Author: Fortune Magazine
Cryptocurrencies backed by gold are an increasingly popular alternative for traders seeking to escape increasing market instability and the looming threat of stagflation. The two top gold-backed cryptocurrencies, PAX Gold and Tether Gold, together surpassed $1 billion in market capitalization this week—a 60% increase from the same period last year, CoinDesk reported, citing a report from Arcane Research, which tracks cryptocurrencies. Both cryptocurrencies reached highs Tuesday before retreating after stocks rebounded. On Tuesday, PAX Gold reached $2,071, its highest price in the last three months. Tether Gold jumped to $2,076, its highest point in a year. On Wednesday stock indexes including the…
On Thursday, the leader of the South Korea’s People Power Party, Yoon Suk-yeol, clinched a narrow victory over the incumbent Democratic Party’s candidate to become the country’s new president, securing roughly 49% of the votes with a platform that appealed to crypto enthusiasts and young men. Yoon, a 61-year old former prosecutor who helped imprison two former presidents on corruption charges, has pledged to raise the threshold for paying capital gains tax on earnings from Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies from $2,000 to $40,000—setting one of the world’s most generous tax-free allowances. The incoming president has also suggested he will review a 2017 ban on…
When Chad Everett Harris first set foot in the tiny hamlet of Rockdale, Texas, on a sweltering day in July of 2019, both the town and the man were the hardest of hard-luck cases. Rockdale’s economy was still reeling from a shock two years earlier when Alcoa shuttered what was once the world’s largest aluminum plant. And a plan by China’s Bitmain to repurpose the gigantic ex-smelter as another industrial superlative––the world’s largest Bitcoin mine––had briefly flourished then foundered after the signature cryptocurrency’s price collapsed in the fall of 2018. An estimated 88% of the facility’s 3,000 workers lost their jobs, pounding…
President Biden plans to announce an executive order this week that will outline the federal government’s strategy for reviewing cryptocurrencies, according to Bloomberg. Citing people familiar with the administration’s plans, Bloomberg said the order will direct federal agencies to examine potential regulatory changes and then report back to the White House later this year. The order is also expected to address the possibility of a U.S. Central Bank Digital Currency, or CBDC, and carve out regulatory roles for individual agencies including the State and Commerce Departments, according to Bloomberg. The executive order, in development since last year, could be issued as…
In April of 2021, Darren Langer decided to make a bet on what he believed to be a “massive evolutionary shift” underway. Langer was working as a managing director at investment firm BTIG, collaborating with clients like hedge funds, and had noticed that for years, achieving above-market returns on the Street was becoming increasingly challenging. But after reading some of BTIG’s own research reports about crypto and blockchain technology, Langer says that, like in the early booming days of hedge funds, “it just became very clear to me that this was kind of history repeating itself in terms of digital assets…
The Kremlin won’t be able to use virtual money to evade sanctions from Western companies, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao said Friday, because “crypto is too small for Russia.” “Currently, the media and politicians are spending a lot of effort and focus on crypto and sanctions,” said Zaho, who heads up the cryptocurrency trading platform, as reported by The Guardian. But they should shift their energies elsewhere, given the dismally small share of global net worth that exists in crypto, he said. “If we look at the crypto adoption today, there is probably about 3% of the global population with some kind…
Citadel CEO and billionaire Ken Griffin has joined the list of billionaires admitting they were wrong about crypto. “The crypto market today has a market capitalization of about $2 trillion in round numbers, which tells you that I haven’t been right on this call,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg. He also called the rise of cryptocurrencies “one of the greatest stories in finance over the last 15 years.” Griffin has previously been extremely critical of crypto, with CNBC noting he once called it “a jihadist call” against the dollar. He also said it was similar to the “tulip bulb mania” of…
Bitcoin enthusiasts have long touted the cryptocurrency’s value as a safe haven to hedge against inflation and other risks in traditional markets. But hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his troops to invade Ukraine on Thursday, cryptocurrencies plummeted. Bitcoin—the digital asset most often referred to as an alternative to gold—plunged 8% within hours of Russia invading Ukraine, with prices tanking to $34,413 per coin. Ether, the native currency of the game-building blockchain Ethereum, has crashed 7% to $2,404 per unit. Ethereum rival Solana, which is popular among NFT creators, tanked 10% to $83, too. Even Shiba Inu, a meme coin which enjoyed logic-defying 49,000,000%…
Vitalik Buterin, the Russian-Canadian co-founder of the Ethereum blockchain, condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin on Twitter minutes after Russia announced a “special military operation” in Ukraine, effectively declaring war on the eastern European country. On Wednesday evening, Buterin wrote that he was “very upset by Putin’s decision” to abandon peaceful solutions in Russia’s dispute with Ukraine and “start a war, instead.” “This is a crime against the Ukrainian and Russian people,” he wrote. “I want to wish everyone safety and security, even though I know there won’t be.” Cryptocurrency prices tumbled after Putin’s announcement. On Thursday morning, Bitcoin prices dropped roughly 3.8% to $35,031.86,…
On Sunday, the streets surrounding the Canadian parliament in Ottawa were free of protesters and trucks for the first time since January after police cleared out the last of the so-called Freedom Convoy truckers who occupied the nation’s capital to oppose the country’s COVID-era restrictions. During a three-day operation, Ottawa police deployed pepper spray and stun grenades to disperse crowds, towed away over 70 vehicles, and arrested 191 people, bringing a total of 389 charges against 103 of them. Three of the protest’s key organizers were arrested and charged with “mischief,” and two of them are now out on bail. The…