Crypto
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Ledger CTO warns crypto users about the dangers of ‘blind signing’
With the recent attack on OpenSea highlighting blockchain vulnerabilities, Charles Guillemet, the CTO of Ledger warns users about “blind signing” which he defines as “consenting a transaction to be signed blindly, without understanding what it means.” In an interview with Cointelegraph, Guillemet broke down the problems and highlighted issues with blind signing. The Ledger CTO notes that consenting to transactions requires signing a message to be sent to the blockchain. A user is the only one capable of signing transactions with the private key, while others can verify if it’s correct. “The issue is that this message is not intelligible by default. It’s a digital payload,” says Guillemet. Guillemet also explained that when a coin transfer is signed, it’s normally su...
Anti-war Russians start donating crypto to support Ukraine
While the West is growing increasingly concerned over Russia’s potential use of cryptocurrencies to evade sanctions, some Russians are using their Bitcoin (BTC) to help Ukrainian people. Pavel Muntyan, a renowned Russian animation producer and creator of the animated web series “Mr. Freeman,” has called on anti-war Russians to support Ukrainian citizens amid Russia’s ongoing military attack on the country. Muntyan took to Twitter on Tuesday to announce the opening of a cryptocurrency donation address for Russians who want to support Ukrainian people anonymously as Russia has banned its citizens from helping people in Ukraine. On Feb. 27, Russia’s General Prosecutor’s Office officially warned that any assistance to Ukrainians amid Russia’s “special operation” in the country would be conside...
Bitcoin a ‘good bet’ if Fed continues easing to avoid a recession — analyst
Bitcoin (BTC) has the potential to become a “good bet” for investors if the Federal Reserve does everything it can to keep the U.S. economy afloat against impending recession risks, according to popular analyst Bitcoin Jack. The independent market analyst pitted the flagship cryptocurrency, often called “digital gold” by its enthusiasts, against the prospects of further quantitative easing by the U.S. central bank, noting that the ongoing military standoff between Ukraine and Russia had choked the supply chain of essential commodities, such as oil and wheat, resulting in higher global inflation. For instance, consumer prices in Europe jumped 5.8% year-over-year in February compared to 5.1% in the previous month, greater than the median economist forecast of 5.6% in ...
China’s share in Bitcoin transactions declined 80% post crackdown: PBoC
People’s Bank of China, the central bank of the country, claimed in a recent note that China’s share in the global Bitcoin (BTC) transactions has rapidly dropped from over 90% to 10%. The Financial Stability Bureau of the Chinese central bank released a comprehensive note on Wednesday discussing the impact of the crypto crackdown on the financial markets. The official notice claimed that all peer-to-peer exchanges in the country had been eradicated, which eventually curbed the hype around digital currency transactions. A Google translated version of the note read: “The global proportion of Bitcoin transactions in China dropped rapidly from more than 90% to 10%. Severely cracked down on illegal financial activities such as disorderly handling of finance and crackdown on illegal fund-r...
New York state ramps up blockchain monitoring to enforce sanctions
New York state’s efforts to enforce sanctions against Russia have ramped up a gear with the Department of Financial Services, or DFS, expediting the procurement of additional blockchain analytics technology. According to a statement released Wednesday, the department will use the technology to help detect exposure to Russian individuals and entities subject to federal sanctions, by the virtual currency businesses licensed by the department. NY Gov. Kathy Hochul issued an executive order Feb. 27 directing state agencies to divest from Russian institutions and companies, as well as entities that provide them with support. She said: “New York is proudly home to the nation’s largest Ukrainian population and we will use our technological assets to protect our people and show Russia that w...
Former ConsenSys employees file for audit claiming ‘serious irregularities’
A group claiming to represent 35 former ConsenSys AG (CAG) employees has requested an audit under the Swiss Code of Obligations to investigate “serious irregularities” they allege occurred at the company during mid-2020. CAG, also known as Mesh, is the company behind top Ethereum-based wallet provider MetaMask and was founded by Joseph Lubin, who is also the co-founder of Ethereum. According to a press release, the group of employees who claim to represent around 50% of all known shareholders submitted the request to a Swiss Court on March 1. The group alleged that “fundamental intellectual property and subsidiaries were illegally transferred” from CosenSys AG (which it refers to as CAG) into a new entity called “ConsenSys Software Incorporated” (CSI) on Aug. 14, 2020. The former employees...
Bob Dylan goes meta as Sony and Universal partner with Snowcrash NFT platform
Solana-based NFT marketplace Snowcrash has announced that Sony Music and Universal Music Group — the two largest music labels in the world — have officially partnered with the upcoming platform. The two music labels will release Bob Dylan and Miles Davis NFT collections later this year, ahead of wider integration with their rosters of artists. Jesse Dylan, who probably not coincidentally is Bob Dylan’s son, is the co-founder of the Snowcrash marketplace, which draws its namesake from Neal Stephenson’s 1992 sci-fi novel that also invented the term Metaverse. Bob Dylan is a major investment by both labels: UMG spent around $400 million on his song catalog in 2020, while Sony bought his recorded music rights for more than $150 million last year. In a statement, Dylan the younger stipulated th...
Monthly NFT buyers dip below 800K as searches ‘fall off a cliff’
The unique number of NFT buyers in February dipped below 800,000 for the first time since October, and search volume for nonfungibles also dropped significantly. According to data from CryptoSlam, there were 796,009 NFT buyers on secondary markets in Feb. (down 12% compared to Jan.) that accounted for roughly $2.6 billion worth of sales (down 40% on the month before). A caveat to that however, is that January was a massive month for NFTs which may suggest the decreases in February are simply part of a relatively healthy pullback. January saw a record number of unique secondary NFT buyers at 904,13 and OpenSea also posted record sales volume in January totaling around $5 billion before pulling back to around $3 billion last month. Looking at Google Trends, however, it appears that global ke...
Analysts say bulls will aim for $48K now that Bitcoin’s ‘accumulation phase’ has begun
Investor sentiment across the cryptocurrency ecosystem has seen a significant shift in the positive direction over the past week, despite events in the wider world. Currently, Bitcoin (BTC) is back above $43,500 and many altcoins are also witnessing double-digit gains. Crypto Fear & Greed index. Source: Alternative The ongoing conflict in Ukraine and recent actions taken by governments to limit access to banking services may have helped to shine a light on the value of holding cryptocurrencies, which offers some protection against uncontrollable events and what some might perceive as government overreach. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that the price of BTC has oscillated between $43,350 and $45,400 on March 2 as the world awaits some form of resolution to th...
True Tickets powers blockchain-based Broadway tickets sales
True Tickets, the blockchain-based digital ticketing platform, made its Broadway debut last fall in collaboration with the Roundabout Theatre Company in New York City. After a “successful” run thus far delivering digital tickets to the Trouble in Mind play and Caroline, or Change musical, Matthew Zarracina, co-founder and CEO of True Tickets, talks blockchain and ticketing with Cointelegraph. When a prospective theatre-goer completes a ticket purchase on the Roundabout website and chooses a digital delivery, as opposed to picking up a ticket at will call or printing it at home, that’s True Tickets cue to come in. Built on the Hyperledger Fabric platform that runs on the IBM Blockchain and deploys to Google Cloud, True Tickets provides the infrastructure that generate...
Web3 gaming in the third world: Axie facilitating billions
The research department of blockchain analytics platform Nansen have published a comprehensive guide to popular play-to-earn game Axie Infinity, calculating quantitative insights such as that 2.8 million unique addresses are currently holding 11.1 million Axies, alongside that 97% of those users hold a minimum of three Axie nonfungible tokens, or NFT’s. Axie Infinity is a play-to-earn game constructed around the collection of, and interaction with, digital pet avatars called Axies. Built by Vietnamese gaming studio Sky Mavis in March 2018, the game rose to cultural prominence during 2019 following the emergence of stories in which players from third-world countries such as Venezuela and Philippines were making a full-time living off of Axie’s native crypto assets: Smooth Love Potion ...
Dogecoin community donates $53K to Ukraine as country hints at upcoming airdrop
With the price of the meme-based token Dogecoin (DOGE) higher than that of the Russian ruble, Ukraine opened to DOGE donations for the first time. Ukraine’s Minister of Digital Transformation Mikhail Fedorov announced on Wednesday that the token had “exceeded Russian ruble in value” — though the ruble has dropped significantly against the U.S. dollar in the wake of U.S. and EU sanctions, its price has been lower than DOGE’s since January 2021. According to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro, the price of Dogecoin is roughly $0.13 at the time of publication, having fallen by less than 1% over the last 24 hours. However, Fedorov’s message on Twitter also called for DOGE proponents including Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Dogecoin founder Billy Markus to donate to Ukraine’s militar...
