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U.S. government goes to court over $11m USDT purportedly stolen by fake Coinbase rep
On September 17, a group of officials led by U.S. attorney Tracy Wilkinson have filed a civil complaint in the United States District Court for the Central District of California claiming that they have identified four digital wallets holding more than 9.8 million Tether (USDT) that was involved in wire fraud, computer fraud, and money laundering. According to court documents, the legitimate owner of the funds is a California resident who in April 2021 got swindled out of more than 200 Bitcoin (BTC) by someone impersonating a Coinbase employee. Customer support goes awry As described in the claim, the unidentified victim was contacted by what appeared to be Coinbase customer support shortly after purchasing some 200 BTC to their Pro account on the exchange. The alleged representative of th...
Neumos in Seattle, in a Pandemic: Shows Are Still Canceling
How are things going for you since we last talked? We had our third break in at (my restaurant) Life on Mars. I now have an alarm. The funny thing about me not having an alarm, is that when I moved to Washington in 1991, I sold burglar alarms for three years. I know how shitty they can be with false alarms and everything, so I was like ‘I don’t want an alarm.’ But this time we had a pro job. They came in through the back door, got into the office, took our portable P.O.S. devices and multiple laptops. The other times people broke in, they didn’t get much. This time they got us bad. We’ve got insurance and all that but there is still a deductible. It’s not cheap. It is a pain the ass and I am still dealing w...
The Weeknd, H.E.R. and Motown’s CEO Honored at First BMAC Music in Action Awards
That mission statement remained front and center throughout the nearly three-hour ceremony/dinner during which emotions ran high. The Weeknd, co-recipient of The Quincy Jones Humanitarian Award for his philanthropic support of various charities and organizations including COVID relief, Black Lives Matter and MusiCares, recalled the first time he met the industry icon. “He pulled up to one of my club gigs in Las Vegas; he’s one of the reasons why I started making music,” said the emotional singer, to whom Jones presented the award via videotape. “He said he’d wait for me to visit with fans first before we talked. He was teaching me the lesion that nothing is more important than people and giving back. This is the best award I’ve ever gotten in my life, I swear. I won’t take this for g...
Coinbase CEO opens up about the struggles of dealing with the SEC
Coinbase decides against fighting SEC on declaring the USDC lending program as a security In a conversation with Anthony Pompliano on the Best Business Show, broadcasted earlier today, Brian Armstrong, the CEO of US-based crypto exchange Coinbase spoke about the struggles of dealing with the Security and Exchange Commission, the problem with lack of regulatory transparency and explained why Coinbase decided against taking SEC to court with regards to the threats issued against the exchange’s USDC lending program. Coinbase became the first cryptocurrency exchange to go public earlier this year, a move that was seen as a major milestone towards establishing the legitimacy of digital assets. Armstrong revealed that once the IPO was launched, the exchange had meetings with every single ...
Weekly analysis: Bitcoin and Dash are red again, Tezos rallies
The cryptocurrency market is likely to end the week in a bearish situation after overturning the gains recorded over the past few hours The cryptocurrency market started the week in poor condition, with most coins losing more than 10% of their values within the first few days. However, Bitcoin (BTC) and some of the major altcoins managed to turn things around in the middle of the week as the total market cap approached the $2 trillion mark again. However, the bears have regained control of the market, and the total market cap has dropped below the $1.9 trillion mark again. For the short term, the bears seem to be in control, and the prices of the cryptocurrencies could drop further in the coming hours. Bitcoin price outlook Bitcoin is currently down by 3% over the past 24 hours and is trad...
Monthly report: El Salvador’s Bitcoin adoption becomes official
El Salvador’s Bitcoin adoption, Solana’s outage and Coinbase’s little talk with the US SEC are the major highlights of the month Bitcoin’s status in El Salvador is now official Bitcoin (BTC) has been around for more than a decade, but this is the first time it has become a legal tender in a country. El Salvador’s bill earlier this year to make Bitcoin a legal tender came into effect this month, marking a huge development for the world’s first and largest cryptocurrency by market cap. The government has bought more than 700 bitcoins in recent weeks as it seeks to promote the adoption of the cryptocurrency. It has also installed more than 200 Bitcoin ATMs across El Salvador. President Nayib Bukele has shown that he is a big believer in Bitcoin and is making moves that could eventually pay of...
Acting OCC head warns that ‘fools gold’ in DeFi reminds him of lead-up to GFC
Acting head of the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) Michael Hsu has warned that the exotic financial products developed in some quarters of crypto and DeFi were reminiscent of those that precipitated the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC). Speaking before the Blockchain Association on Sept. 21, Hsu warned that “innovation for innovation’s sake […] risks creating a mountain of fool’s good,” drawing analogies between the rapid proliferation of digital asset derivatives and the explosion in mortgage and debt derivatives such a Credit Default Swaps (CDS) that preceded the 2008 global financial crisis: “I have seen one fool’s gold rush from up close in the lead up to the 2008 financial crisis. It feels like we may be on the cusp of another with cryptocurrencies (crypto...
Golem releases laptop app to mine Ethereum … but turning a profit is tricky
The Golem Network has launched an app that allows users to mine Ethereum on their laptops, but it could be a long time before riches can be reaped. The decentralized computing resources sharing platform released the Thorg app that allows users to mine Ethereum on Windows-based PCs and laptops. The app runs in the background and harnesses unused computing power to process the calculations required for proof-of-working mining. Users are rewarded in Golem’s native GLM token however, and not Ethereum. The system runs on layer-two aggregator Polygon which alleviates any heavy transaction fees associated with the ERC-20 GLM token. It creates “shares” which are batched computing tasks that are collected and used to mine Ethereum. Golem CEO, Piotr Janiuk, said that Thorg was designed to increase a...
Arca Labs partners with Securitize on regulated, tokenized financial products
Arca Labs, the innovation arm of digital asset investment firm Arca has partnered with blockchain tech firm Securitize to launch regulated, tokenized financial products. According to a Sept. 23 announcement, Securitize has signed on to provide a smart contract and issuance platform for the firm, starting firstly with Arca’s tokenized fund dubbed “Arca U.S. Treasury Fund” that was launched in July 2020. Arca touts it as the first treasury fund registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940 to issue shares as digital assets via the blockchain. The fund meets the same regulatory requirements as a mutual fund, but differs by offering exposure via Ethereum-based digital asset security tokens called “ArCoin.” Arca states that the fund will typically “invest a minimum of 80% of assets in U.S...
Crypto adoption is a ‘huge challenge,’ says Chinese central bank exec
The rapid adoption of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) poses a major challenge for the traditional financial system, an executive at the Chinese central bank has warned. Wen Xinxiang, director of the payment and settlement department at the People’s Bank of China (PBoC), has expressed concerns over the growing popularity of cryptocurrencies and fiat-pegged stablecoins. Pointing to Bitcoin’s market value now surpassing $800 billion and the total stablecoin market cap exceeding $120 billion, Wen outlined major risks associated with the crypto market at a payment and settlement forum on Sept. 24, The Shanghai Securities Journal reported. According to the official, one of the main challenges of crypto is that the industry is capable of operating separately from the traditional payment syste...
Shanghai Man: RMB stablecoin in Shanghai, Evergrande FUD, and FTX gains ground
This weekly roundup of news from Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong attempts to curate the industry’s most important news, including influential projects, changes in the regulatory landscape, and enterprise blockchain integrations. This week, the word “Evergrande” found its way into the vocabulary of every western investor. After years of watching the corporation’s football team on TV and drinking its bottled water, Crypto Twitter was the last place the Man in Shanghai expected to find it. After facing debts of over $300 billion, all types of rumors swirled, leading its Hong Kong-listed shares to drop 80% and a massive crypto sell-off early in the week. Misreading their tea-leaves The western experts had split opinions on the issue, with CNBC’s Jim Cramer urging ...
Staking on Ethereum 2.0, explained
While Ethereum 2.0 staking allows validators to be compensated for securing the network, ‘Ethereum 2.0 Staking Earn’ is its own product, providing users rewards from several DeFi products. On Ethereum 2.0, the PoS-powered blockchain will bundle 32 blocks of transactions during each validation round. Each block bundle is known as an epoch, which are finalized transactions. During the validation process, also known as “attesting,” the Beacon Chain assigns groups of stakers into “committees” of 128, who are then given a shard block. A base reward will determine the issuing rate of Ethereum 2.0. As the number of validators connected to Ethereum 2.0 increases, the lower the base reward will be per validator. This is true since the base reward is inver...
