Author: Bloomberg
Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s Charlie Munger told a conference Friday that markets are wildly overvalued in places and that the current environment is “even crazier” than the dotcom boom of the late 1990s that subsequently led to a bust. “I consider this era an even crazier era than the dotcom era,” Munger, 97, said at the Sohn conference in Sydney, The Australian Financial Review reported. Munger also said that he wished cryptocurrencies didn’t exist, and praised China for taking action to ban their use, according to the AFR. “I wish they’d never been invented,” he said. “And again I admire the…
Mukesh Ambani, Asia’s richest person, said he sees the benefits of the blockchain technology and expects India to soon have one of the world’s most-advanced digital infrastructures — a tool that can generate equitable prosperity across the society. “Blockchain is the technology I believe in and it is different from crypto,” Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries Ltd. said at a forum Friday, organized by India’s International Financial Services Centres Authority and Bloomberg. He added that digital technologies will reinvent sectors from financial services to manufacturing, agriculture to education and health care, making them more affordable and more accessible to all Indians. “Digital technology, I…
Ho Chi Minh City police have detained 59 people tied to the biggest illegal online gambling ring ever uncovered by Vietnamese authorities, according to state-owned broadcaster VTV. The cryptocurrency gambling ring had transactions totaling more than $3.8 billion, which includes the amount of money gamblers put in the ring and excludes reciprocal money from the dealer, VTV reported, citing information from the police. Gamblers in the ring registered cryptocurrency wallets on a foreign platform called Remitano to buy cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum or USDT, also known as Tether, then would use the crypto to gamble on websites Swiftonline.live and Nagaclubs.com,…
Terraform Labs’ Luna token is climbing into the ranks of the largest cryptocurrencies amid changes in how the coin is used for its blockchain payments network and optimism about the potential for decentralized applications. Luna has jumped about 60% in the past seven days, according to pricing from CoinGecko, making it the 12th-largest cryptocurrency with a market value of around $25 billion. The surge comes as Singapore-based Terraform is embroiled in a dispute with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over whether the platform is selling unregistered securities. The Terra protocol deploys algorithmic, fiat-pegged stablecoins — tokens that aim to link their…
Square Inc. is changing its corporate name to Block Inc., signaling a push beyond the company’s main sales and payments products into businesses like music, cash transfers and the blockchain. The company, co-founded and run by cryptocurrency enthusiast Jack Dorsey, will continue to call its seller product Square, and the new corporate identity won’t lead to any organizational changes. The company’s stock ticker — SQ — will also stay the same. CEO Dorsey — who resigned from the same role at Twitter Inc. earlier this week — has long wanted to build Square from a digital-payments company into a broader organization…
The red-hot rally in meme-coin darling Shiba Inu is losing some of its steam. The token had posted a double-digit gain after crypto-exchange Kraken listed it for trading and e-retailer Newegg Commerce announced it will accept the digital asset as a form of payment. But on Wednesday, the token fell more than 4%, according to data from CoinGecko.com. Many were struck by the tepid move. Earlier in the year, announcements large and small tended to move prices almost straight up. But they’re now getting affected by the Federal Reserve’s announcement that it might start to pull back on its stimulus, according to Matt Maley, chief…
Fidelity Investments, one of the world’s largest asset managers, plans to join the spate of companies offering investors access to Bitcoin through a Canadian ETF with U.S. regulators balking at approval of the funds. The Fidelity Advantage Bitcoin ETF will invest in Bitcoin directly or through derivative instruments, and customers will be able to make purchases in the fund with Canadian or U.S. dollars, according to a Nov. 22 filing from a unit of the Boston-based firm. The exchange-traded fund, which would be listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the ticker FBTC, could be launched as soon as Thursday. The filing comes…
A 24-hour trading venue’s embrace of cryptocurrencies helped it secure $14 million in a funding round led by billionaire Steve Cohen’s Point72 Ventures. The funds will help 24 Exchange’s trading platform continue to expand in asset classes including crypto and equities, the company said Wednesday in a statement. The goal is to bring trading to institutional and retail investors around the clock, according to founder and Chief Executive Officer Dmitri Galinov. “There is no waiting on our system,” he said in an interview. “You see the stock or crypto price, you want to buy or sell, do it now.” Crypto is a…
Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler doubled down on his calls for more oversight of cryptocurrency trading platforms on Wednesday, offering new insight into his priorities as he seeks to crack down on the digital coin industry. Gensler reiterated the need for digital asset exchanges to register with the SEC — a move that could bring more investor protections and compliance costs for the firms. He said that the agency is open to working with platforms around thorny issues like custody of tokens, but also said that the firms could face enforcement actions if they don’t comply with the…
For the first time in four years, venture investors are backing more crypto and blockchain startups in the U.S. than they are in Asia—a sign that China’s crackdown on alternative currencies has chilled the country’s upstart industry. Though the country was once a crypto capital, China’s new restrictions on tech companies have driven down the number of cryptocurrency and blockchain startups getting funding, according to year-to-date data collected by research firm CB Insights. Beijing forbid crypto mining and banking operations this spring and then banned all transactions in September, forcing many founders to shutter operations or relocate. “We’ve basically seen no deals in China,” CB Insights…