crypto blog
Rating agencies, not regulators, can rebuild trust in crypto after FTX
The last year has been an eventful one for the crypto space. The collapse of the Terra ecosystem and its TerraUSD (UST) algorithmic stablecoin saw $50 billion wiped off the market in a flash. And more recently, FTX, an exchange many thought was “too big to fail,” came crashing down. There’s been no shortage of drama in the space, which has seen name-stay businesses and projects disappear along with investors’ funds. Given the events of this year, it’s inevitable that serious government attention is coming for the space, in every major jurisdiction — and on the time scale of a few months to at most a few years, not decades. This was fairly clear to most industry observers even before the recent FTX debacle, and now it has become glaringly obvious. There is much debate in the space abo...
The most eco-friendly blockchain networks in 2022
2022 saw the continued advancement of green crypto projects as more industry companies focused on sustainability to reduce carbon emissions. A series of elemental forces drove the paradigm shift, including user demands for faster and more energy-efficient blockchains, growing climate change awareness among investors, and rising government concerns about energy consumption in the crypto sector. Among the most notable eco-friendly crypto developments in 2022 was the transition of the Ethereum blockchain from a proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus layer. The Merge, completed in September, joined the original execution layer of Ethereum with its new PoS consensus layer, the Beacon Chain. It eliminated the need for energy-intensive mining by enabling the network to be secu...
The Argentine Football Association (AFA) Partners with Upland to Expand the Realm of Fandom of the First Division of Argentina to the Metaverse
Buenos Aires, Argentina, 22nd December, 2022, Chainwire -The strategic partnership will allow AFA to engage fans with a better understanding of how the metaverse works, how to contribute and benefit, while also expanding fan engagement and connecting fans to the teams and players they admire -The partnership represents the first Argentinian football presence in the metaverse and the first time for Upland to offer exclusive in-game video footage ownership to fans The Argentine Football Association (AFA), FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™ World Champions, and Uplandme, Inc. the leading metaverse platform in mapping the real world that already has more than 3 million registered accounts, today announced the signing of an official license agreement to bring the First Division Argentina (...
Bitcoin dips below $16.7K as US GDP meets fresh BTC price ‘death cross’
Bitcoin (BTC) fell at the Dec. 22 Wall Street open as United States equities reversed previous gains. BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView Bitcoin risks new and unseen “death cross Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD dipping to intraday lows of $16,650 on Bitstamp. The pair remained a conspicuous stocks copycat as the S&P 500 opened down 1.6% and the Nasdaq Composite Index traded down 1.8% at the time of writing. The weakness appeared to be a reaction to stronger-than-expected U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) growth in Q3, data for which was released prior to the open. Despite notionally a sign of recovery, concerns focused on the Federal Reserve continuing its restrictive economic policy on the assumption that the economy wo...
Third parties could return FTX funds directly to customers: Law firm
More than one million creditors of failed crypto exchange FTX have been waiting to be made whole since before the firm’s bankruptcy filing on Nov. 11, but according to one expert, recipients of donations and contributions may have a legal means of returning the funds directly to investors and customers. Louise Abbott, a partner at United Kingdom-based firm Keystone Law, told Cointelegraph it was “extremely unlikely” FTX would have a legal leg to stand on in its demands for the voluntary return of political campaign donations, grants, and other contributions the firm made prior to its bankruptcy. However, many individuals and organizations — likely the result of public scrutiny — have already returned or pledged to return an estimated $6.6 million to FTX, a fraction of the millions th...
North Korean hacking activity ceases after regulators implement KYC – Report
According to a new press report published by South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS), North Korean hackers have stolen more than 800 billion Korean won ($620 million) worth of cryptocurrencies from decentralized finance, or DeFi, platforms this year. The agency also revealed it blocked a daily average of 1.18 million attacks perpetrated by national and international hacking organizations in November. However, a NIS spokesperson revealed via local news outlet Kyunghyang Shinmun that all of the $620 million stolen by North Korean hackers through DeFi exploits occurred overseas, adding: “In Korea, virtual asset transactions have been switched to real-name transactions and security has been strengthened, so there is no damage.” Many funds have been lost ...
SBF received special treatment inside Bahamian jail: Report
Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, who was remanded to the notorious Fox Hill Prison in Nassau, Bahamas, pending an investigation into the collapse of his exchange, had a different experience than many other prisoners. According to the Financial Times, Bankman-Fried was held in the sickbay where he had access to a toilet, running water, a TV, local newspapers, crossword puzzles, and many other perks, including vegan food. Anonymous prison officials disclosed that the former CEO spent his days watching the news and reading articles about himself. SBF’s prison experience appears to have been very different from what many other prisoners endure in their overcrowded, poorly ventilated, rat-infested prison cells, where they are forced to sleep on the floor using makeshift cards. Unlike oth...
US Senator Toomey introduces stablecoin bill as congressional session wraps up
Republican Senator Pat Toomey, who is set to retire from U.S. Congress at the end of the term, has used one of his last few weeks in office to introduce a new stablecoin bill, aimed at creating a regulatory framework for “payment stablecoins.” Toomey — who also serves as the ranking member of the U.S. Banking Committee — said the Stablecoin TRUST Act of 2022 would serve as a framework for stablecoin regulation for his fellow senators, who are looking to pas stablecoin legislation in 2023. In a Dec. 21 statement, the senator called stablecoins an “exciting technological development that could transform money and payments,” adding: “By digitizing the U.S. dollar and making it available on a global, instant, and nearly cost-free basis, stablecoins could be widely used across the physical...
British Columbia to halt new power connections for crypto miners
A state-owned electric utility provider in the Canadian province of British Columbia is set to halt all new electricity-connection requests from cryptocurrency miners for a period of 18 months. The British Columbia government made the announcement in a statement on Dec. 21 stating that the pause will allow the government and BC Hydro to develop a permanent framework that can better balance the needs of crypto miners and both its residents and businesses in the region. Josie Osborne, Minister of Energy, Mines and Low Carbon Innovation said that the move was made to preserve the clean energy it provides for its residents and businesses that create jobs and are more environmentally friendly. “Cryptocurrency mining consumes massive amounts of electricity to run and cool banks of high-pow...
Alameda’s Caroline Ellison and FTX’s Gary Wang hit with additional fraud charges
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) have hit former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison and former FTX co-founder Gary Wang with fresh fraud charges. The new charges from the SEC and CFTC come as the pair plead guilty to federal fraud charges filed by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) earlier on Dec. 22. SEC states that Ellison and Wang were charged for their role in the “multiyear scheme to defraud equity investors in FTX,” with the SEC also investigating whether other securities laws were violated as well. The SEC alleges that Ellison, under the direction of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, furthered the scheme by manipulating the price of FTX Token (FTT), which is described as a crypto security toke...
Frozen bank account triggers switch to Bitcoin salary for a whole year
As Bitcoin (BTC) adoption continues to sow seeds around the world, more and more people are choosing to accept the original cryptocurrency as payment for their goods and services. For individuals, that means accepting BTC as their salary. A Florida-based Bitcoin advocate called SVN (not his real name) took his entire salary in BTC for the past year. Cointelegraph reached out to him to understand why he did it and if there are certain advantages to earning the world’s most recognizable cryptocurrency. SVN explained that when the bank froze one of his accounts, he turned “to Bitcoin as a solution to keep my life going while the issue got resolved.” While banks have the power to unbank customers at will, or must follow governmental instruction–such as during the Canadian trucker protest in wh...
zkEVM could be the endgame for blockchain infrastructure
Very few projects have come close to matching the security and decentralization of the Ethereum network. However, the inherent overhead of maintaining these two critical features has left Ethereum burdened by low throughput and prohibitively high costs. As a result, alternative layer-1 blockchains (L1s) — which normally sacrifice security and decentralization to provide scale — have emerged to nip away at Ethereum’s market share. However, with Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-equivalent scaling solutions bringing high throughput and low transaction fees to Ethereum itself, the question is: Do we really need these alternative L1 networks? Despite a rocky year for the industry, Ethereum is still as strong as ever The risks of sacrificing security and decentralization have been largely material...
