Crypto

The signature of Star Trek producer Gene Roddenberry has gone boldly where no NFT has gone before — into the code for life itself. Back in 1965, Roddenberry signed a contract with Lucille Ball’s Desilu Productions to finance Star Trek. On Nov. 30, that signature was turned into a nonfungible token (NFT) and implanted into the DNA code of a living bacteria cell — 30 years after the sci-fi legend’s death. Roddenberry Entertainment describes it as the first-ever “Living Eco-NFT” and a “true intersection of science and science fiction.” The piece will replicate and grow with the division of the organism’s cells. “As long as the bacteria remains living, the cell can double at a rate that will create over a billion copies of the Eco-NFT overnight.” It’s being exhibited as an art piece titled “El...

Ethereum’s Ether token (ETH) is due to launch a “parabolic” attack on BTC to beat all-time highs, one analyst believes. 2-week predicts “crazy” ETH move ETH/BTC 1-month candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows ETH/BTC sitting near three-year highs — but its next move should be even stronger. Ether against Bitcoin (BTC) is one of the few bullish narratives in the short-term crypto markets this month. In a tweet on Dec. 3, popular Twitter account Galaxy reinforced optimistic predictions for the largest altcoin, even suggesting that ETH/BTC is about to eclipse its already strong performance with a vertical move. “I’ve been waiting and publicly charting ETH/BTC on the big picture for years, and now we are finally here,” he...

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has given her opinions on the potential of a digital dollar but is hesitant to come to any conclusions at this stage in proceedings. Yellen said on Thursday that she had not formed a view on whether the Federal Reserve should create a digital version of the dollar, but such a move would require broad consensus among Congress, the U.S. central bank and the White House.  This follows the recent reports that the Federal Reserve is currently researching whether an electronic version of the greenback would be beneficial or not. Yellen said that she sees both pros and cons to the digital dollar. Although she does have thoughts on its implementation, she feels more research needs to be done before coming up with any definite answers. According to Yellen, ...

This weekly roundup of news from Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong attempts to curate the industry’s most important news, including influential projects, changes in the regulatory landscape, and enterprise blockchain integrations.   Top of the food chain This probably won’t come as a surprise to anyone in the crypto industry, but Binance founder CZ has been crowned the richest Chinese person in the world. The list appeared in Caijing Magazine, a financial publication based in Beijing. CZ was credited as having a net worth of around $90 billion, a huge jump over former richest Chinese man Zhong Shanshan, a bottled water mogul worth around $66 billion. CZ’s source of wealth was listed as Binance, a company that has not seen eye-to-eye with Chinese regulators, and is now often b...

More than $150 million has been lost this week in separate security breaches at DeFi projects MonoX and BadgerDAO. Multi-chain decentralized exchange (DEX) MonoX (MONO) suffered a cyber attack on Nov. 30 leading to about $31 million in losses. BadgerDAO (BADGER) suffered a front-end attack that was discovered on Dec. 2 with estimates of Badger’s losses hitting more than $120 million. The MonoX DEX platform suffered a single attack on Nov. 30. In this attack, a bug in the smart contract allowed for a discrepancy to exist between prices of assets, when manually changed. Rekt News explained that hackers were able to inflate the price of MONO via the smart contract, then buy up other assets from the protocol with MONO. “The hacker created a loop in which the price of tokenOut would overwrite t...

A groundbreaking five-year study into whether crypto token incentives can improve health outcomes for patients with HIV/AIDS will be launched in Kenya by the end of the year. On Nov 1, the blockchain-powered healthcare ecosystem Immunify.Life and the Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology (MMUST) announced they had secured the approval needed from an ethics committee and the national commission to launch the study. Together they will conduct a five-year study on HIV/AIDS starting before the end of 2021 in the Kakamega County region of Kenya, before extending throughout the rest of the country. The first major project of this collaboration is a groundbreaking study in #HIV/#AIDS to investigate the effectiveness of incentives and paperless tracking systems on HIV treatment adher...

According to reports from local media, the Indian government will not move for an outright ban on crypto and will instead regulate the sector. On Nov. 23, Cointelegraph reported that the Indian government was considering a bill proposing the creation of an official digital currency while imposing a ban on all “private” cryptocurrencies. The news sparked panic selling on local crypto exchange WazirX the following day, and the vague wording on the bill and lack of clarification from the government have since left many onlookers divided on the prospects for crypto in India. But Indian news outlet NDTV reported on Dec. 2 that it had obtained details of a cabinet note circulating in the government regarding the proposed crypto bill. NDTV reporter Sunil Prabhu said that the note contained sugges...

On Thursday, Adidas announced it was entering the Metaverse in collaboration with Bored Ape Yacht Club, gmoney NFT, and PUNKS comic. In an article posted on the Adidas mobile app, the developers behind the initiative said the following: This autumn, Adidas, known for celebrating ideas at the bleeding edge of originality, it settling in at the frontier of creativity: The Metaverse. Our goal there? To see every one of its inhabitants thrive. The Metaverse is where anyone can express their most original ideas and be their most authentic selves, in whatever form they might take. And thanks to the blockchain [and NFTs], those pioneers can own a piece of what they create. Today we leap Into The Metaverse with @BoredApeYC, @gmoneyNFT & @punkscomic. It’s time to enter a world of limitless poss...

Bitcoin (BTC) price is down this week, and naturally, bears will always find some reversal signal whenever the price shows strength, such as the 8% gain on Nov. 28. Of course, technical analysis is not an exact science, so there is a margin for interpretation and most traders look at multiple timeframes to find a narrative that suits their bias.  Currently, BTC price is in a descending channel that started on Oct. 31, and if this pattern plays out, Bitcoin could drop to $50,000 in the short term. Bitcoin/USD price on FTX. Source: TradingView Cryptocurrency markets crashed on Nov. 26 after concern over a new COVID-19 variant sparked a global market sell-off. As Bitcoin dipped below $54,000, bears saw a $215 million potential profit on Dec. 3’s options expiry, but that changed after BTC...

Speaking publicly for the last time as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Randal Quarles urged regulators to exercise restraint on stablecoins. In a prepared statement for his speech at the American Enterprise Institute on Dec. 2, Quarles expressed concern that regulations could hamper innovation in the digital asset space, particularly when it comes to stablecoins. According to the Fed governor, some of the approaches on stablecoin regulation from the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets’ November report are unnecessary, including “limiting wallet providers’ affiliation with commercial entities.” “It is one thing to say that a stablecoin issuer itself must be a regulated bank — I think that is probably overkill, as there are perfectly e...