Crypto

Over the course of 2020 and 2021, the cryptocurrency industry has attracted a notable amount of mainstream attention. In line with the growing awareness of the crypto industry, Intel, a tech company with history dating back to the 1960s, revealed an investment in crypto exchange Coinbase (COIN).  Although a number of specifics remain unknown, such as when the purchase occurred, required Q2 financial disclosure from Intel showed the outfit carrying 3,014 COIN shares at Q2’s conclusion, according to a Friday article from Barron’s. “Intel was obligated to disclose the stake to the Securities and Exchange Commission because it owns more than $100 million in publicly traded investments,” Barron’s noted. The disclosure from Intel went public on Aug. 13, according to the article. Coinbase to...

Bitcoin’s (BTC) rapid recovery above $46,000 has renewed calls for a $100,000 BTC price by the end of 2021, while the effects of China’s crackdown on the mining industry are slowly beginning to fade as the Bitcoin network hash rate shows signs of recovery. Bitcoin mean hash rate vs. price. Source: Glassnode One of the side benefits of China’s crackdown is that it has lowered the barriers of entry into the Bitcoin mining space, which has been shown to provide profits in both bull and bear markets. Bitcoin mining is one of the few ways that investors can acquire BTC without directly purchasing it from the market, and is quickly becoming an industry dominated by big money interests that can afford the electricity costs and upkeep required to run a mining operation. Here are some options avail...

Twitter CEO and self-professed Bitcoin (BTC) maximalist Jack Dorsey is not giving Ether (ETH) fans an inch. In his latest offhand remark about the market’s second-largest cryptocurrency, Dorsey downplayed the platform’s potential to single-handedly shake up the status quo in Big Tech: Disrupting “Big Tech” is exactly what’s needed and what I want. No one technology alone will do that though. — jack⚡️ (@jack) August 12, 2021 Dorsey’s comment followed an online discussion of the usefulness of a full-blown integration of nonfungible tokens (NFT) into Twitter, which Twitter user Seyitaylor argued would be more to the benefit of Ethereum than to the social media site.  Dorsey agreed that such a move would be more consequential for the Ethereum ecosystem than for his own ...

Trading volumes on peer-to-peer nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace OpenSea have surged by over 12,000% in 2021. DappRadar data shows that the total incoming value to OpenSea’s smart contracts increased to $56.07 million on Wednesday compared to $73,556 on Jan. 1. Meanwhile, the marketplace’s user count increased from 315 to 14,520 in the same period — a 4,423% increase. OpenSea historical activity. Source: DappRadar A major portion of OpenSea’s trading volume spike happened after June. At the start of the month, the capital entering the marketplace’s smart contracts was just $3.6 million. But by Sunday, it had surged above $71.238 million. What’s more, on the previous 30-day average alone, OpenSea processed 1.18 million transactions worth $1.06 billion. The marketplace’s cumulative volume...

It was a topsy turvy week — “staggering,” a crypto veteran called it. One that saw United States Senator Ted Cruz and Senator Ron Wyden collaborate on behalf of the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry — albeit, in a lost cause. These events could eventually pave the way for future regulatory success, though it may not seem that way now. To recap: The Biden Administration’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill was supposed to be all about roads and bridges but as the Senate vote approached, it also became about cryptocurrency taxation. Thanks to a last-minute provision added to the bill, which some crypto advocates warned could have dire consequences, the changes could drive BTC miners out of the U.S. and thwart future blockchain development. “It will be a stunning loss for America and our ...

United States Senators have cast their votes, and the contentious HR 3684 infrastructure bill cleared in the upper Congress chamber. Now, the gigantic document of over 2,700 pages and amounting to almost $1 trillion is heading to the House of Representatives, including the provisions expanding the definition of a cryptocurrency broker, designed to beef up crypto and decentralized finance (DeFi) tax compliance. The $1 trillion can’t come out of thin air, right? While the bill in effect simply follows Financial Action Task Force (FATF) guidelines, doomsayers are already declaring the end is nigh, haunted by visions of the dreaded Internal Revenue Service (IRS) coming for their coins. As usual, they’re wrong. Related: Cryptocurrency mining under proposed US policy changes No, not everybody is...

The brokerage arm of Singapore’s DBS Bank will be licensed to provide digital payment token services Singaporean multi-national bank DBS announced yesterday that its brokerage arm, DBS Vickers (DBSV) had received regulatory approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). Under the country’s Payment Services Act, the brokerage has been granted in-principle approval to provide digital payment token services. The news makes DBSV one of the first financial institutions to receive this sort of approval from MAS. The Singaporean regulator had granted the same in-principle approval to Australian digital asset exchange Independent Reserve last week. DBSV’s approval is an important step in DBS’ asset digitalisation strategy. The bank had launched the DBS Digital Exchange (DDEx) last year, ...

Controversial Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson appears to have turned onto Bitcoin in the latest episode of his podcast. On Aug. 10 Peterson published a podcast titled “Bitcoin: The Future of Money?” which hosted a panel of Bitcoiners including John Vallis the host of the Bitcoin Rapid-Fire podcast, Bitcoin coder Der Gigi, film creator Richard James, and Robert Breedlove, ex-hedge fund manager and host of the “What is Money?” show. In the video, Peterson — who claims to have an IQ around 150 — puts forward a succinct description of the innovation from which Bitcoin derives its value from: “It’s a very interesting idea that in some manner, Bitcoin provides an incorruptible language of value preferable to gold.” Throughout the episode, the 59-year-old author prompted his guests to...

The nonfungible token space has been a hive of activity over the past month or so but there could be more going on than meets the eye as concerns emerge over the sector’s involvement in money laundering and tax evasion. Crypto investor and uber-bearish crypto commentator Mr. Whale has drawn attention to the darker side of the burgeoning NFT space. In a blog post earlier this week, the Bitcoin early adopter attributed the popularity and notoriety of NFTs to their ability to facilitate money laundering and tax evasion for the wealthy. “Behind the facade of a bunch of bored rich dudes buying digital artwork at insanely high prices lays a sinister and twisted money laundering scheme for crypto’s ultra-rich elites to make their illegal profits look legal.” He argues that because art is so subje...

Popular social media platform Reddit has gained $4 billion in value since its last funding round earlier this year in February. Six months ago the firm raised $250 million in Series E funding at a valuation of $6 billion. In the latest move, Reddit announced a Series F funding round on Aug. 12 — which is being led by Fidelity Management and Research Company LLC and is expected to close at around $700 million with a post-money valuation of $10 billion. According to the New York Times, investment in the funding round has reached $410 million so far, with Reddit stating that it expects further financing from existing investors to reach the $700 million target. The true valuation of Reddit is hard to gauge as the firm is yet to go public. On that subject, Steve Huffman, Reddit’s co-founder and...