Author: Forbes

The pandemic upped demand for digital currency in China, as elsewhere. But in June, authorities banned crypto mining. This has put China firmly into the camp of using digital currency to increase government monitoring. Are crypto and digital in competition? No. China dislikes the energy consumption and greenhouse gases associated with crypto-currency mining. Regulators also think, with good reason, that crypto currency is used for money laundering, capital flight, and illegal transactions, so why support it? A worker fills out a form at the Whinstone US Bitcoin mining facility in Rockdale, Texas, on October … [+] AFP /AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES What…

Data-driven “Asset as a Service” business models are increasingly finding their way into the manufacturing industry and starting to disrupt the financial value chain. What role will the tokenization of industrial goods play in the future? Tokenization of industrial goods such as tractors opens up new possibilities. Flexible usage and billing models are a key trend of digitization. Hence, it comes as no surprise that they also becoming increasingly important in the manufacturing industry. More and more companies are no longer buying capital goods, opting instead to pay for their use within the framework of pay-per-use or subscription models. This…

Wall Street titan Goldman GS +1% Sachs seems to be all in now when it comes to Bitcoin and claims the cryptocurrency currently has a 20% share of the “store of value” market. This means the asset, Bitcoin, can maintain its worth over time without depreciating, in comparison to precious metals or some currencies. Even though the digital currency remains highly volatile, trading above $46,000, it’s far from the all-time high in November 2021 of  $69,000. Will Goldman Sachs’ cosign of Bitcoin as digital gold, increase confidence in other major financial institutions to do the same?  The Breakdown You Need To Know: With…

Ether prices climbed today, rising above $3,200 this afternoon and then staying above that level since then. The world’s second-most valuable digital currency by market value climbed to $3,263.35 around noon EST, CoinDesk figures show. Since that time, it has traded within a very tight range, fluctuating between roughly $3,200 and $3,265, additional CoinDesk data reveals. Following these latest price movements, several analysts offered their takes on the cryptocurrency’s recent volatility and its future prospects. ‘A Strong Bounce’ “We saw a bounce in the broader digital asset market today,” said Brett Sifling, an investment advisor for Gerber Kawasaki Wealth & Investment Management. “Ethereum…

The Internal Revenue Service announced yesterday that the 2022 filing season will open January 24, and tax returns for individual U.S. taxpayers are due on April 18. Tax season is especially cumbersome for those who buy, sell, trade or invest in digital assets such as cryptocurrency and Non-Fungible Tokens, or NFTs. Unlike your average brokerage account at Edward Jones, until now, most cryptocurrency exchanges haven’t provide a 1099 or other information reporting form that accurately reports gains and losses from transactions entered into in a given year. Calculating basis, gains, and losses was incredibly cumbersome and expensive for investors in digital assets.…

Bitcoin prices have had an interesting day today, declining to their lowest in more than three months and then bouncing back. The world’s largest digital currency by market value dropped to $39,677.65 this morning, according to CoinDesk data. At this point, it was trading at its most depressed value since late September, additional CoinDesk figures reveal. The digital currency then recovered somewhat, rising above $42,000 during the afternoon and trading near $41,800 at the time of this writing. Following these latest price fluctuations, where is bitcoin likely to go next? Several analysts weighed in, offering their point of view on the…

Virtual currencies are being used increasingly in human and drug trafficking, the Government Accountability Office says in a new report. “Virtual currency’s anonymizing features can attract criminals’ use to avoid detection when paying for illicit activities such as human and drug trafficking,” the investigative arm of Congress stresses. As evidence of the surge, GAO points to a five-fold increase in the number of suspicious activity reports filed with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) that involve virtual currency and drug trafficking to almost 1,432 in 2020 from 252 in 2017. The study also cites 2020 figures from Polaris, a nonprofit…

Canadian bitcoin mining company Bitfarms announced Monday it invested $43.2 million in bitcoin as the cryptocurrency plummeted about 12% during the first week of the year, becoming the latest publicly traded company doubling down on the nascent crypto market despite some experts warning its volatility makes it an unreliable investment. KEY FACTS In a Monday statement, Toronto-based Bitfarms said it purchased 1,000 bitcoins during the first week of January, boosting its holdings to more than 4,300 coins worth about $175 million; to compare, Bitfarms posted about $121 million in revenue during the 12 months ending in September. “With the dip in bitcoin,…

Robinhood Markets stock has declined by almost 31% over the last month, considerably underperforming the S&P 500 which remains up by about 2.4% over the same period. There are a lot of factors weighing Robinhood stock down. Firstly, it’s looking increasingly obvious that the boom in so-called “meme” stocks and speculative cryptocurrencies such as Dogecoin is cooling off. This was visible in Robinhood’s Q3 earnings as it actually lost customers after posting record growth in the first half of the year. Moreover, the Federal Reserve is likely to raise interest rates sooner than expected to fight inflation, and this could…

The coming rise of the Metaverse represents a new frontier for privacy, trust, and identity. A persistent virtual world where communications, finance, and personal profiles coalesce under one interoperable platform. In the rapidly approaching world of Web 3.0 applications and services that underpin the Metaverse, it’s more important than ever to have a portable and composable digital identity that preserves privacy and provides security. One that won’t just offer proof of who you are and what you can access but also serves as a non-custodial cache for your virtual assets. A Changing Paradigm Think about it — in the metaverse…