Crypto

TGU Consulting Group, a Honduran company based in the capital of Tegucigalpa, has reportedly installed the country’s first Bitcoin ATM. According to a Friday Reuters report, TGU chief executive Juan Mayen led the move to install the Bitcoin (BTC) ATM in one of the capital’s office buildings. The “la bitcoinera” machine allows crypto enthusiasts to purchase BTC and Ether (ETH) using the local fiat currency, lempira, provided they are willing to scan their IDs and disclose certain personal information. Mayen said this was the first automated way to purchase Bitcoin in Honduras, but many software developers had been accepting crypto for payments. According to the TGU exec, many Hondurans have had to exchange cash for crypto in person, an action he described as “very inconvenient and dangerous...

The rise of decentralized finance and nonfungible tokens has transformed the blockchain ecosystem and generated near unimaginable riches for investors, but none of this would be possible without the strong foundation offered by layer-one blockchain networks like Bitcoin and Ethereum.  Smart contracts and layer-two protocols promise to revolutionize the finance and logistics industry, but they require a robust, secure and distributed network to operate on and to ensure their immutability. Currently, most of the top layer-two projects operate on the Ethereum network, and this has resulted in increased transaction costs and delayed confirmation times due to network congestion. The network’s recent London hard fork attracted a lot of attention due to the implementation of a fee-burning me...

The Ethereum (ETH) network is currently the dominant layer-one protocol in terms of smart contract deployment and active users, but the race to become the ‘world’s computer’ is far from settled because competing protocols are gaining traction by offering solutions to high transaction costs and slow confirmation times, the biggest problems facing the network. One project that has been on the rise over the past month is Tezos, a proof-of-stake blockchain network that is designed to evolve over time without the needing to undergo a hard fork. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that since hitting a low of $2.09 on July 20, the price of XTZ has rallied 165% to a high of $5.53 on Aug. 27 as its 24-hour trading volume surged abov $1 billion. XTZ/USDT 4-hour char...

As nonfungible token sales appear reanimated after a nearly two-month dry spell from their apex in May, a particular NFT application is gaining popularity more than ever: metaverses. Metaverses have gained their fair share of media attention lately, with big moves coming from companies like Facebook and Epic games. However, not everyone — even those who have been in crypto for a long time — has caught on to what metaverses are, despite the hype. But as more companies, celebrities and artists venture into the space, it has become another domain that deserves some thorough consideration. The Metaverse is a network of virtual environments in which people can interact with each other, digital objectsand the physical world through their avatar. While definitions of the Metaverse vary, they orbi...

Bitcoin has thus far remained the largest crypto asset in terms of market capitalization since its launch in 2009. Given the thousands of other cryptocurrencies that have come into existence over the years, could any of them ever become larger than Bitcoin (BTC) in terms of market cap? “We are in the top half of the second inning of crypto and right now it looks like BTC will remain at the top however, like the Red Sox fell apart this year, we just don’t know,” managing partner of A&C Advisors LLC, Daniel Strachman, told Cointelegraph. Strachman’s experience includes decades of financial work and writing multiple books. “It comes down to market reaction and investor interest,” he added. “There is a lot of talk about Eth surpassing BTC and that is a reality but we need to play a f...

Asset managers and companies currently hold over 6% of Bitcoin’s (BTC) circulating supply, according to Buy Bitcoin Worldwide. A breakdown of the data shows Bitcoin fund issuers and asset managers hold about 4% of Bitcoin’s supply, public companies account for nearly 1% and private companies own roughly 0.83% of the cryptocurrency’s supply.  It’s clear that institutional investors have continued to add crypto to their portfolios and Adam Proctor, the managing director for billionaire Simon Nixon’s investment firm Seek Ventures, said the company plans to increase “allocation to crypto” as they believe it to be an “important area for the future.” Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360 CNBC Mad Money host, Jim Cramer, recently said that he was a “believer in crypt...

Accelerate Financial Technologies is planning to match each investment in its pending Bitcoin exchange-traded fund with the planting of thousands of trees. According to a Friday report from Bloomberg, the Calgary-based investment services company has pledged to plant 3,450 trees for every $1 million CAD — roughly $792,000 at the time of publication — invested in its Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund, or ETF. The move is part of Accelerate’s aim to have its Bitcoin ETF be carbon negative — that is, removing more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than the energy required for Bitcoin mining and transactions would create. The company claims each major investment would result in the offset of 1,000 tons of carbon dioxide. Accelerate chief investment officer Julian Klymochko pushed back agains...

China has reportedly doubled down on its crypto crackdown with a public reminder stating that Bitcoin (BTC) and other digital currencies “are not legal tender and have no actual value.” In a local media briefing, Yin Youping, the deputy director of the Financial Consumer Rights Protection Bureau of the People’s Bank of China (PBoC), said the central bank will maintain a “high-pressure situation” and continue to crack down on digital currency-related transactions. At the briefing session, which was coincidently held during China’s “Financial Knowledge Popularization Month,” Youping stated that digital currency-related transactions are pure investment hype. Youping said that the public should increase its risk awareness and stay away from crypto investments. Despite the government’s continue...

The Cuban government is reportedly planning to recognize and regulate cryptocurrencies for payments. According to Aljazeera, the Caribbean nation’s central bank will establish rules for mainstreaming cryptocurrency transactions. Cuban authorities are also expected to distribute relevant licenses to businesses based on the crypto-related services they provide. Some sources claim that the move to allow cryptocurrency as a legal tender has been well received by Cuba’s tech-savvy population as the country had to temporarily stop accepting cash bank deposits in United States dollars, given tighter restrictions set by former U.S. President Donald Trump. Struggling economies, such as El Salvador, have also started mainstreaming Bitcoin (BTC) adoption. On Monday, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele ...

Japan’s largest financial brokerage, Nomura Holdings Inc., has launched a subscription service offering customers the opportunity to purchase and trade food dishes at a high-end Italian food delivery service. The blockchain-based security tokens represent four luxury food parcels from Japanese chef Masayuki Okuda. Owner of two established restaurants in the capital, Tokyo, Okuda is known for his idiosyncratic cooking style, often presenting his clients with niche delicacies, including olive-fed beef and zusayama chicory. Annual subscriptions to the Italian restaurant cost 60,000 Japanese yen, which is equivalent to $546, in addition to an up-front membership payment of 3,000 yen ($27.30). According to the service’s website, dishes available for customers on the delivery menu include pumpki...

When does decentralization stop being an experiment in technological democracy and start being a way to avoid accountability? That’s the question at the heart of a potential $100 million arbitration lawsuit against cryptocurrency exchange Binance, where close to 1,000 traders seek damages for losses suffered during the site’s outage on May 19.  Binance experienced technical issues for several hours on May 19 amid one of the worst market crashes of the year as the global cryptocurrency market suffered a 33% drop. Traders were unable to execute trades for the duration of Binance’s outage, and many found their accounts depleted when the site came back online. Binance’s click-through terms of use absolve it of any responsibility for losses incurred by new users upon registering with the e...