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Showing posts from December 2, 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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‘Wolf of Wall Street’ Jordan Belfort Warns About Investing in Dogecoin and Shiba Inu Cryptocurrencies

Jordan Belfort, the former stockbroker whose memoir was made into a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, has warned about investing in meme cryptocurrencies, like dogecoin (DOGE) and shiba inu (SHIB). Belfort explained that “People are taking advantage of an unregulated market,” emphasizing that “The sooner governments step in the better it is for crypto.” The Wolf of Wall Street’s Advice on Dogecoin and Shiba Inu Cryptocurrencies Jordan Belfort, aka the Wolf of Wall Street, has warned investors about putting money in meme cryptocurrencies, like dogecoin (DOGE) and shiba inu (SHIB), in an interview with The Sun, published Tuesday. “I’m a fan of blockchain but there’s a lot of nonsense out there, a lot of shit coins which serve no purpose and are only there to separate people from their money,” he opined. Belfort is a former stockbroker whose memoir was adapted into a film titled “The Wolf of Wall Street,” starring Leonardo DiCaprio and directed by Martin Scorsese. Belfort founded Stra...
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Academic research claims ETH is a 'superior' store of value to Bitcoin

The report highlights the merits of EIP-1559 as a tool for making ETH a deflationary cryptocurrency and potentially better store of value than Bitcoin. Australian university researchers have questioned Bitcoin’s reputation as the best store of value network in cryptocurrency, with Ethereum on track “to becoming the world’s first deflationary currency.” A Nov. 18 paper by four Australian researchers discusses how the EIP-1559 upgrade makes ETH a potentially better store of value. The research comes was coauthored by Ester Félez-Viñas from the University of Technology Sydney, Sean Foley from Macquarie University, Jonathan Karlsen from the University of Western Australia, and Jiri Svec from the University of Sydney. Ethereum's EIP-1559 upgrade in August saw the network burn a portion of transaction fees and more than one million ETH has been burned from the 118,583,580 circulating supply. At times, the report says, transaction fees amounting to more than 50% of the 12,000 new...
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India to regulate, not ban, crypto: Cabinet documents

Indian crypto investors will reportedly be given a certain time frame to declare their crypto holdings, and must then hold their assets on crypto exchanges regulated by SEBI. According to reports from local media, the Indian government will not move for an outright ban on crypto and will instead regulate the sector. On Nov. 23, Cointelegraph reported that the Indian government was considering a bill proposing the creation of an official digital currency while imposing a ban on all “private” cryptocurrencies. The news sparked panic selling on local crypto exchange WazirX the following day, and the vague wording on the bill and lack of clarification from the government have since left many onlookers divided on the prospects for crypto in India . But Indian news outlet NDTV reported on Dec. 2 that it had obtained details of a cabinet note circulating in the government regarding the proposed crypto bill. NDTV reporter Sunil Prabhu said that the note contained suggestions to regula...
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5 year study looks at if token rewards can improve HIV patient outcomes in Africa

A Kenyan university and a blockchain healthcare provider will join forces to study whether Africa’s HIV crisis can be helped by using crypto and blockchain technology. A groundbreaking five-year study into whether crypto token incentives can improve health outcomes for patients with HIV/AIDS will be launched in Kenya by the end of the year. On Nov 1, the blockchain-powered healthcare ecosystem Immunify.Life and the Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology (MMUST) announced they had secured the approval needed from an ethics committee and the national commission to launch the study. Together they will conduct a five-year study on HIV/AIDS starting before the end of 2021 in the Kakamega County region of Kenya, before extending throughout the rest of the country. The first major project of this collaboration is a groundbreaking study in #HIV / #AIDS to investigate the effectiveness of incentives and paperless tracking systems on HIV treatment adherence and treatment outc...
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Meta Relaxes Facebook’s Cryptocurrency Ad Policy — Says Crypto Continues to ‘Mature and Stabilize’

Meta, formerly Facebook, has relaxed its policy for cryptocurrency advertisements, making it easier for companies to run crypto ads on its platform. “We’re doing this because the cryptocurrency landscape has continued to mature and stabilize in recent years and has seen more government regulations that are setting clearer rules for their industry,” the company explained. Meta’s New Rules for Cryptocurrency Advertising Meta, formerly known as Facebook, announced Wednesday new rules for cryptocurrency advertising. Instead of “using a variety of signals to confirm eligibility” for advertising on its platform, the company has increased the number of regulatory licenses it accepts from three to 27. Now, businesses only need to have one of 27 licenses to be eligible to advertise on Facebook. “We’re making it easier to run ads about cryptocurrency on our platform,” Meta emphasized, adding: We’re doing this because the cryptocurrency landscape has continued to mature and stabilize in re...
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DeFi disasters: $31M drained from MonoX and BadgerDAO losses top $120M

A disappointing week of exploits has put a temporary grim cloud over the end of 2021, with BadgerDAO and Huobi-listed MonoX suffering major losses. More than $150 million has been lost this week in separate security breaches at DeFi projects MonoX and BadgerDAO. Multi-chain decentralized exchange (DEX) MonoX (MONO) suffered a cyber attack on Nov. 30 leading to about $31 million in losses. BadgerDAO (BADGER) suffered a front-end attack that was discovered on Dec. 2 with estimates of Badger’s losses hitting more than $120 million. The MonoX DEX platform suffered a single attack on Nov. 30. In this attack, a bug in the smart contract allowed for a discrepancy to exist between prices of assets, when manually changed. Rekt News explained that hackers were able to inflate the price of MONO via the smart contract, then buy up other assets from the protocol with MONO. “The hacker created a loop in which the price of tokenOut would overwrite the price of tokenIn, pumping the price of M...
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Shanghai Man: CZ is wealthiest Chinese person with $90B, NFT yachts, and MonoX hacked

This weekly roundup of news from Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong attempts to curate the industrys most important news, including influential projects, changes in the regulatory landscape, and enterprise blockchain integrations. Top of the food chain This probably wont come as a surprise to anyone in the crypto industry, but Binance founder CZ has been crowned the richest Chinese person in the world. The list appeared in Caijing Magazine, a financial publication based in Beijing. CZ was credited as having a net worth of around $90 billion, a huge jump over former richest Chinese man Zhong Shanshan, a bottled water mogul worth around $66 billion. CZs source of wealth was listed as Binance, a company that has not seen eye-to-eye with Chinese regulators, and is now often banned by internet search engines within the country. In fact, many average citizens in China have probably never heard of CZ prior to seeing this list. Interestingly, CZs location was listed as Singapore, makin...
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Increased utility in DeFi, NFTs back Ethereum’s 3-year high in its ETH/BTC pair

Ethereum price hit a new all-time high in its ETH/BTC pair and a classic technical analysis pattern suggests the altcoin has a lot more upside. This week, Ether ( ETH ) price reached a new 2021 high against Bitcoin ( BTC ), bringing its year-to-date returns slightly above 350% and according to technical analysis, the rally could extend even further. On Dec. 1, bids for the ETH/BTC pair hit 0.0835 BTC on Coinbase for the first time this year. The upside move came as a part of an uptrend that started mid-October after Ether bottomed out against Bitcoin at 0.0630 BTC to carve out almost 41% price retracement. ETH/BTC daily price chart. Source: TradingView Growing adoption propels Ether's boom The ETH/BTC price rally reflect deep interest in Ethereum, which is currently the world's leading smart contract platform by users and market capitalization. This is slightly different than the scenario for Bitcoin, which typically functions as a speculative hedge against inflation a...
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Jurors in Billion-Dollar Bitcoin Trial Deadlocked for Days — Hung Jury Could Lead to Mistrial

Jurors in the Kleiman v. Wright trial are currently unable to come to a decision on the high-profile billion-dollar bitcoin lawsuit in Florida. While the judge has told the jury to take time deliberating the case, on Wednesday, the jurors issued a statement that explained they could not “come to a conclusion.” Kleiman v. Wright Jurors Unable to Make a Decision — Judge Issues Allen Charge Extending Deliberation Time Following the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States, jurors from the Kleiman v. Wright case have been deliberating on their decision for quite some time now. Some believe the jury may end up deadlocked and the case may lead to a mistrial. Court reporter Carolina Bolada from Law360 tweeted on December 2, 2021, that everyone at the courthouse was simply waiting for the decision. “I’ve had a few requests for updates on Kleiman v. Wright,” Bolada tweeted on Thursday. “Believe me, if there were news, I would’ve tweeted it. We are all just waiting around for word from th...
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Okcoin hires former Facebook spokesperson Randi Zuckerberg to grow female user base

With the hiring, Okcoin has many women in key leadership positions, including CEO Hong Fang as well as head of content and brand Mandy Campbell. Cryptocurrency exchange Okcoin has announced Randi Zuckerberg — the sister of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg — will be joining the platform’s brand advisory council in its aim to bring more women into crypto. In a Thursday announcement, Okcoin said that in addition to hiring Zuckerberg, the exchange would be committing $1 million in an attempt to reach a 50% female user base by 2025. Zuckerberg was the former director of market development and a spokesperson for Facebook until she resigned in 2011, moving on to start her own social media firm in addition to founding the Zuckerberg Institute — a program aimed at educating business leaders, entrepreneurs and students. “Crypto and this new era of wealth creation should be open to everyone,” said Zuckerberg in a video promoting her move to the crypto exchange. “I’ve joined Okcoin’s advisory counci...
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Regulatory fears put a damper on Ethereum traders’ $5,000 target

This week, ETH price came within 2% of a new all-time high before U.S. lawmakers announced a hearing to discuss stablecoins and the need for eventual regulation. This week Ether ( ETH ) price came within 2% of its all-time high, and on Dec. 2 the altcoin reached its highest price in Bitcoin ( BTC ) terms since May 2018. Ether hitting 0.0835 in its BTC pair represents a 229% gain for 2021, but Ether bulls might come out empty-handed from this Friday’s $680 million options expiry. ETH/BTC price at FTX. Source: TradingView Notice the ascending channel formation initiated in mid-October, which likely reflects the network’s $177 billion total value locked in smart contracts (TVL) . Moreover, Ether's ETH 2.0 beacon chain balance reached an 8.45 million high, which is a 4.5% increase in November. Last week, four Ethereum blockchain-based metaverse projects generated more than $100 million worth of virtual land in nonfungible token (NFT) sales last week, according to reporting by ...
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MercadoLibre plans to accept BTC and cryptocurrencies as payment for all products

The Latin American e-commerce platform selected Brazil to kick-off crypto payments via its MercadoPago application. MercadoPago, the fintech arm of e-commerce giant MercadoLibre , has enabled its Brazilian customers to buy, sell and hold Bitcoin ( BTC ), Ether ( ETH ) and the Paxos-issued U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin Pax Dollar (USDP). In a statement issued Thursday by U.S.-based Paxos, the blockchain infrastructure platform used by PayPal and Facebook, the partnership between MercadoPago and Paxos will allow users to pay for all products sold on the platform using cryptocurrency. Today marks another huge milestone in #crypto . @mercadopago , the largest payments provider in #LatAm , will offer Brazilian customers the ability to buy/sell/hold $BTC $ETH and the Paxos dollar #stablecoin $USDP #PoweredByPaxos https://t.co/Pfo3ZcAwwk — Paxos (@PaxosGlobal) December 2, 2021 This news signals one of the largest stablecoin operations within a non-crypto wallet to date. Brazilia...
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Gaimin․io Developed a PC-Based Platform to Create a Global, Decentralized Data Processing Network

UK and Swiss based gaming and blockchain company, GAIMIN.IO Ltd has developed a PC-based platform to create a global, decentralised data processing network with “supercomputer” level performance. The GAIMIN platform utilises underused processing power available from high performance GPUs and rewards users in its own cryptocurrency, GMRX, for participation in the GAIMIN data. Why is the GAIMIN platform needed? The Digital Revolution has created a large number of new industries, each with their own ever increasing demand for processing data. The powering of blockchain computations is one example. Within the cryptocurrency industry, this is commonly known as mining. With an increasing number of daily blockchain computations requiring increasingly more difficult computations and calculations to validate and close transactions, the demand for processing capability and computing power is ever increasing. Other industries, such as video and CGI rendering, scientific computing simulation...
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WazirX, Presearch and Komodo rally after data shows a surge in user activity

A surge in user activity and new token listings allowed WRX, PRE and KMD to shake off the week-long crypto market downturn and post double-digit gains. The characteristically volatile nature of the cryptocurrency market is back in full force on Dec. 2 after the optimism of the past couple of days has transformed into fear and Bitcoin price slid back below $57,000. Despite the pressure being exerted on many of the top cryptocurrencies, several altcoins have managed to buck the trend and post double-digit gains on Dec. 2. Top 7 coins with the highest 24-hour price change. Source: Cointelegraph Markets Pro Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that the biggest gainers over the past 24 hours were WazirX (WRX), Presearch (PRE) and Komodo (KMD). WazirX benefits from listing new tokens WazirX is a India-based cryptocurrency exchange based in India that claims to be the fastest growing and most trusted exchange in the country. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pr...
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Payments Company Square Rebrands to ‘Block Inc.,’ Crypto Service Will Be Called ‘Spiral’

Following Jack Dorsey’s resignation announcement on Monday, two days later Dorsey’s payments company, Square Inc., disclosed that it was rebranding and changing its name to Block Inc. The company said the name Block has “many associated meanings” including the term “blockchain.” Square Changes Name to ‘Block’ — Square Crypto Rebrands to ‘Spiral’ On Wednesday, Square Inc., the firm founded in 2009 by Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey has decided to change its name following Facebook’s rebrand to “Meta.” The news follows Jack Dorsey’s resignation announcement when he explained on Monday that he would step down as Twitter’s CEO. “We built the Square brand for our seller business, which is where it belongs,” Jack Dorsey, co-founder and CEO of Block said during the announcement on Wednesday. Dorsey added: Block is a new name, but our purpose of economic empowerment remains the same. No matter how we grow or change, we will continue to build tools to help increase access to the economy. ...
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SEC rejects WisdomTree's application for spot Bitcoin ETF

The Cboe BZX Exchange used the examples set by CME's crypto futures products in its argument for approval, but the SEC rejected them. The United States Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, has officially disapproved asset manager WisdomTree’s spot Bitcoin ( BTC ) exchange-traded fund (ETF) after deferring on a decision several times this year. According to a Wednesday filing, the SEC rejected a proposed rule change from the Cboe BZX Exchange to list and trade shares of WisdomTree’s Bitcoin Trust. Specifically, the SEC said any rule change in favor of approving the ETF would not be “‘designed to prevent fraudulent and manipulative acts and practices” nor “protect investors and the public interest.” The SEC concluded that BZX had not met the requirements of listing a financial product under its rules in addition to the Exchange Act, saying the BTC ETF proposed would not allow the commission “to obtain information necessary to detect, investigate, and deter fraud and marke...
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Crypto Biz: Wall Street veteran launches $1.5B crypto fund, MELD ISPO shines spotlight on Cardano, Dec. 2

The Crypto Biz newsletter is delivered weekly to your inbox. Join the mailing list to stay up-to-date on the week's biggest business stories. Crypto converted another Wall Street veteran this week after former Citi executive Matt Zhang launched a $1.5 billion digital asset fund . A new funding mechanism allowing users to access early-stage crypto startups shined the spotlight on Cardano’s massive community. One of Latin America’s biggest crypto exchanges raised $50 million in private funding to expand its operations. 1inch Network raised another $175 million from leading crypto venture capitalists to expand DeFi liquidity.  These were just some of the week’s biggest business headlines from the world of crypto. Every Thursday, Cointelegraph’s Crypto Biz newsletter gives readers a pulse of the business behind blockchain and cryptocurrency, delivered directly to their inbox. Below is a concise version of the Thursday edition of our newsletter.  Former Citi banker launches...
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First NFT-focused ETF lists on NYSE Arca

The launch comes as Cointelegraph Research projects nonfungible token (NFT) sales will hit nearly $18 billion by the end of the year. On Thursday, registered investment adviser and fintech firm Defiance announced it has launched the first nonfungible token (NFT)-focused exchange-traded fund (ETF) on the New York Stock Exchange Arca. The fund is listed under the ticker symbol NFTZ and has a management fee of 0.65% per year. The fund does not directly buy and hold NFTs to store in wallets. Instead, it tracks an index of companies operating or intending to venture into the NFT space, as well as the Metaverse. The BITA NFT and Blockchain Select Index, which the fund intends to mirror, is maintained by Germany-based fintech company BITA. Notable holdings in the fund include Coinbase, Cloudflare, Plby Group [Playboy], Marathon Digital and Hut 8 Mining. Its biggest holding is Silvergate Capital, at 6.74% of its net assets. Unbeknownst to most investors, Silvergate is one of the world...
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The Giving Block raises $2.4M for charity on 'CyberGivingTuesday'

Giving Tuesday marked the start of the season for crypto giving and The Giving Block is leading the crypto fundraising campaign. After Thanksgiving Thursday, Black Friday and Cyber Monday comes Giving Tuesday, a day that encourages contributing to charity. 2021 saw a rise in crypto-philanthropy thanks to The Giving Block’s initiative of Crypto Giving Tuesday, which initially began in 2019. The organization that equips nonprofits to accept cryptocurrency donations raised $2.4 million dollars in crypto this year, a 583% increase from Crypto Giving Tuesday 2020.  From charities, universities, faith-based to other mission-driven organizations, 1,071 total nonprofits participated. And the average donation size was $12,600. The majority of donations were done in Ether ( ETH ), with Bitcoin ( BTC ) and USD Coin ( USDC ) in second and third place, respectively. It can be noted that ETH overtook BTC for the top spot in total donation volume, with more than $1.2 million worth of ETH dona...
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Fed's Quarles says regulators should show 'constraint' on stablecoins to avoid hampering innovation

Quarles said some of the approaches on stablecoin regulation from the President's Working Group on Financial Markets’ November report are unnecessary. Speaking publicly for the last time as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Randal Quarles urged regulators to exercise restraint on stablecoins. In a prepared statement for his speech at the American Enterprise Institute on Dec. 2, Quarles expressed concern that regulations could hamper innovation in the digital asset space, particularly when it comes to stablecoins. According to the Fed governor, some of the approaches on stablecoin regulation from the President's Working Group on Financial Markets’ November report are unnecessary, including “limiting wallet providers' affiliation with commercial entities.” “It is one thing to say that a stablecoin issuer itself must be a regulated bank — I think that is probably overkill, as there are perfectly effective ways for nonbanks to meet our legi...
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