Cryptocurrency

Crypto International, a successor of controversial Swiss company Crypto AG, is reportedly dismissing dozens of employees following a major spying scandal. As many as 70 employees had to quit Crypto International after Crypto AG was found to be selling backdoored products to benefit agencies like the United States Central Intelligence Agency in February 2020. The

The highly-anticipated launch of Polkadot’s (DOT) mainnet has seen many smaller crypto assets associated with the project explode recently. Both tokens of the distributed ledger technology (DLT)-powered robotics and Internet-of-Things (IoT) project Robonomics have been among those to surge alongside Polkadot, with the price of its utility token XRT increasing 10 times earlier this month.

“The Justice Department today filed a civil forfeiture complaint detailing two hacks of virtual currency exchanges by North Korean actors,” said an Aug. 27 statement from the U.S. Department of Justice, or DoJ. “These actors stole millions of dollars’ worth of cryptocurrency and ultimately laundered the funds through Chinese over-the-counter (OTC) cryptocurrency traders.” The hackers

Japanese messaging company LINE has launched a blockchain development platform called LINE Blockchain Developers for decentralized applications and services. The company has also launched a digital asset wallet named BITMAX that will allow users to centrally manage all the fungible and non-fungible digital assets they obtain from various blockchain services on the LINE Blockchain. LINE’s

Blockchain-based lending platform Celsius (CEL) Network has raised $20.17 million from more than 1,000 investors with one day to go in its recently extended crowdfunding offering. The most recent extension occurred long after passing the $17 million ‘target’, which itself was a substantial increase on the original $10 million to $15 million target. Celsius trumpeted

On Thursday, U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell is expected to deliver an important speech that will highlight a new strategy of targeting “average inflation.” This means that the Fed might allow inflation to overshoot the 2% target temporarily if it has spent a long time below that level. If the Fed adopts this new

Cryptocurrency derivatives exchange Bybit has added support for the Japanese yen and South Korean won in a bid to expand its roots in Asian markets. In an announcement on Aug. 26, Bybit said the addition of these two new fiat currency payment options takes the total number of supported fiat currencies to 43.  Bybit made

Ripple is facing a lawsuit from New Payments Platform Australia (NPPA) — a consortium that includes every significant bank in Australia. While court documents are yet to have been made public, it is believed the suit alleges intellectual property infringement concerning the branding of Ripple’s ‘PayID’ payment standard. The lawsuit was reported by technology journalist

Waterloo, Ontario is the first Canadian city to issue a general warning after 78 residents were duped by crypto scammers in 2020. According to Global News, Waterloo residents have lost more than $430,000 so far this year, with 29 of the 78 falling victim in July alone.  As previously reported, fraudsters have been impersonating government

The progress of the Chinese government and large enterprises in the blockchain space is impressive. However, according to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, they may need to do more than just deploy and build on private or semi-private consortium blockchains to gain traction internationally.  In a recent interview, Buterin explained that, while what Chinese entities were

Binance.US, the United States branch of major crypto exchange Binance, just announced it would be making its services available to Florida residents. According to an Aug. 24 update on the Binance.US website, the digital asset marketplace will now be allowing Floridians to buy, trade, and earn digital assets. As of this writing, Binance.US has not

The coronavirus pandemic has forced people to change several social behavioral habits. Along with maintaining social distance from one another, people are also averse to using notes, coins or cards as they might transmit COVID-19.  A new report from the Bank for International Settlements suggested that social distancing procedures and the “government-to-person payment schemes” have

The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) announced that the test run of its central bank digital currency is currently limited to small retail transactions. According to the Global Times on Aug. 24, the central bank has clarified some details regarding the recent digital yuan — also known as digital currency electronic payment, or DCEP —

An old International Monetary Fund video explaining the benefits and disadvantages of cryptocurrency has resurfaced on social media, and many viewers are largely unimpressed. The two-minute video originally published in June 2018, which the International Monetary Fund (IMF) posted to its Twitter account on Aug. 23, refers to cryptocurrency as the “next step in the

This week the S&P 500 made news by notching a new intraday all-time high and recovering 100% of the losses caused by the coronavirus pandemic in mid-March.  Despite this, there are signs U.S. stock markets could be overvalued. The Buffett indicator, an analysis tool which divides the Wilshire 5000 Index by the U.S. GDP, currently

Recent statistics show that digital advertising spending worldwide will reach a total of $335 billion dollars in 2020. While impressive, the digital media landscape is rife with issues due to a lack of supply chain transparency. As a result, digital ad fraud increases annually. Even with automated advertising technology designed to efficiently power digital advertising

On Aug 21, Bitcoin (BTC) price declined by more than 3% from around $11,880 to $11,511 on Coinbase. Coincidentally, the U.S. Dollar Index (DXY) started to rebound from its 4-month downturn. BTC/USD daily chart. Source: TradingView.com As the dollar increased by 1.3% from $92.28 to $93.20, Bitcoin, major cryptocurrencies, and gold fell in tandem. The

Decentralized computing power-sharing network Golem released a new version of its network. Golem announced the alpha release of the new Golem network, which focuses on easing application development. “As we have been mentioning in our communications over the last few months, we have made use of all the experience we had gathered while developing and

As part of its Russian expansion plans, Seychelles-based exchange Huobi Global appointed Vladimir Demin as the company’s chief advisor. His main role will be to help develop the company’s market in the region. According to the announcement, he had previously served as partner and CEO of Huobi Russia. Demin believes that market opportunities in the

Rich Dad Poor Dad author Robert Kiyosaki believes that Warren Buffet’s recent closure of his bank stock positions is a warning sign that the world might be starting a “major banking crisis.” Therefore, Kiyosaki suggests traders buy safe haven assets such as gold, silver and Bitcoin (BTC) to protect themselves from the downward spiraling value

Cryptocurrencies — and Tether (USDT) in particular — could be playing a key role in recent capital flight from China, according to a new report from blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis. The report states that over 44% of crypto transactions in East Asia are conducted with counter-parties within the region, making it “the closest we have

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority has granted operational licenses to two cryptocurrency exchanges operating in the country: digital security exchange Archax and the UK branch of the Winklevoss twins’ Gemini exchange. According to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) website, both Archax and Gemini Europe Services are currently registered in the U.K. as crypto asset firms

Bison Trails, a Blockchain infrastructure-as-a-service provider, has created double-signing protection software, or DSP, which aims to address the slashing penalties associated with double signing messages. According to the company, many digital asset holders consider slashing penalties to be one of the “main risks” of Blockchain participation, as they make it more difficult for the network

Bitcoin (BTC) needs to hit $340,000 just to match its performance from its last halving cycle, data shows. In a Twitter series on Aug. 20, popular statistics resource ChartsBTC noted that Bitcoin still has huge room for growth at current levels of $11,700. Halving multiples give up to $1.6 million BTC price Comparing lows, highs

Do you follow some crypto trading rules? If you don’t have any, you should use these five golden rules for successful trading. Crypto trading isn’t about getting lucky a few times. If you want to find success with trading cryptocurrencies, you must base your good results on fundamentals, good habits, and experience. Making money as

A Canada-based Middle Eastern restaurant chain just converted their entire fiat cash reserves into Bitcoin. According to an Aug. 19 tweet from Tahini’s — ‘the best Middle Eastern restaurant in the world’ — the decision to switch its cash reserves to crypto had its genesis in March’s crash, and when the Canadian government began to

Russia is set to pilot a national blockchain-based e-voting system in September. The new system was developed in partnership between Rostelecom, Russia’s largest integrated provider, and Waves Enterprise. Another recent blockchain e-voting experiment in Russia ended in fiasco after the system suffered a number of setbacks and attacks. The Russian government used a different blockchain provider, Bitfury,

The operators of a global cryptocurrency-based Ponzi scheme have been charged with fraud and money laundering following a United States Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) probe. According to an announcement from the U.S. Department of Justice, four of the five alleged operators of AirBit Club, which allegedly netted tens of millions of dollars from victims, were

The Colombian Ministry of Information Technology and Communications, or MinTIC, released a first-of-its-kind draft of a guide that calls for the public sector to adopt blockchain technology, including crypto payment-related matters. In the Guide for the use and implementation of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT/Blockchain) in the public sector, MinTIC explains the advantages and disadvantages of

Amid turbulent times for the world at large, the cryptocurrency space seems to be cruising on its own steam in 2020. The coronavirus pandemic has put a major strain on economies around the world, and countries such as the United States have seen their central banks resort to extended quantitative easing in order to stimulate