Crypto
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Madonna’s nude NFT launch triggers a mix of emotions from the community
The queen of pop has collaborated with record-setting artist Beeple to create a series called Mother of Creation, which includes three nonfungible tokens (NFTs) titled Mother of Technology, Mother of Nature and Mother of Evolution. The NFTs show a 3D likeness of Madonna giving birth to robot centipedes, butterflies and trees. As the markets went crazy over stablecoins showing instability, Madonna and Beeple decided that it was the right time to show the community something even crazier — NFTs showing a 3D model of the 63-year-old singer-songwriter’s vagina. Following the drop, the community reacted with various perspectives, with some being inspired and some criticizing various aspects of the artwork. Twitter user Emiko Inoue wrote that the artwork is “the most inspiring” ...
Untethered: Here’s everything you need to know about TerraUSD, Tether and other stablecoins
The crypto winter could be claiming more casualties among the stablecoin camp. The de-pegging of TerraUSD (UST) on Tuesday triggered market sell-offs, and now Tether (USDT) appears to be losing its footing, having slipped against the U.S. dollar. The algorithmic stablecoin UST is, as the name implies, algorithmically backed. LUNA, the ecosystem’s corresponding token, has sunk over 95% since Tuesday, while UST continues to languish around the $0.50 mark. Cointelegraph’s resident experts shared their explanations for why UST crashed in a special edition of “The Market Report” yesterday. The plan for Terraform Labs’ algorithmic stablecoin continues to roll out, but UST is still struggling. [embedded content] Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro confirmed that various stable...
How blockchain archives can change how we record history in wartime
Decentralized blockchain technology has been around for a relatively short period of time, in the grand scheme of things, but its decentralized nature has the power to keep data and information out of the hands of censors looking to create a “safe” and “faultless” version of history. Blockchain is permissionless and literally owned by no one. So, while we can’t save the Alexandria libraries of the past, we can make sure the future is well equipped with the tools necessary to preserve historical records. Here we’ll look at some of the ways nonfungible tokens (NFT) and blockchain technology have been used for keeping archives, the potential downfalls of such technology, and what the future holds for blockchain-based storage systems. NFTs and archives While many current use cases ...
Coinbase CEO cites ‘informal pressure’ for withdrawing UPI payments in India
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong says the exchange faced informal pressure from the RBI to retract its UPI option in India Armstrong holds an even more bullish stance, notwithstanding Coinbase’s reported $430M net loss in Q1 Last month, Coinbase launched UPI payments for Indian crypto users, but before the product could even take off, it was withdrawn as an option, with the crypto exchange offering users no explanation for the rollback. UPI is a widely-used payments infrastructure built by an internetwork of banks. The decision to withdraw the offering had been preceded by a caution by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which manages the UPI. The organisation denied being aware of “any crypto exchange” using UPI payments. Informal pressure from the RBI Addressing th...
Aussie crypto ETFs see $1.3M volume so far on difficult launch day
With crypto markets tanking, three crypto-focused exchange-traded funds (ETFs) picked a difficult day to commence trading on local exchange Cboe Australia today. The trio’s launch marks the first crypto ETFs to go live in Australia, with two of them focused on offering exposure to Bitcoin (BTC) and the other focused on Ethereum (ETH). So far the three ETFs have generated more than $1.3 million between them, and it has been estimated that they could see around $1 billion worth of inflows moving forward. The Cosmos Purpose Bitcoin Access ETF (CBTC) from Sydney-based crypto investment firm Cosmos Asset Management offers a relatively indirect route to BTC, as it “approximately tracks the performance of the USD denominated ETF non-currency hedged units (Purpose ETF Units) in the Purpose Bitcoin...
Doge gets more love on Twitter and Ethereum gets more hate: Data analysis
Ethereum has taken out the top spot on Twitter as the most hated of five cryptocurrencies studied, while the meme-token Dogecoin is the most liked. The findings emerged from a new report by TRG Datacenters that analyzed a year’s worth of tweets between Jan. 2021 to Jan. 2022, concerning five of the most popular cryptocurrencies to figure out which digital assets were the most emotionally stirring on Twitter. According to the analysis — which looked at Bitcoin (BTC), Cardano (ADA), Dogecoin (DOGE), Ethereum (ETH) and Litecoin (LTC) — Ethereum was firmly the most negatively associated with 29% of all tweets containing a negative sentiment. (The decision not to include Ripple, which has ardent fans but also very passionate critics, probably makes the study less comprehensive than it sho...
Terrible crypto trader gets 42 months for fraud, claiming he was a total gun
A crypto trader who defrauded over 170 people was sentenced to 42 months in prison on May 11 for operating a series of cryptocurrency funds claiming to make big returns but in reality were losing money and instead operated as a Ponzi scheme. The DOJ said that 25 year old Jeremy Spence had solicited millions through false representations, “including that Spence’s crypto trading had been extremely profitable when, in fact, Spence’s trading had been consistently unprofitable.” Spence, who operated the social media channels for a crypto investment scheme called “Coin Signals” was handed the decision by United Stated District Judge Lewis Kaplan for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Spence was also sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to p...
Bitcoin falls below $27K to December 2020 lows as Tether stablecoin peg slips under 99 cents
Bitcoin (BTC) fell out of its long-term trading range on May 12 as ongoing sell pressure reduced markets to 2020 levels. BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView Tether wobbles as UST stays under $0.60 Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView followed BTC/USD as it exited the range in which it had traded since the start of 2021. At the time of writing, the pair circled $26,700 on Bitstamp, marking its lowest since Dec 28, 2020. The weakness came as fallout from the Terra stablecoin meltdown continued to ricochet around crypto and beyond, with rumors claiming that even professional funds were experiencing solvency issues due to losses on LUNA and UST. “People are still processing this but this is the Lehman moment for crypto” Hearing about a lo...
Bitcoin fights to hold $29K as fear of regulation and Terra’s UST implosion hit crypto hard
Bitcoin (BTC) price initially bounced from its recent low at $29,000 but the overall market sentiment after a 25% price drop in five days is still largely negative. Currently, the crypto “Fear and Greed Index,” which uses volatility, volume, social metrics, Bitcoin dominance and Google trends data, has plunged to its lowest level since March 2020 and at the moment, there appears to be little protecting the market against further downside. Crypto “Fear and Greed index”. Source: Alternative.me Regulation continues to weigh down the markets Regulation is still the main threat weighing on markets and it’s clear that investors are taking a risk-off approach to high volatility assets. Earlier this week, during a hearing of the Senate Banking Committee, United S...
5 state regulators allege organization is tied to Russia, scamming users using metaverse casino
Authorities in the U.S. states of Alabama, Kentucky, New Jersey, Texas and Wisconsin have filed enforcement actions against the Flamingo Casino Club for allegedly perpetrating a scam through nonfungible tokens (NFTs) tied to a metaverse casino. In a Wednesday announcement, the Alabama Securities Commission, Kentucky Department of Financial Institutions, New Jersey Bureau of Securities, Texas State Securities Board and Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions alleged the Flamingo Casino Club has been “fraudulently soliciting NFTs” it claims are tied to ownership rights of a casino in the metaverse, thereby giving token holders a share of any profits. The organization has allegedly solicited investors directly through social media, recruiting influencers to promote NFT sales for the ca...
Chairmen from the SEC and CFTC talk crypto regulation at ISDA meeting
The annual meeting of the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) began Wednesday in Madrid. United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman Gary Gensler and U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) chairman Rostin Behnam were both featured as keynote speakers at the event, with Behnam speaking at the morning session, and Gensler in the afternoon. Behnam spoke at length about “a request for an amended order of registration as a derivatives clearing organization (DCO) by an entity seeking to offer non-intermediated clearing of margined products to retail participants,” which was transparently a reference to FTX US’s request. “As other registered entities have expressed interest in exploring similar models, and given the potential impact on clear...
Terra contagion leads to 80%+ decline in DeFi protocols associated with UST
The knock-on effect of the collapse of Terra (LUNA) and its TerraUSD (UST) stablecoin have spread wide across the cryptocurrency market on May 11 as projects with any kind of association with the DeFi ecosystem have seen their prices hammered. The forced selling of the Bitcoin (BTC) holdings backing a portion of UST also influenced BTC’s current drop to $29,000 and analysts fear that DeFi platforms that have liquidity pools primarily comprised of UST and LUNA will collapse. LUNA, ANC, ASTRO and MARS in USDT pairings. 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView Terra-based protocols suffer Projects with the direst of outlooks are those that are hosted on the Terra protocol including Anchor Protocol (ANC), Astroport (ASTRO) and Mars Protocol (MARS). As shown in the chart above, ...
