Author: Bloomberg
New York is trying to become the U.S.’s “crypto capital.” Major cryptocurrency companies are hiring an army of lobbyists to influence that outcome. New filings show that Digital Currency Group, Blockchain.com, and roughly a dozen other firms are spending upwards of $100,000 a month in a $1.5 million Albany lobbying blitz aimed at helping to write the rules governing the $2 billion crypto industry, which remains mostly unregulated at the federal level. Even firms like eToro, which don’t yet operate in New York, are staffing up in Albany because laws written there could impact legislation across the U.S. New York is home to some of the toughest financial…
Bitcoin dropped to a more than two-week low as fears of a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine prompted some analysts to predict the largest cryptocurrency could slide toward the key $30,000 level. Bitcoin dropped for a sixth straight day, touching a low of $36,372 on Tuesday after Russian President Vladimir Putin said he’s recognizing two self-proclaimed separatist republics in eastern Ukraine and ordering troops there. Other cryptocurrencies also declined, with Ether off as much as 2.9% and XRP down as much as 6.7%. Bitcoin dipped below $40,000 level over the weekend and kept weakening as the Ukraine crisis deepened,…
Singaporean state investment firm Temasek Holdings Pte was among investors in a funding round that valued cryptocurrency-trading platform Amber Group at $3 billion, just weeks after the city-state cracked down on marketing by crypto firms. Existing shareholders including Sequoia China, Pantera Capital and Tiger Global Management also took part in the $200 million financing, Singapore-based Amber said in a statement Tuesday. The company, founded in 2018 by five former Morgan Stanley traders, has seen its valuation triple since mid-2021. Singapore is one of Asia’s hottest markets for crypto startups, and Temasek and its subsidiaries have made several investments in the sector in the past year.…
DCash, used in seven nations, has been offline for weeks as technical glitches reveal the challenges governments face as they consider embracing digital currencies. One of the world’s first central bank digital currencies is experiencing serious growing pains. DCash — a digital version of the Eastern Caribbean dollar used by seven small nations — has been offline for more than a month and it could take several more days to fully restore service, bank officials said. The DCash crash is shining a light on some of the technical challenges governments face as they consider embracing sovereign e-currencies. “This is an important case…
The first Paulista Championship NFT auctioned by Binance reached a premium of 110% and sold an illustration of a scene from the 1993 final. Four others are still to be sold. Last Saturday (19), Binance closed the auction of the first NFT issued by the Federação Paulista de Futebol. The penalty kick goal by striker Evair, in the second game of the 1993 Paulistão final, which guaranteed the Paulista Championship title to Palmeiras, after a 17-year drought, was portrayed in an illustration by artist Pedro Nuin. After five days of bidding, the work was sold at a premium of 110%…
Crypto exchange FTX is launching its own gaming unit, aimed at encouraging more game publishers to embrace cryptocurrencies, blockchain networks and non-fungible tokens. Operating via FTX’s U.S. affiliate, FTX Gaming will debut with a “crypto-as-a-service” platform through which gaming companies can launch tokens and offer support for NFTs. The unit began hiring a fully-remote team this month, seeking software engineers with experience coding in the game engine Unity. The move into gaming follows FTX’s announcement in November that it would invest $100 million together with two partners to spur integration of the Solana blockchain into video games. Crypto’s push into the gaming…
Police said they have largely cleared downtown Ottawa of the anti-vaccine protests that have roiled Canada and its capital for the last three weeks, as a financial crackdown widened to help prevent similar disturbances. “The number of unlawful protesters has dramatically declined in the last 24 hours,” Ottawa’s interim police chief, Steve Bell, said in a press conference Sunday. “We promised that we would clear our streets and give them back to our residents,” he said. “We promised that we would return our city to a state of normalcy. With every hour we are getting closer to that goal.” Though…
Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of the Ethereum blockchain, says the digital-asset universe may actually benefit from the current retreat in coin prices that’s cast a chill on investors and is being referred to as another crypto winter. “The people who are deep into crypto, and especially building things, a lot of them welcome a bear market,” Buterin said during an interview with Bloomberg. “They welcome the bear market because when there are these long periods of prices moving up by huge amounts like it does — it does obviously make a lot of people happy — but it does also tend…
A pair of legal memos Ripple Labs Inc. received a decade ago about XRP tokens are fresh fodder for federal regulators in their fight with the company over whether the digital asset is a security that needs to be registered. Court filings unsealed Friday show that in a February 2012 memo, Perkins Coie LLP attorneys advised Ripple not to sell the proposed coins, as various conditions could subject them to being regulated as securities or commodities. A second memo by the same firm, dated in October of that year, suggested that XRP may not be considered to be a security under federal law, but…
Technology that merges the virtual and physical worlds could start to become a reality for consumers in a few years, Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc (FB.O) has told advertising agencies, giving more details of its vision for the creation of the metaverse. Mixed reality (MR) technology could allow a person wearing an MR headset to use a real world object to trigger a virtual world reaction, like hitting a video game character with a real world baseball bat, for instance. It is one of three types of extended reality technologies often associated with the metaverse. Augmented reality exists, with mobile games like…