Bitcoin News and Finance: What You Need to Know

Congresswoman Maxine Waters, chair of the House Committee on Financial Services, has politely asked former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) to attend a congressional hearing on the collapse of his cryptocurrency exchange. Bankman-Fried says he will testify when he has finished “learning and reviewing what happened.” Bankman-Fried Responds to Rep. Waters’ Invitation The U.S. House Committee on Financial Services will hold a congressional hearing on the collapse of crypto exchange FTX on Dec. 13. Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), the committee’s chair, has been trying to get former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) to attend the hearing. However, instead of issuing a subpoena for him to testify, Waters politely asked him on Twitter Friday. “We appreciate that you’ve been candid in your discussions about what happened at FTX. Your willingness to talk to the public will help the company’s customers, investors, and others. To that end, we would welcome your participation in our hearing o

The chief executive of the Nasdaq-listed cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, Brian Armstrong, has slammed former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) for claiming that FTX is missing $8 billion due to an “accounting error.” He stressed: “It’s stolen customer money used in his hedge fund, plain and simple.” Brian Armstrong on SBF’s ‘Accounting Error’ Claim The CEO of the Nasdaq-listed cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase (Nasdaq: COIN), Brian Armstrong, has slammed FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) for blaming his collapsed exchange’s $8 billion hole on an “accounting error.” Bankman-Fried was asked in an interview with Bloomberg, published Friday, how he “misplaced $8 billion.” The former FTX boss replied: “Misaccounted.” He further explained that FTX customers sometimes wired money to his trading firm, Alameda Research, instead of sending it directly to FTX. The crypto exchange’s internal accounting system then double-counted the money, crediting it to both the exchange and the customer

PRESS RELEASE. On November 30th, the MMORPG game “GensoKishi Online-Meta World” was officially released. It is the web 3 version of the iconic Japanese 3DMMO “Elemental Knights Online,” which won the “Game of the Year Gold Award 2012” in Taiwan and accumulated more than eight million downloads worldwide. The new web3 release will introduce the trading of avatars and in-game items as NFTs – the Genso metaverse will consist of a 3DMMORPG and a Polygon-based economy. This fantasy world will be built around Genso’s governance token $MV, a token that has already achieved numerous milestones; a record-breaking 69,000 people participated in Bybit’s launchpool event, the fastest sell-out on Trustpad, and the Kickstarter hall of fame on MEXC. Known as a 3DMMORPG, it already has an active user base and a fully functioning 3D metaverse that allows users from around the globe to connect with one another. With this game, players go to dungeons, defeat monsters together with friends, and inter

What if a Metamask wallet has crashed or become corrupted, and a user is afraid of losing all of their digital assets? To ensure that a lost crypto wallet is recovered successfully, users should read the advice of wallet recovery experts from KeychainX, the trusted service provider that specializes in this type of recovery. Recover Metamask Even If a User Loses the 12 Words Many DeFi users have turned to Metamask as their preferred to-go wallet. Unfortunately, the rise of Metamask’s popularity has also resulted in mega buggy code. As panicked users attempt to upgrade their wallets or run out of disk space, they are greeted with screens stating that the wallet has been corrupted (?) as a result of disk space limitations or, even more worryingly, that their wallet address seems empty or disappear after upgrading to popular browsers such as Chrome or Firefox. Users of Metamask should take a close look at these simple steps on what to do and what not to do when the inevitable occurs, n

The government of Argentina has signed a data sharing agreement with the U.S. to enhance the cooperation of the countries in the tax arena. The agreement, which was signed by Sergio Massa, minister of economy of Argentina, and U.S. ambassador Marc Stanley, will allow the Argentine national tax authority to receive information from accounts and trust beneficiaries of Argentines in the U.S. Argentina to Tighten Tax Controls With Data Sharing Agreement The government of Argentina has signed an automatic tax data sharing agreement with the U.S. that will allow the national tax authority to receive data from accounts and societies managed by Argentine nationals offshore. The agreement, signed on Dec. 5 by the minister of economy, Sergio Massa, and the United States ambassador to Argentina, Marc Stanley, implies a substantial increase in the volume of data that will be shared between the Argentine tax authority (AFIP) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). While the two countries had a

Following FTX’s collapse, many industry executives, influencers, luminaries, and politicians have shared their opinions about the carnage the event has caused to crypto markets and a great deal of innocent bystanders. On Dec. 2, the CEO and founder of Morgan Creek Capital, Mark Yusko, explained in an interview that it’s quite possible that the FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) was merely a “pawn” or “useful idiot” leveraged to “punish the industry.” Morgan Creek’s Mark Yusko: ‘This Debacle Is a Fraud Perpetrated by, I Believe, Someone Above the Useful Idiots’ Since the Terra LUNA fallout and the great number of business failures that followed the event, there’s been a myriad of theories surrounding these subjects. The most recent FTX collapse seems to eclipse all the blunders that took place after the Terra crash, and there are still many unanswered questions surrounding the event. A variety of individuals have shared their two cents about the FTX fiasco, including the host of

On Dec. 5, 2022, at block height 766,080, Bitcoin’s mining difficulty adjustment dropped 7.32% lower, making it the largest difficulty reduction in 2022. The current difficulty is approximately 34.24 trillion and it will remain at this point for the next two weeks or 2,016 blocks. Bitcoin Miners Catch a Break as the Network’s Difficulty Drops 7.32% Lower Bitcoin’s difficulty retarget has dropped, which makes it a bit easier for bitcoin miners to find a block than it was during the two weeks prior. The difficulty change occurred around 8:50:29 p.m. (ET), at block height 766,080 and it was the largest reduction this year. The difficulty reduction was larger than the prior record that was recorded at block height 745,920. At that time on July 21, 2022, the network’s difficulty dropped by 5.01% and the difficulty was around 27.69 trillion. Prior to the 7.32% reduction down to 34.24 trillion, the network’s difficulty rating was at a lifetime high of 36.95 trillion. Satoshi created the

An Indian central bank official claims that if there is anything cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ether can do, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) should be able to create a product that will do the same job without the associated risks. “This is essentially what we are doing in the CBDC experiments,” he stressed. RBI Official on Cryptocurrency vs Digital Rupee Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Deputy Governor T. Rabi Sankar talked about cryptocurrency and central bank digital currency (CBDC) Friday at an event organized by the Indian Banks’ Association (IBA). “We saw an environment where private currencies were evolving. We realized that this poses a threat to investors, systems, and the economy. We also realized that private currencies have shown that digitalizing currency can possibly benefit,” the RBI official said. “The way to deal with it was to provide a digital currency.” Referring to non-government-issued cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin and ether, as “private” cryptocurrencie

Standard Chartered Bank says the price of bitcoin could drop to $5,000 next year. The bank’s analyst explained that cryptocurrencies could fall further and more crypto firms could “succumb to liquidity squeezes and investor withdrawals.” Standard Chartered Bank’s $5K Bitcoin Scenario Standard Chartered Bank published a note titled “The financial-market surprises of 2023” Sunday. The note outlines a number of possible scenarios that “we feel are under-priced by the markets,” wrote Eric Robertsen, Standard Chartered’s global head of research. One of the scenarios is bitcoin’s price dropping to $5,000 next year, which would be about a 70% drop from BTC ’s current price of around $17,000. Robertsen detailed: Yields plunge along with technology shares, and while the bitcoin sell-off decelerates, the damage has been done. More and more crypto firms and exchanges find themselves with insufficient liquidity, leading to further bankruptcies and a collapse in investor confidence in digita

Laliga, the premier Spanish soccer league, has announced the implementation of a new system that will use blockchain for tracking soccer balls that were used to score a goal. The system, which will be provided by Gol-Ball, a third-party company, will certify these balls to allow users to purchase them through official markets or raffles. Spanish Laliga to Use Blockchain System for Soccer Ball Certification Laliga, the leading soccer league in Spain, has announced it will be one of the first organizations to certify balls used to score goals using blockchain tech. The institution has already partnered with Gol-Ball, a third-party company, to implement the system. The system, which is slated to be used after the Qatar world cup, will be used to track each ball used in each match and to separate and identify which ones were used to score each one of the goals — something that was not done before as each football was rotated and mixed with the others. Samuel Eto’o, Laliga’s ambassador

According to the latest reports from the Brazilian tax authority (RFB), institutions have again broken crypto purchasing records in Brazil. The organization registered that almost 42,000 companies purchased some kind of cryptocurrency during October, a new record that overturns the 40,161 that declared having purchased crypto during September. Brazilian Companies Purchase Crypto in Waves More and more companies are introducing crypto as part of their treasuries in Brazil. According to the last data issued by the Brazilian tax authority (RBF), which is empowered by law to receive crypto purchasing statements from taxpayers, almost 42,000 companies bought some kind of cryptocurrency during October. These 41,817 companies that purchased crypto broke the previous record number registered in September when 40,161 institutions also broke the previous record. However, the number of individuals that bought crypto during the same period fell to 1.265.818 from the almost 1.5 million citizen

A Russian company has announced the country’s first authorized transaction with digital financial assets (DFAs) involving a foreign currency, China’s yuan. The deal, reportedly the largest made to date under the current Russian DFA law, covers the issuance of tokens secured by commercial debt. Digital Financial Assets for 58 Million Yuan Issued by Russian Platform A licensed firm has finalized Russia’s first deal with digital financial assets denominated in foreign fiat. The transaction involved the issuing of DFAs worth 58 million Chinese yuan (approx. 516 million rubles or $8.26 million) secured by commercial debt. It took place on a platform developed by Lighthouse, which was approved by the Bank of Russia in March as one of the “information systems operators” allowed to manage digital financial assets. Russia’s largest bank, Sber , and the tokenization service Atomyze were also registered as such. While Russian authorities have been working to adopt a more comprehensive legal

There’s a silver lining to the crash in the NFT market — millions of dollars of potential tax-savings. To help NFT investors claim their tax-savings before the end of the year, CoinLedger recently launched an NFT tax-loss harvesting tool . Let’s break down how the tool works and how it can help people save money on their tax bill. What is Tax Loss Harvesting? Tax loss harvesting is a tax reduction strategy used by savvy investors to reduce their total tax liabilities for the year. By selling assets that have gone down in value since originally acquiring them, investors can harvest capital losses and generate tax write offs. Imagine the following scenario: Jane Doe sells a portion of her bitcoin holdings in February 2022 and realizes $50,000 of capital gains in doing so. That $50,000 is now income that Jane has to pay taxes on. If Jane is a high earner, she may have to pay up to 37%, or $18,500 to Uncle Sam in taxes. Ouch! Let’s say during the same year Jane also spent $30,000

“Vox Populi, Vox Dei, man.” So says self-proclaimed Chief Twit Elon Musk from a private jet flying high above the world during a Twitter Spaces appearance on Sunday, Dec. 4 (JST). It does sound nice to say, but the voice of the mob should never be the voice of “God.” The reasons are myriad. Suffice it to say that in the same way failed crypto-exchange CEO Sam Bankman-Fried supposedly set off Musk’s BS detector, so should Musk be setting off our own alarm bells. His actions simply don’t match his nice-sounding words, and anyone who refuses to understand free speech is also going to miss the boat on crypto and economic freedom. God Save the ‘Technoking,’ the People Are Disposable Tesla CEO and self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” Elon Musk recently ended a massively-tuned-into Dec. 4 Twitter Space hosted by Mario Nawfal, by noting that we live in a time which, different from times past, doesn’t involve “some king or whatever [that would] just by default suppress” free speech. Thi

The CEO of Blackrock, the world’s largest asset manager, says that most crypto companies will not be around following the collapse of crypto exchange FTX. However, the executive is still optimistic about blockchain technology. Blackrock’s CEO on FTX’s Collapse and Future of Crypto Larry Fink, the CEO of Blackrock Inc. (NYSE: BLK), the world’s largest asset management firm, talked about cryptocurrency and the collapsed exchange FTX during an interview at the New York Times Dealbook Summit last week. Blackrock had $7.96 trillion in assets under management (AUM) as of the third quarter. The asset management firm invested $24 million in Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF)’s FTX through a billionaire fund it manages, the CEO explained. Regarding the FTX meltdown, Fink said: “We’re going to have to wait to see how this all plays out … I mean, right now we can make all the judgment calls and it looks like there were misbehaviors of major consequences.” The Blackrock chief executive believes that mos