crypto blog
The Metaverse will bring a further erosion of privacy
Unlike some of my peers in the technology space, I don’t see the Metaverse as a virtual world in which we work, socialize and shop. Rather, I see it as a point in time, reached in 2020 and into this year because of the global pandemic, when the digital world became as important as the physical world. It’s a shift away from the idea that physical reality is superior and preferred over digital reality. Work for many has turned into a series of Zoom meetings, people are buying virtual real estate, and children are spending time with their friends in Fortnite and Roblox. Facebook’s rebranding as Meta signals that there’s no going back to the way things were before, as a critical mass of people has realized the benefits of operating within a digital reality. And with this crashing of realities ...
Weekly Report: Regulators and authorities around the world hone in on the crypto sector
The US is strengthening its regulatory efforts against crime involving crypto and related assets Warren Buffet’s right-hand man Charlie Munger compares Bitcoin to a venereal disease Ukraine’s parliament, this week, passed a bill to legalise digital assets legal in the country, with the vote receiving the majority of votes Here are the major headlines from the cryptocurrency sector that you might have missed this week: US authorities crack the whip on crypto crime even harder Deputy Attorney General of the US Lisa Monaco told the virtual Munich Cyber Security Conference on Thursday that the FBI is forming a new team, the Virtual Asset Exploitation Unit. The division would include investigators and experts in cryptocurrencies, blockchain analytics, and digital asset confiscation....
OpenSea planned upgrade stalls as phishing attack targets NFT migration
Just yesterday, OpenSea announced a smart contract upgrade, which requires users to migrate their listed NFTs from Ethereum (ETH) blockchain to a new smart contract. As a direct result of the upgrade, users that don’t migrate over from Ethereum risk losing their old, inactive listings — which currently require no gas fees for migration. Major nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace OpenSea has reportedly fallen victim to an ongoing phishing attack within hours after announcing a week-long planned upgrade to delist inactive NFTs on the platform. However, the urgency and short deadline opened up a small window of opportunity for hackers. Within hours after OpenSea’s upgrade announcement, reports across multiple sources emerged about an ongoing attack that targets the soon-to-be-delis...
Want to weed out ransomware? Regulate crypto exchanges
Just between July 2020 and June 2021, ransomware activity soared by a whopping 1,070%, according to a recent Fortinet report, with other researchers confirming the proliferation of this mode of extortion. Mimicking the prevalent business model of the legitimate tech world, ransomware-as-a-service portals popped up in the darker corners of the web, institutionalizing the shadow industry and slashing the skill ceiling for wannabe-criminals. The trend should be ringing a warning bell through the crypto ecosystem, particularly since ransomware attackers do have a knack for payments in crypto. That said, the industry that was once a Wild Wild West is now assuming a more orderly setting. Slowly but surely infiltrating the mainstream, it is now at the point where some of the largest central...
BTC helps our effort to unseat a 20+ year incumbent: Aarika Rhodes on Bitcoin Day
Aarika Rhodes, an elementary school teacher-turned congressional candidate, recently featured in the Bitcoin Day Sacramento 2022 event to discuss the impact of Bitcoin (BTC) in local politics. Speaking to Cointelegraph, Rhodes highlighted the difficulty for grassroots candidates like herself to compete against established members of the US Congress. Our campaign has officially adopted Lighting for campaign contributions.⚡️ This revolutionary technology creates accessibility and looks towards the future. I am excited to provide this option to our supporters across all 50 states. #Bitcoin — Aarika for CA-32 (@AarikaRhodes) November 30, 2021 “If it wasn’t for Bitcoin and the Lightning Network, a grassroots campaign like ours wouldn’t have made it this far with the amount o...
SafeMoon pump and dump lawsuit targets Jake Paul, Soulja Boy, and others
A new class-action lawsuit demands a jury trial against A-list celebrities and social influencers for their alleged participation in a classic pump and dump scheme relating to SafeMoon tokens. SafeMoon, a Binance Smart Chain-native cryptocurrency, allegedly recruited a number of celebrities to lure investors in with misleading promotions. Some of the prominent names roped in by the class action include musicians such as Nick Carter, Soulja Boy, Lil Yachty and YouTubers Jake Paul and Ben Phillips. According to the lawsuit, SafeMoon and its subsidiaries mimicked real-life Ponzi schemes by misleading investors to purchase SafeMoon tokens under the pretext of unrealistic profits. Citing the ecosystem’s ‘burn’ and ‘tokenomics’ as a key driver for SafeMoon’s price potential, the recruited celebr...
The crypto world should know about longevity
As the first month of 2022 drew to a close, the internet was abuzz with trend predictions for the year ahead. Bloggers, Twitter influencers and established business moguls alike were, and still are, incredibly excited about the new opportunities afforded by an explosion of innovation in Web3. However, something you may have missed in scrolling pages of celebrity-backed NFT drops or speculations about the metaverse was the launch of a new company called Altos Labs, reportedly backed by Amazon’s former CEO Jeffrey Bezos. The language that followed the launch was largely typical of how many mainstream journalists talk about the longevity sector, words like mysterious and secret. I’ve written in earlier articles that there are a lot of misconceptions around the longevity sector, and this...
Mining worldwide: Where should crypto miners go in a changing landscape?
One of the main themes among the crypto community in 2021 was China’s aggressive policy toward mining, which led to a complete ban on such activities in September. While mining as a type of financial activity has not gone away and is unlikely to disappear, Chinese cryptocurrency miners had to look for a new place to set up shop. Many of them moved to the United States — the world’s new mining mecca — while some left to Scandinavia and others to nearby Kazakhstan, with its cheap electricity. Mining activities can’t stay under the radar forever, and governments around the world have begun to raise concerns over electricity capacity and power outages. Erik Thedéen, vice-chair of the European Securities and Markets Authority — who also serves as director general of the Swedish Fina...
BlockFi settles with the SEC, Russia’s CBDC trials begin and Cointelegraph releases its 2022 Top 100 list: Hodler’s Digest, Feb. 13-19
Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link. Top Stories This Week $1T opportunity: JPMorgan becomes first major bank in the metaverse United States banking giant JPMorgan Chase has taken a dive into what it considers a significant up and coming arena of opportunity: the metaverse. The bank has recently opened a digital lounge called Onyx in Decentraland’s metaverse. Decentraland serves as one of many crypto industry projects utilizing blockchain to provide a digital world experience — in other words, a metaverse. JPMorgan sees significant potential in the new mov...
Web3 might be crypto’s key to the mainstream market
2021 has been a significant year for crypto with no fungible token (NFT) being awarded word of the year, decentralized finance (DeFi) trending in the mainstream media and crypto companies making headlines for a variety of announcements. This is, no doubt, in part due to the effects that COVID-19 has had on the economy, with many looking for new ways to diversify their finances and a move to working from home giving people the free time to research new interests. And, many chose to get involved in crypto. As conversations began to move on from Bitcoin (BTC) to other larger crypto projects like Ethereum network upgrades and central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, news coverage would suggest that the mainstream adoption of crypto is already well underway. However, there is one project whic...
Bitcoin inactive supply nears record as over 60% of BTC stays unspent for at least 1 year
Bitcoin (BTC) may be struggling at $40,000 but fresh data is reinforcing the fact that hardly anyone is interested in selling. Data from on-chain analytics firm Glassnode shows that despite price volatility, over 60% of the BTC supply has not left its wallet in a year or more. Strong hands have rarely been stronger Stubborn hodling by long-term investors is a characteristic that differentiates the current Bitcoin market climate from most other downtrends. With spot price action passing 50% losses versus November’s all-time highs last month, expectations were for cold feet to kick in — but among seasoned hodlers, the sell-off never came. In fact, the opposite has been true for an extended period — long-term investors are adding to their positions or staying put on their BTC exposure. ...
More playing and less earning will make better Metaverse games
If you’re not keen on joining Mark Zuckerberg in the Metaverse, I have bad news for you: You’re already there. You don’t need a virtual reality headset to enter a virtual world. Humans have been representing reality since our distant ancestors first painted on cave walls. If TV, radio, books or newspapers have ever given you access to events that you did not physically attend, you have experienced a kind of metaverse already. Sport and games are another reality that we often partake in virtually — in the stands or behind a screen — when not on the field. So, it’s no coincidence then that, thus far, games dominate what most people understand as the Metaverse, or more widely, Web3. Our innate love of play, our understanding that fulfilling games depend on rules and structures and our w...
