Crypto

Ether (ETH) price rallied 32% leading up to August 23, and despite testing the $3,000 support multiple times, the level has held firmly. Meanwhile, Bitcoin (BTC) could not sustain the $50,000 mark, at least in the short-term. According to Cointelegraph, pro traders are not yet inclined to add bullish positions according to derivatives metrics. Surprisingly, the opposite situation emerges when looking at the sentiment of Ether traders who currently show a reasonable degree of confidence in the current price level. Regulatory pressure and spectacular NFT growth back traders confidence in Ether On Monday, Dawn Stump, a commissioner at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), stated that: “A trading platform that offers derivatives on digital assets to U.S. persons without regist...

Powers On… is a monthly opinion column from Marc Powers, who spent much of his 40-year legal career working with complex securities-related cases in the United States after a stint with the SEC. He is now an adjunct professor at Florida International University College of Law, where he teaches the course “Blockchain, Crypto and Regulatory Considerations.” More and more, governments are fearing that they will lose control over aspects of their respective legitimate financial systems, including capital raising and trading, to the hundreds of unlicensed, unregulated centralized and decentralized crypto exchanges worldwide. There is a clear rising chorus of alarm in statements by government regulators in the United States, England, China, Southeast Asia and elsewhere, which are focu...

The controversial $1 trillion infrastructure bill will see a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives without any amendments to the crypto tax provisions by Sept. 27. The vote was agreed to after the House narrowly approved the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion budget blueprint in a vote of 220 to 212. Despite some initial pushback from moderate Democrats, the dissident voters were swayed after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi committed to pass the bill before Sept. 27. Pelosi stated: “I am committing to pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill by September 27. I do so with a commitment to rally House Democratic support for its passage.” In late July, last-minute cryptocurrency provisions were added to the infrastructure bill in a bid to raise a further $28 billion through expanded tax obligations for th...

Tim Stokely, the founder and CEO of OnlyFans has explained how banks had forced it to drop adult content from the subscription-based content platform. OnlyFans is a popular platform connecting online sex workers to subscribers, but the firm recently changed its policy to prohibit “sexually explicit conduct,” starting Oct. 1 — which has caused backlash from both creators and content connoisseurs alike. Speaking about the change of policy with the Financial Times on Aug. 24, Stokely noted that “we had no choice — the short answer is banks,” as he listed three banking giants who refused to provide services to OnlyFans: Bank of New York Mellon, Metro Bank and JPMorgan Chase. Stokely asserts that the banks pulled services from OnlyFans over the “reputational risk” of being associated with a pla...

Whether working in visual innovation or merely acting as a reporter, I’ve made a career out of diving headfirst into ideas that I know nothing about. The fresher, more complex the puzzle to be solved, the more I dig into it, going from unknown to known. And if I’m lucky, I’m gifted a day-long adrenaline rush and some unusual dreams in return for my services. When I was starting out, I worked as a breaking news journalist — a job that had me writing up to six news stories a day. On top of that, the pressure to catch every word in a presidential press briefing, for example, can be mind-bendingly intense and require such inconceivable attention. The only comparison I could draw would be day trading cryptocurrencies. And like crypto, my work would often visit me late into the night. Once in be...

Blockchain artificial intelligence lab Fetch.ai has launched a new NFT marketplace for AI-generated art, giving users the ability to create digital collectibles in a collaborative setting through machine learning technology.  The new platform, dubbed Colearn Paint, allows groups of creators to automatically generate and collectively own NFTs designed by a machine learning algorithm. The platform is geared towards “abstract compositions,” according to Humayun Sheikh, CEO of Fetch.ai, who cited “collective learning” as a major trend for the future. Collective learning is a concept within artificial intelligence that describes the application of deep learning algorithms to data and privacy. Users of Colearn Paint will be taken through a three-step process for creating randomly generated ...

Cardano (ADA) addresses with a balance greater than $1 million have surged 173% during the latest ADA price rally. Specifically, the ADA/USD exchange rate gained almost 200% after bottoming out at $1.007 on July 20. The pair reached its record high of $3.02 in the previous session, a move that was followed by a 6.42% price correction to $2.73 at the time of writing. Meanwhile, the same period saw the total number of Cardano wallets that hold at least $1 million worth of ADA tokens surge from 3,625 to 9,830, per information provided by data analytics platforms CoinMetrics and Messari. ADA addresses with balance greater than $1 million. Source: Messari, CryptoQuant Additionally, against ADA’s 1,455% year-to-date (YTD) gains, the total number of Cardano millionaires surged fro...

$2 billion worth of Bitcoin (BTC) options will expire on Friday, Aug. 27. Some analysts argue that a strong call (buy) option buying activity on Aug. 22 was likely the catalyst for the recent $50,000 price test. Digital asset trading firm QCP Capital mentioned in its market update that an entity has been “consistently pushing (option) prices higher in the last few weeks.” The activity, which took place during the morning trading session in Asia, aggressively bought bullish options in chunks of 100 BTC contracts each. The report also mentions the exhaustion of regulatory concerns in the near term, as crypto-related decisions from the Senate Banking Committee and regulators are unlikely to bear fruits in 2021. Bears might be analyzing different data However, the most recent ̶...

The $17.5 million deal will see the Berkeley campus football field renamed the FTX Field at California Memorial Stadium Cryptocurrency derivatives exchange FTX announced yesterday it was launching a 10-year relationship with Cal Athletics, the sport department of the University of California at the Berkeley campus. The $17.5 million deal will see FTX receive the naming rights to the campus football field, which shall henceforth be known as the FTX Field at California Memorial Stadium. This marks the first collegiate crypto naming rights sponsorship and the Cal Athletics rightsholder will accept the payment in cryptocurrency. The university’s director of athletics, Jim Knowlton, commented, “FTX is a growing company at the forefront of innovation in an emerging technology, one that fits well...

The non-fungible token (NFT) space has experienced tremendous growth over the past few months Leading payment company Visa has acquired a non-fungible token (NFT) for $150,000, making it one of the first corporate entities to do so. The company said it believes NFTs will play a huge role in the future. Visa bought the CryptoPunk 7610 for $150,000, with the company making its first entry into the NFT world. In a blog post yesterday, Cuy Sheffield, Visa’s crypto head, stated that “We think NFTs will play an important role in the future of retail, social media, entertainment, and commerce.” Sheffield said for Visa to enable its clients and partners to enter the NFT space, the company needed to have a firsthand understanding of the infrastructure requirements for a global brand to buy, store a...