Crypto

New filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, reveal that four wealth management companies have acquired shares of Grayscale’s Bitcoin Investment Trust, offering further evidence of institutional adoption of digital assets.  As first reported by MacroScope, a Twitter feed devoted to institutional trading and asset management, the firms disclosed their GBTC holdings in new filings for the period ending June 30, 2021. Clear Perspective Advisors, an Illinois-based wealth manager, revealed direct ownership of 7,790 GBTC shares on Friday. In an SEC filing today, Clear Perspective Advisors, a wealth management firm in Aurora, Illinois, reported owning 7,790 shares of Grayscale Bitcoin as of June 30. Filing:https://t.co/PT21czzjvO pic.twitter.com/WZ7RYk1RBp —...

Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link. Top Stories This Week Infrastructure bill passes US Senate — without clarification on crypto On Tuesday, the controversial infrastructure bill passed in the U.S. senate In a 69-30 vote. The bipartisan bill proposes roughly $1 trillion of funding into transportation and electricity infrastructure projects. The bill also puts forward more stringent rules for firms handling crypto assets while expanding reporting requirements for brokers, who will be required to report digital asset transactions worth more than $10,000 to the IRS.&nbs...

Bitcoin (BTC) at $47,000 is turning heads but is in fact only the “worst-case scenario” for one of its most popular analysts. In a tweet on Aug. 13, PlanB, creator of the stock-to-flow family of Bitcoin price models, reiterated that $47,000 should be just the beginning for BTC/USD. Bitcoin price no longer in its “worst case scenario” Following the May miner rout from China and accompanying BTC price crash, long-established price models based on the stock-to-flow principle saw a major test of their reliability. Even PlanB himself had moments of uncertainty as Bitcoin dipped to lows of $29,000. At the time, however, he predicted that a return to strength as the dust settled on the mining reorganization would propel the market far higher. August, or more specifically t...

After months of unrelenting turbulence, the crypto industry has been on somewhat of a tear over the last couple of weeks, with the total market capitalization of the space recently topping the $2 trillion mark for the first time since May.  In fact, over the last 21 days alone, a whopping $700 billion entered the digital asset sector, leading many to believe that more may be in the cards in the near term. Two recent events seem to have created this bullish sentiment: Ethereum’s successful London hard fork, which makes the network seem more scalable, and the introduction of the recent infrastructure bill by the United States Senate, with its tax implications for crypto businesses in America. Kadan Stadelmann, chief technological officer of blockchain solutions provider Komodo, told Coi...

The decentralized finance sector is growing at a breakneck pace. Three years ago, the total value locked in DeFi was a mere $800 million. By February 2021, the figure had grown to $40 billion; in April 2021, it attained a milestone of $80 billion; and now it stands at above $140 billion. Such rapid growth in a new market could not but attract the attention of all manner of hackers and fraudsters. According to a report by crypto research company, since 2019, the DeFi sector has lost about $284.9 million to hacks and other exploit attacks. Hacks of blockchain ecosystems are an ideal means of enrichment from the point of view of hackers. Because such systems are anonymous, they have money to lose, and any hack can be tested and tuned without the victim’s knowledge. In the first four months of...

The year 2009 was marked by both the genesis of Bitcoin and the United States stock market starting an unprecedented bull market — one that’s continued almost uninterrupted since. However, murmurings of a crash are always present, and the noise has recently been getting louder.  Against the backdrop of COVID-19 refusing to go away, stocks keep pushing higher, backed by an unprecedented amount of government support. But now that quantitative easing policies are no longer being implemented, is the talk of a stock market crash justified? If so, this could bring unfortunate news for Bitcoin (BTC): It could be argued that there are signs of a strong correlation between Bitcoin and stocks. So, what may happen to crypto if the bottom falls out of U.S. equities? How likely is a crash? Taking ...

Binance has halted Korean won (KRW) trading pairs as part of a raft of changes to its operations in South Korea. In a notice issued on Friday, the crypto exchange giant announced the discontinuation of KRW trading pairs as well as KRW payment options on its service. Other features discontinued include Korean language support on its website and merchant applications for peer-to-peer transactions (P2P) in South Korea. As part of the announcement, Binance also advised P2P traders to remove all trade advertisements denominated in KRW from the platform. Detailing the reason for the decision, Binance said that it was proactively complying with local regulations. Indeed, South Korean authorities have been putting the screws on crypto exchange operators in the country amid a tightened regulatory r...

Artificial intelligence research lab Fetch.ai has been granted a request to have major cryptocurrency exchange Binance identify individuals behind a $2.6 million hack. According to a Friday Reuters report, the Royal Courts of Justice in London has ordered Binance to identify the hackers and seize the stolen assets. Fetch.ai reportedly claimed that hackers stole $2.6 million worth of cryptocurrency from its Binance account on June 6 and resold the tokens for a significantly reduced price. “We need to dispel the myth that crypto assets are anonymous,” said Syedur Rahman, a partner from Fetch.ai’s legal team at Rahman Ravelli. “The reality is that with the right rules and applications, they can be tracked, traced and recovered.” Rahman reportedly claimed Binance ...

A KPMG report titled “Pulse of Fintech H1 2021,” shows that the total investment in the blockchain and cryptocurrency sector in the first half of this year has risen to $8.7 billion, which is more than double the $4.3 billion worth of deals done in 2020.  KPMG global fintech co-leader Anton Ruddenklau said: “Cryptocurrency and blockchain are exploding globally. I think for the rest of this year at least, crypto will be a very hot ticket for investors.” Separate research by blockchain market intelligence Blockdata also shows that 55 out of the top 100 banks by assets under management have directly or through subsidiaries invested in crypto and blockchain firms. Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360 Bittrex Global CEO Stephen Stonberg told Cointelegraph that the ...

The NFT sector took the world by storm in 2021 as crypto and corporate sector influencers, globally recognized companies and popular sports teams embraced the growing digital collectible trend.  After a brief sector-wide pullback which coincided with the market-wide declines seen beginning in May, the NFT sector roared back to life as collectibles like CryptoPunks, Pudgy Penguins and Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) selling for record-breaking prices.  One project that has benefitted from the recent bull market in the NFT sector is Aavegotchi (GHST), a decentralized finance (DeFi) focused NFT ecosystem that runs on the Aave protocol. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that since reaching a low of $0.896 on June 22 the price of GHST has rallied 202% to ...

Layer-two protocol Polygon will be merging ZK-rollup project Hermez Network into its ecosystem for $250 million worth of MATIC tokens. In a Friday announcement, Polygon said Hermez would become a part of the network’s suite of solutions under the name Polygon Hermez. The 26 people in the Hermez team as well as its tech and solutions — including work on an Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible solution — will join the platform. As part of the merger, holders of Hermez’s native HEZ will be able to exchange the tokens at a rate of 3.5:1 to Polygon’s MATIC tokens. Polygon said HEZ tokens would eventually be phased out at an unspecified date. “We believe this is in a way a historical moment since this will be (to the best of our knowledge) the first full-blown merger of two blockchain networks,” ...

Polkadot (DOT) is a blockchain project designed to interconnect sub-chains called parallel chains or parachains. Each application-specific chain built within Polkadot uses the Substrate modular framework, and this is meant to ease the development process. The project has been at the center of developers’ and investors’ attention for most of 2021, but the sharp market-wide correction on May 19 dealt a heavy blow to the DOT price, and the team has been relatively quiet for the past two months. On July 22, Karura Swap, the first decentralized exchange (DEX) in the Polkadot ecosystem, was launched. The project was created by Acala, a decentralized finance (DeFi) project backed by Coinbase Ventures. Polkadot (DOT) performance in USD at Coinbase. Source: TradingView In the past 24 da...