Crypto

To compare Bitcoin (BTC) to the Dutch tulip bulb bubble is to perpetuate a fallacy. Technology evolves more rapidly than nature, and decentralized networks have more financial utility than a bouquet. Bitcoin is a technology, tulips are plants, and no discerning person would take the comparison much further. Tulipmania, a 17th-century market bubble in which the price of the flower bulb increased due to speculation by Dutch investors, resulted in a major crash. Prices exceeded the average annual income of the time by six times. The rarest of bulbs became among the most expensive items on the planet. Even though the Bitcoin network has been operating since 2009, its comparison with the tulip bubble continues ad nauseam. Last February, British economist and European Central Bank council member...

There are good reasons why pension funds should not invest in the crypto and blockchain space. The industry is too new, too volatile, and stultifyingly technical. Moreover, the rules and regulations to govern the sector have yet to be settled.  But the fixed-income financial instruments that pension funds typically favor — like long-term government bonds — are scarcely paying anything these days, so the traditional caretakers of employees’ retirement funds have a dilemma: Where to find investment yield in a world where inflation is looming? It may not be entirely surprising, then, that pension funds — the most cautious of institutional investors — are now giving the booming crypto/blockchain sector a closer look. “Family offices led the charge into crypto funds several years ago, but ...

United States Senator Cynthia Lummis, a Republican from Wyoming, has revealed that she purchased Bitcoin (BTC) worth between $50,001 and $100,000 on Aug. 16, according to documents filed on Thursday.  The disclosure was part of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, or STOCK Act, which prohibits the use of non-public information for profit. The STOCK Act was signed into law under former President Barack Obama in April 2012 and is designed to combat insider trading. As CNBC reported, Lummis’ purchase was disclosed outside of the 45-day reporting window stipulated in the law. The reporting delay was due to “a filing error,” a spokesperson said. Lummis made the purchase less than two weeks after she and other senators attempted to insert a pro-crypto amendment into President Jo...

Sri Lanka joins the global crypto adoption drive after setting up a committee for exploring and implementing blockchain and crypto mining technologies. A letter shared on Oct. 8 by Sri Lanka’s director general of government information, Mohan Samaranayake, shows that the authorities have approved a recent proposal that aims to attract investments in the country’s blockchain and cryptocurrency initiatives. According to Samaranayake, the Sri Lankan authorities have identified the need to develop “an integrated system of digital banking, blockchain and cryptocurrency mining technology” as a means to stay on par with global partners and international markets. He added: “This committee will be mandated to study the regulations and initiatives of other countries such as Dubai, Malaysia, Philippi...

With success comes a survivor bias ― the logical error of concentrating on people or things that made it past a selection process while overlooking those that did not ― as well as, potentially, a superiority complex ingrained in those who survived. This has led to a preponderance of financial products in crypto because of their successes thus far, but a paucity of products and marketplaces for real trade. Entrepreneurs in the blockchain space do not cater to what was supposed to be the most common class of user, and those who do often end up shipping products that fail at commercialisation. Blockchain and financial economy The 2016-2017 era of crypto startups saw the launches of many companies promising blockchain-powered products ― blockchain social networks, phones, logistics, legal tech...

With cryptocurrencies, every time a transaction takes place, it is broadcast to every computer on the network, and this interconnected system verifies the transactions. Mining inefficiency, causing the environmental costs, threatens the notion of blockchain as a long-term enterprise solution.  Thankfully, efforts are well underway towards environmentally friendly digital assets, and we are seeing rapid innovations in this space. Proof of stake is now forming the foundation of newer protocols such as Cardano (ADA) and XinFin (XDC).  The XDC Network is supported by masternodes that are responsible for block creation. The platform XinFin is a resilient blockchain protocol that integrates seamlessly with older systems and can bypass some of the major problems that ce...

Welcome to the latest edition of Cointelegraph’s decentralized finance, or DeFi, newsletter. Blogging platform Mirror expanded to the public market this week. Read on to discover the impact of this move for Ethereum wallet holders.  What you’re about to read is a more succinct version of the newsletter. For a comprehensive summary of DeFi’s developments over the last week, subscribe below. Mirror expands blockchain blogging to the public This week, Mirror, a decentralized publishing protocol focused on fostering data ownership and free expression, expanded its platform to the public market for the first time. In the previous version, a weekly voting competition using the platform’s native token, WRITE, determined an exclusive list of 10 content creators who could contribute to the pla...

Over the past few months, there have been some major developments coming out of China that have rocked the cryptocurrency market and the global financial markets. China’s Evergrande debt repayment crisis sent shockwaves throughout global equities markets, as well as the United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) consistent signaling of upcoming regulation for stablecoins and decentralized finance (DeFi) continued to weigh on sentiment within the market.  While the Evergrande situation somewhat resolved itself, for the time being, the government crackdown on unregulated DeFi platforms and stablecoin transactions continues. This has resulted in cross-chain equipped layer-one protocols and layer-two solutions seeing increased volumes as traders search for non-centralized ...

Ethereum’s native token Ether (ETH) is at risk of falling below $3,200 in the coming sessions as its rally comes face-to-face with a strong resistance zone. In detail, the price of Ether swelled by almost 22% on a month-to-date timeframe in the wake of a market-wide price rally. That pushed the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization from under $3,000 to above $3,650 in the first eight days of October, triggering more bullish forecasts. “Six thousand dollars will happen fast; $10,000 is programmed,” noted Twitter-based technical chartist Crypto Cactus. David Gokhshtein, CEO of distributed data network PAC Protocol, predicted a $10,000 upside target for Ether, as well. Waiting for $ETH to cross $10,000 so the party can really get underway. Side note: Th...

A subsidiary of the blockchain software provider Powerbridge Technologies, Powercrypto Holdings, has announced the launch of a sustainable cryptocurrency mining initiative for Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) in Hong Kong. The company plans to deploy a total of 2,600 first-grade mining rigs, comprising of 600 BTC mining machines operating at a hash rate of 60 PH/s, as well as a further 2,000 ETH mining machines, which harness a hash rate power of 1,000 GH/s. According to the announcement, Powercrypto’s ultimate ambition with the inauguration of this venture is to increase the BTC and ETH hash rate level across the North American and Asian markets. Analytical data revealed that Bitcoin’s current hash rate,  measured by terahashes per second, reads 150.29m across a seven-day aver...

Bitcoin’s (BTC) rally above $50,000 seems to have received a boost from institutional buyers who are looking to hedge their portfolio against increasing inflation, said JPMorgan in a note to its clients on Oct. 7. The bank’s analysts speculated that institutional investors may be preferring Bitcoin over gold as a better hedge against inflation. A recent study titled “Cryptocurrencies and the Sharpe Ratio of Traditional Investment Models” by crypto asset management firms Iconic Funds and Cryptology Asset Group showed that the addition of cryptocurrencies to any portfolio improved returns and risk-reward performance of the portfolio. Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360 Bloomberg senior commodity strategist Mike McGlone said in the October 2021 edition of the Bloomberg Ga...