Crypto

As the Income Tax Department of India reportedly considers taxing crypto traders and crypto exchanges soon, experts believe investors should rest assured. According to ET Now’s report, the tax department, which operates under India’s Ministry of Finance, has signaled interest to tax crypto earnings through trade and exchanges. However, the sources claim that the move will not entitle cryptocurrencies to a valid asset class position. Speaking to Cointelegraph, Indian entrepreneur Nischal Shetty, CEO of WazirX crypto exchange, said that getting clarity on crypto-related Goods and Services Tax (GST) will help in identifying the asset class of cryptocurrencies: “It’s a no-brainer that your crypto earnings are taxable like other income and should be declared in the Income Tax Returns. As of now...

Business intelligence outfit and corporate Bitcoin (BTC) whale MicroStrategy has increased its BTC ownership with the additional purchase announced on Monday. MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor announced the purchase of 5,050 BTC for about $242.9 million at an average of $48,099 per coin. In a Form 8-K filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission published on Monday, MicroStrategy stated that it had added 8,957 BTC to its corporate Bitcoin treasury in Q3 2021. As previously reported by Cointelegraph, MicroStrategy recently bought 3,907 BTC at the cost of about $177 million between July 1 and Aug. 23. Following the latest Bitcoin acquisition, the company now holds about 114,042 BTC acquired at an aggregate purchase cost of $3.16 billion. Given the current BTC spot price, t...

Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, is planning to raise $1.5 billion via a debt offering, the company officially announced Sept. 13. The Nasdaq-listed crypto exchange is looking to use the capital raised to further grow the company’s balance sheet for general corporate purposes as well as potential investments and acquisitions of other companies, products or technology, Coinbase said. The closing of the offering is subject to market and other conditions, the firm noted. The new raise specifically aims to offer a $1.5 billion aggregate principal amount of the company’s senior notes due 2028 and 2031, which will be fully guaranteed by Coinbase, Inc., a wholly-owned Coinbase subsidiary acting as its holding company. The interest rate, redemption provision...

On Sept. 7, in a historic first, the small Central American nation of El Salvador adopted Bitcoin as legal tender. The true significance of this day for how people all around the world exchange value and what meaning they ascribe to the concept of money will take quite some time to reify and be fully understood. Yet, what is already clear is that September 2021 will be up there next to January 2009 in the history books of the digitization of finance. Surrounded by controversy, protests, bumpy infrastructure rollout — how else? — but also joy and optimism of millions globally who look at this great experiment with hope, the Bitcoin Day marked the first instance of a sovereign state making a decentralized digital asset its national currency. Was it a success, after all? Politics in the backg...

“Crypto gifting is a part of our product roadmap,” says WazirX VP of Marketing Inculcating Bitcoin gifting during the festival season is expected to improve crypto awareness   Local crypto exchanges in the world’s second-most populous country India are luring retail traders and private individuals to buy Bitcoin with aggressive marketing campaigns and free crypto giveaways in order to create awareness around the utility of digital assets. The crypto industry is looking to use the country’s rich cultural history to make inroads into public consciousness by encouraging citizens to gift Bitcoin to friends and family instead of the traditionally accepted gold during the Hindu holiday season, Economic Times reported. Unocoin co-founder Sathvik Vishwanath explained the strategy by stating t...

Protocol and community development initiatives have become the latest trend in the cryptocurrency market after a number of projects have launched multi-million dollar funds aimed at enticing builders and investors to make the cross-chain migration into the layer-2 ecosystem. The latest project to capitalize on this trend is Harmony (ONE), a blockchain protocol that boasts a 2-second transaction finality and offers cross-chain bridges to a handful of layer-one protocols, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Polkadot (DOT) and the Binance Smart Chain (BSC). Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that since hitting a low of $0.095 on Aug. 31, ONE price rallied 120% to a daily high at $0.21 on Sept. 9 as its 24-hour trading volume spiked to $717 million. ONE/USDT 4-hour ...

On Aug. 12, Cardano tweeted that the upgrade had been completed successfully at epoch 290, facilitating the creation and execution of smart contracts on the public blockchain for the first time. Despite celebrating the milestone, Cardano notes that it is still “early days for the project,” asserting that now is when “the mission truly begins” in a blog post published on the same day: Cardano has announced the completion of its Alonzo hard fork, ushering in its long-awaited smart contract functionality. “This is where the mission truly begins as we – the whole community – start delivering on the vision we have all been working towards for so long. Building a decentralized system that extends economic identity and opportunity to everyone, everywhere.” The Alonzo fork enables smart cont...

Ethereum layer-two rollup network Arbitrum One is beginning to see significant growth, with its total value locked (TVL) surging by roughly 2,300% this past week. According to L2beat, an analysis platform comparing layer-two protocols, Arbitrum’s TVL tagged an all-time high of $1.5 billion on Sept. 11 as DeFi degens rushed to invest in early farming DApps launching on the network. Off-chain Labs launched Arbitrum to mainnet following a $120 million funding round on Aug. 31. Since then, Ethereum transaction fees have surged to their near-record levels, driving a migration of liquidity to layer-two scaling solutions and rival layer-ones. Arbitrum currently holds 65.7% of all capital locked on layer-two networks, followed by the second-layer decentralized exchange dYdX with 14.6%. Much of Arb...

To celebrate the holiday season in India, cryptocurrency exchanges are looking to lure retail traders by launching aggressive marketing campaigns and giving away crypto. For this year’s Hindu holiday season, which kicked off on Sept. 10, crypto exchanges are encouraging citizens to choose Bitcoin as a gift instead of their traditional choice this time of year – gold. Sathvik Vishwanath, the co-founder of the popular crypto exchange Unocoin, told the Economic Times that if approached right, “Bitcoin and gift vouchers can be an interesting option for users to consider as more awareness activity is expected across the industry.” The exchange has linked up with e-commerce websites to enable customers to purchase prepaid gift-vouchers vouchers for online shopping using Bitcoin. Rival exchange, ...

Australian digital asset manager Monochrome has concluded a $1.8 million Series A fundraiser led by some of crypto’s most influential entrepreneurs, underscoring the growing potential of institutional-grade crypto-asset solutions.  The cash injection will be used by Monochrome to develop new products specializing in Bitcoin (BTC) and other digital assets, the company said. The Series A was co-led by Litecoin creator Charlie Lee, Blockstream chief strategy officer Samson Mow, former Binance CFO Wei Zhou and Kain Warwick, the founder of Blueshyft and DeFi protocol Synthetix. Following the raise, Monochrome’s total valuation was estimated to be worth roughly $15 million. Monochrome was launched earlier this year by Jeff Yew, the former chief executive of Binance Australia, to provide an ...