crypto blog
Grayscale’s GBTC and ETHE products now available on Robinhood
Digital asset manager Grayscale has made its flagship Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) products available on Robinhood, the popular trading app open to millions of retail users. Beginning on Friday, Robinhood users will be able to trade Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) and Ethereum Trust (ETHE) directly through the app. Shares of GBTC provide investors with direct exposure to Bitcoin in the form of a security without having to buy or store the digital asset directly. ETHE, meanwhile, operates as an open-end investment company whose shares reflect the value of Ether held by the trust. Finally! You can now trade Grayscale Bitcoin Trust and Grayscale Ethereum Trust on Robinhood$GBTC $ETHE https://t.co/MzOJxvI7GG — Barry Silbert (@BarrySilbert) May 6, 2022 Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust is the l...
Will Polkadot (DOT) price reverse course now that cross-chain messaging is live?
Development within the Polkadot (DOT) ecosystem has been slowly unfolding over the past year and a half, and the work put in by developers is finally starting to bear fruit as parachain auctions finish and the first chains launch on the mainnet. The next phase of interoperability within the ecosystem is set to kick off now that cross-chain functionality is about to go live. This next step will allow Polkadot-based parachains to communicate with each other and transfer assets between chains. After passing community vote, v0.9.19 has been enacted on Polkadot. This upgrade included a batch call upgrading Polkadot’s runtime to enable parachain-to-parachain messaging over XCM and upgrading #Statemint to include minting assets (like NFTs) and teleports. pic.twitter.com/uqIB5di2Q1 — Polkado...
‘Regulations are in place to help crypto businesses understand operations,’ says The Bahamas PM Philip Davis
The Bahamas Prime Minister Philip Davis told Cointelegraph that the region has a regulatory regime in place that will enable crypto businesses to operate within its jurisdiction. During an interview at SALT’s Crypto Bahamas conference, Davis shared that The Bahamas recently published a white paper framework that will allow crypto businesses to “grow and prosper,” while letting companies understand the region’s expectations. He added: “The policy also takes into account the balance between concerns people have about cryptocurrency and the risks that come along with it. [The] policy is to protect consumers, [the] integrity of the space and at [the] same time, ensure that we minimize all risks that may be associated with these businesses.” Davis pointed out that crypto innovation is already w...
Senator Tommy Tuberville proposes a bill in support of crypto retirement plans
The Alabama senator says the government shouldn’t interfere with how users invest their retirement savings He plans to introduce the Financial Freedom Act to this effect The DoL and Senator Elizabeth Warren already took moves opposing Fidelity Investments’ plan to offer crypto investments for retirement plans At the end of April, Fidelity Investments announced the launch of a new service that would allow employees in the 23,000 companies it serves to complete Bitcoin investment of up to 20% of the 401(k) pension plan. With the provision, users would be able to invest in crypto without the involvement of crypto exchanges The DOL had warned against such an offering The recent move by Fidelity meant that the retirement plan provider had directly contravened guidance issued by the Department o...
Cynthia Lummis’ crypto bill won’t address NFTs or environmental concerns
Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis has said the bill she’s preparing intends to regulate cryptocurrencies in the same categories as traditional assets She said NFTs are hard to categorise, hence will not be covered in the coming bill Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis has revealed more details about the planned pro-crypto regulatory framework that she is expected to table in collaboration with New York Democrat Senator Kristin Gillibrand. Speaking to Axios in an interview published earlier this week, the US senator explained that the coming bill would regulate from an angle such that digital assets fall under the same categories in which traditional assets are regulated. Lummis explained that the bill would see the regulatory ‘wand’ split and shared between the Commodity Futures Trading Comm...
Ice Cube backs DOGE and an ‘incredible and historical’ transaction
Iconic rapper Ice Cube — also known as O’Shea Jackson Sr. — has jumped on the Dogecoin (DOGE) bandwagon with his endorsement of an “incredible and historical” DOGE transaction. Cube’s entry into the wild world of Dogecoin is related to the BIG3 basketball league that he co-founded. The organization predominantly features former NBA stars in a three-on-three format as opposed to the regular five-on-five basketball games. Last month, the BIG3 launched a new ownership model for the league, which consists of selling tokenized stakes in each of the 12 teams. There are 1000 nonfungible tokens (NFTs) in total allocated to each team, with 25 “Fire” NFTs worth $25,000 a pop and 975 “Gold” NFTs at $5,000 each. On Wednesday, MyDoge wallet co-founder Bill Lee tweeted at Ice Cube saying “if ya dig DOGE...
Argentina’s central bank steps in to block new crypto offerings from banks
The central bank of Argentina (BCRA) has put the kibosh on financial institutions offering crypto trading only days after two of the country’s largest banks signaled they were opening up to digital assets. On Thursday, the BCRA said the move was to mitigate the risks crypto poses to users and “to the financial system as a whole,” citing crypto’s high volatility, use in money laundering and absence of regulatory safeguards. The news came hot on the heels of an announcement on Monday from two of the country’s largest banks, Banco Galicia and Brubank, that they would allow their customers to purchase Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), USD Coin (USDC) and Ripple (XRP). The decision to open crypto trading was decided by a poll conducted by Banco Galicia, where 60% of respondents said they wanted easie...
NFT collectors sent $37B to marketplaces in 2022, nearly equaling 2021 already
Collectors of nonfungible tokens (NFTs) have already sent more than $37 billion in value to NFT marketplaces this year as of Sunday, a figure that nearly exceeds the total amount in all of 2021. According to a report from Chainalysis, investors sent $40 billion worth of cryptocurrency to smart contracts associated with NFT collections and marketplaces throughout 2021. Source: Chainalysis Since the beginning of last year, NFT transaction volume has grown considerably, but the overall growth of the industry has been inconsistent. The report outlines that NFT transaction volume occurs sporadically and has been in a downturn since mid-February. The NFT market has since made a brief recovery as of mid-April — most likely due to the recent hype around Moonbirds and the Bored Ape Yacht Club...
‘Someone is blowing up’ — Bitcoin sees 2022 volume record amid hopes capitulation is over
Bitcoin (BTC) dipping below $36,000 “smells like capitulation,” one trader says as suspicion mounts over United States stock markets. In a tweet on May 6, Cointelegraph contributor Michaël van de Poppe suggested that the BTC price was at least giving “serious signals.” Analyst: Stocks saw “forced liquidation” After plunging to 10-week lows in line with equities on the May 5 Wall Street trading session, Bitcoin bounced at levels last seen in February. The downturn in both crypto and stocks, which followed an initial bounce the day prior on the back of expected rate hikes by the Federal Reserve, appeared to be more than traders bargained for. The S&P 500 finished the day down 3.5%, while the Nasdaq 100 ended down 5%. Outside stocks, U.S. 10-year Treasury futures shed 1%, a rare comb...
Tumbleweeds blow through Coinbase NFT on its first day: Just $75K in volume
Coinbase, one of the largest crypto exchanges by volume, opened its beta non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace to the public on May 4 with on-chain data showing a maximum of 150 total transactions on the day and $75,000 in USD volume. The transactions captured by Dune Analytics show the total amount which took place through the 0x Protocol, the infrastructure behind Coinbase’s marketplace. Whilst not all transactions are guaranteed to be from Coinbase, since 0x announced its support for NFTs in January it has yet to announce any other partners apart from Coinbase. Number of market transactions on the 0x Protocol. Dune Analytics. The number pales into insignificance compared to expectations arising from the marketplace’s waitlist. More than 8.4 million email addresses signed up for the...
Court orders BitMEX founders to pay $30M civil penalty
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York has ordered a total of $30 million civil monetary penalties from the three co-founders of BitMEX crypto derivatives exchange, including former CEO Arthur Hayes. Hayes, Benjamin Delo, and Samuel Reed were each fined $10 million in consent payments according to a statement from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) at the conclusion of a court battle on May 5 in which the CFTC said they violated aspects of the Commodity Exchange Act and CFTC regulations from November 2014 to October 2020. CFTC: Bitmex Co-Founders Ordered to Pay $10 Million Each — db (@tier10k) May 5, 2022 The CFTC filed suit against the exchange and its three co-founders on Oct. 1, 2020. In a rundown of the conclusion of the case today, the Commission st...
‘Decentralized Twitter’ Bluesky releases code, outlines content moderation
Twitter’s decentralized social media project Bluesky has released its first batch of code, and also committed to content moderation on the network. Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey first announced Bluesky back in late 2019, but the project went independent in February after receiving $13 million worth of funding from Twitter. However, Dorsey is still a member of the board. Bluesky released its “Authenticated Data eXperiment” (ADX) protocol code via a May 5 blog post titled “Working in Public.” The team noted that it will be publicly sharing the process of developing the platform by “releasing work before it’s complete, but also giving ourselves time to workshop new directions at early stages.” Today we’re open-sourcing the Authenticated Data eXperiment (ADX) to begin working in public....
