Crypto
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SafeMoon pump and dump lawsuit targets Jake Paul, Soulja Boy, and others
A new class-action lawsuit demands a jury trial against A-list celebrities and social influencers for their alleged participation in a classic pump and dump scheme relating to SafeMoon tokens. SafeMoon, a Binance Smart Chain-native cryptocurrency, allegedly recruited a number of celebrities to lure investors in with misleading promotions. Some of the prominent names roped in by the class action include musicians such as Nick Carter, Soulja Boy, Lil Yachty and YouTubers Jake Paul and Ben Phillips. According to the lawsuit, SafeMoon and its subsidiaries mimicked real-life Ponzi schemes by misleading investors to purchase SafeMoon tokens under the pretext of unrealistic profits. Citing the ecosystem’s ‘burn’ and ‘tokenomics’ as a key driver for SafeMoon’s price potential, the recruited celebr...
The crypto world should know about longevity
As the first month of 2022 drew to a close, the internet was abuzz with trend predictions for the year ahead. Bloggers, Twitter influencers and established business moguls alike were, and still are, incredibly excited about the new opportunities afforded by an explosion of innovation in Web3. However, something you may have missed in scrolling pages of celebrity-backed NFT drops or speculations about the metaverse was the launch of a new company called Altos Labs, reportedly backed by Amazon’s former CEO Jeffrey Bezos. The language that followed the launch was largely typical of how many mainstream journalists talk about the longevity sector, words like mysterious and secret. I’ve written in earlier articles that there are a lot of misconceptions around the longevity sector, and this...
Mining worldwide: Where should crypto miners go in a changing landscape?
One of the main themes among the crypto community in 2021 was China’s aggressive policy toward mining, which led to a complete ban on such activities in September. While mining as a type of financial activity has not gone away and is unlikely to disappear, Chinese cryptocurrency miners had to look for a new place to set up shop. Many of them moved to the United States — the world’s new mining mecca — while some left to Scandinavia and others to nearby Kazakhstan, with its cheap electricity. Mining activities can’t stay under the radar forever, and governments around the world have begun to raise concerns over electricity capacity and power outages. Erik Thedéen, vice-chair of the European Securities and Markets Authority — who also serves as director general of the Swedish Fina...
BlockFi settles with the SEC, Russia’s CBDC trials begin and Cointelegraph releases its 2022 Top 100 list: Hodler’s Digest, Feb. 13-19
Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link. Top Stories This Week $1T opportunity: JPMorgan becomes first major bank in the metaverse United States banking giant JPMorgan Chase has taken a dive into what it considers a significant up and coming arena of opportunity: the metaverse. The bank has recently opened a digital lounge called Onyx in Decentraland’s metaverse. Decentraland serves as one of many crypto industry projects utilizing blockchain to provide a digital world experience — in other words, a metaverse. JPMorgan sees significant potential in the new mov...
Web3 might be crypto’s key to the mainstream market
2021 has been a significant year for crypto with no fungible token (NFT) being awarded word of the year, decentralized finance (DeFi) trending in the mainstream media and crypto companies making headlines for a variety of announcements. This is, no doubt, in part due to the effects that COVID-19 has had on the economy, with many looking for new ways to diversify their finances and a move to working from home giving people the free time to research new interests. And, many chose to get involved in crypto. As conversations began to move on from Bitcoin (BTC) to other larger crypto projects like Ethereum network upgrades and central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, news coverage would suggest that the mainstream adoption of crypto is already well underway. However, there is one project whic...
Bitcoin inactive supply nears record as over 60% of BTC stays unspent for at least 1 year
Bitcoin (BTC) may be struggling at $40,000 but fresh data is reinforcing the fact that hardly anyone is interested in selling. Data from on-chain analytics firm Glassnode shows that despite price volatility, over 60% of the BTC supply has not left its wallet in a year or more. Strong hands have rarely been stronger Stubborn hodling by long-term investors is a characteristic that differentiates the current Bitcoin market climate from most other downtrends. With spot price action passing 50% losses versus November’s all-time highs last month, expectations were for cold feet to kick in — but among seasoned hodlers, the sell-off never came. In fact, the opposite has been true for an extended period — long-term investors are adding to their positions or staying put on their BTC exposure. ...
More playing and less earning will make better Metaverse games
If you’re not keen on joining Mark Zuckerberg in the Metaverse, I have bad news for you: You’re already there. You don’t need a virtual reality headset to enter a virtual world. Humans have been representing reality since our distant ancestors first painted on cave walls. If TV, radio, books or newspapers have ever given you access to events that you did not physically attend, you have experienced a kind of metaverse already. Sport and games are another reality that we often partake in virtually — in the stands or behind a screen — when not on the field. So, it’s no coincidence then that, thus far, games dominate what most people understand as the Metaverse, or more widely, Web3. Our innate love of play, our understanding that fulfilling games depend on rules and structures and our w...
Harmony launches Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT Passport
On Friday, blockchain platform Harmony — whose mainnet runs on the Ethereum network, claiming to have two-second transaction finality and fees 1,000 times lower than Ethereum — announced the launch of its Bored Ape Yacht Club Passport. The Passport enables users to import proof of their apes into DeFi Kingdoms, a play-to-earn game built on the Harmony blockchain with over 120,000 monthly active users. During its initial stages, Ape holders will be able to validate and display their assets in the game across multiple blockchains when they connect their MetaMask wallet to DeFi Kingdoms. The infancy of cross-chain technology means that funds could be at risk when bridging across chains, as the biggest decentralized finance hack thus far this year showed. However, as stated by its develop...
Clarity pushed back: Russian government fails to forge a consolidated stance on crypto regulation
On Feb. 18, the Russian Ministry of Finance kicked off public consultations on the rules of cryptocurrency issuance and transactions. While a welcome development, it is less than the country’s crypto space had expected to get. Earlier in the week, the government announced that by Feb. 18, a bill containing the finance ministry and central bank’s consolidated position on crypto regulation would be drafted. Updated estimates suggest that it will take at least another month for draft legislation to see the light. The main reason for the delay appears to be the central bank’s renewed resistance, which just several days ago seemed to have been overcome. Here is a roundup of the latest twists in this rocky ride. Round 1: Central bank’s ban proposal On Jan. 20, the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) is...
Georgia lawmakers consider giving crypto miners tax exemptions in new bill
Five members of the Georgia House of Representatives have introduced a bill that would exempt local crypto miners from paying sales and use tax. On Monday, Georgia Representatives Don Parsons, Todd Jones, Katie Dempsey, Heath Clark, and Kasey Carpenter introduced HB 1342, a bill which has yet to be titled. The legislation proposes to amend the state tax code “to exempt the sale or use of electricity used in the commercial mining of digital assets” and would likely only apply to commercial miners operating in a facility of at least 75,000 square feet — roughly 6,968 square meters. The proposed bill is the latest in the series of state-level measures aiming to encourage crypto miners to set up shop. In January, Illinois lawmakers introduced a bill which would extend tax incentives for data c...
NFTs and DeFi are revolutionizing real estate investing and homeownership — Here’s how
NFTs continue to make an impact on multiple sectors, and this mainstreaming is opening up new opportunities and revealing new trends for blockchain technology. Recently, the real estate sector has shown interest in blockchain technology because it opens up the potential for fractionalized ownership, cryptocurrency-backed mortgages and other unique ownership, financing and payment models. Here’s a look at a few real estate-oriented blockchain projects that are to integrate decentralized finance, cryptocurrency payments and nonfungible tokens (NFT) to the sector. Propy Propy is the largest real estate-focused protocol in the cryptocurrency market, and it’s focused on automating home buying and making the closing process faster and more secure. After becoming the first company to launch...
What is the Near Protocol, and how does it work?
What is Near protocol blockchain? Near Protocol is a decentralized application (DApp) platform that focuses on usability among developers and users. As a competitor of Ethereum, NearProtocol is also smart-contract capable and a proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain. Near uses sharding technology to achieve scalability, a core aspect discussed later. The native token, NEAR, is used for transaction fees and storage on the Near crypto platform. Tokens can also be used for staking by NEAR tokenholders who wish to become transaction validators and help achieve network consensus. Near was built by the NeaCollective and conceptualized as a community-run cloud computing platform designed to host decentralized applications. It was also built to be both developer and user-friendly, hence having features s...
