Author: Bloomberg

More than half of the people surveyed in India are against legalizing cryptocurrencies, according to an opinion poll published on Wednesday, just as the government proposed a law to regulate their use and to create an official digital coin. The survey showed 54% don’t want the government to legalize cryptocurrencies but instead to tax them like a digital asset held in a foreign country, pollster LocalCircles said. These findings were based on a survey of 56,000 people in the last 15 days. Only 26% of those polled said cryptocurrencies should be legalized and then taxed in India while the remaining 20% didn’t…

Sherrod Brown, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, is probing some of the biggest stablecoin issuers and exchanges for more information about the risks that digital tokens pose to investors and consumers. In letters to executives at Tether, Coinbase Global Inc., Binance.US and five other companies, Brown asked for more details about the size of the market for digital coins, how tokens are converted into U.S. dollars and how consumers exchange cryptocurrencies, among other questions. “The complex terms and conditions applicable to digital assets and stablecoins, as well as the need for reliable and resilient underlying networks, can make it difficult for investors and…

Peter Thiel told a crowd of a few hundred people assembled at a Miami conference where he’d look for clues about the real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the now almost mythical pseudonymous founder of Bitcoin — a beach in the Caribbean. “My sort of theory on Satoshi’s identity was that Satoshi was on that beach in Anguilla,” the technology billionaire and self-described libertarian said Wednesday, recounting an early meeting with the founders of E-Gold Ltd., a now defunct digital currency that was indicted by the U.S. Justice Department in 2007. “I met them on the beach in Anguilla in February of 2000. We were beginning…

Bitcoin miner Griid Infrastructure is in talks to go public through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, according to people with knowledge of the matter. A transaction with the blank-check firm, Adit EdTech Acquisition Corp., would value the combined entity at more than $3 billion, one of the people said. Terms aren’t finalized and talks could still fall apart. Spokespeople for Adit EdTech and Cincinnati-based Griid declined to comment. Griid, which says its procures cheap, carbon-free energy to manage, build and operate a portfolio of U.S.-based Bitcoin mining facilities, announced this week that it secured a $525 million facility from Blockchain.com.…

Amid another choppy day for most cryptocurrencies, digital token aficionados are turning to technical indicators for clues as to where Bitcoin and Ether may go next. Bitcoin, mired in a rough spell that’s seen it lose near 20% since its record high earlier this month, has been trading below its 50-day moving average, which many see as a bearish development. Ether, on the other hand, on Wednesday managed to bounce off of its own such trendline. The second-largest token sees good round-number technical support at $4,000, according to Mike McGlone, a commodities analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. “It seems to be…

An Australian software developer says he has made thousands of non-fungible token images freely available, calling it an art project that aims to show the absurdity of property-rights concepts in digital assets. Geoff Huntley, the project’s creator, claims to have collected all the images associated with NFTs minted on the Ethereum and Solana blockchains and made them accessible via an accompanying website called NFT Bay, modeled on the infamous Pirate Bay peer-to-peer search service. The effort is compiled into a 17-terabyte “billion-dollar torrent,” Huntley said, because of the vast sums of money people have spent to acquire ownership of the pictures within it…

Today, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the nation’s regulator of large banks such as J.P. Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo, issued Interpretive Letter 1179, which erects supervisory barriers that will slow the entry of the fast-growing cryptocurrency industry into the U.S. banking system. Acting Comptroller Michael Hsu effectively issued a rebuke to the work of previous Acting Comptroller Brian Brooks by instilling greater risk management thresholds prior to any bank conducting crypto-asset bank activities. According to Hsu, “…Because many of these technologies and products present novel risks, banks must be able to demonstrate that they have appropriate…

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, confirmed that it is in talks with sovereign wealth funds about them taking a stake as the closely-held firm faces increasing regulatory pressure worldwide. Investments from sovereign wealth funds would help improve its “perception and relationships” with various governments, Binance Chief Executive Officer Changpeng Zhao told the Financial Times this week. His comments were confirmed by a spokesperson. The exchange declined to comment on which sovereign funds it has held communications with. The firm, which was initially based in China, is also keeping its options open in regard to naming a headquarters, the spokesperson said. It declined…

The Collins Dictionary declared NFT its word of the year for 2021 in recognition of the convergence of the worlds of money, tech and art in what became known as “non-fungible tokens.” NFTs have exploded in popularity this year with the help of collectors, speculators and celebrity endorsers stirring up hype — and funding — for them. Collins defines them as “a unique digital certificate, registered in a blockchain, that is used to record ownership of an asset such as an artwork or a collectible.” Some of this digital artwork has been selling for millions of dollars. The corporate world has been anything…

India is considering a proposal to treat cryptocurrencies as a financial asset while safeguarding small investors, according to people familiar with the matter. The discussions come as authorities race to finalize a bill Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government wants to present to parliament in the session starting Nov. 29. The legislation may stipulate a minimum amount for investments in digital currencies, while banning their use as legal tender, the people said, asking not to be identified as no final decision has been taken. Policy makers left themselves some wiggle room when they posted a description of the bill on parliament’s…