Author: Reuters

The Russian finance ministry does not want to ban circulation of cryptocurrencies as advocated by the central bank and hopes the government will help solve the crypto market regulation dilemma, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said on Wednesday. The Bank of Russia has proposed restricting cryptocurrency trading and mining due to concerns it may cause financial instability. But the finance ministry disagreed and President Vladimir Putin called on authorities to find a consensus. The finance ministry and the central bank have been arguing about cryptocurrency regulation for a year and a half, Siluanov said, adding that the government is now expected…

China’s Metaverse Industry Committee said on Wednesday it has admitted 17 new firms, including three listed companies, according to a post on an official website. The state-backed China Mobile Communications Association’s Metaverse Industry Committee was set up in October, although analysts say the country’s metaverse will be subject to more control than elsewhere. read more The committee said it had admitted listed firms including Inly Media Co Ltd (603598.SS) and two Shenzhen bourse-listed companies Beijing Topnew Info&Tech Co Ltd (300895.SZ) and Beijing Quanshi World Online Network Information Co Ltd (002995.SZ). The notice was posted on the China Mobile Communications Association Metaverse Consensus Circle website. Experts say…

China’s aim to make an Olympic splash with its digital currency, thwarted by a COVID 19-induced decision to exclude foreign spectators, has been taken up instead by a captive audience of locals unable to use their usual digital payment apps. Only three forms of payment are available at Olympic venues: China’s yuan currency, its digital version known as e-CNY, and Visa (V.N), whose cards are not widely used in China. Tencent’s WeChat Pay (0700.HK) and Alibaba’s Alipay (9988.HK), which dominate cashless payments in China, are generally not accepted inside the “closed loop” separating competitors and personnel from the public. No tickets were sold for…

Risks from the $2.6 trillion crypto market could grow quickly and regulators need pre-prepared measures to bring the sector to heel, the Financial Stability Board (FSB), a risk monitoring watchdog for the G20 economies, said on Wednesday. While cryptoassets like bitcoin remain a small part of the financial system, data gaps make it difficult to assess their full use and many investors don’t fully understand what they are buying, the FSB said. Traditional finance such as big banks and hedge funds are also becoming more involved, along with derivatives that reference cryptoassets in complex investment strategies, the FSB said in…

New rules are needed urgently to give banks certainty in handling cryptoassets on behalf of big customers who want to enter the rapidly evolving market, a senior executive from U.S. bank JPMorgan Chase (JPM.N) said on Tuesday. The largely unregulated $2.7 trillion cryptoasset sector, which includes bitcoin, is still relatively small, but there are currently no bespoke rules on how much capital banks should set aside to cover activities in the sector. This leaves international banks in limbo and regulators behind the curve. Big institutions like hedge funds and investment funds are becoming increasingly interested in cryptocurrencies and are looking to banks…

Bristling tensions and looming laws in Europe could offer clues to two questions: Can bitcoin be a safe-haven asset? And can Russia emerge as a crypto superpower? The answer to the first, for now at least, is no; while fortress gold has risen 2.3% over the past week, as Western warnings about Russian aggression have intensified, bitcoin has lost 3%. That was worse than the 0.9% decline of the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) index. “I don’t see any evidence of bitcoin being a safe haven,” said Chris Weston, head of research at Melbourne-based brokerage Pepperstone. “The Ukraine situation with Russia is a really…

A subsidiary of crypto company BlockFi Inc has agreed to pay $100 million to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and 32 states to settle charges in connection with a retail crypto lending product the New Jersey company offered to nearly 600,000 investors, regulators said on Monday. The penalty includes $50 million to the state regulators and $50 million to the SEC, the largest ever fine the federal securities watchdog has levied on an issuer of crypto asset securities, the SEC said. The North American Securities Administrators Association, which led a multi-state working group on the investigation, said in…

Some 100 million Americans will watch the Super Bowl on Sunday. That means 200 million eyeballs on the 30 second spots that are going for as much as $7 million a pop, a record, according to NBC Universal. Among them are three cryptocurrency firms, Coinbase Global (COIN.O), Crypto.com and FTX. If history is any guide, that’s an ominous sign. In 2000, roughly a dozen dotcom firms took out Super Bowl ads. About half went bankrupt within two years, including the iconic Pets.com nine months later. Those spots averaged $2.1 million, says Ad Age. Adjust for inflation, and that’s $3.5 million,…

The platform which sold an NFT of Jack Dorsey’s first tweet for $2.9 million has halted transactions because people were selling tokens of content that did not belong to them, its founder said, calling this a “fundamental problem” in the fast-growing digital assets market. Sales of NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, soared to around $25 billion in 2021, leaving many baffled as to why so much money is being spent on items that do not physically exist and which anyone can view online for free. NFTs are crypto assets that record the ownership of a digital file such as an image, video…

OnlyFans, an online subscription platform known for adult content, has launched a feature for users to display verified NFTs as profile pictures, it said on Thursday. The UK-based company, which said it introduced the feature in December, joins social media companies such as Twitter and Reddit that have explored ways to incorporate the digital tokens on their platforms. read more OnlyFans, which was launched in 2016, boomed during the pandemic as it became a way for creators to earn money selling content directly to subscribers. read more NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are a type of digital asset that exist on the record-keeping technology blockchain.…