Crypto

Coinbase has announced a new support phone line for customers who believe their account has been compromised by outside actors. Users will be able to speak to a live support agent, who can kick off an investigation immediately. In an industry where support tickets and emails are the standard method of communication, Coinbase expects that this implementation could help users save valuable time when dealing with this type of crisis. Coinbase also offers its customers additional layers of protection that include two-factor authentication, unknown device recognition and advanced hardware security keys. Account takeovers, or ATOs, involve a malicious actor gaining access and control over a user’s account. They are treated as a form of identity theft, where hackers simulate the credentials of th...

Smart contracts have been a revolutionary force in the blockchain industry because they have enabled the creation of decentralized finance protocols, nonfungible tokens and a new form of carrying out transactions without the need of a middleman.  Cardano (ADA) is one of the many projects that has been gaining momentum throughout 2021 and now that the project’s long-awaited smart contract capabilities are on the verge of becoming reality, the token is on the precipice of setting a new all-time high. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that after bottoming at a low of $1.02 on July 20, the price of ADA has surged 139% to a multi-week high at $2.45. ADA/USDT 1-day chart. Source: TradingView Here’s a look at what some analysts and traders are saying about the r...

Gary Gensler, chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission stated that DeFi is highly centralized in certain aspects and urged projects working in the sector to register with the SEC. Speaking to The Wall Street Journal on Aug. 19, Gensler suggested that the decentralized notions implied by the term DeFi were “a bit of a misnomer,”: “These platforms facilitate something that might be decentralized in some aspects but highly centralized in other aspects.” While DeFi projects are designed to be autonomous platforms that operate without a centralized authority, Gensler asserted that many are developed and controlled by a centralized team who are incentivized to promote their platforms. “There’s still a core group of folks that are not only writing the software, like the open-source...

Regulatory concerns surrounding Binance.us and its owner, Changpeng Zhou (CZ), have reportedly culminated in investors backing out of a $100 million funding round. The failed funding round also prompted Binance.us CEO Brian Brooks’ surprise decision to step down after serving as its executive for just three months.  Brooks, the former Acting Comptroller of the Currency and former chief legal officer to rival exchange, Coinbase, cited “strategic differences” while stepping aside. The funding round had been intended as the first step in Binance.us’s path toward an initial public offering (IPO). According to New York Times, Brooks had initially courted potential investors including Ray Lane from venture capital firm GreatPoint, and an executive at Japanese holding c...

Brian Quintenz, who has served as one of the commissioners with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC, reportedly plans to leave the agency on Aug. 31. According to a Thursday report from the Wall Street Journal, Quintenz is expected to announce his move into the private sector after leaving the CFTC later this month. He hinted that his future career could include a focus on “innovation, particularly related to cryptocurrency and DeFi” and planned to continue advocating for the crypto space. Quintenz was first nominated to the position by President Barack Obama in March 2016 before being re-nominated by Trump in May 2017 and confirmed that August. His term at the CFTC was scheduled to end in April 2020, but he announced at that time he would stay “until the earlier of the confi...

The Avalanche blockchain platform’s native asset, AVAX, fell on Aug. 19 as traders decided to secure their profits from its 100% upside move. The AVAX/USD exchange rate plunged more than 16% after hitting a three-month high of $36.64, putting the brakes on a seven-day upside boom that saw its price rise by 111%. It appears that traders felt uneasy about entering AVAX markets near $36 because of its historical reference as a sell-off level, capping AVAX’s previous recovery attempts from March to May. Overvaluation risks AVAX also dropped on interim overvaluation fears. The daily relative strength index (RSI) of Avalanche’s token crossed above 70 during its upside boom. Essentially, markets consider an RSI reading above 70 as overbought for the underlying asset, noting...

Over the past seven days, Bitcoin (BTC) has failed to break through the $48,000 resistance, but its price has remained flat even as Minneapolis Federal Reserve Chairman Neel Kashkari bashed the industry. During an appearance at the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region Annual Summit on Aug. 17, Kashkari said: “So far, what I’ve seen is […] 95% fraud, hype, noise and confusion.” Moreover, Kashkari specifically targeted Bitcoin when hementioned that its only use case has been funding illicit activities. Even with the current pullback, Bitcoin investors should be glad that the $44,000 support held because the Federal Reserve also signaled its intent to unwind its $120-billion monthly purchases of Treasury and mortgage-backed securities. With less stimulus to support the markets,...

Ethereum scalability infrastructure developer Polygon said it will form a decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, for all of its community members as well as projects in decentralized finance.  In a Thursday announcement, Polygon called on its members to express their views on the platform forming a DAO. According to Polygon, it plans to create committees to promote discussion between projects including QuickSwap, Sushi, and Aave and others to “bring DeFi to the next million users.” “As the Polygon ecosystem grows, the committee members have a front-seat opportunity over others to increase cross-collaboration for their products,” said the project. “Voting for elections of new members could be implemented in multiple ways like by using staked MATIC on PoS or via the DAO tokenhol...

American banking giant JPMorgan Chase has reportedly blocked all account activities of Compass Mining, a Bitcoin (BTC) mining company based out of Delaware. The information came to light when Compass Mining CEO Whit Gibbs announced: “Shoutout to Chase for shutting down Compass Mining accounts for doing our part to replace the old guard with self-sovereign, future-focused supporters of hard money. Get behind #Bitcoin or get out of our way.” Compass Mining has been involved in offering mining rigs and hardware hosting services for Bitcoin mining. Under the pretext of supporting the Bitcoin hash rate and network, the company allows individual users to undertake mining operations via its private infrastructure. Cointelegraph has reached out to both parties for further comments and will update ...