Author: Bloomberg
Global stock markets have whipsawed investors in recent weeks amid the war in Ukraine and spiraling commodities prices. Yet Bitcoin, which typically is no stranger to wild moves, has been locked in its narrowest trading range in more than a year. The world’s largest cryptocurrency has been trading within 10% of a key trendline — its average price over the past 50 days — for 40 straight sessions. That’s the longest stretch of range trading since October 2020, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The tepid movements haven’t gone unnoticed by market watchers, who cite data showing long-term holders have…
Michael Saylor, chief executive of enterprise software maker MicroStrategy Inc. and noted Bitcoin proselytizer, spoke to dozens of members of the Economic Club of New York on Monday about the merits of the world’s largest digital asset, especially in the face of sharply rising inflation. Most mainstream economists have been slow to embrace Bitcoin, questioning the claims of advocates that the cryptocurrency serves as a store of value as well as an inflation hedge. The software entrepreneur explained how when the company was faced with the “fast death” that the technology industry promised, the “slow death” that expanding monetary supply presented, and…
Crypto protocols that allow digital-asset traders to obfuscate their transaction activity should be more regulated, the U.K.’s National Crime Agency said. Decentralized mixers such as Wasabi Wallet and Tornado Cash use smart contracts to break the visible chain of transactions between a sender and receiver. Crypto advocates say the tools offer more privacy than trading directly on public blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Regulators have expressed concerns about their potential for aiding criminal activity and sanctions evasion. The NCA has called for such mixers to be subject to regulation which would mandate them to carry out know-your-customer checks and record…
Crypto markets still have many puzzles, but they are beginning to reveal their secrets. The last few months of chaos show what Bitcoin and other crypto assets are good for: They are advanced tools of globalization, luxury goods for complex, well-functioning markets — not protections against the depredations of hostile governments. One common story, especially popular in libertarian circles, has been that when inflation runs rampant and governments confiscate private wealth, crypto will be a vital refuge. It increasingly appears that this story is wrong. In February, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau froze the bank accounts of many of the truckers that…
Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm also known as a16z, hired former federal prosecutor Michele Korver to oversee regulatory affairs for its crypto team. Korver has more than 25 years of experience in government and law enforcement, the firm said in a blog post on Tuesday. She last year became the first chief digital currency adviser for the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Before that, she worked as the digital currency counsel for the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. Korver will be responsible for handling relations between a16z’s crypto portfolio companies and regulators, as well as working to ensure future…
David Naylor’s knowledge of cryptocurrency was limited, to say the least, when Bitcoin miners started approaching him last year about buying power from the utility he runs across a 16-county stretch of rural Texas. “I was writing it down, B-i-t-c-o-i-n,” said Naylor, chief executive officer of Rayburn Country Electric Cooperative Inc., which provides power to about 229,000 customers — mostly small towns and homes — north and east of Dallas. Naylor has had to get up to speed quickly. He’s received multiple proposals to build Bitcoin mines, with rows of electricity-guzzling computers that solve mathematical problems to create digital coins, on…
Gary DeWaal, special counsel and chair of the financial markets and regulatory practice group at Katten, says U.S. officials’ concern about the potential misuse of cryptocurrency to evade sanctions against Russia in the war in Ukraine is warranted based on recent cases. But he says blockchain transactions are visible and traceable and the ability of law enforcement, including the DOJ, to detect and prosecute cryptocurrency misuse is improving. Many government officials worldwide are very concerned about Russia and certain of its nationals using cryptocurrencies to evade extensive sanctions imposed by the U.S., the European Union, and other countries following Russia’s…
Binance Holdings Ltd. has received licenses to be a crypto service provider in Dubai and Bahrain, a key milestone for the world’s largest digital-asset exchange as it sets up the stage for a major push in the Middle East. Binance got a license to be the first anchor in Dubai World Trade Centre, an economic free zone, a person familiar with the matter said. It also won a license from the Bahrain’s central bank to be a crypto-asset service provider in the kingdom, Chief Executive Officer Changpeng Zhao tweeted. The pair of licenses marked the exchange’s first regulatory approvals in the…
A proposal that would have effectively banned the mining and transactions of energy-intensive cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin in the European Union failed to win approval by a parliamentary committee, as the bloc pushes ahead with regulation of the fast-growing sector. The EU’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee voted on a final draft of the Markets in Crypto-assets (MiCA) legislation on Monday, which included a clause pledging to make cryptoassets traded or issued within the bloc “subject to minimum environmental sustainability standards.” A final tally of the committee’s voting showed the proposed clause was defeated with 23 votes in favor, 30 against and…
Gauntlet, a financial-risk modeling platform for crypto lending, raised a new round of funding that pushed its valuation to $1 billion. The $23.8 million Series B round was led by Ribbit Capital, the company said in a statement Monday. Existing investors including Polychain Capital and Paradigm also participated. Tarun Chitra co-founded Gauntlet in 2018 after about five years at D.E. Shaw Research, the firm led by billionaire and hedge fund founder David Shaw, and two years at high-frequency trading company Vatic Labs. He began Gauntlet after consulting with a group of clients whose platforms became decentralized-finance protocols, where smart contracts automatically execute trades without an intermediary.…