Bitcoin News and Finance: What You Need to Know

On Friday, the incorporated and publicly listed business intelligence (BI) firm, Microstrategy announced the company has acquired an additional $10 million in bitcoin. The company’s CEO Michael Saylor revealed the latest purchase on Twitter with a link to a Form 8-K Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing registered on March 5, 2021. Microstrategy’s Bitcoin Buying Spree Continues Microstrategy continues its bitcoin (BTC) buying spree announcing it bought an additional $10 million worth on Monday. The BI company’s CEO revealed the new acquisition on Friday, March 5, when he tweeted about the latest purchase on Twitter. “Microstrategy has purchased an additional ~205 bitcoins for ~$10.0 million in cash,” Saylor wrote . “At an average price of ~$48,888 per bitcoin,” he explained to his 598,000 Twitter followers. Saylor added: As of 3/5/2021, we hodl ~91,064 bitcoins acquired for ~$2.196 billion at an average price of ~$24,119 per bitcoin. In addition to the tweet, Saylor

The U.S. Federal Reserve is in a predicament as fiscal deficits erode the American economy and the nation is seeing a spike in benchmark 10-year Treasury yields. Meanwhile, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell expressed zero worries about inflation during an interview at a Wall Street Journal Jobs Summit on Thursday. Powell didn’t explain when the easy-money policies would end and after his commentary, U.S. bonds and stocks saw a massive sell-off. The US Fed Juggles Shaky Treasury Yields and Easy-Money Policies On March 3, 2021, Reuters reported on how the benchmark 10-year U.S. note saw some steep declines for three days straight ahead of the Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell interview at the summit. But then Treasury bond yields spiked, which gave market investors the impression that easy-money policies would be stifled. Moreover, Fed Governor Lael Brainard discussed the concerning bond yields before Powell’s summit interview as well. This was after the fact that Powell s

University of California, Berkeley and Parity Technologies are joining forces on several blockchain fronts, including educational development and awareness, by leveraging Parity’s expert team and the Substrate framework as knowledge-building resources. UC Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator Partners with Parity to Promote Blockchain Adoption To bring more resources to the University of California, Berkeley community and Blockchain Xcelerator, Parity Technologies and the academic institution are expanding existing ties by forming a resource-rich educational framework for the 2020-2021 academic year. This deepening cooperation follows Berkeley Blockchain Xcelerator’s existing familiarity with Parity and Polkadot ecosystem startups through its program, which has already accelerated 45 high-value blockchain projects since its inception in 2019. These growing ties will see the Parity development team help expose the University’s students to innovation through a multi-pronged approach, star

PRESS RELEASE. IOST has announced it is now at the final development stage for building a cross-chain transfer bridge to the Polkadot Ecosystem. The move is part of IOST’s plans to promote its cross-chain interoperability, bringing tremendous value for IOST users & developers and drive bigger adoption scenarios for its blockchain, according to a blog post on 5 March 2021. IOST Joins Forces with Polkadot In a bid to make its decentralized solutions available across multiple blockchains, promote trust and data sovereignty for users, IOST, the Proof-of-Believability smart contract leader is joining forces with Polkadot, a new generation blockchain that focuses on promoting interoperability across different distributed ledgers. As stated in a blog post by the IOST team, the new alliance will enable the transfer of the information, transactions, and asset values and make it available across all blockchains supported by Polkadot. The IOST cross-chain transfer bridge has entered th

The Kentucky House Budget Committee approved a bill in a 19-2 vote to eliminate the sales tax on electricity for use in cryptocurrency mining operations. The bill, designed to attract more miners to the state, is now in the Kentucky Senate for review. Lawmakers Urge Greater Crypto Appeal Despite Purported Costs Motivated by the explosive growth in blockchain technology and the increased spotlight at cryptocurrencies, Kentucky lawmakers are busy crafting legislation designed to appeal to mining operations. House Bill 230, which the House Budget Committee approved on Tuesday, is designed to encourage miners to move to the state by removing the sales tax from these operations’ electricity. The bill now moves to the state senate, where it will be reviewed alongside Senate Bill 255 , which similarly calls for miner tax breaks. More Costs Than Benefits According to a fiscal note within the bill, this proposed legislation would cost the state’s General Fund at least $1 million in

U.S. crypto tax compliance startup Taxbit has raised $100 million in a Series A funding round led by investment firms Paradigm and Tiger Global. Paypal Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, and others including Bill Ackman, Ryan Smith, and Anthony Pompliano also joined the round. Taxbit chief executive officer Austin Woodward said the funds will be invested in the company’s enterprise tools as well as used to expand into Europe this year, with the U.K. as the first port of call. “One of the greatest financial innovations and disruptions of the last century, cryptocurrency, should not be weighed down by the complexities of tax and accounting,” Woodward said in a March 3 blog post . “Our products are removing some of the largest roadblocks of this emerging asset class. With the support of Paradigm, Tiger Global … we are excited to continue to scale world-class tax and accounting products so that cryptocurrency can continue to thrive among enterprises, consumers, and governments,” he added. F

Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, has always been a mysterious character and a great number of sleuths have made it their mission to discover the inventor’s identity. One particular theory was published this month which attempts to tether the well known and now deceased, Len Sassaman to the creation of the first cryptocurrency. Moreover, coincidently two months before Sassaman passed away, Satoshi Nakamoto left the community saying; “I’ve moved on to other things and probably won’t be around in the future.” Len Sassaman, Anonymous Remailers, and Bitcoin’s Creator During the last decade, many detectives and journalists have tried to uncover the secret behind Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity. News.Bitcoin.com has published a total of 11 articles tied to our “Many Facts” Satoshi series . The last three “Many Facts” Satoshi series suspects were Chainlink’s Sergey Nazarov , the famed American economist and mathematician John Nash , and the 48-year old former programmer and criminal c

Renowned investor Jim Rogers, who co-founded the Quantum Fund with billionaire investor George Soros, now regrets not buying bitcoin. However, he is still worried that governments can outlaw bitcoin if it becomes a viable currency. Jim Rogers’ Bitcoin Regret Jim Rogers said in an interview with Real Vision this week that he wished he had bought bitcoin years ago. Rogers is George Soros’ former business partner and the co-founder of the Quantum Fund and Soros Fund Management. He believes that bonds are in a bubble and expects the prices of gold and silver to skyrocket. As for bitcoin, he said: I wish I had bought bitcoin. I will point out that many cryptocurrencies have already disappeared and gone to zero. We all hear about bitcoin. We don’t hear about the dozens that don’t exist anymore. The price of bitcoin has surged about 54% this year, 612% since the beginning of last year, and 1,152% since the start of 2019. Surpassing previous all-time highs multiple times this year, the

Billionaire investor and Shark Tank star Mark Cuban, once a bitcoin skeptic who preferred bananas to the cryptocurrency, now sees utility in bitcoin. He has made a case that bitcoin is better than gold, telling gold bug Peter Schiff to “move on” because “gold is dead.” Mark Cuban Says Gold Is Dead, Peter Schiff Should Move On The owner of the National Basketball Association (NBA) team Dallas Mavericks, Mark Cuban, has argued that bitcoin is better than gold in response to Peter Schiff’s comments about the cryptocurrency. Schiff tweeted this week: “Congratulations to those who bought bitcoin early, pumped up the price, and who’ve been dumping into the hype. You succeeded in getting Wall Street to buy into the mania. When I first learned about bitcoin I didn’t think smart investors would be dumb enough to buy. I was wrong.” Cuban responded: Let me help Peter. Gold is hyped as much as crypto. Do we really need gold jewelry? Gold can make you a ring. BTC / ETH are technologies that

Crypto merchant service provider Bitpay has added dogecoin to its list of supported cryptocurrencies. One of its merchants, the Mark Cuban-owned Dallas Mavericks has become the first in the network to accept the meme coin. Meanwhile, a major crypto ATM operator Coinflip has made dogecoin available for purchase at its 1,800 crypto ATMs nationwide. Dogecoin Added to Bitpay’s List of Supported Cryptocurrencies In an official announcement Thursday, the cryptocurrency merchant service provider detailed: [Bitpay] today announced the rollout of dogecoin payments for merchants and consumers. Dogecoin was started as an internet meme. However, it has grown to a near $10 billion market cap in recent months due to support from celebrities such as Tesla and Spacex CEO Elon Musk, Snoop Dogg, Gene Simmons, and Kevin Jonas. Bitpay further revealed that “An early adopter of cryptocurrency, the Dallas Mavericks will be the first to accept dogecoin.” The Mark Cuban-owned team has been accepting b

As a relatively new technology, most people have a lot to learn about blockchain. But not everyone is happy to admit that they don’t know or understand how it works. Shae Wang is not one of those people. With her background in statistics and engineering, Shae had spent a number of years in data science … Continued The post Ripple’s Women in Blockchain: Shae Wang on Bringing Data Science to Blockchain appeared first on Ripple. http://dlvr.it/RtzLs1

The Thai financial watchdog has reportedly retreated from its initial controversial crypto rule proposal. Citing the country’s Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), a local media outlet stated that public criticism was significant regarding the matter. People ‘Misunderstood’ Minimum Annual Income Rule, Claims the SEC According to the Bangkok Post , the Thai SEC is retracting from its plan to supposedly require crypto investors to have a minimum annual income of over one million baht ($33,000). The proposed measure sparked controversy, as the amount is well above the national income average. In fact, the Thai financial regulator claimed that the initial proposal was published just to “test public sentiment from stakeholders.” The results of the test have ignited “a huge wave of public criticism,” said the SEC. Ruenvadee Suwanmongkol, secretary-general of the SEC, confirmed the testing’s purpose of the initial draft: I proposed the criteria that many considered too tough to pr

Original artwork crafted by the pseudonymous England-based street artist and political activist Banksy has been burned in order to turn the art into a non-fungible token (NFT). The screenprint was one of only 500 made and was authenticated by Banksy’s verification company Pest Control. The burning was a symbolic message of turning a rare piece of physical artwork into a non-fungible digital collector’s item. Burning a Banksy ‘Morons’ Print In February a Twitter account appeared on social media with the name @burntbanksy , which consists of a group of art and non-fungible token (NFT) enthusiasts. The group of collectors and investors announced that on March 2, 2021, the group would be burning the artwork created by the iconic street artist Banksy. The England-based artist and well known political activist, Banksy is one of the most popular graffiti artists today with his unique street art commentary and stenciling technique. The Burnt Banksy team decided they would be destroying a