Business

Alternative investment firm SkyBridge capital hopes to expand its crypto offerings, filing for a crypto-focused exchange-traded fund (ETF) on Tuesday and revealing plans for an Algorand fund at this week’s SALT conference in New York. Speaking to CNBC, SkyBridge founder and former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci said the firm had raised more than $100 million toward the newly announced Algorand fund. He added that the firm currently holds roughly $700 million worth of crypto assets. Scaramucci asserted that “crypto is here to stay,” adding that regulators must act “very quickly” if they intend to stem the snowballing adoption of the technology. “This is a lot like Uber — the regulators wanted to knock Uber out of business, but the people wanted Uber and the people wo...

NFT NSFW Nafty, a blockchain firm that produces decentralized NSFW platforms —such as OnlyFans competitor Nafty.TV — launched an erotic-themed NFT marketplace dubbed “NaftyArt” today. NaftyArt aims to provide a platform for erotic artists and adult-content creators to promote and sell their tokenized works without fears of it being removed, or their accounts shadowbanned. It may also give some NFT proponents an excuse for out-laying large sums of money on NSFW content. The announcement read: “Erotic Artists and Adult Content creators have been struggling for some time to get their work prominently featured on mainstream NFT marketplaces. A lot have found their work is removed as it contains nudity or at best they are shadowbanned, with potential buyers unable to see their work.” Nafty is a...

Time magazine has named Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin one of the most influential people this year, along with musicians, world leaders, activists, and others. Appearing in the list of Time’s innovators for 2021, Buterin is named alongside Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Tesla CEO and Dogecoin (DOGE) proponent Elon Musk, and others. In his profile on the Ethereum co-founder, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian cited Buterin’s role in building the Ethereum network to a market capitalization of more than $400 billion and encouraging the development of decentralized apps and non-fungible tokens, or NFTs. “No one person could’ve possibly come up with all of the uses for Ethereum, but it did take one person’s idea to get it started,” said Ohanian. “From there, a new world has opened up, and given r...

Bitcoin (BTC) is leading the recovery in the crypto sector and the cryptocurrency briefly rallied to $48,429 on Sept. 15, before pulling back to test the underlying support levels. While speaking during a live stream at the SALT conference, Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood said that Bitcoin is the default currency of the crypto space and could rise tenfold in the next five years. Her projection is based on the presumption that Bitcoin will find a place in the balance sheets of many companies and institutional investors will increase their allocation to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to about 5%. Several legacy finance companies have realized the growing demand for digital assets and are increasing their crypto offerings to fulfill that demand. Morgan Stanley recently set up a new crypto-focu...

Bitcoin detractors and those protesting the policies of El Savador President Nayib Bukele have destroyed a crypto kiosk in the nation’s capital city. News outlet Teleprensa and others posted videos on social media showing a Chivo-supported kiosk in San Salvador burning amid a crowd of journalists and protesters on Wednesday. The Bitcoin (BTC) machine, one of many arranged by the El Salvador government since its acceptance of the cryptocurrency as legal tender in the country, could be seen defaced with anti-BTC logos and a sign saying “democracy is not for sale.” Los manifestantes quemaron el kiosko Chivo como medida de protesta contra el #Bitcoin. Vía @Luis33Tv #Teleprensa33 #Nacionales pic.twitter.com/XlacUWCPNN — Teleprensa (@Teleprensa33) September 15, 2021 San Salvador Mayor Mario Durá...

Over the past ten days, Bitcoin (BTC) price tested the $44,500 resistance on multiple occasions, and this marked a 16% drawdown from the previous week’s $53,000 local top. Not even the $3.4 billion long futures contracts liquidations that occurred on Sept. 7 while BTC dropped by 18.7% was enough to eliminate bulls’ optimism, according to options markets data.  Bitcoin price at Coinbase in USD. Source: TradingView If historical data plays any role in the price of Bitcoin, the month of September presented negative performances in four of the previous five years, and BTC finished August trading at $47,110. Regardless of the price, adoption by institutional investors has been growing at a steady pace. On Sept. 13, Morgan Stanley, one of the largest banks in the United States, ...

The value of MicroStrategy’s massive Bitcoin (BTC) holdings has surpassed what most S&P 500 companies hold in their cash treasuries. The Nasdaq-listed enterprise software firm purchased an additional 5,050 Bitcoin for about $242.9 million, raising the value of its 114,042 BTC holdings to nearly $5.3 billion. That comes out to be higher than what 80% of non-financial S&P 500 companies hold in their cash coffers, as per data compiled by Bloomberg. Cash spending up among corporations MicroStrategy made buying Bitcoin its official corporate strategy in 2020, with its celebrated CEO, Michael Saylor, calling the move a defense against the U.S. dollar’s potential devaluation. Companies like Tesla and Square later copied the strategy to replace a portion of cash reserves wit...

Bitcoin (BTC) quickly returned to $48,000 during Sept. 15 as BTC/USD continued on the path to a $50,000 retest.  BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView Bitcoin takes aim at $50,000 Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView tracked the largest cryptocurrency as it beat out thin resistance above $47,000 to zone in on psychologically significant higher levels. Passing $47,000 was a substantial gain for bulls, with resistance then shifting up towards the $50,000 mark, an area which should come next, analysts say. “Right now, we are looking at a potential breakout above the range high,” Cointelegraph contributor Michaël van de Poppe said in his latest YouTube update earlier on the day. Van de Poppe revealed that he was uncertain about a ...

An OpenSea executive has been outed for hyping nonfungible tokens he purchased and then featuring them on the homepage of the popular NFT marketplace — a move that presumably allowed him to sell the art pieces for a quick profit. Nate Chastain, who serves as OpenSea’s head of product, allegedly used burner wallets to purchase NFTs, which were then featured on the front page of OpenSea — where they’d receive the most attention — before unloading them. A Reddit user documented the whole ordeal by publishing the transaction details. One of the NFTs in question belongs to the Dailydust Collection on OpenSea. The “Spectrum Of A Ramenfication Theory” was purchased by Chastain on Tuesday for 0.25 Ether (ETH) before it was sold for 1.5 ETH a few hours later. Notably, the sale was executed after th...

The European Union is reportedly looking to bolster technological development in the region with a planned $177 billion investment war chest. According to Bloomberg, EU officials plan to fund direct investments in areas like blockchain, data infrastructure, 5G, and quantum computing among others. The planned $177 billion investment fund is about 20% of the 750 billion euros ($887 billion) stimulus package agreed upon by EU leaders back in July 2020 to kickstart economic recovery amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Speaking on Wednesday, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission stressed the importance of investing in digital technology for the entire region. Indeed, part of the investment fund will go towards the manufacture of low-power processors as EU officials seeks to...