Crypto

The exodus of Bitcoin miners from China into Kazakhstan has contributed to an energy crunch that the central Asian country’s president has proposed solving with nuclear energy. Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Energy has attributed the 8% increase in domestic electricity consumption throughout 2021 to Bitcoin miners. The country received at least 87,849 Bitcoin mining machines from Chinese companies so far this year following China’s crackdown on crypto mining, according to data from the Financial Times. The substantial increase in demand has led to a deficit in the domestic power supply and contributed to unreliable electricity services, according to the Kazakhstan Electricity Grid Operating Company. President Tokayev told bankers at a Nov. 19 meeting that he thinks building a nuclear power plant...

Hong Kong-based gaming and venture capital company Animoca Brands and subsidiary Blowfish Studios have promised users that they will repay 265 ETH (US$1.1 million) stolen in a fraudulent nonfungible token (NFT) sale on D`iscord. The fraudulent minting event occurred at approximately 3 AM AEDT on Nov 19 on the Phantom Galaxies Discord server. It saw 1,571 fake minting transactions over the course of about three hours. Phantom Galaxies is an upcoming Australian game being developed by Blowfish Studios. The Phantom Galaxies Discord server has 94,000 members. In an increasingly common occurrence on Discord, hackers gained control of the official Phantom Galaxies server by using a malware bot that compromised the Admin account’s two-factor authentication. Once in control of the Discord server, ...

Blockchain data provider Nansen has announced the upcoming integration of the Arbitrum network to enable its global users, both retail and institutional-grade, the ability to identify emerging trends in the decentralized finance (DeFi) market. Technical charts and quantitative data will be accessible to view within a bespoke Arbitrum dashboard, akin to the more than 100 million data points across Ethereum, Polygon and Binance Smart Chain, among others. One of Nansen’s tools is Smart Money, a function that tracks the wallet addresses of hedge funds, institutional investments and whales, collating their activity into a visual graphic that enables users to determine technical patterns. Other features of the platform include NFT Paradise and Mint Master, which provide insights into the burgeon...

Sherrod Brown, the chair of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, has called on several crypto firms to release information related to consumer and investor protection on stablecoins. According to a Nov. 23 announcement, Brown sent notices to Coinbase, Gemini, Paxos, TrustToken, Binance.US, Circle, Centre, and Tether requesting information on stablecoins by Dec. 3, suggesting that he and other lawmakers may be preparing to hold a later hearing on the subject. The senator said investors “may not appreciate the complexity and distinct features and terms of each stablecoin,” with crypto platforms not always providing users with the same protections afforded to someone purchasing coins directly from an issuer. “I have significant concerns with the non-standardized terms a...

A consortium of roughly 70 Japanese companies, including the country’s biggest financial institutions, have joined forces to trial and launch a new yen-based digital currency in fiscal 2022, sending a strong signal that the private sector was embracing blockchain-based payment systems.  The new digital currency, dubbed “DCJPY,” will be backstopped by bank deposits and rely on a common platform to expedite large fund transfers and settlements among the participating companies, according to Kazuhiro Tokia, the chief executive of cryptocurrency exchange DeCurret. DeCurret is leading the consortium, which includes banks Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Mizuho Financial Group and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group. The consortium also consists of Japan Post Bank Co Ltd., Nippon Telegraph and T...

The Collins Dictionary has officially announced their ten-word annual shortlist for word of 2021, as well as declaring that NFT — though technically understood to be an abbreviation for nonfungible token — is their word of the year, surpassing the likes of crypto, metaverse and hybrid working, among others. The blog post spoke frankly about the prospect of a digital revolution through a “convergence of money and the internet,” which seeks to challenge and evolve traditional mediums of payment into the 21st century. Collins Dictionary defines an NFT as “a unique digital certificate, registered in a blockchain, that is used to record ownership of an asset such as an artwork or a collectible,” and it was further noted in their blog post that NFT’s signify: “A chunk of digital data...

Ripple, the digital payment network, has partnered with the Republic of Palau to help the Pacific island nation develop its own digital currency. The initial focus of the partnership will see the development of a USD-backed digital currency to help facilitate cross-border payments for the nation. The collaboration “could see the implementation of the world’s first government-backed national stablecoin in the first half of 2022” according to Ripple’s announcement. Ripple suggested the national digital currency may not necessarily be just another CBDC. “Ripple would provide Palau with technical, business, design and policy support. Meanwhile, exploring a USD-backed stablecoin and associated use cases —such as a corporate registry— on the XRP Ledger could provide a viable alternative to...

Regulatory discussions in India around a crypto ban caused panic selling on major crypto exchange WazirX, resulting in a massive price drop for leading cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH).  Crypto prices in India crashed soon after parliament announced to introduce and list 26 new bills in the Winter Session, which included the Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill, 2021. As Cointelegraph reported, the bill seeks a legislative vote on creating an official digital currency while imposing a ban on “all private cryptocurrencies,” starting on Monday. A mass sell-off on WazirX on Wednesday morning at 3:30 am UTC tanked the price of Bitcoin from nearly 4,600,000 Indian rupees ($61,820.73) to 3,917,659 rupees ($52,650.55), a drop of 14.8% withi...

Bitcoin (BTC) continued its pattern of sudden price spikes on Nov. 24 as sudden momentum produced a brief trip above $57,400. BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView Analyst: 2021 still conforms to bullish pattern Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD making skittish moves within a familiar range during Wednesday. The pair reached highs of $57,875 on Bitstamp over the past 24 hours, these failing to hold for long as buyer support still waned closer to $60,000 resistance. Amid an overall uninspiring market environment, some took the opportunity to highlight ongoing similarities between 2021 and previous bull-market years. Popular Twitter account TechDev focused on Fibonacci levels and Bitcoin’s behavior around them — this year, so far, h...