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Alicia Keys Added to 2021 VMAs Lineup as MTV Confirms There Will Be No Video Vanguard Award Again
Keys first performed on the show in 2001 when she delivered her breakthrough hit “Fallin’” (with an interpolation of Beethoven’s “Für Elise”). In 2007, she performed “No One”/”Freedom.” But there will be no video vanguard award on the VMAs for the second year in a row, MTV confirmed to Billboard on Thursday (Sept. 9). This is only the third time in VMA history that the show will go two or more years without presenting that award, which has sometimes been presented as the Michael Jackson video vanguard award or as a lifetime achievement award. There was no video vanguard award in 2004 to 2005 and again from 2007 to 2010. But there was a seven-year streak from 2013 to 2019 in which the video vanguard award presentation was a highlight of the show. The recipients in those years were Justin Ti...
Biden taps D.C. utility regulator Phillips for FERC
Environmental groups have long accused FERC of “rubber-stamping” new gas pipelines and other fossil fuel infrastructure projects, although Glick and fellow Democratic Commissioner Allison Clements have sought to examine both the climate effects and the consumer need for such projects. A third Democrat could give Glick and Clements a critical swing vote as the commission revisits its 1999 gas certification policy governing pipeline approvals, mulls the impact of recent court rulings and weighs new projects. Recent court decisions largely rejecting the commission’s current approach to gas projects have put the commission under greater scrutiny when it comes to environmental justice and climate change. An August ruling from the D.C. Circuit ordered the commission to redo its permits for two L...
Insiders sold MicroStrategy stock after Bitcoin’s bull run
Virginia-based enterprise software company MicroStrategy has captured the attention of crypto and financial news outlets alike with its CEO’s atypical strategy of going all-in on Bitcoin, beginning in 2020, with some reporters quipping that the company has since morphed into something closer to a Bitcoin (BTC) investment vehicle than a software firm. Recent filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission suggest some of the company’s top-level executives are ambivalent about pursuing this strategy long-term. The filings reveal that MicroStrategy chief financial officer Phong Le and chief technology officer Timothy Lang both unloaded stock in August of this year by exercising roughly 30% of the options they received as compensation. As Bloomberg reports, Lang e...
As Bitcoin debuts in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala study CBDCs
Two Central American countries, Honduras and Guatemala, are taking a cue from their common neighbor’s adoption of Bitcoin (BTC), but they are taking a very different road. Instead of embracing an existing cryptocurrency as a legal tender, like what El Salvador did, the central banks of Honduras and Guatemala are currently studying central bank digital currencies (CBDC). Following the approval of the board of directors, the Central Bank of Honduras kicked off a study “to determine the feasibility of conducting a pilot test issuing its own digital money or a central bank digital currency,” according to Honduras central bank president Wilfredo Cerrato’s remarks at a forum event in Tegucigalpa. He said that the Central American Monetary Council, or Consejo Monetario Centroamericano,...
Solana rally mimicking Ethereum? Why a $500 SOL price target could be ‘conservative’
A high-flying Solana (SOL) refused to land even in the face of a brutal sell-off in the cryptocurrency market on Tuesday. Two days later, the price of SOL rebounded to another new all-time high. The SOL/USD exchange rate averted a big pullback over the previous 48 hours and reached $217 for the first time in history. The pair’s ability to sustain bearish pressure underscored investors’ growing interest in Solana’s blockchain as an emerging rival to Ethereum, a public ledger currently leading the decentralized finance (DeFi) and nonfungible token (NFT) sector boom. SOL/USD daily price chart. Source: TradingView “The SOL outperformance in the market recently is more or less the continuation of its growth run in recent times,” said Petr Kozyakov, co-founder and CEO at payment servi...
US crypto exchange CrossTower expands to India
United States-based cryptocurrency exchange CrossTower is expanding operations to India despite the ongoing legal uncertainty over local crypto regulation. CrossTower has set up a local division in India and launched a cryptocurrency trading platform to capture the growing multi-billion-dollar market, Reuters reported Monday. CrossTower India has already onboarded 35 employees and is looking to expand its team to 100 people in the next six to nine months. With $7.6 million in daily trading at the time of writing, CrossTower expects its Indian exchange to contribute to its plans to expand further across the world. “India will play a pivotal role and we plan to use the country as a hub to expand into other geographies,” CrossTower co-founder and CEO Kapil Rathi said. CrossTowe...
Regulation via litigation: Crypto community reacts to Coinbase vs SEC
Coinbase likely to take the SEC to the court, says Celsius CEO Alex Mashinsky Support has poured in from all corners of the crypto community after Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong revealed that the US-based cryptocurrency exchange was being threatened with prosecution by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over its proposed Lend programme. The Coinbase Lend programme is a crypto yield programme that offers 4% annual returns on deposits of the USDC stablecoin. In a 21-thread tweet, Armstrong explained that the SEC informed Coinbase that the service was considered a security without providing any explanation for this and warned against launching the yield programme. “They refuse to tell us why they think it’s a security, and instead subpoena a bunch of records from us (we comply), deman...
Cardano price analysis: ADA up by 6% after Tuesday’s bearish movement
The cryptocurrency market slightly recovered yesterday after the price crash on Tuesday saw BTC drop below the $45k mark The cryptocurrency market performed better in the past 24 hours, recovering some of the losses incurred earlier this week. Bitcoin dropped below $45,000 yesterday after the price crash. However, BTC is now up by less than 1% and is trading above the $46,000 mark. The altcoins were the biggest winners in the latest recovery. Ether’s price is up by 3.5% in the past 24 hours, and is trading at $3,500 per coin again. Cardano remains the third-largest cryptocurrency by market cap and experienced a massive rally yesterday. ADA will likely continue with its bullish recovery, with market analysts expecting its price to surge higher in the coming hours and days. Marked those leve...
More countries will follow El Salvador’s lead, says Hoskinson
El Salvador has officially made Bitcoin legal tender, and market experts believe more countries will follow Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson believes that more countries will follow in the footsteps of El Salvador after it became the first country in the world to officially adopt Bitcoin as legal tender. El Salvador’s move is the first of its kind, but it might not be the last. Hoskinson stated this in a YouTube video on Tuesday. Termed “Congratulations Bitcoin”, Hoskinson used the opportunity to congratulate the cryptocurrency space for reaching such an important milestone with the adoption of Bitcoin as a legal tender. According to the Cardano founder, currencies like BTC are the future of money as he believes the younger generation will be the one to trigger the mass a...
Afterpay ‘absolutely’ keen to explore crypto services after regulations clarified
Australian buy now pay later (BNPL) giant Afterpay — now part of Jack Dorsey’s Square — has said that it is likely to pursue cryptocurrency services once the regulatory framework is clear. Following on from Afterpay’s submission to the Senate inquiry into “Australia as a Technology and Financial Center” which posited that merchants could slash payment costs by utilizing cryptocurrencies, representatives spoke to the inquiry on Sept. 8. Afterpay’s vice president for public policy and communications Damian Kassabgi said that “this idea of being able to exchange currencies from person to person or to a merchant without going through the traditional rails could create a lot of efficiencies.” Crypto-friendly Liberal senator Andrew Bragg asked if Afterpay had plans to offer crypto services...
Play-to-earn gold rush as Crypto Gaming Guild and Zebedee raise millions from VCs
Crypto Gaming United, a startup aiming to build a global community of nonfungible token (NFT)-focused play-to-earn gamers, hraised $5 million in an oversubscribed seed funding round. A Sept. 8 announcement notes the round was led by famed Australian venture capitalist Mark Carnegie and Chrono.tech CEO Sergei Sergienko — with the pair having co-founded the crypto-focused asset manager MHC Digital Finance. Australian investment managers Shaw and Partners and Blockchain Assets also participated in the round. Crypto Gaming United was established in August of this year and has already attracted more than 1,500 members and has a waiting list of almost 40,000. The guild helps members play the popular NFT-based game Axie Infinity by offering scholarships where sponsors provide expensive in-game as...
SEC vs Coinbase: Alex Mashinsky says Celsius will have to ‘wait and see’ on fallout
Support for Coinbase and its CEO, Brian Armstrong, has been pouring from the crypto community since the company disclosed in a regulatory filing on Wednesday that it had received a Wells notice from the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission. The regulator has threatened to sue the exchange over its proposed Lend program, which would offer 4% interest on customer holdings of the USDC stablecoin. Company CEO Brian Armstrong took to Twitter on Sept. 8 to vent his dismay over the lack of clarity from the regulator as to why it believes the product is a security. Rival platforms Celsius and BlockFi offer similar products. Speaking to Yahoo! Finance on Sept. 8, Celsius Network co-founder and CEO Alex Mashinsky said that everyone in the crypto industry was looking for clarity: “I think we’re going ...
