Bitcoin News and Finance: What You Need to Know

Paxos, a blockchain services and tokenization firm has added Coinbase Ventures, FTX, Bank of America, and Founders Fund as backers in its Series D funding round that started last April. These institutions were listed as “strategic investors,” but the amounts of their contributions were not disclosed. Paxos has now raised more than $540 million in funding. Bank of America, FTX, and Coinbase Invest in Paxos Two leading cryptocurrency exchanges and the second-biggest U.S. bank invested in Paxos, a New York-based blockchain infrastructure firm that focuses on offering clearing and tokenization services to other traditional firms. Bank of America, FTX, and Coinbase participated as “strategic investors” in the latest Series D funding round that the company started last April. The interest of Bank of America in the firm is not strange. The company included the bank in its Paxos Settlement services, a blockchain platform that allows third parties to settle equity transactions. But for it ...

A new report issued by Crypto.com, a cryptocurrency exchange and fintech services firm, discovered that the number of people using cryptocurrencies has more than doubled since January, reaching 221 million last June. The report states that the rise of the defi movement, institutions like Tesla, Visa, Mastercard, and Microstrategy adopting cryptocurrency, and El Salvador establishing bitcoin as legal tender, were important events that helped to popularize crypto even more. Cryptocurrency Userbase Jumps to 221 Million Worldwide, According to Crypto.com Report Crypto.com’s “Measuring Global Crypto Users” report found that the number of cryptocurrency users more than doubled during the first half of the year. Cryptocurrency adoption went from 106 million in January to 221 million in June, principally powered by the bull market that took bitcoin ( BTC ) to all-time highs during Q1. The report included information from the leading crypto exchanges in the market, including Binance, Bitfin...

Gabriel Makhlouf, the governor of the Central Bank of Ireland (CBI), has published a blog post in which he shares his views on the digitalization of finance. While echoing concerns expressed by his counterparts regarding cryptocurrencies, the official has also highlighted some of their positives. Don’t Ignore the Positive Elements of Crypto Technology, Central Bank Governor Says The article titled “Digital Money” was published on the bank’s website on Thursday. In the post, Gabriel Makhlouf discusses the project to issue a digital version of the common European currency. The European Central Bank (ECB) recently launched its “Investigation Phase” and although a final decision is yet to be taken, the governor believes that it is not a question of “if” but rather “how and when” a digital euro will be introduced. Central Bank of Ireland Governor Gabriel Makhlouf. Source: CBI Besides central bank digital currencies ( CBDCs ), Makhlouf devotes attention to the rise of decentralized...

While non-fungible token (NFT) collectibles have been all the rage, a few projects have been developing the concept of fractionalized NFTs so investors without deep pockets can purchase shares of an expensive collectible. On Thursday, the firm Otis revealed that people can invest in an NFT created by the world-famous Canadian musician and record producer Grimes. The platform allows anyone to purchase a small fraction of the recording artist’s artwork called “Newborn 1 & 3.” Grimes’ Artwork ‘Newborn 1 & 3″ Gets Fractionalized During the last 30 days, statistics from nonfungible.com’s market history show that there was $219 million in NFT sales. Over 48,000 active wallets recorded 214,654 sales which is a steady increase in sales from the start of the month’s 120,150 sales. The website also shows that a Meebits NFT recently sold for 1,000 ETH or $2.1 million and a Cryptopunks NFT character sold for 450 ETH or a touch over $1 million. Unicly offers a dex that allows people...

Last February the crypto community was obsessed with a specific dogecoin address that happens to be the largest dogecoin holder today with over 36 billion DOGE. One armchair sleuth studied a number of onchain transactions and suspected the company Robinhood owned the wallet. Now the individual has researched the topic again and claims the latest findings help confirm the dogecoin wallet does belong to Robinhood. Alongside this, the person suspects Robinhood controls the third-largest bitcoin wallet as well. Onchain Research Suggests Robinhood Not Only Owns the Mysterious Doge Whale Wallet, but Also the Third-Largest BTC Wallet Two days ago, the Reddit account u/Andreifromalberta published research that claims the company Robinhood ( Nasdaq: HOOD ) holds more bitcoin (BTC) than the firm Microstrategy. The Redditor Andrei is the same sleuth that published research four months ago on the notorious dogecoin (DOGE) wallet dubbed “DH5,” which happens to be the largest DOGE wallet tod...

Finland’s customs authority is looking for brokers to sell 1,981 bitcoins seized in drug cases. The coins are currently worth nearly $80 million. Finland’s customs authority announced Thursday that it is seeking brokers to sell 1,981 bitcoins seized in drug busts, Bloomberg reported, noting that the coins were forfeited to the state by court order. At the time of writing, the bitcoin stash is worth $78.75 million. Most of the seized coins were accumulated in raids before 2018. The Finnish State Treasury set out guidelines for handling crypto assets that year. It prohibited authorities from storing cryptocurrencies at exchanges, requiring them to keep the coins offline. Pekka Pylkkanen, Finnish Customs’ director of financial management, explained that the authorities want a permanent solution to “safely and reliably” sell cryptocurrencies forfeited to the state coffers in the future. The customs agency described in a statement: The main aim of Finnish Customs is to make sure t...

Last week, we launched PayID, with a coalition of over 40 companies around the world. PayID is an open protocol that helps improve the user experience of sending and receiving a payment across siloed payment networks using a standardized address format (user$domain.com). PayID works great for the standard peer-to-peer payment, but also has the potential … Continued The post Introducing ChefXRP appeared first on Ripple. http://dlvr.it/S4kzxj

The securities regulator of Malaysia has taken enforcement actions against the global cryptocurrency exchange Binance. Noting that the exchange is operating illegally in the country, the regulator has advised those who currently have accounts with Binance “to immediately cease trading through its platforms and to withdraw all their investments immediately.” Malaysia Issues Public Reprimand Against Binance The Securities Commission Malaysia (SC) announced Friday “enforcement actions against Binance for illegally operating a digital asset exchange (DAX).” Under Malaysia’s regulation, digital asset exchange operators must be registered with the Securities Commission as Recognized Market Operators (RMO). Since the global crypto exchange is operating in Malaysia without being registered, the Malaysian securities watchdog “has issued a public reprimand” against four Binance entities and the company’s CEO, Changpeng Zhao (CZ), for continuing to operate illegally in Malaysia. According t...

Payments giant Paypal has outlined its plans to expand cryptocurrency services, including via a new wallet “super app,” open banking integration, U.K. expansion, and third-party wallet transfers. “We continue to be really pleased with the momentum we’re seeing on crypto and we’re obviously adding incremental functionality into that,” said Paypal’s CEO. Paypal Reveals Crypto Plans, Details of ‘Super App’ Paypal CEO Dan Schulman talked about his company’s crypto plans and the progress of the upcoming “super app” during the payments giant’s second-quarter earnings conference call Wednesday. “I’m pleased to report that the initial version of our new consumer wallet super app is code complete and we are now beginning to slowly ramp,” Schulman began, elaborating: New features will include high yield savings, early access to direct deposit funds, new and improved bill pay functionality, messaging capabilities outside of P2P to enable family and friend communications, as well as addition...

U.S. President Joe Biden and lawmakers have agreed on the details of a roughly $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package with measures to step up tax enforcement around crypto assets. Taxing Crypto Transactions to Fund US Infrastructure Plan The White House announced Wednesday that President Joe Biden and a bipartisan group of lawmakers have agreed on the details of “a once-in-a-generation investment” in the U.S. infrastructure. The bill will be taken up in the Senate for consideration, the White House stated, adding that “In total, the deal includes $550 billion in new federal investment in America’s infrastructure.” Measures to step up tax enforcement around crypto assets were added to the infrastructure bill at the last minute to raise funds to finance the infrastructure plan. The $550 billion will be spent over the next eight years on roads, bridges, high-speed internet, public transport, electric vehicles, airports, and shipping ports, among other areas. The measures i...

July 30th marks the day, six years ago, Ethereum was launched. The Bitcoin.com Wallet , having just integrated Ethereum, is excited to celebrate the achievements of the world’s premier smart contract platform – and to do so, we’re giving away $6000 in Ether ( ETH ), the native currency and the ‘fuel’ of the Ethereum network. What Is Ethereum? With the ambitious vision of creating a fully decentralized general purpose computing network, Ethereum and the massive community of developers that has sprung up around it, have pioneered smart contracts , NFTs, decentralized finance , and more. From humble beginnings, now billions of dollars are transacted daily through Decentralized Applications (DApps) deployed on Ethereum – and, just like with Bitcoin, it’s all done permissionlessly and pseudonymously. The Ethereum community has striven to maintain ‘ credible neutrality ’ in the evolution of the platform – so far very successfully in our opinion. The result is that the platform supp...

The Central Bank of Russia (CBR) has identified 146 financial pyramid schemes in only six months this year. Fraudsters often lure people with weak financial literacy into investment scams linked to cryptocurrencies or crypto mining operations. Pyramid Schemes Thrive Amid Rising Investment Demand, Bank of Russia Says The number of financial pyramid scams uncovered by the CBR between January and June 2021 is 1.5 times higher compared to the same time period last year, the regulator announced this week. The financial authority attributed the spike to increased activity of “unfair market participants” in the midst of ongoing economic recovery and increasing demand for investments in Russia. Bank of Russia also emphasized that fraudsters take advantage of “people’s insufficient financial and digital literacy” convincing them to invest in projects associated with trending topics. Investors often put money into cryptocurrencies, “pseudo cryptocurrencies” or fake crypto mining operation...

Although it’s possible to draw comparisons between almost any two blockchain development platforms, comparing Ethereum with Polkadot is almost an inevitability. Not only on the technical level – they use a comparable architecture and proof-of-stake consensus to achieve scalability – but because Vitalik Buterin and Dr. Gavin Wood also have a shared history in Ethereum. Polkadot and Ethereum are Entering the Final Stretch of the Runway for Chain Supremacy The coming year is set to be a big one for both networks. Ethereum has been rolling out a series of improvements ahead of the “merge” that will occur when the current Ethereum main chain joins the proof-of-stake Beacon chain. At this point, Ethereum will finally abandon its proof-of-work consensus and shift entirely to proof-of-stake. More upgrades are expected to follow as the network implements additional chains, or shards, connected to the Beacon chain, which aim to improve scalability. Although the timelines are somewhat nebulou...

The new digital yuan, currently undergoing trials, can help to increase the international usage of China’s national fiat, experts have stated. As the renminbi (RMB, CNY) is becoming one of the world’s most important currencies, the People’s Bank of China is planning to conduct cross-border tests with the yuan’s digitized version, the e-CNY. Digital Yuan to Facilitate ‘Renminbi Internationalization’ The digital yuan will further promote the process of “internationalization” of the renminbi, Chinese experts believe. This can happen when the Chinese yuan becomes the world’s third-largest currency — in terms of pricing, settlement, and international reserves —current and former officials said Wednesday, quoted by the China Internet Information Center portal. The e-CNY, arguably the most advanced central bank digital currency ( CBDC ), is still being tested primarily in domestic retail payment trials. However, cross-border e-commerce could provide the next use case scenario for the “na...

The Ghanaian Vice President, Mahamudu Bawumia, has implored African governments to start exploring digital currencies as such alternatives have the potential to enhance intra-African trade. In addition, such digital currencies allow African countries to carry out all cross-border payments smoothly, the leader explained. Ghana Government Backing for CBDC According to a report, Bawumia made these comments while addressing guests at the opening ceremony of the Ghana International Trade and Finance Conference (GITFIC) in Accra. The report also quotes Bawumia commending the Ghanaian central bank’s e-cedi project. He said the Ghanaian government is ready to “give it the needed credibility and legal backing for usage.” As previously reported by Bitcoin.com News, the Bank of Ghana (BOG) is one of the first African central banks to announce the start of the pilot phase of its central bank digital currency (CBDC). However, final approval of this CBDC will depend on the outcome of the pilot...