Kevin Reynolds

The record comes as traders analysts have described institutional investors’ interest in bitcoin as growing “at a staggering pace.” Source link

Dapper Labs, responsible for high-flying digital collectables such as NBA Top Shots and CryptoKitties, is raising funds that should net the firm more than $250 million at a valuation of about $2 billion, according to The Block, which cited sources familiar with the deal. Source link

Decentralized finance protocols (DeFi) Cream Finance and Alpha Finance were victims of one of the largest flash loan attacks ever Saturday morning resulting in a loss of funds totaling $37.5 million, according to transaction details on Etherscan. Two hours later Cream said its contracts were “functioning as normal” and markets had been enabled. Alpha Finance then posted its own announcement, saying its Alpha Homora V2 product as the root cause. They confirmed that they’re working with DeFi guru Andre Cronje and Cream Finance to investigate the incident, and that the loophole had been fixed. They also said that they “have a […]

Morgan Stanley already has a nearly 11% stake in the bitcoin-laden business intelligence company MicroStrategy. Source link

Cathie Wood’s ARK Investment Management increased its holdings of the Grayscale Bitcoin Investment Trust (GBTC) by 2.14 million shares in the fourth quarter of 2020, bringing its holdings of the market-leading institutional bitcoin investment vehicle to 7.31 million shares. Source link

The cryptocurrency was more valuable than all but seven of the world’s publicly traded companies. Source link

In a run reminiscent of bitcoin’s stunning climb in early January, the price of leading cryptocurrency blew past $47,000 for the first time ever on Monday, driven by Tesla’s announcement that it had bought $1.5 billion of bitcoin. UPDATE (Feb. 8, 23:35 UTC): Updates to add bitcoin passed $46k for the first time. Source link

BTC is back within striking distance of its all-time high set early last month. Source link

Coinbase announced last month it had confidentially submitted a draft registration statement with the SEC. Source link

Planned investments “will include holding tokens directly as well as equity in early-stage blockchain-related projects.” Source link

The price of ether (ETH), the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain network, soared to record levels on Sunday. Source link

The session will focus on the diminishing role of cash and the emergence of central bank digital currencies, moves accelerated by the pandemic. Source link

“Not owning any Bitcoin has been a massive mistake, and we expect that will continue to be true,” the famed value investor wrote to clients. Source link

President Joe Biden has frozen all agency rulemaking, including former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s controversial proposal on “unhosted wallets,” according to a prominent cryptocurrency lawyer. The story is developing and will be updated. Source link

The agreement is subject to creditor acceptance. Source link

Clients residing outside the U.S. will be unaffected. Source link

Deltec, Tether’s Bahamas-based bank, announced Thursday it was investing customer funds in bitcoin. The announcement, made by Deltec Bank & Trust Chief Investment Officer Hugo Rogers during a year-in-review video, raises new questions about whether the dollar-pegged USDT stablecoin, which is in theory backed by cash and “cash equivalents,” as well as “other assets and receivables made by loans,” is actually backed in any way by bitcoin. “We bought bitcoin for our clients at about $9,300 so that worked very well through 2020 and we expect it to continue working well in 2021 as the printing presses continue to run hot,” […]

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey took to (where else?) Twitter to ask the question “Was this correct?” regarding his company’s decision to ban U.S. President Donald Trump from the platform following last week’s attack on the Capitol. After that opening expression of doubt, he proceeded to answer that yes, it was. UPDATE (Jan. 14, 02:00 UTC): Adds more from Dorsey’s tweet thread and deplatforming context. Source link

Gary Gensler, a Washington and Wall Street veteran who has closely studied the cryptocurrency field, is expected to be named chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the next several days by President-elect Joe Biden, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Wednesday. The story is developing and will be updated. Source link

The tech giant had reportedly given the service 24 hours to address its concerns. Source link

The platform, which mainly caters to “social” or beginner traders, raised its required deposit level to $1,000 from $200. Source link

While a bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) would be a long-term positive, in the short term it could hurt the price of the leading cryptocurrency as it would draw institutional money from the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), currently the only way for some on Wall Street to gain exposure to bitcoin, JPMorgan analysts wrote in a report. Source link

Morgan Stanley now owns 792,627 shares in the company best known for using its treasury funds to load up on bitcoin. Source link

It supersedes the $200,000 option on Deribit as the maximum one can wager. Source link

A deal could be announced as soon as next week, the report said. Source link

The incredible ride that has been the price of bitcoin this year hit back-to-back milestones Wednesday as the leading cryptocurrency blasted past $36,000 for the first time ever, then a little over three hours later briefly crossed $37,000. UPDATE (Jan. 5, 20:23 UTC): Adds possible reason for bitcoin rally.UPDATE (Jan. 6, 00:05 UTC): Adds that bitcoin hit $37,000. Source link

Voyager said it will suspend trading in XRP, effective Monday, Jan. 18, at 12:00 p.m. New York time. Source link

The homepage of leading cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is currently inaccessible, and the leading cryptocurrency exchange tweeted that it’s experiencing “connectivity issues” on both the website and mobile app. The story is developing and will be updated as more information is available. Source link

Cryptocurrency media and events platform CoinDesk, which owns this news service, Tuesday announced it has purchased TradeBlock, the world’s leading crypto index provider. With the purchase, CoinDesk said it’s positioned to be the leading source of crypto news, information and data for the rapidly growing sector which has seen a flood of interest and investment from financial companies. In the year just closed, the price of bitcoin, the leading cryptocurrency, rose more than 300%, driven largely by institutional investors. ”We will be crypto investors’ go-to destination for unified media, events, research, pricing and data,” Kevin Worth, CoinDesk CEO, said in a […]

The price of dogecoin has soared 150% since the start of the new year since an adult star tweeted that she’s been an investor since 2014. Source link

The native currency of the Ethereum network hit a nearly three-year high of $819.65 before settling back to $810. Source link

Following a torrid December in which the price of bitcoin rose $10,000, three days into the new year it’s up another $5,000. Source link

The folks over at Deribit apparently think the recent explosion in the price of bitcoin (BTC) from $20,000 to around $32,000 in just over a month, including a 10% rise in the last 24 hours, merits offering traders the ability to bet on a rally to $200,000 by late December. Source link

On Nov. 30, bitcoin breeched a nearly three-year high of $19,793. Since then the cryptocurrency has gained more than $10,000. Source link

While Bittrex gave no reason for the removals, exchanges around the world have been moving to delist coins that seek to hide the activity of their users. Source link

“I would expect to see bitcoin charge past $30,000 as we enter the new year,” said one market observer. Source link

Bitcoin custodian firm BitGo agreed to pay $93,830 in a settlement pact with the U.S. Treasury over 183 “apparent violations” of multiple sanctions programs. Source link

Institutional investors are perceived to be driving this record-setting run. Source link

The Times’ data included pay details for most of Coinbase’s roughly 830 employees at the end of 2018. Source link

The announcement came hours after Coinbase and OKCoin took similar actions. Source link

The crypto trading/investment management platform is also considering the possibility of a merger with a special purpose acquisition company. Source link

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said it obtained an order imposing an asset freeze and other emergency relief against Virgil Capital LLC and its affiliated companies in connection with an alleged securities fraud relating to Virgil Capital’s flagship cryptocurrency trading fund, Virgil Sigma Fund LP. Source link

Nasdaq-listed Marathon Patent Group, one of the largest enterprise bitcoin mining companies in North America, said it’s entered into a contract with Bitmain to purchase 70,000 Antminer S-19 ASIC miners for $170 million, more than tripling the size of Marathon’s fleet. This story is developing and will be updated. Source link

After tearing through $27,000 for the first time ever only a few hours before, the price of bitcoin briefly surged past $28,000 Sunday morning as the leading cryptocurrency’s recent meteoric rise continues. BTC’s market value now exceeds $500 billion. Source link

CME Group’s recent announcement that it will launch ether (ETH) futures on Feb. 8, 2021, is the “writing on the wall” that institutions will being buying the cryptocurrency next year, according to a pair of tweets by Ryan Watkins, an analyst at crypto data provider Messari. Source link

After hitting $25,000 on Dec. 25 and $26,000 on Dec. 26, quite naturally the price of bitcoin (BTC) soared past $27,000 early on Dec. 27 as the leading cryptocurrency’s recent meteoric rise continues. Source link

A side effect of the Fed’s medicine for the pandemic-stricken U.S. economy was to create conditions ideal for the rise of cryptocurrencies. Source link

The leading cryptocurrency set another all-time high this month. Source link

Non-U.S. clients can still trade the token but need to pre-fund all short trades, the report said. Source link

The folks at Deribit apparently think betting on a $100,000 bitcoin (BTC) price is so earlier-this-month because on Friday, mere hours before the leading cryptocurrency hit $25,000 for the first time, the crypto derivatives exchange announced contracts on $120,000 BTC with $140,000 coming soon. Source link

Digital currencies may challenge and someday could make redundant the SWIFT global banking payment system, according to a Central Bank of Russia official, Russia Today reported. Read more: Bank of Russia Chair: Digital Ruble Is No Threat to Banks Source link

The event happened just a week after the leading cryptocurrency broke $24k. Source link

Bitstamp is the first major U.S.-based crypto exchange to respond to the SEC lawsuit against Ripple. Source link

The news comes a day after former Chairman Jay Clayton announced that yesterday was his last day. Source link

Clayton announced in November he would be leaving by the end of the year but hadn’t specified a date. Source link

The firm’s bitcoin AUM rose by more than $3 billion in a week. Source link

Fidelity Investments CEO Abby Johnson says the mutual fund giant’s custody business around bitcoin has been “incredibly successful” and has a “tremendous pipeline.” In an interview with Barron’s, Johnson noted that developments in the sector are moving so rapidly it’s hard to keep track of them all and said that things that have long been talked about in the sector are now starting to become reality. The interview with Johnson can be watched here and start at the 22:30 mark. Source link

No matter how it looks, swims or quacks, if the law says it ain’t a duck, then it ain’t one – The Michael Saylor Guide to Waterfowl Identification. No, to our knowledge, Saylor, CEO of business intelligence firm MicroStrategy, has not written any such guide. However, if he did so, one can imagine an entry like this upending the famous “duck test” of observed reality that the poet James Whitcomb Riley is believed to have coined.  It certainly captures the letter-of-the-law reasoning Saylor used on Twitter Friday evening to dismiss widespread speculation that his company’s recent massive purchases of bitcoin have turned […]

Trading app Robinhood has chosen Goldman Sachs to lead the way for an initial stock offering which could come in 2021 and value the trading app firm at more than $20 billion, people familiar with the matter told the N.Y. Post. The story is developing and will be updated as more information is known. Source link

Trading app Robinhood has chosen Goldman Sachs to lead the way for an initial stock offering which could come in 2021 and value the trading app firm at more than $20 billion, people familiar with the matter told the N.Y. Post. The story is developing and will be updated as more information is known. Source link

About 65% of users would use bitcoin as a currency at PayPal’s 28 million merchants. Source link

Stablecoins could “threaten financial security” if widely adopted, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said in an article published Monday in magazine L’ENA hors les murs. In the piece, Lagarde makes a bullish case for a digital euro while throwing shade at potential rivals such as cryptocurrencies and stablecoins – digital assets the values of which are pegged to fiat currencies. Lagarde said the main risk of cryptocurrencies is a feature that crypto proponents consider a plus, namely that cryptos rely purely on technology and that there is no identifiable issuer or claim. As a result, Lagarde said, cryptocurrencies suffer from a […]

Hoptner comes from Borse Stuttgart GmbH and Euwax AG, where he has been CEO since 2018. Source link

Leading cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, on a day when bitcoin surpassed its all time high, said it’s experiencing delays. processing BTC withdrawals due to Bitcoin network congestion. Story is developing and will be updated when more information is known. Source link

Guggenheim Funds Trust filed an amendment with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to allow its $5 billion Macro Opportunities Fund gain exposure to bitcoin by investing up to 10% of the fund’s net asset value in the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC). Source link

Yearn is “joining forces” with market coverage provider Cover, capping a busy week for the decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol., Source link

Coinbase is experiencing another outage of its website and mobile apps, a reoccurrence of a problem that seems to plague the leading cryptocurrency exchange whenever bitcoin’s price and volume spike. This comes on the heels of issues yesterday that affected Coinbase and a large swath of the internet when cloud provider AWS experienced outages. As other sites are also still reporting issues, it’s possible Coinbase’s problems are still being caused by the AWS troubles. Coinbase has suffered a number of outages during busy trading periods this year including most recently on Nov. 16. The most recent outage comes as bitcoin (BTC) […]

Cryptocurrency trading platform liquid.com and crypto mining firm NiceHash were two of at least six firms that had control of their domains briefly transferred to malicious actors last week after employees at GoDaddy, the world’s largest domain registrar, were again tricked by fraudsters, KrebsOnSecurity reported. Source link

KuCoin, the Singapore-headquartered digital asset exchange that was hacked to the tune of $281 million in September, said it’s restored the deposit and withdrawal services of all tokens  as of Sunday. KuCoin’s $281 million security breach is among the largest in cryptocurrency history. One or more hackers obtained the private keys to the centralized exchange’s hot wallets, gaining control over vast quantities of bitcoin, ether, tron, XRP, stellar lumens and various ERC-20 tokens, among others. KuCoin immediately moved to freeze all wallets and disable services.  Source link

Cryptocurrency investigation firm Chainalysis expects to raise $100 million venture capital at a $1 billion valuation as early as next week, the company told Forbes. The Series C is being led by VC newcomer Addition with participation expected from Accel, Benchmark and Ribbit, Forbes reported. Those three firms have all invested in earlier Chainalysis rounds. Once closed, the raise will vault Chainalysis, a blockchain analysis firm that builds crypto tracing tools for governments and exchanges, into cryptocurrency unicorn status. Only a handful of crypto firms have notched $1 billion plus valuation. None have done it from the crypto tracing niche before. […]

Coinbase has suffered a number of outages during busy trading periods this year including most recently on Oct. 27. Source link

Ray Dalio, the founder and co-chairman of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund, said he sees three main problems with bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies that will limit their future, including that governments will “outlaw” them should they start to become “material.” In an interview with Yahoo Finance, Dalio said he expects more digitized versions of government-issued currencies in the future than bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for three reasons: “I don’t think digital currencies will succeed in the way people hope they would,” Dalio said. “Would I prefer bitcoin to gold? No,” Dalio said. Source link

Crypto services provider Anchorage said it received third-party certification that the controls supporting its financial reporting and operations are adequately secure. The SOC 1 Type 1 report is granted after an independent third-party audit of a company’s internal systems and controls supporting client financial reporting, in addition to exclusive control of private keys. Achieving SOC 1 Type 1 certification is a milestone for San Francisco-based Anchorage, which has spent much of the past two years building out its services. In October 2019 it added a governance platform for on-chain voting, months after introducing Stellar inflation and Tezos staking (called “baking”) to clients holding either crypto […]

Privacy-centric blockchain network Grin (GRIN) is undergoing a 51% attack, an event in which a miner (or miners) acquires more than 50% of the network’s mining hash power and takes control, according to a notice at the bottom of the Grin protocol’s website.   Source link

The seizure on Tuesday, tied to the Silk Road marketplace, is reported to be the largest the U.S. has ever effected. Source link

The U.S. District Court of Colorado entered a judgment on behalf of the Commodity Futures and Exchange Commission (CFTC) against a Ponzi scammer on claims he and his company raised half a million dollars for cryptocurrency investments, which instead went to personal uses, the CFTC announced Wednesday. Source link

The U.S. Department of Justice announced Wednesday the seizure of $24 million in cryptocurrency after a request from Brazilian police. Source link

Eris Clearing LLC, the clearing arm of Eris Exchange, has won the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s blessing to provide clearing services for fully collateralized swaps in addition to its existing business of clearing virtual currency products. Source link

Maggie Valentine was awarded the grant to help make bitcoin wallets usable by anyone. Source link

The Australian central bank announced Monday it’s partnering with Commonwealth Bank, National Australia Bank, Perpetual and ConsenSys Software to explore the possible use and implications of a wholesale form of central bank digital currency (CBDC) using distributed ledger technology (DLT). Source link

The number of Robinhood-related emails for sale outnumber those for other brokerages by about 5-to-1, the report says. Source link

Using the airport’s computers allowed the miner to avoid the cost of electricity needed to mind crypto, the report said. Source link

European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde Sunday announced an ECB survey of public opinion regarding the issuance of a digital euro, implying the central bank is considering a retail central bank digital currency (CBDC), not just one intended for use between banks, which would represent a much more profound change in the way finance works, according to Noelle Acheson, CoinDesk’s director of research. Source link

The top officers of HDR, the parent company of crypto trading platform BitMEX, which has been charged with facilitating unregistered trading and other violations, systematically looted more than $440 million from HDR accounts, a civil lawsuit claims. Source link

U.S. banks are looking at ways to handle crypto adoption in the wake of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s (OCC) July decision to allow banks to provide custody for cryptocurrencies, Acting Comptroller Brian Brooks said in a podcast. That may mean partnering with or purchasing custodians, he said. Source link

The approval, if made final, opens the door for the new bank to custody cryptocurrencies. Source link

Ken Kurson, a board member of payments firm Ripple and the co-founder of cryptocurrency website Modern Consensus, was arrested Friday and charged with cyberstalking in connection with his divorce, the New York Times reported.  Kurson, who is a close friend of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is accused of sending threatening messages to several people, the Times said. There is also evidence Kurson engaged in installing software on someone’s computer to monitor keystrokes, and reporting false accusations to someone’s employer, the complaint reads, according to the Times. The accusations reportedly came to light during a routine background check of Kurson […]

The company had failed to file any reports with the commission since Dec. 31, 2019. Source link

The news comes a day after the payments giant confirmed it’s entering the cryptocurrency market. Source link

U.S. administration officials and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi broached the possibility of passing the pandemic-relief package after the Nov. 3 election, indicating that a deal might not be able to be reached before then, the Wall Street Journal reported. Source link

Why this matters to the crypto world: 1. Because the price of bitcoin and equities have been strongly correlated in recent months. Because the stimulus package would be a boost for stock markets, it should also be good for the price of cryptocurrencies. 2. Crypto investors have been betting all year that the flood of government and central bank spending to fight the pandemic-caused economic slowdown will eventually lead to inflation, which would also be beneficial for cryptocurrencies. 3. All the stimulus is calling into question the independence of the U.S. Federal Reserve, which in the interest of preventing economic ruin […]