crypto blog
Madeira ‘embraces’ Bitcoin, and how its president met Michael Saylor
The tiny Portuguese archipelago of Madeira has “adopted” Bitcoin (BTC) — but what does that mean? The announcement, made during the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami, has spurned confusion and misinformation. Miguel Albuquerque, the president of the Regional Government of Madeira, hopped on the stage in April to announce: “I believe in the future, and I believe in Bitcoin.” He also said he would work to “create in Madeira a fantastic environment for Bitcoin.” However, the details remained unclear. Cointelegraph spoke to André Loja, a Madeiran entrepreneur who spearheaded the plan to bring BTC to the archipelago in the Atlantic ocean, to find out how Bitcoin is shaping the islands’ development. Madeira exploded onto the Bitcoin world map on April 7 when JAN3 CEO Samson Mow proudly ...
Review: Bots abound in NFT castle-building game League of Kingdoms
With the development of gaming platforms, virtual items have also become a popular method of monetization, but most games store data on private servers, giving gamers a reason to doubt their reliability and transferability. Developers can change the game policy at any time to maximize their profits. They are not obliged to consult users or take responsibility for the harm caused to the game ecosystem. This problem can be solved by blockchain technology which makes it possible to own and transfer virtual assets to anyone through nonfungible tokens (NFT). In a world where gamers spend a lot of time and money developing their characters and seeking out unique items, games that allow them to earn and influence the game’s development are very attractive. One of the most popular genres of games ...
Asset manager Grayscale announces maiden ETF in Europe
The Grayscale Future of Finance UCITS ETF tracks the Bloomberg Grayscale Future of Finance Index The ETF will list on the Borsa Italiana, London Stock Exchange (LSE), and Deutsche Börse Xetra Digital asset management firm Grayscale on Monday issued a press release revealing that it is stretching its offering to European investors by listing its first European EFT. The Grayscale Future of Finance UCITS ETF will be a stark indicator of the evolution of Grayscale to the next level. The first in Europe The ETF offering is planned to get listed on the Borsa Italiana, London Stock Exchange (LSE), and Deutsche Börse Xetra under the ticker GFOF. It is structured to allow investors to interact with firms at the intersection of virtual assets, technology, and finance. The new offering will tra...
Elwood Technologies bags $70M in investment from Goldman Sachs and Barclays
Elwood Technologies aims to invest in infrastructure rather as opposed to injecting funds into short-term initiatives The company’s latest funding pushed its valuation to $500 million Crypto trading software provider Elwood Technologies has secured a $70 million investment that pushed the company’s valuation to half a billion. According to a report published by Financial Times on May 15, Goldman Sachs and Barclays have teamed up to finance the crypto trading platform founded by British billionaire Alan Howard. The report detailed that venture capital firm Dawn Capital as well as the venture divisions of Germany’s Commerzbank and Galaxy Digital, also took part. The move comes as the crypto scene contends with the top 500 of leading digital assets losing over 50% in value as the crypto ...
Battle of the memecoins: should you buy DOGE or SHIB?
DOGE’s value increased by 4% in the last 24 hours, while SHIB’s value increased by 5%. Both of these tokens have seen an active level of support from their community. This has led to a lot of investors asking the question, which token is worth buying as of 2022. Dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu (SHIB) are cryptocurrencies that have had the biggest rivalry within the crypto space. While they are competing in terms of the return they offer, they are also competing with their community. This is due to the fact that both cryptocurrencies have seen huge growth within their community throughout the previous year. While Dogecoin was the leader for years, Shiba Inu is seemingly closing the gap. On May 14, 2022, Shiba Inu’s Twitter page announced that a year had passed after Ethereum’s founder, ...
Japan’s largest investment bank Nomura readies new crypto subsidiary
The largest investment bank in Japan, Nomura, is set to establish a new subsidiary company to help institutional clients invest in cryptocurrency and nonfungible tokens (NFTs). The Financial Times reported on Tuesday that people with knowledge of Nomura’s plans said the firm will bring together several crypto services under one single company with a staff of about 100 people by 2023. Nomura is one of Japan’s ten largest banks, with $569 billion in assets under management as of Q1 2022. Nikkei Asia, a Japanese news outlet, reported that the subsidiary company will be established abroad, but the board will start off seated by Nomura transplants while the company acquires talent in the Web3 and blockchain space. It will initially be led by Jez Mohideen, head of wholesale digital operatio...
Twitch co-founder raises $24M for Web3 gaming firm Metatheory
Web3 gaming and entertainment company Metatheory founded by Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin has raised $24 million in a Series A funding round on Monday. The round was led by crypto capital venture firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with participation from Pantera Capital, the venture arm of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, FTX Ventures, and other venture firms, according to the announcement. Metatheory was launched in November 2021 around one year after Lin left Twitch, where he wrote in a Medium article at the time that he was creating the gaming company and also a blockchain game called DuskBreakers. Lin was quoted in this week’s announcement as saying: “Building immersive digital experiences has always been a passion of mine, and after stepping away from Twitch to explore what’s next in...
RBI warns of crypto ‘dollarization’ of Indian economy
Officials from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) have reportedly sounded the alarm bells again over crypto adoption, which they claim will ultimately lead to the “dollarization” of the local economy. According to a Monday report from the Indian branch of the Economic Times — which cited unnamed sources — the RBI’s concerns are focused on U.S. dollar-dominated cryptocurrencies taking away market share from the Indian rupee. The publication notes that RBI officials, along with its governor Shaktikanta Das, provided a briefing to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance this week. In it, they took a very skeptical stance toward crypto’s potential influence on the financial system. An unnamed official is quoted as saying: “Almost all cryptocurrencies are dollar-denominated and issued by f...
China returns as 2nd top Bitcoin mining hub despite the crypto ban
The Chinese government has not managed to take down cryptocurrency operations as part of its crypto ban last year as China has re-emerged as one of the world’s largest Bitcoin (BTC) mining hubs, according to a new report. China became the second-largest Bitcoin hash rate provider as of January 2022, months after the local government banned all crypto operations in the country, according to the latest update from the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI) shared with Cointelegraph on May 17. Bitcoin miners in China accounted for 21.1% of the total global BTC mining hash rate distribution as of early 2022, following only the United States, which produced 37.8% of the total hash rate as of January, according to the data. China was once the world’s largest Bitcoin m...
El Salvador hosts 32 central banks and 12 other institutions to discuss Bitcoin
The majority of central banks and financial authorities that featured are from Africa The continent lags in terms of crypto adoption and use compared to Europe, America, and Asia It has been more than seven months since El Salvador made Bitcoin its legal tender – a decision the country’s president Nayib Bukele has insisted is for the good of the citizens. This is despite caution from monetary institutions like the IMF and strong opposition by a faction of El Salvadorians. During this period, the Central African Republic followed suit in adopting the Satoshi coin as an officially accepted currency form – the first in Africa. On Monday, El Salvador president Bukele met with representatives from central banks and financial institutions of 44 different countries, as he had previous...
MakerDAO price rebounds as DAI holds its peg and investors search for stablecoin security
Its been a rough couple of weeks for the cryptocurrency market. Bitcoin (BTC) price is nowhere near the price estimates of most analysts, multiple stablecoins lost their peg and the demise of one of the top decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms sparked an event that resulted in $900 billion vanishing from the total crypto market capitalization. In the midst of the widespread fallout, MakerDAO (MKR) managed to turn crisis into opportunity and the collapse of TerraUSD (UST) has brought renewed attention to DAI, the longest-running decentralized stablecoin. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that as the collapse of Terra (LUNA) price accelerated from May 9 to May 12, MKR climbed 66.2% from a low of $952 on May 12 to its current value of $1,587. MKR/USDT 1-da...
California regulator will revisit long-running ban on crypto donations on May 19
A California state regulator may be looking at overturning a ban on cryptocurrency donations to political campaigns which has been in effect since 2018. According to its May 2022 agenda, California’s Fair Political Practices Commission, or FPPC, has scheduled a “pre-notice discussion” on Thursday on the use of cryptocurrencies f campaign contributions in the state. The commission said it will be considering drafting amendments to its regulations requiring that “no contribution may be made or received in cryptocurrency.” In September 2018, the FPPC voted to ban both sending and receiving crypto contributions for political campaigns in the state of California, due to concerns the donations “might be utilized to circumvent contribution limits and prohibitions, or by foreign entities to ...
