Crypto

THORChain hasn’t had an easy year. After three exploits in the space of a month during the summer the protocol’s native token (RUNE) took a beating, plummeting from all-time highs over $20.00 in May to a low of around $3.50 in late July. Billed as a way to exchange crypto assets across different blockchains without an intermediary, the protocol disabled swaps completely as it looked to harden the network against exploits. With the relaunch of Ethereum swaps in late October, however, THORChain’s recovery was virtually complete — and the price of RUNE was within striking distance of the $20.00 mark again. And then there was the THORSwap public sale.  THORSwap, a decentralized exchange powered by THORChain, had a successful initial capped sale that was oversubscribed by 198%, as communit...

It took just four minutes for a relatively unknown cryptocurrency to rise by over 5,600% as of Nov. 5, according to data from CoinMarketCap. Dubbed Phoenix Global (PHB), the token soared from $0.02057 to as high as $1.1413 on Nov. 5, with its volume dropping surprisingly — from $3.79 million to around $777,680 in the same period. Phoenix Global (PHB) price action in the last 24 hours. Source: CoinMarketCap Nonetheless, at the core of the massive PHB pump was a token migration and a technical glitch, which CoinMarketCap has now fixed with PHB price now up a relatively modest 59%. Fake PHB pump? In detail, Phoenix Global announced in September that it would shift its enterprise decentralized application solutions from the Neo blockchain to Binance Smart Chain (BSC). In doing so, th...

The stablecoin market has been growing exponentially — from only $21.5 billion in mid-October of last year to $130 billion at the start of November; a six-fold increase — so it was only reasonable to expect that the United States government would have to come to grips with these digital assets that are designed to maintain a stable value relative to a fiat currency like the U.S. dollar (USD) or a commodity like gold. The Treasury Department revealed its latest thinking on the subject this week with the much-anticipated President’s Working Group on Financial Markets’ (PWG’s) report on Stablecoins. That report recommended that Congress act promptly to enact legislation to ensure that payment stablecoin issuers be regulated more like U.S. banks. That is, stablecoins might be issued only throu...

Crypto leaders are divided over whether Mark Zuckerberg should lead Facebook into the Metaverse, with Hodl Asset’s Jenny Ta saying he needs to resign if Meta is to succeed while Animoca’s Yat Siu says Zuck is the only one who can drive the company forward. Ta is the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of nonfungible token (NFT) platform developer Hodl Assets, and said that Zuckerberg needs to head off lawsuits and protect the company’s image by relinquishing his role as CEO. But the co-founder and Chairman of blockchain game and virtual property developer Animoca Brands, Yat Su said that Zuck is a “force of nature” who can make Meta’s vision a reality — but that he hopes he embraces a decentralized model. The comments came in light of Facebook’s recent rebrand to Meta, in which the firm is aimin...

The Financial Services Commission (FSC) in South Korea reaffirmed in a public statement today that nonfungible tokens (NFT) are not virtual assets, and will not be regulated. The confirmation of the decision to keep NFTs unregulated came after a review of the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) updated guidelines. The October 28 guidance report from FATF states that “NFT, or crypto-collectibles, depending on their characteristics are generally not considered to be [Virtual Assets].” On November 5, an official from a branch of the FSC said in a statement to reporters: “Due to the FATF position on NFT regulation, we will not issue regulations for NFTs.” Korea’s financial regulator focused on the fact that FATF considered NFTs to be “unique, rather than interchangeable,” — which is of course...

Former Goldman Sachs hedge fund manager and founder of Real Vision, Raoul Pal, believes that the social media pundits are wrong and the crypto market cycle won’t end this year. But things might get a bit hairy on the way. In a Real Vision interview on Nov. 3rd Pal predicted that the current bull run won’t end in December as it did spectacularly in 2015 and 2017, and will instead extend to some time between March and June. According to Pal, Bitcoin, Ethereum and altcoin markets are likely to “take the path of most pain”, potentially crashing twice over the next six months. “My guess is that we probably have a sell-off, and then it rips again because that is the path of most pain and markets tend to take the path of most pain.” Cointelegraph reported on Nov. 4th that on-chain data source Eco...

Former Comptroller of the Currency and Binance.US CEO Brian Brooks has been announced as the new CEO of crypto (BTC) mining firm BitFury. According to a Nov. 4 announcement from Bitfury, Brooks was appointed last Friday and he will lead the firm as it prepares for a new funding round. Bitfury founder and former CEO Valery Vavilov will serve as Chief Vision Officer and the Chairman of the Board of Directors. “Mr. Brooks will lead the 10-year-old crypto unicorn as it launches a new funding round, increases the growth of its mining business with a revolutionary new microchip design and new global data center locations, and scales a portfolio of innovative businesses,” the breathless announcement read. Bitfury’s last funding round occurred in 2018, when it raised $80 million at a valuation of ...