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Weekly Report: President Putin recognises crypto’s role in payments
Cryptocurrencies have received recognition from numerous popular names in recent years, and the praises keep on coming Putin says crypto can be used for payments Russian President Vladimir Putin has joined the long list of Bitcoin’s admirers after admitting earlier this week that cryptocurrencies can be used as a means of payment. He made this comment while responding to CNBC’s Hadley Gamble at the Russian Energy Week event. Putin admitted that using cryptocurrencies to pay for goods and services is perfectly okay. However, he thinks it is still early for Bitcoin to replace the US dollar for global traders. Putin also touched on Bitcoin’s huge energy consumption in terms of mining, stating that it is a major barrier for the cryptocurrency attaining massive adoption. The president’s comment...
Coinbase lobbies for new crypto regulator in the US
Regulators all over the world are struggling to regulate the cryptocurrency space, but efforts are still in the early stages Leading cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has revealed that it is currently lobbying for the United States government to create a separate regulatory agency to oversee the activities within the cryptocurrency space. Over the years, traditional regulatory agencies have struggled to properly oversee the activities within the crypto space. This is due to the fact that the crypto market operates differently from other traditional financial markets. As a result, Coinbase unveiled it’s Digital Asset Policy Proposal yesterday, suggesting that the United States Congress pass legislation that would regulate Marketplaces for Digital Assets (MDAs). The cryptocurrency excha...
The political peril that Biden didn’t see coming
That prospect has heightened concern among Democrats about the potential political fallout, and the administration has scrambled to address some of the root causes even as officials argue that there’s little they can do to resolve them on their own. The longer the issues last, the more likely they are to become politically perilous for congressional Democrats running for re-election and hoping to hold onto their slim House and Senate majorities as voters feel the squeeze of elevated prices on everyday goods and services. Evidence that higher costs might last longer than first expected has been piling up. Data on consumer prices released Wednesday showed that the cost of goods and services rose 5.4 percent last month from a year earlier, the largest jump in 13 years. Prices increased 0.4 pe...
Half of unique active crypto wallets played a blockchain game in Q3
The number of crypto wallets participating in blockchain games has surged in recent months according to new research. According to DappRadar’s Q3 ‘Blockchain Game Report’, unique active wallets connected to gaming decentralized applications reached a total of 754,000 for the period. This represents almost half of the industry’s activity with the blockchain industry registering 1.54 million daily unique active wallets on average over the three-month period. The unique active wallet metric refers to unique addresses that interact with a given smart contract, so it does not necessarily translate to daily active users. The increase in gaming activity has been largely driven by the play-to-earn movement and in-game nonfungible tokens. These in-game NFT collectibles generated $2.32 billion in sa...
ANZ bank settles debanking case with Aussie Bitcoin trader
Bitcoiner Allan Flynn has settled his first complaint with the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) over being unilaterally debanked in 2018 due to his occupation as a Digital Currency Exchange (DCE). The settlement comes 20 months after the Canberra resident first filed complaints with the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal against ANZ. In the settlement, the ANZ noted that it closed his accounts due to the risk of money laundering and terrorism funding (ML/TF) that it perceives among exchanges. It also acknowledged that the act of unbanking Flynn could “have amounted to unlawful discrimination contrary to sections 7(1)(p) and 20 of the Discrimination Act 1991.” However ANZ denied any liability saying that if it had “discriminated against Mr. Flynn by closing his account...
Bitcoin hits $60K for the first time since April after reports of imminent ETF approval
Bitcoin has surpassed the $60,000 mark briefly for the first time since April 2021. The price has been boosted by reports suggesting a Bitcoin futures ETF is likely to begin trading in the United States as early as next week. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro indicate that Bitcoin prices have been on a slow grind upward since the beginning of this month. Before the upward price action began, prices had hovered around $42,000 from Sept. 20 to Oct. 1. The $60,000 mark was first breached on Bitstamp exchange just after 5 AM (UTC), and Bitcoin is now just 7% away from reclaiming its Apr. 14 all-time high of $64,804. The price has since eased slightly and at the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading around $59,500. Bloomberg reported earlier today that sources familiar with the matter had...
Flow integrates Filecoin storage services to make NFTs more decentralized
Filecoin has officially become the storage collaborator for the Flow Blockchain. Filecoin said in an Oct. 13 announcement that the move was a part of a push to ensure holders’ and issuers’ NFTs are “securely available everywhere.” The announcement follows from a previous move in August in Which Dapper Labs was working to integrate Filecoin’s storage services with the Flow Blockchain. The collaboration enables Flow users to mint NFTs, leverage InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) content addressing, and store the tokens in decentralized storage hosted by Filecoin. According to Filecoin, IPFS content addressing is a solution to location addressing which retrieves online information from specific locations on the web, such as from behind URLs. Filecoin asserts that this m...
ARIA Board Strips Denis Handlin of His Icon Award
The trade body’s Icon Award is periodically presented at a VIP ceremony in Sydney, in the hours prior to the annual ARIA Awards. Just five ARIA Icons have been awarded. The first went to the late Mushroom Group founder Michael Gudinski in 2013, followed by Handlin, Sebastian Chase (2016), Roger Davies (2017) and Michael Chugg (2019). ARIA’s u-turn follows the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s premiere Monday night (Oct. 11) of Facing the Music: The Sony Music Scandal, a 47-minute documentary which exposed the “culture of fear, harassment and bullying” in a workplace Handlin led for 37 years. The following day, trade body Q Music revoked the honorary award presented to Handlin at the 2020 Queensland Music Awards, in his hometown Brisbane. The documentary, noted QMusic CEO Kris Stewart, ...
Mell Hall’s ‘Knock Knock’ Sets Australian Club Chart Record
The previous record belonged to fellow Australian Zoe Badwi’s “Release Me,” which dominated the ARIA club chart for seven-straight weeks in 2008. “Knock Knock” opened its chart account 11 weeks ago, before going on to claim the top position, with Hall becoming only the fifth Australian solo female artist to get there. “Knock Knock” also becomes the first ARIA club chart leader to feature two Australian female artists in collaboration, and it marks Thandi Phoenix’s first appearance on the tally. “So grateful to see my debut record getting so much love,” comments Hall. “Knock Knock” was a “joy to make, a joy to work with Thandi Phoenix and knowing that it brings audiences and my peers alike joy, what more could a girl want!? Big love to Team Sweat for the endless support. Feeling the moment ...
What else is moving as Bitcoin price inches toward a new ATH?
Bitcoin (BTC) is hot and clearly in the hands of bulls. Yes, eventually an exchange-traded fund (ETF) is coming and after that a $100,000, no $120,000, scratch that, $150,000 BTC price will be on the board. Blah, blah, blah. Anyone logging onto crypto Twitter is going to be bombarded with all this bullish drivel straight from the jump and that’s great, we’re all happy Bitcoin is doing well. I’ve been a holder since early 2016 so of course, I’m happy. But, isn’t there more to crypto than just Bitcoin? Aren’t there other assets that are moving? Wouldn’t it be nice to hear about them before they go on some parabolic 150% run and then your favorite anon Twitter trader with a Rolex and an Audi advises you on which support levels to buy on the next pullback? Let’s take a ...
Canadian city plans to supply residents’ heat using Bitcoin mining
MintGreen, a Canada-based cleantech cryptocurrency miner, will be partnering with the Lonsdale Energy Corporation to supply heat to residents of North Vancouver in British Columbia starting in 2022. In a Thursday announcement, MintGreen said its “digital boilers” — which it claims can recover more than 96% of the electricity used for Bitcoin (BTC) mining — will prevent 20,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases per megawatt from entering the atmosphere during its arrangement with North Vancouver. The recovered energy will be used to heat 100 residential and commercial buildings in the Canadian city with a population of roughly 155,000. Colin Sullivan, the CEO of MintGreen, said the partnership was aimed at tackling issues related to climate change. According to a December 2020 report from the ...
Ethereum price hits $3,800, boosting bulls’ control in Friday’s ETH options expiry
Ether (ETH) entered a slightly bullish channel earlier this month, and currently the price is marching toward the $3,800 level. Despite the recent turbulence, Ether bulls are set to bag a $53 million profit on this Friday’s weekly options expiry. Investors also appear to be disinterested in Ether’s recent underperformance versus Bitcoin (BTC), and to date, the altcoin’s gains stand at 265%. If Ether manages to stay above $3,600 on Friday, 99% of the $180 million put (sell) options will become worthless. Ether price at Bitstamp in USD. Source: TradingView Ethereum smart contract competitors continue to pressure the leading network and at the time of writing, Ethereum’s average gas fees remain above $20. Polkadot (DOT) is scheduled to begin its sidechain auction...
