Three of Japan’s largest banks are among major players joining a study group looking at developing a digital payment system that may address concerns about cryptocurrencies. Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), Mizuho Financial Group, and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group – institutions that control more than $6.6 trillion in assets between […]
Paddy Baker
38 posts
London-listed Argo reported a dip in May revenue, possibly as a result of the bitcoin halving event. Per the mining firm’s monthly operational update, monthly mining margins – revenue minus operating costs – was roughly 34% in May, down from 39% in April. Overall, the company mined 252 bitcoin (~$2.4 million […]
Coincheck has fallen victim to a data breach after attackers accessed one of its domain name accounts and used it to impersonate the cryptocurrency exchange. The Japanese firm – which fell victim to possibly the largest crypto hack in history in 2018 – said Tuesday that an unknown third party […]
The head of Venezuela’s cryptocurrency initiative, the petro, is wanted by the U.S government on charges of corruption and links to the narcotics trade. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) added Joselit Ramirez Camacho to its Most Wanted List on Monday, accusing him of a number of violations related to international […]
Private Swiss bank Maerki Baumann’s new crypto trading service shows there’s a growing market for providing premium execution for an institutional or wealthy clientele. The entity promised its new crypto trading and custody service would provide clients with the best trading experience in a blog post last week. “The trading […]
Receiving regulator approval to operate in Gibraltar is anything but easy, crypto derivatives exchange ZUBR told CoinDesk. ZUBR, which began trading in March, said Wednesday it had received in-principle approval from the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission (GFSC) as a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) provider. The approval is on the condition […]
The Stellar Development Fund (SDF) has loaned micropayments firm SatoshiPay $550,000 in XLM tokens after the coronavirus pandemic put the kibosh on its Series A funding round. Under lockdown in his Berlin flat, SatoshiPay CEO Meinhard Benn told CoinDesk via Google hangout the Series A, which was to have been […]
A federal court has frozen all funds raised in a $9 million token sale the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has accused of being fraudulent. In a filing earlier this month, the U.S. District Court sitting in Austin, Texas, froze the assets of the individuals and entities believed to have […]
Employers struggling to meet the conditions set by the U.S. government’s loan program may find salvation in an unlikely place: a new bitcoin 401(k) plan from Bitwage. Calling the product a world first, the crypto payroll company said Tuesday it had successfully trialed its bitcoin 401(k) employee pension account and […]
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has ordered the government to draw up a renewed national approach for the emerging crypto industry. Chairing Iran’s economic coordination headquarters – a seminar for the national economic strategy – earlier this week, Rouhani told officials from the Central Bank of Iran (CBI), energy department and […]
Bittrex really didn’t want to get involved in the war that’s currently raging within the Steem community. Richie Lai, co-founder of the U.S.-based crypto exchange, posted an announcement late on Wednesday saying his firm would return – reluctantly, it seems – million of dollars worth of disputed cryptocurrency back to […]
Block.one is about to begin wielding its juggernaut EOS allocation in the ecosystem’s governance, but the multi-billion-dollar developer house has some pre-requisites. In a note last Friday, the Cayman Island-based company, which controls 100 million EOS tokens, just under 10% of the current total supply, outlined the criteria it would […]
The Steem blockchain has just split, or hard forked, controversially seizing the tokens of key community members who opposed TRON’s recent acquisition of the ecosystem’s biggest dapp, Steemit. At 14:00 UTC on Tuesday, Steem implemented hard fork 0.23, significantly codenamed “New Steem,” shunting some of the former Steem “witnesses” – […]
A mobile subsidiary of Jack Dorsey’s payments company Square now allows users to make automatic purchases of bitcoin. Dorsey said on Twitter – that other company he runs – that Cash App had, from Monday, enabled automatic purchases of bitcoin at regular intervals, such as daily, weekly, or fortnightly. Although […]
BlockFi said an attacker got hold of users’ data by compromising an employee’s phone and taking control of their phone number through a sim swap attack. The New York-based crypto lending platform announced in a memo to users on Tuesday that a hacker – whose identity remains unknown – gained […]
A cryptocurrency investment fund has launched a class-action lawsuit against Block.one and EOS’ high command, arguing the “fraudulent scheme” failed to deliver on its primary promise of decentralization. The Crypto Assets Opportunity Fund (CAOF), along with individual investor Johnny Hong, has accused Block.one, its CEO Brendan Blumer, CTO Dan Larimer, […]
Vitalik Buterin has called for lawmakers to be more accommodating to blockchain protocols, saying they can actually help antitrust agencies fight monopolies and anti-competitive behavior. Together with Thibault Schrepel, an antitrust academic and Harvard faculty associate, the creator of Ethereum argued in a newly-published paper that blockchain and antitrust agencies […]
Less than a month after launching a new $515 million crypto fund, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) is predicting that “high-quality projects” may drive a new growth cycle in the industry. The famous venture capital fund, which has a substantial crypto portfolio, said in a post Friday it anticipated some of the […]
FalconX’s multi-million-dollar pre-seed funding from an impressive list of investors reflects institutional demand for a platform that aims to fight artificially inflated trading volumes in the crypto space. The cryptocurrency trading platform announced Thursday it had raised a total of $17 million in a round led by Accel – which […]
A month on from Binance buying CoinMarketCap for a rumored $400 million, the crypto price aggregation site has unveiled an exchange ranking system that gives its new owner the best score possible thanks, in part, to the CEO’s Twitter feed. “We listened,” said CoinMarketCap’s new owner, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, tweeting […]
Central banks in 46 countries are considering creating a central bank digital currency (CBDC) using a constrained form of distributed ledger technology (DLT), according to a new survey. But they’re leery of blockchain. London-based journal Central Banking, a specialized publication supported, among others, by the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) […]
Visa looks to be laying the groundwork for a future in which fiat currencies, like the U.S. dollar, could be easily turned into a central bank digital currency (CBDC). The California-based payments giant, which processes upwards of 100 million transactions every day on average, has filed a patent application for […]
Infrastructure provider Copper claims its new trading tool solves an obstacle preventing institutional investors from trading more freely in the cryptocurrency space by letting two parties hold on to their assets until just before executing a trade. The London-based firm said Thursday that ClearLoop – which facilitates fast, off-exchange settlements […]
Binance has frozen funds linked to the $49 million breach of the Upbit crypto exchange, as hackers tried to liquidate some of their ill-gotten gains. Most of the action around the news took place on Twitter. At just after 16:00 UTC Wednesday, bot Twitter account Whale Alert warned Binance – […]