Crypto news
Independent Tether attestation reveals 58% decrease in commercial paper holdings
An announcement from USDT issuer Tether Holdings Limited revealed information from an independent attestation about the company’s previous quarter’s performance. The reviewer, top accounting firm BDO Italia, assessed Tether’s assets as of June 30, 2022. Tether had previously announced a commitment to decreasing its commercial paper holdings by the end of August 2022. Data from the report revealed a 58% decrease in commercial paper exposure since the previous quarter from $20 billion to $8.5 billion. The chief technology officer of Tether, Paolo Ardoino, tweeted that Tether has plans to continue to decrease its commercial paper holdings to $200 million by the end of August and zero them out by the following October. As of June 30th, more than 58% decrease in Tether’s commer...
Price analysis 8/19: BTC, ETH, BNB, XRP, ADA, SOL, DOGE, DOT, SHIB, AVAX
Bitcoin (BTC) and most major altcoins witnessed a sharp sell-off on Aug. 19, but there does not seem to be a specific trigger for the sudden drop. The sharp fall resulted in liquidations of more than $551 million in the past 24 hours, according to data from Coinglass. Barring a V-shaped bottom, other formations generally take time to complete as buyers and sellers try to gain the upper hand. This tends to cause several random volatile moves that may be an opportunity for short-term traders, but long-term investors should avoid getting sucked into the noise. Daily cryptocurrency market performance. Source: Coin360 Glassnode data shows that investors who purchased Bitcoin in 2017 or earlier are just doing that by holding their positions. The percentage of Bitcoin supply dormant for at least ...
Celsius Network coin report shows a balance gap of $2.85 billion: Finance Redefined
Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of essential decentralized finance (DeFi) insights — a newsletter crafted to bring you significant developments over the last week. This past week, Celsius’s financial troubles mounted further as a new coin report showed the company had a balance gap of $2.85 billion, more than double what it had shown in the bankruptcy filing. Aave (AAVE) called upon community members to commit to the Ethereum proof-of-stake (PoS) Merge. Coinbase CEO said the exchange would rather wind down its staking services than implement on-chain censorship in the form of regulatory compliance. The crypto market saw another depeg this week, with the Acala ecosystem seeing its native stablecoin lose the peg. With a sudden price drop toward the end of the week, the majorit...
Crypto Unicorns founder says P2E gaming is in a long ‘maturation phase’
As the hype surrounding play-to-earn (P2E) games and platforms began to dwindle in early 2022, Web3 participants began to emphasize the need for games to be more “fun” and less finance-oriented. In the most recent episode of NFT Steez, Alyssa Expósito and Ray Salmond spoke with Aron Beireschmitt, the CEO of Laguna games and founder of Crypto Unicorns, about the sustainability of P2E-focused blockchain games. For Beireschmitt, the evolution from a play-to-earn to a play-and-earn model suggests that there is still experimentation and maturation to be seen for these games. “Nothing has changed about making games,” says Beireschmitt, but with blockchain technology, crypto natives and gamers are now able to play, own and potentially monetize from these play-and-earning models. The larger ...
Nearly $55M worth of Bored Ape, CryptoPunks NFTs risk liquidation amid debt crisis
Many owners of precious Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and CryptoPunks NFTs, who used them as collateral to take out loans in Ether (ETH), have failed to repay their debts. The situation could lead up to the NFT sector’s first massive liquidation event. gm. As a result of the floor dropping to 72, the first BAYC liquidation auction on BendDAO has begun Starting price of 68.4e… Any takers or is this going to be the first bad-debt domino that falls for the platform? pic.twitter.com/7qxsIi661e — Cirrus (@CirrusNFT) August 18, 2022 BAYC “death spiral” incoming? DoubleQ, the founder of web3 launchpad Double Studio, says lending service BendDAO could liquidate up to $55 million worth of NFTs to recover its loans, fearing the so-called “health factor” of these deb...
NFTs democratize music industry and redistribute song rights
The music industry continues to find inventive ways to integrate decentralized technology into new releases to benefit both artists and their fans. Electronic dance music (EDM) artist R3HAB and blockchain-based music community anotherblock released a single on Aug. 19 with the idea of “democratizing music rights.” The nonfungible token (NFT) included in the drop allows holders to earn royalties based on streaming popularity. The single, “Weekend on a Tuesday,” debuted bundled with an exclusive NFT. Each of the 250 NFTs available entitles the holder to a 0.02% share in the streaming revenue. Anotherblock’s platform provides a value tracking tool so holders can estimate payouts and overall value. Many artists have been using digital assets as a way to connect with their fan base t...
SBI lost 40% of hash rate after stopping mining in Russia: Data
Japanese financial giant SBI Holdings has partly terminated cryptocurrency mining in Russia due to geopolitical uncertainty and the crypto winter. SBI Holdings suspended mining operations in Russia’s crypto mining-rich region of Siberia, citing reasons like Russia-Ukraine conflict and the ongoing bear market, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. The Japanese online brokerage shut down the Siberian mining operations shortly after Russia started a military intervention in Ukraine on Feb. 24, a spokesperson for the firm reportedly said. The termination contributed to SBI’s crypto asset business reporting a pretax loss of 9.7 billion yen ($71 million) in Q2 202. As a result, the Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group-backed group recorded a 2.4 billion yen ($17.5 million) in net losses, reportedly posting...
Biden is hiring 87,000 new IRS agents — and they’re coming for you
The Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law this month by President Joe Biden, empowers the IRS with nearly $80 billion in new funds. The world’s most powerful tax collection agency is using the money to go on a hiring spree to fuel much tougher enforcement efforts. It is widely assumed that the audits will be brutal and widespread. Taxes start with tax returns, which must be signed under penalties of perjury. The Biden administration has said that the audits on steroids are for fat cats who have escaped having to pay their fair share for too long. The administration has suggested the IRS would perform no new audits on anyone making less than $400,000 annually. Republicans tried to include that in the law, but every Senate Democrat voted against the amendment, as well as IRS audit protect...
Fortnite developer supports Animoca subsidiary’s blockchain racing game
Australian indie game developer Grease Monkey Games, a subsidiary of Animoca Brands, has received received financial support from video-game giant Epic Games to develop a new blockchain-based motorsport game Torque Drift 2 Receiving an Epic MegaGrant from the Fortnite developers, the funding will be used to develop the motorsport title, which is based on drifting. The Unreal Engine is a 3D computer graphics game engine developed by Epic Games, which has been used in many industries after it was first showcased in the 1998 game Unreal. According to an Aug. 18 announcement from Animoca Brands, the Epic MegaGrant, which ranges from $5,000 to as much as $500,000, will be used to develop a realistic gaming experience that is on par with other triple-A games that also utilize the Unr...
‘Programmable money should terrify you’ — Layah Heilpern
Government controlled “programmable money should terrify you”, says social media influencer and TV Host Layah Heilpern, who sees central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) as a way for banks and governments to reign control over their people. In an interview on Aug. 19 with British news outlet GB News, Heilpern, who also released Undressing Bitcoin: A Revealing Guide To The World’s Most Revolutionary Asset in September 2021, said the widespread rollout of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) from nation states is on its way, and that it could lead to the financial censorship of citizens in the future. Heilpern stated that as CBDCs are essentially programmable cryptocurrencies that run on blockchains, they could potentially be “programmed against you” at the whims of the centralized au...
Korea’s ‘poop-coin’ project got flushed in February, inventor reveals
The South Korean government has put the lid on a science program that created toilets designed to turn human waste into electricity, heat, and digital currency. The Science Walden project was revealed in July 2021 to the amusement of the crypto community and the wider public alike — introducing the “BeeVi” toilet which turned human excrement into methane gas and rewarded its “depositors” with a digital currency called Ggool. Speaking to Cointelegraph, Science Walden lead, and Professor Cho Jae-weon however revealed that in February this year, further development of the BeeVi toilet and its associated Feces Standard Money (FSM) digital currency has “unfortunately” halted after the scheduled end of the project’s five years of funding. “My project, Science Walden, unfortunately, came to an en...
Nifty News: NFL All Day opens to the public, Boss Beauties go to Hollywood and more…
NFL fans at large will now be able to get their hands on digital keepsakes of their favorite football stars after Dapper Labs’ NFL All Day NFT finally opened to the public after a seven-month-long closed beta. On Aug. 18, The National Football League (NFL), the NFL Players Association (NFLPA), and Dapper officially launched the project and announced the first public NFT drop, a pack of four NFTs dubbed “Headliner” consisting of four different new player moments. Users will have the chance to get their hands on NFTs depicting popular players such as Tom Brady, Trevor Lawrence, Javonte Williams, and Jalen Ramsey. There will be a total of 22,500 packs on sale for $59 a pop. The NFTs come in different rarity tiers of common, rare and legendary, with just 187 packs containing a highly sought af...
