Bitcoin News and Finance: What You Need to Know

PRESS RELEASE. The leading blockchain developer platform, Alchemy, will bring its best-in-class suite of APIs and tools to Flow blockchain, empowering Fortune 500 companies as well as thousands of independent developers building on Flow. Alchemy is the leading API platform for blockchain developers, already powering more than $25 billion in annual transaction volume on the Ethereum blockchain. Flow blockchain will be a milestone expansion beyond Ethereum for the San Francisco-based team. Home to leading consumer experiences like NBA Top Shot and upcoming titles such as Dr Seuss, MotoGP and UFC, Flow is witnessing unprecedented momentum in terms of developer traction, with over 1,000 developers and teams actively building on top of the network. “Alchemy’s mission is to enable blockchain developers to build the future, so the activity on NBA Top Shot and explosive growth of the overall ecosystem made the need to support Flow obvious.” said Nikil Viswanathan , CEO of Alchemy. “The d

The legal tussle between the U.S. authorities and John McAfee continues as his associate Jimmy Watson has entered a plea. The former antivirus tycoon’s bodyguard has pleaded not guilty to the alleged cryptocurrency fraud case. McAfee and Watson Jr. Are Accused of Having Built a ‘Pump and Dump’ Scheme According to court documents , Jimmy Gale Watson Jr. entered his plea before the Magistrate Judge Kevin Fox at the Southern District of New York. Watson Jr., a former navy seal, was arrested in Texas early this month, as the authorities indicted him with multiple charges that include money laundering and securities fraud. Law enforcement stated both McAfee and Watson allegedly “raked in more than $13 million” from crypto investors. The personal bodyguard of McAfee ostensibly served as an “executive adviser” of the “McAfee Team,” which was the website built to offer tips targeted to crypto traders, allegedly endorsed by the controversial tech entrepreneur. The DoJ announcement publish

Following the announcement by Grayscale Investments that it will be offering a trust that invests in Livepeer’s LPT, the token surged from just over $6 on March 17, 2021, to an all-time high (ATH) of $32.35 on March 21. LPT’s Four Day Surge The token’s four-day rally briefly saw its market capitalization rising to over $630 million up from just under $120 million. However, at the time of writing, LPT had retreated to $21 and the token’s market capitalization had similarly dropped to approximately $400 million. In addition to the LPT trust, Grayscale Investments had revealed the creation of Basic Attention (BAT), Decentraland (MANA), Chainlink, and Filecoin trusts. Yet only LPT appears to have responded more favorably to the announcement than the rest. To illustrate, MANA, which traded at $0.79 on the day of the announcement, briefly rose to just over $1. However, at the time of writing, MANA had retreated to $0.93. Similarly, BAT, which started March 17 trading at approxim

Major differences in the spot price for bitcoin and the cost of buying the cryptocurrency in the futures market create unique opportunities for traders. Several factors may be behind this development, but it could be bullish for the bitcoin price outlook no matter the catalyst. Curious Developments Could Highlight Supply Shortage or Heightened Derivatives Demand As bitcoin gradually matures and the ecosystem surrounding it expands further, the original cryptocurrency is increasingly behaving like a commodity. Thanks to a robust futures market that continues to grow, derivatives contracts on bitcoin also gain popularity and meaningfully impact its pricing structure. This has resulted in a unique development that has unfolded over the last several months. Known as “ contango ,” bitcoin futures contracts to be settled months down the road are trading at a significant premium to spot prices. This delivers a serious arbitrage opportunity that could temporarily result in relatively high

Non-fungible token (NFT) collectibles have been seeing relentless demand and publicity these days. While the Ethereum network has been the dominant force in this space, a great number of alternative blockchains have been introducing NFT support. In recent weeks, Bitcoin Cash proponents have been leveraging an NFT marketplace called juungle.net. The marketplace has a myriad of Simple Ledger Protocol (SLP)-based collections of NFTs for sale. Meet Juungle.net: A Bitcoin Cash NFT Marketplace Bitcoin cash fans have been recently introduced to a new non-fungible token (NFT) asset market called juungle.net . The market allows individuals to purchase SLP-based NFTs with bitcoin cash ( BCH ), and the NFTs can be stored for collecting purposes. At first, the Juungle web portal only had Waifu NFTs for sale, as the marketplace is still in its alpha development phase. Bitcoin.com’s newsdesk reported on Waifu NFTs in an editorial that teaches people how to create a non-fungible token (NFT) asse

PRESS RELEASE. Bitcoin.com Exchange is thrilled to announce the upcoming listing of XCUR on the 24th of March 2021 at 14:00 UTC. XCUR was created by the Curate team, under founding member James Hakim. For the time being, XCUR will be listed with USDT , with BTC and ETH trading pairs coming next month. What is Curate? Curate is the worlds first all in one marketplace app utilizing blockchain. Curate provides a fairer and more transparent open marketplace by offering an industry low 4% seller commission and provides buyers with zero fees when they use XCUR, curates native token, to purchase in-app. All buyers and sellers are also rewarded in XCUR on all transactions. Why choose XCUR? XCUR is a utility and reward-based cryptographic token which can be used to purchase in-app goods, accepted as a form of in-app payment for selling or staked to collect rewards for holding. XCUR tokens serve as a multi-use utility token offering users a wide number of use cases on both the Curate D

The tech giant seems to be changing its stance on being more friendly with the cryptocurrency sphere amid the current hype. Microsoft has been asking its Xbox gaming console users about the possibility of implementing payment methods, such as bitcoin. The Poll Is the First of Its Kind Released by the Tech Giant With Crypto Questions According to a post in Reddit , a user reported that Microsoft started to show polls with the topic “Payment Options,” surveying people with questions such as how they pay for their things in Xbox. One of the items asks Xbox users about their thoughts on the current range of options regarding the payment options available. However, the poll then puts out the following question: Which of these other payment methods would you like to use on Xbox (select all that apply)? Among the answers, “pay with bitcoin” ( BTC ) is one of Microsoft’s alternatives to the users. The survey concludes with a question that inquiries people about if they have ever decide

JMP Securities has predicted that “$1.5 trillion of incremental capital” could flow into bitcoin, an amount greater than the cryptocurrency’s current market cap. The firm sees more wealth management companies following Morgan Stanley’s example to offer bitcoin to their clients. “Around $30 trillion of assets in the U.S. retail wealth management industry currently do not have direct access to bitcoin,” he said. $1.5 Trillion Could Flow Into Bitcoin, Analyst Says San Francisco-based financial services firm with offices nationwide JMP Securities said last week that Morgan Stanley ‘s move to offer wealthy clients exposure to bitcoin is the “tip of the iceberg” and could result in $1.5 trillion flowing into the cryptocurrency. Devin Ryan is a managing director and equity research analyst covering investment banks, brokers, and asset managers at JMP Securities. He also serves as the firm’s Head of Business Development. JMP Group is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol J

The crypto financial services provider Blockchain.com revealed on Wednesday that the company has raised $300 million in a financing round. Blockchain.com’s latest funding round follows the $120 million raise the company obtained last month. Blockchain.com Is Now Valued at $5.2 Billion On March 24, Blockchain.com CEO Peter Smith announced that the company was pleased to announce a new Series C financing round. The company has raised $300 million from investors and Blockchain.com’s post-money valuation has increased to $5.2 billion. Smith detailed on Wednesday that the funding stemmed from partners such as VY Capital, Yuri Milner’s DST Global, and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Smith said during the last year, the firm has seen colossal growth and now has 31 million verified users in 200 countries leveraging Blockchain.com services. “We’ve seen a 3x increase in active users over the past 12 months alone,” Smith detailed during the announcement. Smith said that the new financing round

On March 19, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) published draft guidance on the risk-based approach to virtual assets. The newly updated guidance now applies anti-money laundering and know-your-customer rules to stablecoins, decentralized finance (defi), and non-fungible token (NFT) assets. FATF Defines Decentralized Exchanges and Defi as a Virtual Asset Service Providers For a while now, cryptocurrency proponents have said that one day, global regulators would likely target decentralized finance (defi) and the latest non-fungible token (NFT) hype. For a while now, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) has been trying to come up with a regulatory standard for cryptocurrencies businesses called a “virtual asset service provider” (VASP). Things like the FATF’s Travel Rule have always been controversial, but regulators from a number of countries have been adopting the organization’s guidance. Recently Gibraltar updated its guidance notes to align with the FATF rules and South Afri

PRESS RELEASE. Unmarshal is proud to announce that the seed and private sale funding rounds have been successfully closed with strong investment support from Industry bigwigs. A total of $2.6m was raised in the seed and private rounds. With the fresh capital introduced, Unmarshal will focus on building an advanced network of Data Indexers that can cater to the entire DeFi Ecosystem. Unmarshal is a Multi-chain DeFi Data Network that facilitates seamless access to data on blockchains for any kind of decentralized applications. So far, they have added support for Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Elrond, PolkaDot, and Substrate-based projects such as StaFi and with Polygon, they are diving into the Layer-2 networks and empowering dApp developers to have easy access to on-chain data. The investors have a strong trust in the team and they believe that Unmarshal will be a game changer in the space that can build a strong and vibrant Web3 . Some of the well known top investors and like minds

After setting a new all-time high (ATH) of $61,699 on March 13, bitcoin dropped to $53,300 on March 23, a decline of more than 14% in just ten days. However, following this latest drop, onchain analyst Willy Woo speculates that another institutional investor could be buying the dip. Strong Hands Accumulating In his tweet on March 23, Woo uses two charts to support his assertion, that the large volumes of coins that are being removed from exchanges, are in fact flowing to ” strong hands with minimal history of selling.” However, it is the involvement of Coinbase, which has facilitated large BTC acquisitions by U.S. entities in past, that has convinced Woo that a yet-to-be-announced institution is currently buying. Consequently, in his warning to holders currently selling, Woo tweeted: Anyone selling right now is cray-cray. Seriously strong long term holders are buying this dip. However, some Twitter users reacting to Woo’s post like Twitter user “Phive26,” are unconvinced wit

Elon Musk’s electric car company, Tesla, has started accepting bitcoin payments. Musk, whose title is now Technoking of Tesla, also confirmed that all “Bitcoin paid to Tesla will be retained as bitcoin, not converted to fiat currency.” Tesla Now Accepts Bitcoin Tesla has begun accepting bitcoin payments. Elon Musk, who recently changed his title from the CEO of Tesla to the Technoking of Tesla , announced via Twitter Wednesday morning, “You can now buy a Tesla with bitcoin.” The bitcoin payment option has also been added to the Tesla website along with a page explaining how to pay with the cryptocurrency. Musk further tweeted that the “pay by bitcoin capability” will be available outside the U.S. “later this year.” In addition, the Tesla technoking confirmed, “Bitcoin paid to Tesla will be retained as bitcoin, not converted to fiat currency,” noting that his company “is using only internal & open source software & operates bitcoin notes directly.” A page about paying with

In-person crypto robberies are becoming a global issue lately for the authorities, and this time, Argentina is the place of the latest case reported. In Mendoza, an unnamed man was assaulted by two criminals who posed as bitcoin buyers. Identities of the Robbers Are Still Unknown According to Mendo Voz , the 26-years-old man, identified by his initials as F.T., agreed to meet with the two robbers at 7:30 pm local time via telephone in a street corner of the Guaymallén neighborhood. In a first instance, F.T. believed the two criminals were legit bitcoin (BTC) buyers who wished to buy his cryptos in exchange for Argentinean pesos. There are no reports on how many exact bitcoins the men agreed to acquire. However, the situation became suspicious, as the alleged BTC buyers never arrived. Afterward, two robbers appeared on the scene by threatening him with a firearm. Per the local newspaper Los Andes , the individuals are suspected to be the same people who posed as crypto buyers.