Crypto

Members of Parliament (MPs) in the United Kingdom have called upon the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to limit the use of the word “invest” and “investment” by cryptocurrency firms for promotional purposes. According to a Thursday report in The Times, MPs at the treasury select committee told FCA chief Nikhil Rathi that the use of the phrase “your investment” often portrays that these are on par with an FTSE 100 company or a unit trust, thus giving the wrong impression about the type of investment. Harriett Baldwin, Conservative MP for West Worcestershire took special exception to FCA’s supposed inability to stop fraudulent promotions and went on to accuse them of helping criminals: “Your website actually publishes a list of unregistered crypto-asset businesses for anti-money laundering...

According to Bloomberg Intelligence, $100,000 Bitcoin (BTC) and $2,000 gold could greet 2022 as global markets face “deflationary forces.”  In a tweet on Dec. 9, Mick McGlone, a senior commodity strategist at Bloomberg’s research arm, forecast that next year would be good for both gold and BTC. “Positive ramifications” for Bitcoin thanks to deflation As inflation makes headlines worldwide this month, Bitcoin has faced criticism over its alleged role as a hedge thanks to its 39% drawdown from all-time highs. As Cointelegraph reported, the latest U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI) data is due Dec. 10, with analysts presuming that inflation will have sharpened 6.7% year-on-year. Next year could be very different, McGlone argues, as inflationary pressures give way to declining co...

Enterprise payment platform Tribal Credit has partnered with Latin American crypto exchange Bitso and the Stellar Development Foundation to create a new cross-border payment service for businesses, opening the door to broader use cases for blockchain technology in the region. The new service, which is geared towards small- and medium-sized enterprises, enables companies in Mexico to pay for goods and services in their native peso currency and have their counterparts in the United States receive the payments in dollars. The service will rely on the Stellar blockchain, a decentralized open-source payment network specializing in cross-currency transactions. Tribal Credit’s cross-border payment system will be facilitated by Bitso, a multi-billion-dollar crypto exchange that will enable merchan...

On Thursday, Frax Finance, a developer of algorithmic stablecoins, announced it would launch the Frax Price Index, or FPI, on the Partisia blockchain. The benchmark would have its stablecoin pegged to it and serve as a competitor to the standard Consumer Price Index, or CPI. Although the latter is a near-universally adopted inflation gauge, skeptics have claimed that its methodology does not account for items such as housing prices, college tuition, healthcare, etc. All of which have risen significantly in the past decade in the United States. Brian Gallagher, co-Founder at Partisia Blockchain, elaborated on the development: Together with Partisia Blockchain’s advanced privacy oracles, a variety of crowdsourced demographic purchasing data are converted into trustworthy indexes enabling FPI...

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) published a report into its two-year research project into wholesale central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) that emphasized the benefits of digitizing and autonomizing manual, paper-based banking processes using distributed ledger technology (DLT). The report marks the conclusion of the two-year project named “Project Atom” that was conducted in partnership with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), National Australia Bank (NAB), Perpetual, and ConsenSys, along with additional input from King & Wood Mallesons. Commenting on Project Atom, RBA’s assistant governor (Financial System) Michele Bullock noted that it “demonstrated the potential for a wholesale CBDC and asset tokenization to improve efficiency, risk management and innovation in wholesal...

The world’s top nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace OpenSea has denied it intends to pursue a public listing any time soon. Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Brian Roberts sparked a public backlash this week when he told Bloomberg that “it would be foolish not to think about going public.” The statement caused an uproar among OpenSea’s crypto native NFT community, many of who see a public listing of the platform as a sell out to large institutional investors. The vast majority of users on OpenSea execute transactions below $10,000 at a time. “Sucks to hear @opensea is selling out and doing an IPO,” wrote Twitter user @Punk_2070, complaining the community rather than VCs had driven its success. “Just another reason why I can’t wait for @Coinbase_NFT. If we are using corp...

New research by consumer data aggregator CivicScience has found that a growing number of investors are selling their shares to purchase more crypto. The research questions were sent to people over 18 years old in the U.S. at varying times during 2021. The results were weighted by U.S. census data. Each question had between 1000 and 40,600 respondents. Out of 3,700 respondents surveyed, the number who said they would be more likely to invest their money in cryptocurrency than traditional stocks increased 140% in just five months. Back in June, only 10% of respondents said they would be more likely to invest their money in cryptocurrency than traditional stocks, which rose to 24% in November. Interesting those who said they follow the financial market and economy “very closely” or “somewhat ...

The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) rolled out its digital payment system to The Commonwealth of Dominica and the British overseas territory of Montserrat on Dec. 7, leaving only Anguilla left among the eight countries planning to implement it. The ECCB launched the “EC dollar” Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) in March 2021 in collaboration with DCash to Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, Saint Christopher (St Kitts) and Nevis, and Saint Lucia. In August, it was expanded to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. DCash is a payment system designed specifically for use with the digital EC currency. The wallet app allows holders to make purchases and person-to-person transfers of the CBDC within the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECCU). The use of this digital payment system is part of an ...

Stablecoins, or crypto assets which peg their value to less volatile fiat money, are useful tools for a variety of reasons. They can be used to cash out crypto investments, send or receive stable money abroad, and to pay for everyday consumer transactions without fear of fluctuation. A recent estimate from the Bank for International Settlements, or BIS, put the total stablecoin supply at roughly $150 billion. But central banks, the issuers of traditional fiat money around the globe, do not seem to be big fans of stablecoins. A sharp increase in supply coupled with a lack of relevant regulations has led to concerns that these stable blockchain assets could threaten the current financial order. Fiat money stablecoins, such as those created by Circle (USDC) and Tether (USDT), m...

Bitcoin (BTC) bulls are still licking their wounds from the bloody Dec. 4 correction, which saw the price collapse from $57,000 all the way to $42,000. This 26.5% downside move caused $850 million in long BTC futures contracts to be liquidated, but more importantly, it shifted the “Fear and Greed index” to its lowest level since July 21. Bitcoin/USD price at FTX. Source: TradingView It is somehow strange to compare both events, as the July 21 sub-$30,000 low would have erased the entire gains in 2021. Meanwhile, the $42,000 low from Dec. 4 is still a 44% gain year-to-date. Compare this against the S&P 500, which is up 21% in 2021, and the WTI oil price, which has accrued a 41% gain. Bulls might be focused on the Bitcoin reserves held at exchanges, which continues to descend and current...

Crowdfunding platform Kickstarter will be launching a new company that will eventually see its website move to a blockchain-based system on Celo.  In a Wednesday blog post, CEO Aziz Hasan and co-founder Perry Chen said Kickstarter would be developing an open-source protocol that will live on the Celo blockchain. The two execs cited the blockchain’s efforts in minimizing its environmental impact — being carbon negative — in addition to the fact it was open source. “We are entering a significant moment for alternative governance models, and we think there’s an important opportunity to advance these efforts using the blockchain,” said Chen and Hasan. Bloomberg reported that Kickstarter planned to transition its website to the blockchain platform in 2022, with the project ...