appears to meet the definition of an energy-backed currency proposed by the famed American inventor during the interbellum period. In 1921, American industrialist Henry Ford proposed the creation of an “energy currency” that could form the basis of a new monetary system — offering striking similarities to the peer-to-peer electronic cash system outlined in Satoshi Nakamoto’s 2008 Bitcoin ( BTC ) whitepaper.  Front page of the New York Tribune dated Sunday, December 4, 1921. Source: Library of Congress Bitcoin as an energy currency On Dec. 4, 1921, the New York Tribune published an article outlining Ford’s vision of replacing gold with an energy currency that he believed could break the banking elites’ grip on global wealth and put an end to wars. He intended to do this by building “the world’s greatest power plant” and creating a new currency system based on “units of power.” Ford, who founded Ford Motor Company in 1903, told the publication: “Under the energy cur...
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