Business

The Blockfolio brand is no more: One of the first genuine product brands in the cryptocurrency space, the mobile app that started as a portfolio tracker — and later morphed into a trading app under the stewardship of FTX — will now take its new owner’s name. Blockfolio, which boasted a user base in excess of six million crypto enthusiasts, was acquired by Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX Trading company in August 2020 in a deal worth $150 million.  Related: Billionaire SBF says FTX may one day buy Goldman Sachs and CME “The rebrand of FTX: Blockfolio to FTX puts the final cap on our acquisition of Blockfolio, doubling down on our commitment to being the number one crypto trading platform for both retail and institutional users,” said FTX CEO and crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried...

Crypto mining firm BIT Mining, which recently announced it would be expanding out of the Chinese market, plans to purchase 2,500 Bitcoin miners for deployment in Kazakhstan. In a Wednesday announcement, BIT Mining said it had entered a $6.6 million agreement to buy 2,500 Bitcoin (BTC) mining rigs. The firm has already put 3,819 BTC miners into operation at data centers in Kazakhstan, with another 4,033 machines on the way. Once all are deployed, the addition of the recent mining purchase is expected to increase BIT Mining’s hash rate capacity to roughly 458 petahashes per second. Though based in the city of Shenzhen, BIT Mining has said it plans to expand its operations outside of China in response to the recent government crackdown on mining. Many Chinese firms have reportedly faced ...

Last week, as Bitcoin resurged after briefly falling below $30,000, a good number of altcoins embarked on their own relief rallies. Telcoin (TEL) was among this large group of digital assets whose prices shot up on July 21.  Unlike most of its peers, however, TEL’s upward trend remained alive for the entire week, leading to a respectable 82% gain against the dollar and a 43% gain against Bitcoin (BTC) over a seven-day period.  Given the market dynamics of the time, many traders may simply attribute this performance to a marketwide oversold bounce — but was there a way for traders to spot the potential for this tremendous run early? TEL’s second wave TEL is the utility token of Telcoin, a blockchain protocol designed to facilitate affordable mobile-based remittances globally. Telc...

Multiverse, a decentralized artificial intelligence ecosystem that funds early-stage tech companies, has secured $15 million in investments from some of blockchain’s biggest venture funds.  Samsung Next, a developer ecosystem focused on AI, blockchain and fintech, was among the investors, along with Arrington XRP Capital, Huobi Ventures and Fenbushi, Multiverse announced Wednesday. With the raise, Multiverse now has an implied valuation of $250 million, making it one of the largest ecosystem developer funds at the intersection of blockchain and AI. The investment will go towards expanding Multiverse’s capacity across engineering, research and marketing. The organization is eyeing a bigger presence in Europe and Southeast Asia.  Related: New Samsung service Paperless adds do...

Tuesday’s crypto hearing before the United States Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs also included a call for stricter regulations on cryptocurrency miners. Addressing the committee, professor Angela Walch claimed that miners held “meaningful power” over the way blockchain networks operate. According to Walch, miners can exploit their role of transaction ordering, which could become a “major issue” for cryptocurrencies, as reported by Law360. In stressing the point, professor Walch likened the miner extractable value paradigm — where miners earn more profits from ordering transactions in a certain way — as being akin to a “bribe.” As such, Walch called for “greater scrutiny” on the activities of miners, given their role as “intermediaries” in the multi-billion-dollar cr...

Crypto-finance unicorn Amber Group has partnered with TR Lab to launch a new initiative to help creators access the booming NFT market, highlighting once again the rapid uptake of digital collectibles in various industries.  The CreatorFi initiative was unveiled Wednesday as a new platform to help NFT creators go to market faster. This includes receiving infrastructure setup support, including minting, custody and platform penetration testing, directly from Amber Group. CreatorFi leverages leverages the expertise of Amber Group and TR Lab to provide users with customizable, end-to-end services for their NFT auctions. Related: Blockchain tech is holding NFTs back because of these three design flaws “NFTs are revolutionizing the traditional art world,” said Annabelle Huang, a part...

Biconomy, a multi-chain infrastructure network for decentralized applications, has concluded a $9 million private funding round that was co-led by venture firms DACM and Mechanism Capital. Ahmed Al-Balaghi, CEO of Biconomy, said his protocol has been designed to address some of the biggest challenges with Web 3.0 transactions, such as gas fees, Ether-only payments and fragmented layer-2 solutions. He explained: “If we are able to solve even a fraction of those challenges, we believe we will be able to onboard the next billion users into the DeFi and broader web3.0 ecosystem.” Related: A multichain future will accelerate innovators and entrepreneurs Biconomy describes itself as a multi-chain relayer infrastructure network that enables developers to more easily build applications for decentr...

Senator and former United States presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren believes that the digital asset industry may be a tool to tackle some challenges in the traditional financial system. A known skeptic of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC), Warren appeared to have softened her stance on the crypto industry in a CNBC Squawk Box interview on Wednesday, stating that digital currencies could be an instrument to bank the unbanked: “There has been an enormous failure by the big banks to reach consumers all across the country. Digital currency and central bank digital currency may be an answer there.” The senator emphasized that the existing financial system has a lot of problems, suggesting that some cryptocurrency-related solutions could be a potential solution to these issues. “The quest...