Bitcoin News and Finance: What You Need to Know

Nasdaq-listed cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has acquired a regulated derivatives trading platform. Coinbase plans to make the derivatives market more approachable to millions of its retail customers. Coinbase Plans to Offer Crypto Derivatives to All US Customers Nasdaq-listed crypto exchange operator Coinbase announced Wednesday that it has acquired Fairx, a regulated derivatives trading platform. Fairx is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as a derivatives exchange or Designated Contract Market (DCM). “Through this acquisition, we plan to bring regulated crypto derivatives to market, initially through Fairx’s existing partner ecosystem,” Coinbase detailed. “Over time, we plan to leverage Fairx’s infrastructure to offer crypto derivatives to all Coinbase customers in the US.” The Nasdaq-listed company added: We want to make the derivatives market more approachable for our millions of retail customers by delivering an easy-to-use user experience that...

The main finance industry association of Russia has urged authorities to reconsider a position against crypto investments in the nation’s financial market strategy. The organization insists that the crypto investments of Russians should be brought out of the “gray zone” instead of being banned. Finance Industry Body Urges Government to Regulate Operations With Crypto Assets The Russian National Financial Association (NFA) has issued a call to amend the country’s Strategy for Development of the Financial Market of the Russian Federation Until 2030 in the part concerning investments in cryptocurrencies, RIA Novosti and Prime reported, quoting the proposal. The NFA unites over 200 entities active in Russia’s financial market. The strategy now states that the Russian government and Bank of Russia will continue to oppose the use of “monetary surrogates,” a term often employed to describe decentralized digital currencies such as bitcoin. They carry high risks for citizens, according to ...

One of the hottest topics in the United States in 2022 is the rising inflation, as the U.S. Labor Department’s data published on Wednesday indicated that the consumer price index (CPI) rose to 7% in December. This represents the largest annual jump since 1982. Federal Reserve governor Lael Brainard is set to tell congressional leaders today that the central bank is focused on battling inflation. Moreover, members of the Democratic party are concerned that the rising inflation may cost the Biden administration politically. CPI Rate Jumps to 7%, Wholesale Prices Spike 9.7% On January 11, 2022, the U.S. Labor Department published CPI data for the month of December and the metrics indicate that the U.S. inflation rate jumped 7% year-over-year (YoY) and last month was the third consecutive month over 6%. The rise is the highest jump the CPI has seen since June 1982 as inflation is making the cost of goods and services spike exponentially. Basically, the CPI is a measure of a basket of c...

Following Mozilla’s decision to pause crypto donations due to environmental concerns, a number of Wikimedia Foundation community members have submitted a proposal that asks the foundation to stop accepting digital currency donations. The proposal explains that crypto donations “signals [an] endorsement of the cryptocurrency space,” and also says that “Cryptocurrencies may not align with the Wikimedia Foundation’s commitment to environmental sustainability.” Proposal Claims Cryptocurrencies May Not Align With the Wikimedia Foundation Members of the Wikimedia Foundation are voting on a proposal that could stop the foundation from accepting digital currencies like bitcoin and ethereum. The U.S. non-profit started accepting crypto assets in 2019 via Bitpay. “We accept donations globally, and we strive to provide a large variety of donation options. It’s very important that we can get international donations processed in ways that are efficient and cost-effective,” Pats Pena, director o...

A record high consumption of electricity blamed on illegal crypto farms in northwestern Georgia has caught the attention of authorities in the capital Tbilisi. The central government and the local utility are taking on the issue of dealing with power shortages in the mountainous region of Svaneti. With Tourism Hit by Pandemic, People in Georgia Turn to Crypto Mining on Cheap Energy The government of Georgia, a small nation in the Caucasus, has joined forces with the energy distribution company Energo-pro, to address the growing illegal use of electricity to mine cryptocurrencies in the Svaneti region. The move was announced by the country’s Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development, Natia Turnava, at a press conference this week. The extraordinarily high power consumption by mining farms in the area of the historic town of Mestia has been a hot topic for a whole month now, the Novosti-Georgia news agency reported. Svaneti has attracted miners with its low electricity rates i...

PRESS RELEASE. Zug, Switzerland, 13 th January 2022: As part of its strategic business objective to become the leading gaming technology company, GAIMIN announces a plug-in and metaverse environment that enables blockchain technology and NFTs to be used within Minecraft. GAIMIN has developed a gaming and technology platform that delivers blockchain and NFT technology to gamers and game studios whilst providing a mechanism for gamers to passively generate rewards based on the processing power of their gaming PC. The GAIMIN platform incorporates a Windows-based software application to allow users/gamers to generate rewards whilst they play. GAIMIN’s “P2E 2.0″, the next evolution in play to earn (where you earn even when you are not playing!) platform utilises the processing power in a gamers high performance PC to access GAIMIN’s distributed data processing network and generate rewards for the gamer in the form of GAIMIN’s GMRX token. These rewards can be used to acquire in-game ass...

On January 11, 2022, the Washington-based bitcoin mining operation Luxor announced the launch of a new application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) trading desk. According to the company, Luxor’s new trading desk will give miners and investors access to bitcoin ASIC mining rigs “at a fair market price.” NYDIG-Backed Mining Operation Luxor Reveals ASIC Trading Desk Service The bitcoin mining firm Luxor aims to purchase and sell bitcoin mining machines via the company’s new ASIC trading desk service. The press release published on Luxor’s web portal explains that the company “will purchase and sell specialized Bitcoin mining hardware on behalf of the Luxor team, miners and investors.” Luxor recently raised $5 million in a Series A led by the firm NYDIG in June 2021. Furthermore, the Luxor mining pool is the 12th largest mining pool at the time of writing on Wednesday, with 0.46 % of the global hashrate or 801.30 petahash per second (PH/s). Luxor’s ASIC trading desk announcement d...

According to a recent interview, trial lawyer Kyle Roche from the legal firm Roche Freedman LLP has started a tech startup called Ryval that aims to be “the stock market of litigation financing.” The firm plans to launch during the first quarter and allow people to leverage tokens in order to wager on civil lawsuits. Ryval’s Initial Litigation Offering Concept The trial lawyer Kyle Roche was recently interviewed by the Vice author Maxwell Strachan as Roche’s new tech startup Ryval was showcased for its litigation tokenization concept. Ryval co-founder Roche told Strachan that “Ryval’s goal is to make access to justice more affordable.” Essentially, the Vice editorial discusses how Ryval will gamify the court system by decentralizing the barrier to access shares in multi-billion dollar court cases. “What we do is: tell the story, vet the legal claim, and then allow the public to invest and give you the funds to go and litigate your case,” Roche told Strachan. “And what does the pub...

Franklin Noll, an academic and monetary historian, has asserted that crypto can be both a security and a currency. Pointing to the history of U.S. money, Noll argues that being both a currency and a security is, in fact, not contradictory. The ‘Infamous’ Continental Dollar Coins Franklin Noll, a U.S.-based monetary historian, has asserted that the history of the U.S. dollar over the years shows that being a currency and a security is not contradictory and that crypto can be both. The assertions by Noll, the president of Noll Historical Consulting, come as the debate over the status of cryptocurrencies continues to be a contentious and unresolved one. For instance, Bitcoin.com News recently reported on current U.S. SEC chair Gary Gensler’s comments on the subject. Yet in a short piece published to his blog recently, Noll starts by using the example of the continental dollar coins to support his assertions. According to the historian, these now “infamous” coins were an attempt “t...

N26, a German online neobank, has announced it will get into the cryptocurrency trading business this year. The announcement was made by Max Tayenthal, co-founder and a CEO of the company, who pondered whether focusing on cryptocurrency instead of going global may have been a better idea. The company closed operations in the U.K. and is now exiting the U.S. N26 to Offer Cryptocurrency Services N26, a German online bank, has announced it will roll out cryptocurrency trading services for its customers this year. The co-founder of the bank, and one of its current CEOs, Max Tayenthal, made the recent announcement expressing the need to be a universal platform. Tayenthal also talked about oversights the bank may have made in ignoring cryptocurrencies last year. The executive told Financial Times: Should we have built trading and crypto instead of launching in the US? In hindsight, it might have been a smart idea. N26, a bank with more than 7 million customers as of January 2021, m...

As Thailand prepares to impose a levy on crypto profits, parties on both sides of the aisle have expressed concerns over the government’s current proposal. A number of political figures have insisted that important aspects need to be clarified in order to avoid double taxation of income related to cryptocurrencies. Thai Politicians Warn About Negative Effects of Crypto Tax Representatives of parties from various corners of the political spectrum in Thailand have shared their disagreements with the government’s plan to tax gains from cryptocurrencies. The reactions come after recent reports revealed that the Finance Ministry in Bangkok intends to introduce a 15% levy on profits from crypto investments and trading. On Monday, the Revenue Department announced it will finalize the details of the tax by the end of January. Cryptocurrency miners, dealers, and investors will be affected if the proposal is passed into law, the Thai Enquirer writes in an article on Wednesday. Traders wil...