Business

Smart cities are steadily garnering attention worldwide as they become points of aspiration for many jurisdictions. There is a very clear relationship in these urban utopias between the citizens for whom they are built and the systems, networks and devices that enable their safe, secure and efficient operation. Most importantly, they will be built on entirely new financial technology infrastructure that supports the flow of micropayments over financial “plumbing,” in a similar way that other essential utilities (water, energy, data, etc.) flow over pipes, cables and fiber. The principal aim of a smart city is to optimize city functions and promote economic growth by leveraging cutting-edge technologies. Smart cities seek to increase operational efficiency, achieve sustainability goals such...

Bitmain, a Chinese manufacturer of cryptocurrency mining equipment, has been forced to stop its business in China from Oct. 11 following the crypto ban imposed by local authorities. In addition to China’s blanket ban on crypto operations, the company has attributed the move to stop shipping Bitcoin (BTC) and cryptocurrency mining rigs as a response to China’s carbon-neutral policies. According to Bitmain’s announcement: “From October 11, 2021, Antminer will stop shipping to mainland China. For customers in mainland China who have purchased long-term products, our staff will contact them to provide alternative solutions.” While the company has yet to reveal its plan to help existing customers in China, Bitmain will continue to supply Antminer crypto mining rigs to users across the world inc...

Esports, gaming and interactive media investment platform Bitkraft VC has established a $75-million token fund for investing in blockchain gaming and digital entertainment. The fund uses a “stage-agnostic” strategy, meaning that it will put money in companies and startups at any business development stage. Apart from equity investment, the token fund will also invest in cryptocurrencies and nonfungible tokens (NFT). In order to provide regulated investment opportunities, Bitkraft received an investment advisor registration from the United States Securities and Exchange Commission in June 2021. The new token fund is led by Piers Kicks, a founding partner in the investment arm of crypto research firm Delphi Digital. Kicks joined Bitkraft earlier this year to lead the company’s investmen...

Shiba Inu (SHIB) has emerged as one of the best investments heading into the fourth and final quarter of 2021, with its price rising by over 390% in the first week of October. Nonetheless, the spin-off meme cryptocurrency now risks wiping most of those gains in the coming sessions. Yuriy Bishko, a Ukraine-based market analyst, discussed the potential bearish scenario based on Shiba Inu’s recent price trends, which appear eerily similar to those recorded in the Dogecoin (DOGE) market earlier this year. For instance, SHIB’s October price rally followed five months of consolidation inside a $0.00000398-wide price range. Similarly, DOGE’s sideways trend in Feb-April 2021, wherein its bids bounced between $0.0471 and $0.0630, served as a basis for a 500%-plus price rally in la...

Whether it’s baseball players or shiny Pokemon cards, collectibles have been a cultural mainstay in human behavior since the Renaissance. Memorabilia from famous films or items of clothing worn by a celebrity can be auctioned and sold for eye-watering amounts. Take the prototype Batmobile from the 1960s Batman TV show, it was sold for $4.2 million. With collectibles, the concept itself is simple: An item has value based on its scarcity. The less of it there is, the more it’s worth. It is this concept that is the driving principle behind the explosive growth of nonfungible tokens (NFTs). Largely bought and sold on the Ethereum blockchain, NFTs are essentially collectibles that have been digitized. Whether it’s the insanely popular and limited CryptoPunk avatars or Jack Dorsey’s first-...

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 Indian crypto exchange CoinSwitch Kuber raises $260M Indian crypto exchange CoinSwitch Kuber closed a $260 million Series C funding round this week at a valuation of $1.91 billion, adding itself to the prestigious unicorn club. The funding round was led by Coinbase Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz, the latter of which has emerged as a leading crypto venture capital firm. Following the $1.91 billion valuation, CoinSwitch Kuber is said to be India’s most valued crypto firm. Speaking of funding, Sky Mavis, the de...

Twitter, which has seen its user base steadily grow to surpass 185 million users last year, is experimenting with NFTs to allow users to display their collections as their profile pictures. According to Mada Aflak, a senior software engineer at Twitter, the microblogging platform is working on new functionality that will let users import their NFT collections from their wallets on the blockchain. The feature would display a verified checkmark based on the blockchain the NFT has been minted on. As promised, here is the first experiment. Feedbacks and ideas are welcome 🙂 https://t.co/TDyhibCXfG pic.twitter.com/2ifru9T2Pa — Mada Aflak (@af_mada) September 29, 2021 Twitter’s verified NFTs may be an answer to a problem that has been plaguing crypto Twitter. After NFTs exploded earlier this year...

Experienced analysts and media outlets including Cointelegraph recently highlighted some indicators suggesting that the Bitcoin (BTC) price rally could be overextended. Those bearish views include one from Bollinger bands creator John Bollinger, suggesting traders use a trailing stop, as signs of a “top” were building up. However, it is worth noting that Bollinger Bands and the Fear and Greed indicator are backward-looking metrics. Therefore, those will usually flash overbought levels whenever there’s a 30% weekly rally, such as the most recent one. As crypto analyst TechDev_52 correctly questioned, there’s no way to know whether we’re entering a large potential correction or a rally continuation. Now you know why they call it a bear “trap”. It’s damn convincing. How do you know the “trap”...

The run-up in the price of Shiba Inu (SHIB) so far in October pushed the SHIB token to become the 20th largest digital asset by market capitalization. Shiba Inu’s circulating market valuation jumped to $11.08 billion earlier this week and is currently above $10 billion, putting it in the top-20 by market cap for the first time. As a result, the Dogecoin-inspired meme cryptocurrency became more valuable than popular blockchain projects like Stellar (XLM), Polygon (MATIC), and Tron (TRX). SHIB market cap versus price. Source: Messari The growth in Shiba Inu’s valuation came on the heels of a tweet published by Elon Musk. On Oct 4, the Tesla CEO posted the picture of his pet dog—a Shiba Inu breed—with the caption “Floki Frunkpuppy.” SHIB jumped by more than 40% an hour...

To compare Bitcoin (BTC) to the Dutch tulip bulb bubble is to perpetuate a fallacy. Technology evolves more rapidly than nature, and decentralized networks have more financial utility than a bouquet. Bitcoin is a technology, tulips are plants, and no discerning person would take the comparison much further. Tulipmania, a 17th-century market bubble in which the price of the flower bulb increased due to speculation by Dutch investors, resulted in a major crash. Prices exceeded the average annual income of the time by six times. The rarest of bulbs became among the most expensive items on the planet. Even though the Bitcoin network has been operating since 2009, its comparison with the tulip bubble continues ad nauseam. Last February, British economist and European Central Bank council member...

There are good reasons why pension funds should not invest in the crypto and blockchain space. The industry is too new, too volatile, and stultifyingly technical. Moreover, the rules and regulations to govern the sector have yet to be settled.  But the fixed-income financial instruments that pension funds typically favor — like long-term government bonds — are scarcely paying anything these days, so the traditional caretakers of employees’ retirement funds have a dilemma: Where to find investment yield in a world where inflation is looming? It may not be entirely surprising, then, that pension funds — the most cautious of institutional investors — are now giving the booming crypto/blockchain sector a closer look. “Family offices led the charge into crypto funds several years ago, but ...

United States Senator Cynthia Lummis, a Republican from Wyoming, has revealed that she purchased Bitcoin (BTC) worth between $50,001 and $100,000 on Aug. 16, according to documents filed on Thursday.  The disclosure was part of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, or STOCK Act, which prohibits the use of non-public information for profit. The STOCK Act was signed into law under former President Barack Obama in April 2012 and is designed to combat insider trading. As CNBC reported, Lummis’ purchase was disclosed outside of the 45-day reporting window stipulated in the law. The reporting delay was due to “a filing error,” a spokesperson said. Lummis made the purchase less than two weeks after she and other senators attempted to insert a pro-crypto amendment into President Jo...