Author: Bloomberg
While Coinbase Global Inc. knows that many investors are fixated on an anticipated compression in trading fees, its main revenue source, the chief operating officer of the biggest U.S. cryptocurrency exchange said it hasn’t seen any signs of pressure yet. “We haven’t seen the actual compression. We haven’t changed our fee structure on the retail side yet,” Coinbase President and COO Emilie Choi said during a Goldman Sachs U.S. Financial Services Conference on Tuesday. “Consumers are more than willing to pay a certain fee percentage for the services we offer, particularly the security.” Coinbase has been diversifying from trading fees, which make up the majority of…
As Puerto Rico has been beset by corruption allegations, the island’s legislature will begin holding meetings on how to use the blockchain technology that underpins cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin to reduce government graft. Puerto Rico House Speaker Rafael “Tatito” Hernandez said he will begin meeting with members of the island’s growing blockchain industry this month about creating “smart contracts,” on embedded computer programs in the protocols, that might bring more transparency and accountability to the public sector. “We have a real credibility problem,” Hernandez told Bloomberg on the sidelines of a Puerto Rico Blockchain Trade Association conference. “And this might…
A lack of power in Iceland has caused the island’s main utility, Landsvirkjun, to reduce supplies to some industrial customers, such as aluminum smelters, data centers and fish meal factories, as well as turn away new Bitcoin miners. Low hydro reservoir levels, a malfunction at a power station and a delay in obtaining power from an external producer led to the reduction, effective immediately, the company said on Tuesday. In addition to fish-feed plants, the reductions apply to large customers on curtailable short-term contracts. Record demand also played a part, said Tinna Traustadottir, executive vice president of sales and customer service…
This weekend’s crypto flash crash helped to bring into focus the recent cooling of decentralized finance, once one of the hottest corners of the digital asset world. While Bitcoin and other rival coins have mostly steadied or climbed from lows of about 20% seen Saturday, many DeFi tokens tumbled more and have since failed to rebound. The DeFi Pulse Index, which tracks tokens such as Aave, Balancer, Compound, Sushi, Synthetix, Uniswap, Yearn and Badger, dropped as much as 24%. The slide comes on top of recent poor performance for the tokens related to decentralized-finance applications — services that let people lend, borrow and trade directly, without…
The Australian computer scientist who claims he invented Bitcoin was told by a U.S. jury to pay $100 million in damages over claims that he cheated a deceased friend over intellectual property for the cryptocurrency. Jurors in Miami federal court took about a week to reach Monday’s verdict, following about three weeks of trial. The jury rejected most claims against Craig Wright and the outcome probably won’t resolve the debate over whether Wright is the mythical creator of the peer-to-peer currency, Satoshi Nakamoto. The brother of Dave Kleiman, a computer security expert who died in 2013, alleged that the late…
Tech veteran Brian Roberts is joining OpenSea as its first chief financial officer in the latest sign web3 startups are attracting not just historic sums of cash, but also serious talent. “I voted with my feet,” Roberts told Bloomberg following his recent resignation from Lyft Inc. which ended his 7-year run as the ride share company’s CFO. Roberts said while he “loves Lyft,” the growth in web3 companies and in particular in OpenSea’s marketplace for NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, made it an easy choice. “I haven’t been this excited about something in a very long time,” he said. “It reminds…
As Wall Street traders bedded down for the weekend after the stock volatility last week, Nikita Fadeev in London was woken up by a Bitcoin market alarm at 4:55 a.m. Thanks to the cell-phone notification on Saturday morning, the head of cryptocurrency hedge fund Fasanara Digital was back at his desk as the world’s biggest token plunged 20% in an hour. For all the talk about the allure of cryptocurrencies to diversify portfolios, Bitcoin proved susceptible to a textbook flight to quality — dropping as low as $43,000 after speculative stock favorites sold off last week on monetary-tightening fears. “When things set…
Following the successful launch of his first collection of NFTs, Tom Brady is going all in by offering a set that focuses on the beginning of his football career. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback is launching a set on his Autograph NFT platform that highlights a resume he had created prior to his 2000 draft selection and includes a stopwatch, cleats and jersey used at the NFL combine, among other items. Whether it will include his famous shirtless picture from the professional tryout, which has since become an internet meme, remains to be seen. More than 16,000 collectibles are part of…
Zimbabwe’s central bank is exploring the use of a digital currency rather than allowing cryptocurrencies as legal tender, according to the nation’s central bank Governor John Mangudya. “As a central bank we don’t believe in cryptocurrencies,” said Mangudya in an interview with publisher Trevor Ncube broadcast Monday. “We believe in central bank digital currency which is basically trying to say ‘how do we have an e-Zimbabwe dollar as opposed to cryptocurrency’.” The southern African nation plans to send a team to Nigeria to learn from their experiences in launching the first digital currency in Africa in October. “We have got our fintech group and…
The complexities of the real world are starting to bleed into the Metaverse — the virtual arena where identity functions as both a reflection on and determinant of social capital. Differences in prices for digital avatars based on race, gender and skin color are emerging among a popular collection of NFTs known as CryptoPunks, belying the utopian and egalitarian ideals touted by the closely connected world of crypto, decentralized finance, blockchain and non-fungible tokens. According to both participants in and observers of the space, these price discrepancies are partly explained by the lack of diversity among the investors who favor…