Bitcoin News and Finance: What You Need to Know

U.S. Senator Mike Lee has raised concerns that adopting the crypto tax provision in the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill will stifle innovation and make Americans poorer. He explained that cryptocurrencies are not like securities and cannot be regulated with the same policies, noting that to do so would drive innovation offshore. Senator Mike Lee Warns Passing Unproven Legislation Will Stifle Innovation While outlining concerns he has about numerous provisions in the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill during the Senate session Saturday, U.S. Senator Mike Lee from Utah drew attention to the provision about cryptocurrency, which he described as “an industry that’s rapidly developing within the United States.” He noted that the crypto provision “seeks to require those who buy and sell cryptocurrency to treat it the same way as they would the exchange of securities.” However, the senator argued that cryptocurrencies are “very different than securities.” He added: “These aren’t just s

The chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Gary Gensler, says that Satoshi Nakamoto’s innovation is real. “It has been and could continue to be a catalyst for change in the fields of finance and money,” he said. Satoshi Nakamoto’s Innovation Is Real SEC Chairman Gary Gensler talked about bitcoin and cryptocurrency regulation last week at the Aspen Security Forum where he outlined his plans to regulate the crypto space. He began by referencing the Bitcoin whitepaper and its creator, the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto. “His innovation spurred the development of crypto assets and the underlying blockchain technology,” Gensler said about Satoshi, adding that “the crypto asset class has ballooned” and is now worth about $1.83 trillion. Noting that when he was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) prior to being confirmed as the head of the SEC, he researched, wrote, and taught on the subject of bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and blockchain technology. Ge

Last month, the popular bitcoin analyst and creator of the stock-to-flow price model, Plan B, explained that he believed the “bull is not over.” On August, 6, Plan B is still showing confidence in his forecast and reconfirmed his message from last month. Meanwhile, bitcoin prices have been able to bounce back and on Sunday, bitcoin prices tapped a high of $45,355. Plan B Shows Confidence in Previous Forecast While Bitcoin Prices Tap Fresh Highs Bitcoin ( BTC ) has been on a tear lately and oddly enough in the face of regulatory uncertainty in the United States. BTC has gained over 11% during the last seven days and 30-day stats show the leading crypto asset is up 31% against the U.S. dollar. Since the opening trading sessions on August 5, at $39,734 per BTC , the crypto asset has gained 12.97% in three days. Moreover, following the bullish action, the infamous pseudonym leveraged by the Twitter account @100trillionusd, also known as “Plan B,” seems more confident the bitcoin bull

PRESS RELEASE. AscendEX , a global cryptocurrency financial platform with a comprehensive product suite, is excited to announce the Port Finance token (PORT) under the pair USDT/ PORT on Aug 9 at 2 p.m. UTC. Port Finance is a money-market, non-custodial liquidity protocol on Solana. They aim to provide a comprehensive suite of lending products, including variable-rate lending, fixed-rate lending, and interest rate swap. Their idea is to take advantage of the growth in size and capability of the Solana network. Port Finance brings interest rate markets to the Solana ecosystem. It leverages the Solana blockchain’s high speed and low latency with a product suite that includes variable rate lending, fixed-rate lending, and interest rate swaps. Port Finance takes a three-step approach; they provide a baseline lending protocol similar to Compound and Aave on Ethereum. Secondly, they launch a fixed rate lending protocol that utilizes the Serum order book. And finally, they build out an in

British bank Standard Chartered will offer cryptocurrency broker services in Ireland through its Zodia Custody subsidiary. The digital asset custodian will focus on signing up institutional investors in the Republic which has become a European base for many financial institutions and crypto companies. Standard Chartered to Provide Crypto Custody to Institutions in Ireland Zodia Custody, the Standard Chartered Bank’s crypto brokerage, is planning to offer its services to institutional investors in Ireland, the Irish daily Independent revealed on Sunday. The company operates as an exchange and brokerage for cryptocurrencies and other digital assets. The crypto custodian platform was established late last year by the U.K. bank’s SC Ventures subsidiary and U.S.-based wealth and asset management firm Northern Trust. Both parent companies have already invested heavily in blockchain services in the past few years, the newspaper noted. The joint venture specializes in managing investment

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has notified several providers of digital payment services that they will be licensed to operate in the city-state. The move, which comes after the approval of a crypto exchange for a license, secures Singapore’s status as Asia’s crypto hub, industry observers say. Digital Payment Service Providers to Be Authorized to Operate in Singapore The central banking authority of Singapore has informed digital payment service providers that it’s going to license them to operate under its jurisdiction. MAS told “several” out of 170 applicants it’s “prepared to grant them payment services licenses,” as long as they implement measures to meet its requirements, the regulator confirmed to South China Morning Post’s ‘This Week in Asia’ edition. Two applications have been rejected so far and another 30 withdrawn for failing to meet anti-money laundering standards. Monetary Authority of Singapore. The news comes after the Australian cryptocurrency excha

The quantity of monthly USD value transferred from seven leading non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces has reached a total of $356 million during the first week of August. Currently, the project Cryptopunks is leading the pack when it comes to NFT project sales. Meanwhile, the marketplace Opensea captures the lion’s share of transferred value as the trading platform commands 97.19% of the monthly value settled. Opensea’s Tidal Wave of Monthly Sales Captures Lion’s Share of USD Value Transferred At the time of writing, the most prominent non-fungible token project this week is Cryptopunks as statistics from nonfungible.com show the project has seen 1,018 sales worth over $166 million during the last week. Cryptopunks is followed by Art Blocks ($61M) and Meebits ($27M) and Superrare ($6.8M) respectively. Additionally, Cryptoarte ($3.5M), Hashmasks ($2.8M), and the Sandbox ($2M) have also contributed to the past week’s 67,538 NFT sales recorded on Saturday, August 7, 2021. Seven-d

Residents of Ukraine will be able to legally keep, exchange, and spend cryptocurrencies once the new virtual assets law is adopted. The legislation will comprehensively regulate the crypto space, possibly lower taxes for Ukrainians and create conditions for new services, a government official revealed. New Regulations to Create Market for Crypto Services for Ukrainians Ukrainians owning cryptocurrency will benefit from the law “On Virtual Assets” as it will introduce investor protection and allow them to legally exchange and declare their crypto holdings. The legislation will make virtual assets “a completely legal and common phenomenon for the government and the society,” Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Digital Transformation, Oleksandr Bornyakov, said in an interview with the financial news portal Minfin . Oleksandr Bornyakov The official expects to also see a whole new market for services allowing coins to be stored, exchanged, and used in payments. Although the draft states tha

The president of Fidelity Digital Assets, the crypto arm of Fidelity Investments, says that crypto is “its own unique asset class.” He revealed, “We and others are very engaged with regulators … to bring this asset class into the mainstream.” Fidelity Sees Long-Term Interest in Crypto Assets Among Institutional Investors Fidelity Digital Assets President Tom Jessop shared his view on the future of cryptocurrency in an interview with Yahoo Finance Thursday. He also discussed his firm’s efforts to engage with regulators to bring the asset class mainstream. Fidelity is one of the largest traditional money managers. It has about 37 million individual investors, 83.4 million customer accounts, and $10.4 trillion in managed assets as of the end of March. The company established Fidelity Digital Assets in 2018 to provide cryptocurrency products and services, including bitcoin, to institutional investors. “What’s apparent are two things,” Jessop explained: This is seen as its own unique

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has taken its first enforcement action involving decentralized finance (defi). The commission has charged a defi platform and its executives for unregistered securities sales of more than $30 million and misleading investors. SEC’s 1st Enforcement Action Involving Decentralized Finance The SEC announced Friday that it has taken the first enforcement action involving decentralized finance (defi). The case involves “securities using defi technology.” The regulator charged two Florida men — Gregory Keough and Derek Acree — and their Cayman Islands company, Blockchain Credit Partners, for “unregistered sales of more than $30 million of securities.” The three were also charged “for misleading investors concerning the operations and profitability of their business Defi Money Market.” They used smart contracts and defi technology to sell two types of digital tokens: mtokens and DMM governance tokens (DMG). The former promised to pay 6.25%

According to data on August 7, there’s 253,510 bitcoin-pegged or wrapped tokens worth more than $11 billion in value on the Ethereum blockchain. Out of the seven different bitcoin-pegged projects, the Wrapped Bitcoin protocol has 194,023 bitcoin-pegged ERC20 tokens in circulation. Over 250K Tokenized Bitcoin In Circulation Split Between 7 Ethereum Projects, Binance Smart Chain’s Bitcoin-Peg Reaches 73K Issued Ethereum (ETH) jumped over the $3K zone in value on Saturday, as the protocol successfully upgraded on August 5. ETH ’s market valuation has gained a significant amount of dominance in terms of the $1.78 trillion crypto-economy capturing 20% of that value on Saturday. The crypto asset has also gained more than 700% against the U.S. dollar during the last 12 months. Much of this has been attributed to decentralized finance (defi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and a myriad of decentralized exchange (dex) platforms over the last year. The number of tokenized bitcoin on Ethere

The well known luxury auction house Christie’s has announced the company’s first non-fungible token (NFT) art sale in Asia on September 17. According to the announcement, the NFTs will feature Cryptopunks by Larva Labs, Meebits, and Bored Apes. Christie’s Reveals First NFT Auction in Asia Founded in 1766 by James Christie, the British auction house Christie’s has been auctioning luxury goods, artwork, clothing, and jewelry for well over 100 years. Christie’s got into the cryptocurrency and blockchain scene last year and sold its first NFT for $131,250. The first NFT the auction house sold was Robert Alice’s “Block 21 (42.36433° N, -71.26189° E) (from Portraits of a Mind).” During the second week of May, Christie’s held a Cryptopunks auction where the auction house sold nine punks for over $16 million . Christie’s was also instrumental during the Beeple NFT sale which sold for a whopping $69 million and is the most expensive NFT to date. In July, the artist “Fewocious” raked in ov

The Ethereum game Axie Infinity continues to see demand as the developer Sky Mavis revealed on Friday there are now more than 1 million daily active players. Additionally, the game token utilized within the Axie Infinity gaming universe tapped an all-time high at $52 per unit 10 days ago. Despite being down 18% from the price high, axie infinity (AXS) tokens have gained over 60% in the last two weeks. Axie Infinity Celebrates 1 Million Daily Active Players While blockchain gaming and non-fungible token (NFT) assets continue to see significant interest, the developers of the Ethereum-based game Axie Infinity revealed the project’s overall growth. “It’s official,” the Axie Infinity Twitter account said on Friday. “More than 1M daily active players. Let’s keep pushing, together.” For further clarification, the Twitter account for the project also added that “some players download the game client without owning Axies. There are still less than 1M Axie owners.” Interestingly, a few

Tesla CEO Elon Musk says there is no crisis that compels hasty cryptocurrency regulation. He agrees with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong that the U.S. government should not pick winners or losers in cryptocurrency innovation. Elon Musk and Coinbase CEO Agree on Crypto Regulation Tesla CEO Elon Musk has chimed in on the heated discussion of the U.S. government picking winners and losers in the crypto space. This followed the endorsement by the White House of a crypto tax amendment to the $1 trillion infrastructure bill that the crypto industry and several lawmakers have opposed. The Tesla CEO responded to a thread on Twitter started by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong about the crypto tax amendment “that would decide which foundational technologies are ok and which are not in crypto,” Armstrong wrote. “This is disastrous.” Musk tweeted, “Agreed, this is not the time to pick technology winners or losers in cryptocurrency technology.” He added, “There is no crisis that compels hasty regula

U.S. Senator Pat Toomey has called on Congress to stop the Treasury Department from maximizing its ability to regulate and tax crypto by picking winners and losers. “Congress should not allow that to happen,” he said. US Senator Urges Lawmakers Not to Crush Crypto Innovation Following the endorsement of a crypto tax amendment by the White House, concerns have been raised that the U.S. government is picking winners and losers in the crypto space. Two crypto tax amendments to the $1 trillion infrastructure bill have been introduced but the White House has chosen to endorse the one that favors proof-of-work over all other consensus mechanisms, including proof-of-stake. Senator Pat Toomey is one of the sponsors of the amendment that is not endorsed by the Biden administration but has gained support within the crypto community. He tweeted Friday: While I appreciate that my colleagues and the White House have acknowledged their original crypto tax had flaws, the Warner-Portman amen

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has reportedly raised objections to lawmakers about the cryptocurrency tax amendment to the $1 trillion infrastructure bill that is supported by the crypto community. The White House subsequently announced its support for a competing amendment. Yellen Exerting Influence on Lawmakers Regarding Crypto Taxation The new crypto tax proposal in the $1 trillion infrastructure bill has become a topic of intense controversy over the past week. Two amendments have been put forward so far: one sponsored by Senators Mark Warner, Rob Portman, and Kyrsten Sinema. The other, which has gained the support of the crypto community, is sponsored by Senators Ron Wyden, Cynthia Lummis, and Pat Toomey. According to Washington Post reporter Jeff Stein, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen spoke with lawmakers Thursday to raise objections to the amendment sponsored by Senators Toomey, Wyden, and Lummis. He tweeted Friday, citing sources familiar with the matter: Treasury

Truefi, an uncollateralized loan platform, has raised $12.5 million from three important investors. The token sale was led by Blocktower, a New York-based cryptocurrency investment firm. Other important investors were Alameda Research — owned by Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of FTX — and A16z. Truefi is one of the few uncollateralized defi-based lending protocols in the industry. Truefi Raises $12.5 Million Truefi has raised $12.5 million dollars to expand its operations and its offer of lending products. The investment was made through the purchase of its native token truefi (TRU), which will be liberated in stages. The token sale was led by New York-based Blocktower, a cryptocurrency blockchain VC firm, with the participation of Alameda and A16z, some of the biggest investment firms in the crypto space. The protocol is the product of experimentation with a system that emulates traditional finance conditions on defi. While most defi loans must have collateral to even be issued in th

Genesis Digital, a leading cryptocurrency trading, lending, and custody desk, released its Q2 reports, where it confirms what it calls the “emerging role” that Ethereum and defi have in the industry. The report also confirms that institutional interest in crypto is still rising despite the crash in prices the market experienced in Q2 2021. Genesis Confirms Ethereum and Defi Market Rise Genesis, a big cryptocurrency lending and trading desk, has confirmed that emergent currencies like Ethereum and defi tokens have taken a relevant part of the market, according to its Q2 2021 Market Observations Report . Genesis saw these currencies take a big part of the interest from bitcoin, which has been traditionally the go-to cryptocurrency for institutional investors. Regarding this, Matt Ballensweig, Head of Institutional Lending at Genesis stated: Bitcoin’s dominance in terms of market cap declined from over 70% at the end of 2020 to under 45% at the end of Q2, as Ether and most of the mai

The Central Bank of Venezuela announced the new redenomination plan for its fiat currency called “Digital Bolivar.” This new proposal seeks to simplify transactions by slashing six zeroes from the current value of the currency. While it is called digital, it has nothing to do with the proposal of a new central bank digital currency (CBDC), but it claims to have the development of a digital economy in the country as its objective. Digital Bolivar Redenomination Plan Announced The Central Bank of Venezuela issued an official statement yesterday on the implementation of a new redenomination plan for its fiat currency after the measure was leaked by some sources last month. The plan, called by the authorities “Digital Bolivar,” contemplates slashing six zeroes from the current value of the fiat currency to ease the process of making payments and transactions. At the time of writing, there is an exchange rate of 4,000 VES per dollar, which results in uncomfortably large amounts when m

Award-winning hip-hop artist Megan Thee Stallion has published a video of herself explaining the basics of bitcoin, including what it is, why it is valuable, and how to obtain it. The famed rapper previously gave away $1 million in bitcoin to her fans in collaboration with Square’s Cash App. Famous Hip-Hop Star Breaks Down Bitcoin to Her Fans Popular rapper Megan Thee Stallion, also known as Hot Girl Meg, published a video titled “Bitcoin for Hotties” Tuesday in collaboration with Cash App, a mobile payment service developed by Jack Dorsey’s Square Inc. Megan Thee Stallion has more than 24.1 million followers on Instagram and 6.4 million followers on Twitter. She has received several accolades, including three Grammy Awards. At the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards, she became the second female hip-hop artist to win Best New Artist. In 2020, Time Magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world on their annual list. Her Bitcoin for Hotties video starts with the star