Crypto news
Indian authorities freeze $8.1M in WazirX funds as part of AML investigation
India’s Directorate of Enforcement, or ED, has announced it froze roughly $8.1 million in funds and conducted a search connected to cryptocurrency exchange WazirX as part of an investigation into instant personal loan fraud. In a Friday announcement, the Directorate of Enforcement alleged WazirX facilitated transactions by unnamed fintech firms “to purchase crypto assets and then launder them abroad” as part of a scheme involving Chinese-backed companies circumventing India’s licensing regulations. In its investigation, the ED said it ordered WazirX bank accounts containing 646.7 million Indian rupees — roughly $8.1 million at the time of publication — frozen and conducted a search connected to co-founder Sameer Mhatre. According to the regulator, the investigation was still ongoing. Howev...
2 metrics signal the $1.1T crypto market cap resistance will hold
Cryptocurrencies have failed to break the $1.1 trillion market capitalization resistance, which has been holding strong for the past 54 days. The two leading coins held back the market as Bitcoin (BTC) lost 2.5% and Ether (ETH) retraced 1% over the past seven days, but a handful of altcoins presented a robust rally. Crypto markets’ aggregate capitalization declined 1% to $1.07 trillion between July 29 and Aug. 5. The market was negatively impacted by reports on Aug. 4 that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is investigating every U.S. crypto exchange after the regulator charged a former Coinbase employee with insider trading. Total crypto market cap, USD billions. Source: TradingView While the two leading cryptoassets were unable to print weekly gains, traders’ appetite...
What will cryptocurrency look like in 2027? Here are 5 predictions
The year is 2027. It’s a time of great innovation and technological advancement, but also a time of chaos. What will the crypto market look like in 2027? (For those unfamiliar, that’s a line from the 2011 video game, Deus Ex.) Long-term predictions are notoriously difficult to make, but they are good thought experiments. One year is too short a period for fundamental changes, but five years is just enough for everything to change. Here are the most unexpected and outrageous events that could happen over the next five years. 1. The metaverse will not rise The metaverse is a hot topic, but most people do not have even the slightest idea of what it actually comprises. The metaverse is a holistic virtual world that exists on an ongoing basis (without pauses or resets)...
Crypto Biz: Gucci ‘apes’ into crypto
What comes to mind when you think of Gucci? Designer handbags, fashion jewelry, elegant Swiss watches? What about payment integration with an ERC-20 governance and utility token that wants to power Web3? Rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? The iconic Italian fashion brand announced this week it would expand its payment options to include the Bored Ape Yacht Club-affiliated ApeCoin (APE) — but only through BitPay. In other words, Gucci will let you liquidate your APE for United States dollars and spend the proceeds at its stores. If you’re surprised by the news, you should read on to learn more about Gucci’s broadening crypto ambitions. While you’re at it, stick around for this week’s Crypto Biz, where we dissect the latest news surrounding Michael Saylor and Robinhood. We leave you wit...
Voyager plans to resume cash withdrawals on Aug. 11
Crypto lender Voyager Digital Holdings has reported users may be able to make cash withdrawals from the app more than a month after suspending trading, deposits, withdrawals and loyalty rewards. In a Friday blog post, Voyager said clients with U.S. dollars in their accounts could withdraw up to $100,000 in a 24-hour period starting as early as Aug. 11, with the funds received in 5–10 business days. The announcement followed a judge ruling on Thursday the crypto lending firm was cleared to return $270 million in customer funds held at the Metropolitan Commercial Bank in New York. “Requests will be processed as quickly as possible but will require some manual review, including fraud reviews and account reconciliation, and timing will depend, in part, upon the individual banks to which custom...
Finance Redefined: Solana and Nomad bridge fall prey to exploits losing millions
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, the DeFi ecosystem saw two exploits, one after another, resulting in the loss of millions of dollars. First, cross-bridge token platform Nomad became a victim of what many deemed a decentralized robbery, which saw almost $190 million drained out of their wallets. Solana ecosystem became the victim of a widespread unknown attack that saw thousands of wallets getting drained out of all the funds. Apart from a series of exploits, Nansen admitted their negligence toward the DeFi market during the NFT boom. The top-100 DeFi tokens had a mixed price action over the past week, with many seeing a downturn ...
Core Scientific increased Bitcoin production by 10% in July amid Texas power cuts
Crypto mining firm Core Scientific reported its operations produced 1,221 Bitcoin (BTC) in July even as the company powered down several times in response to demand on the Texas power grid. In a Friday announcement, Core Scientific said its month-over-month Bitcoin production had increased from 1,106 in June to 1,221 in July — roughly 10.4%. The firm reported curtailing operations “due to extreme temperatures at multiple data centers,” but also increased the number of its self-mining servers and hashrate by 6%, to 109,000 and 10.9 exahashes per second (EH/s), respectively. JULY 2022 HIGHLIGHTS:-1,221 #Bitcoin self-mined-10.9 EH/s self-mined-+190,000 ASIC servers in operation-8.4 EH/s colocation (hosting)-Deployed first BITMAIN ANTMINER S19 XPs in the United Stateshttps://t.co/Qt2...
Bitcoin fails to beat $23.4K sellers as US payrolls upend inflation debate
Bitcoin (BTC) saw fresh rejection at $23,500 resistance on Aug. 5 as United States equities failed to embrace surprisingly strong payroll data. BTC/USD 1-hour candle chart (Bitstamp). Source: TradingView “Collapsing real wages” poke fun at payroll print Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView followed BTC/USD as bears kept the market in its intraday trading range. Wall Street opened with a whimper despite U.S. payrolls for July coming in at twice estimated levels. The curious reaction had some analysts arguing that the numbers did not in fact show economic strength, but rather existing workers taking on second jobs due to inflation. “The gain of 528K jobs in July as the labor force participation rate fell to 62.1, means that most of the new jobs went to people who a...
Antminer S19 XP dropped in a bid to swing crypto miners back into profit
With the Bitcoin (BTC) price moving at a very steady pace during the crypto winter, the return on investment (ROI) on a new mining device seems like a shot in the dark. But a mining expert explained there may be hope for miners to make a comeback to profit. Phil Harvey, the CEO of crypto consultancy firm Sabre56, told Cointelegraph that there are factors to consider when checking the potential profit of mining devices. These are mining machine specifications, costs, real ROI and the economics of mining over time. Analyzing the recently released Antminer S19 XP by mining rig provider Bitmain, Harvey noted that specs-wise, it’s the most efficient miner at the moment. In terms of costs, the crypto mining expert pointed out that the current costs of mining machines are significantly lowe...
US lawmakers request crypto firms provide info on diversity and inclusion
A group of five lawmakers from the United States House of Representatives has requested data on the diversity and inclusion practices of 20 major firms dealing with cryptocurrencies and Web3. In a Thursday notice, House Financial Services Committee chair Maxine Waters along with Representatives Joyce Beatty, Al Green, Bill Foster and Stephen Lynch penned a letter requesting U.S.-based crypto firms provide information on “how and whether the industry is working toward a more equitable environment for everyone.” The lawmakers sent letters to 20 companies including Aave, Binance.US, Coinbase, Crypto.com, FTX, Kraken, Paxos, Ripple and Tether as well as venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz, Haun Ventures and Sequoia Capital. “There is a concerning lack of publicly available data to effect...
Nonfungible tokens don’t live on the blockchain, experts say
As nonfungible tokens (NFTs) are advertised as blockchain-based technologies, there are misconceptions on how they are stored according to two experts. They argued that technically, these tokens do not exist in the blockchain but are actually stored elsewhere. In a Cointelegraph interview, Jonathan Victor, the Web3 storage lead at Protocol Labs and Alex Salnikov, the co-founder of Rarible, discussed decentralized storage, the future of the NFT space and investing in NFTs. According to Victor, main chains are very limited in size and storing data on the blockchain can be very expensive. Because of the large file sizes of assets, off-chain storage solutions are introduced. He said that NFT data can live anywhere from a hosted node or decentralized storage networks. Salnikov a...
Vitalik: Centralized USDC could decide the future of contentious ETH hard forks
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin says that centralized stablecoins such as Tether (USDT) and Circle USD (USDC) could become “a significant decider in future contentious hard forks.” Buterin was speaking at the BUIDL Asia conference in Seoul on Aug. 3, along with Illia Polosukhin, the co-founder of Near Protocol (NEAR) to discuss Ethereum’s upcoming Merge. The Ethereum co-founder argued that centralized stablecoins could be a “significant” decider of which blockchain protocol the industry would “respect” in hard forks. A hard fork occurs when there is a radical change to the protocol of a blockchain network that effectively results in two versions. Usually, one chain ends up being preferred over another. “At the moment of the merge, you will have two [separate] networks […] and then you ...
