Author: Staff Writer

Berlin-based venture capital firm Greenfield One has raised a $160 million fund from telecom giant Swisscom, Galaxy Digital, and others, to invest in crypto projects, according to a a press statement released on Wednesday. Greenfield One’s third fund is likely one of the largest crypto funds in Europe to date. Fabric Ventures’ $130 million fund, which was announced earlier this year, was previously thought to be one of the largest European crypto funds. German media giant Bertelsmann also invested in the $160 million fund. Bertelsmann had invested in Greenfield One’s second fund, which had a target volume of $56 million…

Turkish Bitcoin holders avoid an accelerating currency collapse as the lira loses 15% against the U.S. dollar in a single day. Bitcoin (BTC) has frustrated investors with its recent price correction, but in one country, BTC hodlers have never been more relieved. Market data from TradingView on Nov. 23 confirmed that Bitcoin has hit new all-time highs against the Turkish lira. Bitcoin passes 700,000 liraTurkey is unofficially battling a currency crisis as President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pushes to keep interest rates low. The result has been the de facto collapse of the lira’s exchange rate, with USD/TRY gaining 14% on…

The first time the Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig told computer scientists they were the unwitting regulators of the digital age — about 20 years ago — he made a coder cry. “I am not a politician. I’m a programmer,” Mr. Lessig recalls her protesting, horrified by the idea. Now, the notion that “code is law”— from Mr. Lessig’s 1999 book “Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace” — does not shock young engineers or lawyers, the professor says. To digital natives it is “obvious” that technology dictates behavior with rules that are not value neutral. Big tech companies have reluctantly…

Fold AR is a new augmented reality game from Pokémon Go developer Niantic and the financial company Fold. The game — which the companies dub part of the metaverse — is very loosely modeled on Pokémon Go but themed around cryptocurrency. As explained by Fold CEO Will Reeves, it runs with the metaphor of “mining” Bitcoin. So instead of capturing cute monsters, the central mechanic involves finding cubes of binary code and tapping them like Minecraft blocks until they reveal a prize. The prizes include Bitcoin in the denomination of Satoshis, a very small unit currently worth around 1/20th of…

Police have arrested an alleged cryptocurrency fraudster who is suspected of swindling his victims out of more than €500,000 (£421,000) while living a life of luxury on the Costa del Sol, staying in exclusive hotels and villas, eating in expensive restaurants and buying designer clothes. The Guardia Civil force described the Latvian man, who had been sought by Interpol since 2015, as “one of the biggest cryptocurrency con artists based in Spain”. He was arrested in Latvia last week after an operation by the Guardia Civil’s cybercrime department and its central operational unit. The force said that more than 1,000…

Bitcoin and cryptocurrency prices have returned to form in recent months following a summer market lull—and despite some serious warnings. The bitcoin price hit an all-time high of almost $69,000 per bitcoin in November before falling back. Meanwhile, other major cryptocurrencies have made far greater gains than bitcoin over the last year—including ethereum, Binance’s BNB, solana, cardano, and Ripple’s XRP—pushing the combined crypto market capitalization of highs of $3 trillion. Now, Samson Mow, chief strategy officer of blockchain technology provider Blockstream, has said he expects El Salvador’s volcano-powered, bitcoin-back bonds to help the bitcoin price climb to $1 million per…

United States banking regulators intend to clarify in 2022 what role traditional banks can legally play in the cryptocurrency market, they said on Tuesday. In a statement, regulators said they plan to make clear what sort of activities banks can engage in involving cryptocurrency, including holding it on their balance sheets, issuing stablecoins and holding crypto assets and facilitating crypto trading on behalf of customers, among other currently murky areas. The joint statement from the Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is an update on work done by an interagency “sprint” team…

A consortium of roughly 70 Japanese firms, including the country’s three mega-banks, will begin experiments to launch a digital currency as early as the latter half of 2022, the Nikkei newspaper said on Wednesday. The digital currency will be backed by bank deposits and use a common platform to speed up large-scale fund transfers and settlement among companies, and cut costs, the paper said. The consortium, including Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc , Mizuho Financial Group Inc and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc , have been meeting regularly since last year to study ways to build a common settlement infrastructure for digital payments.…

Bitcoin can’t seem to shake its funk. The world’s largest cryptocurrency was trading at around $57,300 on Tuesday, down 1% and hovering well below its all-time highs near $69,000. Investors in the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (ticker: GBTC), however, may be faring even worse. With $37 billion in assets, the Grayscale trust is the world’s largest Bitcoin fund. It towers over every other fund on the market. Its next-closest rival, the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy (BITO) exchange-traded fund, has racked up $1.3 billion in assets since launching in October. Investors have flooded into the Grayscale trust because it owns Bitcoin directly, while the ProShares ETF and…

Are all bitcoins created equal? Not necessarily according to Galaxy Digital. Revealed exclusively to Forbes, today the company is releasing a report, How Much Does It Cost To Mine A Bitcoin?, from its research team. The answer to this question matters greatly. First, as the price of bitcoin grows along with interest in the space, many people are starting to worry about the growing carbon footprint of the industry. Although the precise figure is disputed due to difficulty in discerning the exact energy mix between fossil fuels and renewable sources, it is still correlated to the amount of electricity needed to unlock new…