Crypto
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Investors chase Web3 as blockchain industry builds despite bear market
The third quarter of 2022 saw a reduction in venture capital activity across the entire blockchain industry. Investors appear to be moving away from decentralized finance (DeFi) and into Web3. The crypto industry tends to have a problem with overusing buzzwords, like the way “DeFi” was everywhere just a couple of years ago. In 2022, it seems like every new startup and established blockchain company alike is taking up the “Web3” mantle. But what exactly is Web3? Cointelegraph Research delved into the matter in its recently released Q3 2022 Venture Capital Report. To further understand the subject, it held a panel discussion with venture capitalist investors to find out how they see Web3. [embedded content] Web3: The newest buzzword The panel was asked whether the term Web3 is ov...
Turkey has an obsession with crypto — Specifically Dogecoin: Study
The crypto market slump doesn’t mean interest in crypto is also down. A new study from the cryptocurrency education platform CryptoManiaks revealed that many countries are still scouring the internet, hungry for crypto-related information. According to the study, the Netherlands and Turkey take the top two spots, with 8.2% and 5.5% of the population, respectively, searching for crypto-related terms. Turkey particularly accounted for 4.7 million searches, leading the searches with sheer numbers. The study analyzed the combined number of searches for a select set of popular cryptocurrencies into a percentage of the population for each country in order to calculate the percentage of locals searching each month. While it was in second for overall searches, Turkey came in first place ...
FTX reportedly gets 3 more months to stop all operations in Japan
The Japanese subsidiary of the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX has received approval from local regulators to continue sorting out issues with withdrawals until next year. The Kanto Local Finance Bureau, a local financial regulator running under the Ministry of Finance of Japan, has issued a statement regarding FTX Japan operations, Reuters reported. The Japanese authority has postponed FTX’s business suspension deadline until March 9, 2023, extending the original time limit by three months. In mid-November, Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) initially requested FTX Japan to suspend business orders by Dec. 9. According to the announcement, the Kanto Local Finance Bureau has ordered the extension of the deadline because FTX Japan has so far failed to return assets from custody ...
Coinbase takes a shot at Tether, encourages users to switch to USDC
United States-based cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has asked its customers to convert their Tether-issued USDT (USDT) stablecoin to USD Coin (USDC), a USD-pegged stablecoin issued by Circle and co-founded by Coinbase in 2018. The cryptocurrency exchange suggested that USDC is a much more secure alternative in the wake of the FTX collapse saga and has also exempted any fee on the conversion of USDT to USDC on its platform. The firm said: “We believe that USD Coin (USDC) is a trusted and reputable stablecoin, so we’re making it more frictionless to switch: starting today, we’re waiving fees for global retail customers to convert USDT to USDC.” Stablecoins started out as an onboarding tool for the crypto exchanges in the early days of crypto, but today they have become a key mark...
Remote work triggers move to DAOs in the post-pandemic world: Survey
A survey sample of working Americans suggests that millennial and Generation Z workers are far more in favor of joining decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and working remotely in the post-Covid-19 world. Over 1,100 Americans took part in a survey conducted by MetisDAO Foundation which explores trends in remote working preferences and the emergence of DAOs in recent years. A key consideration is the effect that Covid-19 has had on worker sentiment and the growth of DAOs in corporate governance. Citing a research report on DAOs published by the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, the results of the survey highlight how DAOs saw their treasuries swell from $400 million to $16 billion in 2021. This coincided with growing participant figures, up from 13,000 to 1.6 milli...
What Paul Krugman gets wrong about crypto
In mid-November, as crypto markets reeled in the aftermath of FTX’s meltdown, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman made use of his New York Times column to disparage crypto assets — again. Despite his unquestionable academic credentials, Krugman reiterated a common misunderstanding in his attempt to understand crypto assets — by conflating Bitcoin (BTC) with other cryptocurrencies. Despite being the oldest, most valuable and most well-known member of this emerging class of digital assets, Bitcoin has a unique use case that differs widely from all others. Therefore, in order to understand this asset class as a whole, it would make more sense to choose as your starting point an asset with more tangible utility. Filecoin, for instance, provides storage for digital files in a similar vei...
FEC probe demanded after SBF ‘admitted’ making dark money donations
A watchdog group has demanded an investigation into Sam Bankman-Fried’s political donations, claiming the former FTX CEO admitted to donating tens of millions of dollars to Republicans under the table, in violation of federal law. The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed the complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on Dec. 8, citing comments made by Bankman-Fried in a Nov. 16 interview with cryptocurrency vlogger Tiffany Fong released via YouTube on Nov. 29. CREW suggested in its complaint that wealthy donors often take advantage of the Citizen United ruling to evade federal disclosure laws by using intermediaries and claiming they were unaware of where the funds ended up, but that Bankman-Fried’s admission negates this plausible deniabil...
GameStop to drop crypto efforts as Q3 losses near $95M
Gaming retailer GameStop says it will no longer focus any efforts on cryptocurrencies, after amounting $94.7 million in net losses in the third quarter and laying off staff from its digital assets department. On a Dec. 7 earnings call GameStop CEO, Matt Furlong, said it “proactively minimized exposure to cryptocurrency” over the year and “does not currently hold a material balance of any token,” adding: “Although we continue to believe there is long-term potential for digital assets in the gaming world, we have not and will not risk meaningful stockholder capital in this space.” Earlier this year the company said it was looking at crypto, along with nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and Web3 applications, as avenues for growth calling these spaces “increasingly relevant for gamers of the fut...
What’s in and what’s out for Ethereum’s Shanghai upgrade
Ethereum core developers have opted to prioritize the enabling of staking withdrawals via the Shanghai upgrade first before implementing The Surge-related Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP)-4884. As reported by Cointelegraph, the next key milestone on Ethereum’s roadmap is the Shanghai upgrade, which will enable withdrawals for ETH stakers/validators from the Beacon Chain — among other things. EIP-4884 is also important and was initially expected to be packaged in with Shanghai, introducing “proto-danksharding” to significantly enhance Layer 2 rollup scalability (The Surge) ahead of the full implementation of the major Sharding upgrade late next year. However, according to Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko at the latest Ethereum Core Developers Meeting on Dec. 8, the ultimate co...
US lawmakers question federal regulators on banks’ ties to crypto firms
Two members of the United States Senate have called on the heads of federal financial regulators to address “ties between the banking industry and cryptocurrency firms” in the wake of FTX’s collapse. In letters dated Dec. 7 to Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, acting Comptroller of the Currency Michael Hsu, and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation acting chair Martin Gruenberg, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Tina Smith — both on the Senate Banking Committee — acknowledged that the crypto industry was not so “deeply integrated” with traditional financial institutions to severely impact markets after FTX’s bankruptcy filing. However, the two lawmakers pointed to reports suggesting ties between FTX and the Washington-based Moonstone Bank as well as stablecoin issuer Tether and the Bahamas-...
Ethereum developers target March 2023 for Shanghai hard fork
According to a discussion at the 151st Ethereum Core Developers Meeting on Dec. 8, core programmers have set a tentative deadline of March 2023 for Ethereum’s Shanghai hard fork. In addition, developers will aim for May or June 2023 to launch the Ethereum Improvement Protocol (EIP) 4844 upgrade that will introduce proto-danksharding to the network. Although the much-anticipated proof-of-stake Merge upgrade was completed on Sept. 15, staked Ether (stETH) is currently locked on the Ethereum Beacon Chain. The token is created by decentralized finance protocol Lido, with close to 3.5 million stETH ($4.48 billion) in circulation. After the Shanghai upgrade, stETH users can withdraw their funds along with any applicable staking rewards for validating network transactions. The Ethereu...
BlockFi employees were discouraged from describing risks in internal communications: Report
Following BlockFi’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing at the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey, reports have surfaced about the crypto lending company’s risk assessment and management culture. According to Forbes, as early as 2020, the company culture discouraged employees from “describing risks in written internal communications to avoid liability, “ as reported by a former employee at BlockFi. Although BlockFi claimed risk management was core to their DNA and central to their mission, reports surfacing paint a different picture of the company. BlockFi executives appear to have prioritized aggressive growth, while dismissing risk management professionals who attempted to do their job. According to a former employee, an internal team at BlockFi raise...
