Crypto Currency

In the latest Cointelegraph video debate, experts discuss pathways towards making Bitcoin more sustainable. In the latest Cointelegraph Crypto Duel, founder of Digiconomist Alex de Vries and CEO and founder of Blockchain for Climate Joseph Pallant debated the intensity of Bitcoin’s footprint and possible paths forward to reduce it.  As pointed out by de Vries, Bitcoin’s energy consumption has been increasing together with its network.  The analyst predicts its carbon footprint could increase tremendously as Bitcoin gets closer to mass adoption. “I fear that this will quickly get completely out of control if adoption increases a lot more”, he said. According to de Vries, as long as Bitcoin functions with a proof-of-work system, bringing down emissions will be difficult. De Vries doesn’t see the incentive for miners to embrace renewables, given the intermittency of this type of energy sources. “There's no incentive for miners to just enrol themselves into a scheme where th...

Crypto could still be in its infancy, according to one mainstream company's CEO. Although the crypto space has been around for more than a decade, William Stromberg, CEO of mainstream investment management outfit T. Rowe Price, thinks the asset class is still finding its sea legs.  "It's early days,” Stromberg told the Baltimore Business Journal in an interview when asked if “T. Rowe Price will ever start investing in cryptocurrencies.” “We have some research going on around it,” the CEO added. “Some companies, just really a handful, have tried to put together products where one can buy and own crypto-related currencies.” So far, a crypto-free strategy is working for Stromberg. Quarter one of this year was a great one for T. Rowe Price. The firm notched $1.52 trillion in assets under management, and saw its profits rise by over 100%, the Baltimore Business Journal article detailed.  A number of avenues exist for investing directly in cryptocurrencies. A growing numb...

A crazy few hours sees volatility return, with spot buyers noticeably in charge over leveraged traders. Bitcoin ( BTC ) retook $57,000 on April 30 as a surprise bullish end to month took traders by surprise. BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView $4.2 billion expiry gives way to big Bitcoin gains Data from  Cointelegraph Markets Pro and Tradingview  showed BTC/USD climbing 5% in hours on Friday to come within inches of a green monthly close for April. At press time, $57,000 still formed a focus, with the pair needing to clinch $58,800 to avoid April's monthly candle turning red. On social media, traders pointed to this month's $4.2 billion options expiry being out of the way and thus allowing Bitcoin room to move.  As Cointelegraph often reports, expiry events tend to pressure price beforehand, but post factum relief rallies differ considerably in strength, sometimes not appearing at all. So much for "red April" For Lex Moskovski, C...

Virtual experiences are becoming the "new norm" as Decentral Games expands their virtual nightlife offerings. Virtual land governance DAO Decentral Games is continuing to expand into the metaverse nightlife space with the launch of an Atari-branded casino.  The casino will be the third such gambling establishment for the DAO, which purchases land in virtual worlds like Decentraland and opens digital businesses. Using brand assets from Atari, the provably-fair games are designed to be “nostalgia-inducting,” per a press release from Decentral Games. Gamers can play with a wide range of tokens, including DAI, ETH, and Decentraland’s MANA, and a “gaming mining” program is also in effect that rewards gamblers with Decentral Games’ governance token, $DG. Decentral Games — which previously built a number of games for Decentraland on a whitelabel basis before setting out as an enterprise DAO — is expanding into the metaverse nightlife space rapidly. Last week, they announced a d...

The Bank of England's CBDC-related job listings range from solution architect to senior manager. The United Kingdom’s central bank, the Bank of England, or BoE, still maintains that it is unsure on a path forward regarding a central bank digital currency, although the entity is looking to hire at least seven CBDC-related job positions.  The job listings recently surfaced on the BoE’s job posting website. One such position searches for a “Stakeholder Analyst - Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).” As per the site, the bank is also searching for a project analyst, a solution architect, a technology analyst, a senior manager, and a senior enterprise architect — all CBDC-related, as well as a senior CBDC policy analyst. The site posted the listings on Tuesday and Wednesday. “Like many other central banks, the Bank of England is actively exploring whether it should develop and issue a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC),” said the page for the stakeholder analyst job listing. “...

The $3 billion USDC influx puts the total supply of the stablecoin at around $14,4 billion, reaching over a quarter of Tether's market cap. More USD Coin ( USDC ) was printed on April 30 than at any time in the dollar-backed stablecoin’s existence, as just over $3 billion was minted in one fell swoop. New USD Coins are minted whenever a customer exchanges their U.S dollars for the stablecoin, and Friday’s influx amounted to over 26% of its market cap at the time. The sudden arrival of $3 billion worth of USDC into the cryptocurrency market coincides with a surging altcoin market, evidenced by Bitcoin’s ( BTC ) descent to its lowest market cap dominance in two and a half years. Bitcoin’s dominance of 47.79% on Friday was the lowest since August 2018, as Ethereum ( ETH ), Binance Smart Chain (BSC), Cardano ( ADA ) and others saw their own market cap presence swell massively since the turn of the year. In early January, Bitcoin’s dominance was perched at over 70%, and has been on...

New figures show certain revenue sectors boomed by over 50% in Q1 2021 compared to the same quarter last year. MicroStrategy, the company which owns over 91,000 Bitcoin ( BTC ), saw an astounding surge in revenues in Q1, its latest figures confirm. In a press release on April 30, CEO Michael Saylor revealed that the company's success had gone far beyond its Bitcoin profits. Saylor: Hodling BTC creates "substantial value" MicroStrategy has continued to hit the headlines for its flatly bullish position on Bitcoin and its future, adding to its reserves regardless of sentiment or price.  Its advocacy has seemed to endear it to a new sector of clientele — nine months after beginning to convert its cash reserves to BTC, sales of its products and services have also boomed. "Product licenses and subscription services revenues for the first quarter of 2021 were $31.3 million, a 52.3% increase, or a 49.8% increase on a non-GAAP constant currency basis, compared to the...

More taxes may cause short-term volatility, “but long term, you may see more demand for DeFi applications and other collateralized use cases.” There are often multiple causes for an asset’s sharp decline, but Bitcoin’s ( BTC ) 10% “nosedive,” which took place on April 22, may be blamed on the Biden Administration’s reported plan to tax capital gains at double the current rate on America’s wealthiest.  Bitcoin is habitually volatile, so one probably shouldn’t read too much into a double-digit swoon in any given week, but this might be as good a place as any to reflect upon the possible impact of the United States capital gains taxes, and taxes in general, upon the future growth of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. Could it hinder long-term adoption? If so, in what ways? Will the Biden plan even reach fruition, given the vagaries of U.S. politics? How, too, does one explain the mini-market eruption in the face of the mere possibility of more taxes in a single nation? W...

The Chinese crypto exchange says funds are “SAFU” and that the emergency maintenance could take up to two weeks. Cryptocurrency exchange platform Hotbit has shut down all of its services after an attempted cyberattack on Thursday. “Hotbit just suffered a serious cyber-attack starting around 08:00 PM UTC, April 29, 2021, which led to the paralyzation of a number of some basic services,” a notice on the platform’s website reads. The hackers were reportedly unsuccessful in gaining access to Hotbit’s wallets but did manage to compromise the platform’s user database. Thus, the Hotbit team has advised customers to disregard any communication from entities claiming to be representatives of the exchange. With all normal operations currently paused during the ongoing maintenance, Hotbit also revealed that pending trading orders are canceled to prevent losses. Also, the exchange promised to bear any losses stemming from exchange-traded funds listed on its platform during the duration of th...

Some of skew's institutional clients include One River Asset Management and Susquehanna International Group. United States’ cryptocurrency giant Coinbase has acquired  institutional-grade blockchain data analytics platform skew. Greg Tusar, vice president of institutional products at Coinbase, announced the news Friday, stating that the new acquisition will help customers make more informed trading decisions using real-time data analytics. “We’re excited to integrate skew’s data analytics platform with Coinbase Prime, allowing our customers to track cryptocurrency spot and derivatives markets in real-time. With skew, we’ll arm professional traders with dynamic, aggregated market data, presented in a highly actionable format, all within our market leading prime brokerage,” Tusar noted. The acquisition is part of Coinbase's broader strategy to serve institutional clients. According to Tusar, the exchange will continue to serve skew’s institutional customers, who include One...

The arrested siblings of the missing Thodex CEO reportedly own millions of dollars worth of crypto. Turkish authorities are progressing with an investigation into local cryptocurrency exchange Thodex, which  abruptly halted trading last week. On Thursday, a Turkish court jailed six suspects pending trial, including siblings of the missing CEO and senior company employees, Reuters reported . As part of a probe, Interpol reportedly issued a red notice for Thodex CEO and founder Faruk Fatih Özer, who had reportedly flown to Albania. “When he is caught with the red notice, we have extradition agreements with a large part of these countries. God willing he will be caught and he will be returned,” Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said. Local authorities detained over 83 individuals suspected to be involved in the case amid growing concerns that Thodex was a scam after the platform halted money withdrawals. Some suspects indicated that Özer’s siblings — Güven Özer and Serap Özer —...

Uzbekistan wants to lift its ban on cryptocurrency purchases after barring residents from buying crypto in 2019. A major governmental agency in Uzbekistan seems to be rethinking its stance on cryptocurrencies. The National Agency for Project Management under the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan, or NAFT, issued  an official document proposing several amendments to licensing procedures for crypto trading. NAFT proposed to officially allow local residents to conduct “all types of crypto exchange trades involving crypto assets and tokens in exchange for the national currency and the foreign currency.” The authority stressed that crypto investors would trade and invest at their own risk. The proposal also aims to establish processes for the registration, issuance and circulation of digital assets, authorizing licensed crypto companies in Uzbekistan to issue their own tokens. According to official records, the proposed amendments are open to discussion until May 14, 2021. T...

European financial institutions are using pilots to make a case for the digital euro. It turns out the 100 million euro digital bond issued by the European Investment Bank earlier this week was actually a trial of a European central bank-issued digital currency, or CBDC. An April 28 announcement from France’s central bank, Banque de France, revealed the digital bond was settled using a CBDC on a blockchain. The two year-bond was issued on the Ethereum public blockchain on April 27 and settled the following day, with a maturity date of April 28, 2023. The sale was led by Goldman Sachs, Santander and Société Générale. “From a technological standpoint, the experiment required the development and deployment of smart contracts under secured conditions, so that the Banque de France could issue and control the circulation of CBDC tokens and so that CBDC transfer occurred simultaneously with the delivery of securities tokens to the investors’ portfolio,” Banque de France said. The bank...

The official's conduct in past litigation was brought into question by a U.S. District court judge. The United States Securities and Exchange Commission new enforcement chief, Alex Oh, has resigned from her position with the Securities and Exchange Commission just days after taking the role. According to an official SEC announcement , Oh stepped down for personal reasons. However, in Oh’s resignation letter to Chairman Gary Gensler — as seen by Bloomberg — the former enforcement chief revealed she was stepping down to avoid becoming a distraction, as she deals with controversies arising from a case she worked in the past. Oh was previously a partner at the Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison private law practice, where she represented, among others, oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp. The case in question reportedly relates to Oh’s defense of Exxon against allegations that the firm had supported the torture and murder of Indonesian villagers. Oh’s conduct during the litigati...

Intercontinental Exchange has sold its 1.4% stake in Coinbase to reduce the company’s debt. Intercontinental Exchange, the operator of the New York Stock Exchange and the owner of Bakkt digital asset platform, has sold its 1.4% stake in the newly Nasdaq-listed cryptocurrency firm Coinbase. Announcing the news Thursday on a financial results call for the first quarter of 2021, ICE chief financial officer Scott Hill said that the company sold its Coinbase stake for $1.2 billion. The executive noted that the sale generated approximately $900 million net after taxes. Hill said that the proceeds were used to reduce ICE’s debt at the end of the first quarter. He noted that the company’s pro forma leverage, or total indebtedness rate, would have been closer to 3.6x compared to 4.2x when ICE acquired mortgage-focused software company Ellie Mae in September 2020. “We are definitely a bit ahead of schedule, been paying down debt faster than we sort of expected when we started the deal. I ...

High costs and transactions prioritized by gas fees often make using DeFi protocols challenging to say the least. Does it really need to be this difficult? Decentralized exchanges have indelibly changed the way that cryptocurrencies are traded. But in the grand scheme of things, the technology that’s driving these platforms is relatively young… meaning it’s inevitable that teething problems have emerged. Some of the heavy hitters that dominate the market at present are known as non-orderbook markets. While it’s tantalizing and somewhat romantic that these platforms are controlled purely by supply and demand, it often results in some unexpected downsides. There’s one glaring disadvantage that we don’t need to mention too extensively — high swap fees. We currently live in a world where it can cost hundreds of dollars to execute a small number of seemingly straightforward transactions on the best-known decentralized finance protocols. For the DeFi sector’s true potential to shine, th...

Australia’s senate committee on technology and finance wants lawmakers to establish a national blockchain land registry. An Australian senate committee has published a report calling for a blockchain-based national land registry, better clarity over laws relating to smart contracts, and continued efforts to establish international standards for DLT. The Select Committee on Australia as a Technology and Financial Centre's second interim report offers 23 recommendations spanning blockchain, consumer data, and corporate taxation. Five recommendations deal specifically with blockchain and digital assets, including that the Council of Financial Regulators Cyber Working Group takes into account international data standards. The committee recommended that National Cabinet consider supporting a blockchain-powered national land registr y as a pilot project for Commonwealth-State cooperation on “RegTech’ to highlight ways to streamline administrative processes in both the public and pr...

China is reportedly paying more attention to the crypto mining sector, amid concerns of its growing carbon footprint. China’s crypto mining operations may be set for stricter supervision in the future, with the Government reportedly concerned about the energy consumption of Bitcoin mining in particular. Beijing sent an “emergency notice” to conduct checks on data centres involved in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency mining operations on April 27, which was reportedly met with some panic in China. However Chinese columnist Colin Wu or Wu Blockchain on Twitter, was quick to downplay fears of how this could impact Chinese Bitcoin miners in the short term, noting that: “This caused some panic in China. However, the Chinese government said it was only conducting an investigation. Data centers are difficult to use for Bitcoin mining, and are mainly used for ETH Filecoin.” According to Chinese state media PengPai (accessed via translation), the “emergency notice” was routine work for ...

Sherlock will provide fundamental and technical analysis for fund managers and investors. Asset management giant Fidelity is delving deeper into the digital asset space with the announcement of an analytics platform called Sherlock. In an announcement on April 29, Fidelity Investments — which has $10 trillion assets under management — unveiled a digital assets data and analytics solution to assist institutional investors and fund managers. The platform, dubbed Sherlock, will be similar to Bloomberg’s Terminal and will collate data on fundamental and technical analysis, blockchain data, market data, social sentiment analysis, and industry news into one portal. It will include research on crypto assets from some of the leading institutional data providers, in addition to unique analytics to help investors evaluate the market, according to the announcement . The new platform will compete against existing solutions from companies such as Messari which was launched in 2018 to provide ...

SEC filings show that America’s oldest bank has attributed the underperformance of its small-cap ETF to failing to buy MicroStrategy shares after the firm invested heavily in BTC. U.S.-based financial institution BNY Mellon, the world’s largest custodian bank and asset servicing company, states that the recent performance of one of its exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, was significantly impacted by its lack of exposure to companies investing in Bitcoin. The BNY Mellon Opportunistic Small Cap Fund (DSCVX) gained 35% from September 1, 2020, through February 28, 2021, underperforming its benchmark, the Russell 2000 Index — which produced roughly 41.7% over the same period. Filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission indicate the firm laments not purchasing shares in leading business intelligence firm MicroStrategy (MSTR) — which invested billions into Bitcoin last year, holdings that have since grown to more than $4.8 billion. The filings state: “Fund performance was hurt...

After accidentally unlocking its own hash rate limiter in a driver update, Nvidia has announced it will lock new cards again by reducing the mining capacity by 50%. Graphics card giant Nvidia is quietly reintroducing a hash rate limiter on its RTX 3060 series graphics cards in an effort to disincentivize cryptocurrency miners. On April 29 the company issued the GeForce 466.27 driver that reintroduces RTX 3060 cryptomining limiter. GeForce 466.27 driver release notes, Source: Nvidia According to sources reported by computer news site Videocardz , Nvidia will release the new ‘Lite Hash Rate’ models in mid-May which will be almost identical to previous versions of the same cards. The gaming giant had originally limited the hash on the previous models, reducing mining performance by 50%. Matt Wuebbling , head of global GeForce marketing at Nvidia, said in a blog post in February: “We designed GeForce GPUs for gamers, and gamers are clamoring for more.” Hackers first came up wi...

The collaboration will seek investments in the gaming and blockchain industry. Gaming-focused venture capital fund Bitkraft Ventures has partnered with crypto industry research firm Delphi Digital in order to invest in related projects. The collaboration, announced on April 29, will allow Bitkraft to increase its focus on investments in firms that use blockchain technology in addition to crypto assets and economics. Bitkraft was founded in 2015 and has more than $400 million in assets under management with more than 50 investments in companies such as Epic Games, BitFry, and Fuze TV. In August 2020, the company raised $165 million to invest in digital gaming and e-sports and it is now betting big on crypto and blockchain. Founded in 2018, Delphi Digital is an institutional-grade research firm focused exclusively on crypto and digital assets. The two companies intend to combine their collective expertise in gaming, e-sports, digital entertainment, crypto technology, and the crypt...

Huobi tackles the institutional market, you can now own an NFT of basketball star Yao Ming drinking red wine, and China’s digital yuan starts to target the private sector Huobi Asset Management is looking to be the Grayscale of Asia with the launch of four cryptocurrency related tracker funds . The funds include a Bitcoin Fund, an Ethereum fund, a multi-asset basket of digital currencies, and a private equity fund for mining businesses. The aim is clearly to entice major institutional investors into the space with a product that feels familiar. The fund and asset management company is set up in Hong Kong, even though Huobi maintains several offices within the mainland. Huobi is China’s most established exchange and ranks second on the global liquidity rankings behind Binance. DOGEmania continues High volumes and volatility continued on the world’s most popular memecoin. On April 28th, searches on WeChat for the Chinese version of ‘Dog-coin’ were up over 65% from the previous day. S...

Subject to regulatory approval, the asset manager should convert its Bitcoin trust to an ETF starting next week. After putting the matter to a vote amongst the unitholders of its Bitcoin trust, Toronto-based investment manager Ninepoint Partners has filed its final prospectus for a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund. According to an announcement from Ninepoint today, the securities regulatory authorities in each of the 10 provinces and 3 territories of Canada have acknowledged receipt for its application to establish a Bitcoin ( BTC ) exchange-traded fund, or ETF. The firm said in March it would allow its unitholders to vote on whether to convert its existing BTC trust to a Bitcoin ETF on the Toronto Stock Exchange, or TSX. Ninepoint is aiming for the BTC trust to be converted to a Bitcoin ETF starting next Thursday, May 6, subject to regulatory and stock exchange approvals. Should the application be successful, the Ninepoint Bitcoin ETF would trade on the TSX under the ticker symbols u...