Author: Coindesk
Ethereum’s average network fees have dropped to the lowest value in 30 days at 0.0096 ether or $24.64 per transaction. Median-sized Ethereum fees are lower today as well, as fees are between $8.37 to $10.82 per transaction as ether fees haven’t been this low since January 1. It’s cheaper today to send ethereum (ETH), as network fees are 0.0096 ETH or $24.64 on average to send the second leading crypto asset. On January 30, 2022, ethereum has a 24-hour price range of around $2,575 to $2,647 per unit. Average-sized ETH fees haven’t been this low since January 1, 2022, when the average-sized fee (ASF)…
A controversial proposed rule that would enforce know-your-customer rules on unhosted or self-hosted crypto wallets may again be under consideration by the U.S. federal government. The rule was first proposed at the end of 2020 by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the U.S. money laundering watchdog. If enacted, crypto exchanges would be required to collect names and home addresses, among other personal details, from anyone hoping to transfer cryptocurrencies to their own private wallets. Industry advocates said they were concerned that the rules might be impossible for certain wallets to comply with because they are not controlled by people…
Given the stupendous amount of personal information stored and transferred online, it’s good that regulators are moving to bolster consumer privacy. But these rules – ranging from the “right to be forgotten” to the ability query a database to see what information they keep about you on file – may bump up against the web the blockchain industry is building, sometimes called Web 3. Crypto’s primary benefits stem from being open, transparent and immutable. Blockchain-based web apps are necessarily different than the multibillion-dollar “walled gardens” that dominant the internet today. Privacy laws were written with the old web in mind,…
Visa users made $2.5 billion in payments with crypto-connected cards during the company’s fiscal first quarter ended Dec. 31, Visa CEO Al Kelly said on the company’s earnings call Thursday. The figure for the quarter was 70% of Visa’s crypto volume for all of fiscal 2021, which ended on Sept. 30, Kelly added on the call with analysts. More than 65 crypto platforms and exchanges, including Coinbase and BlockFi, have partnered to issue Visa credentials, the company said. More than 100 million vendors in the Visa network are also now accepting Visa crypto payments, the company added. Kelly said Visa…
Crypto investors seem to have stepped up bitcoin accumulation, shrugging of prospects of faster interest-rate hikes from the U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed). Blockchain data provided by Glassnode shows that more than 18,000 bitcoin worth $670 million left centralized exchanges on Thursday, registering the biggest single-day net outflow in over a month. Crypto exchange BitMEX alone saw net outflow of over 9,500 bitcoins. Most investors prefer to have direct custody of coins when they intend to hold them for a longer-term. Thus, net outflows are widely taken to represent bullish sentiment. Outflows do not necessarily imply passive investing and investors often tokenize…
The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) has indicted Project Investors Inc. (also known as Cryptsy) CEO and founder Paul Vernon for stealing $1 million from wallets that the now-defunct crypto exchange controlled, the agency announced Wednesday. In a 17-count indictment that was unsealed in federal court in Miami, the DOJ charged Vernon, 48, with tax evasion, wire fraud, money laundering, computer fraud and destruction of records in a federal investigation, among other charges. The DOJ is alleging that between May 2013 and May 2015 Vernon stole over $1 million from wallets that the exchange controlled and used his own crypto wallet to…
The transparency of blockchains is often marketed as a benefit. It’s not. Main Street financial consumers are never going to adopt blockchain-based financial tools as long as blockchains are radically transparent. Regular folks have secrets that they want to keep. One of the most promising use cases for blockchains is decentralized finance (DeFi). The people who are building DeFi tools aspire for DeFi to be something more than a skate park for the risk-loving crypto-rich. They want their tools to solve real-world financial problems faced by individuals and companies, including America’s 31.7 million small businesses. Imagine a cash-starved manufacturer in…
The value of Tesla’s (TSLA) bitcoin holdings at the end of the fourth quarter remained unchanged from the end of the previous quarter at $1.26 billion, the electric car maker said in its quarterly earnings report on Wednesday. Tesla did not buy or sell any bitcoin in the quarter, nor did it record any impairments to the value of its bitcoin holdings because the price of bitcoin was essentially flat from the end of the third quarter to the end of the fourth quarter. In the third quarter, Tesla also did not add to or reduce its bitcoin holdings, but…
TRLab, a platform for collecting art in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), raised $4.2 million in a funding round, according to a press release shared with CoinDesk. The company will use the funds to diversify its collection and add art projects of “varying scope and scale, ranging from full-production genesis drops to curated multi-artist projects united along a common theme, to large-scale editions that integrate shared learning and direct access to artists into the collecting process,” the statement said. The platform is geared towards the higher end of the contemporary art market, with one listed artwork by Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang…
Take off that McDonald’s hat, boyo, and return to the screen: Bitcoin is up 10%. Favorite altcoins of day traders ETH, LUNA and ATOM are also up and to the right. The trading lines are green, even if your total investment is in the red. This is not financial advice. Today’s market bounce, which may or may not be of the dead cat variety, is just another data point in crypto’s historically volatile lifecycle. It’s this volatility that many investors are after when they enter the market, the same volatility that causes so much pain for unprepared, over-leveraged buyers. Some…