Bitcoin News and Finance: What You Need to Know

In May 2020, McKinsey identified that both consumer and enterprise digital adoption had matured five years, in a matter of eight weeks. For financial institutions, digital technologies — including cloud-based models — offer the flexibility and scalability required to meet the demands of a more digitally advanced society. Throughout this accelerated shift to digital in … Continued The post RippleNet Is Now SOC 2 Certified appeared first on Ripple.

During the last few months, a few reports from mainstream media (MSM) outlets tried to prove that a large sum of bitcoin is controlled by a small group of people. Recently, Bloomberg claimed that “2% of accounts control 95% of all bitcoin,” a claim that doesn’t hold weight to onchain analysts. On Tuesday, Glassnode researcher Rafael Schultze-Kraft’s latest report refutes this claim by MSM, stressing that bitcoin ownership is not highly concentrated. Shrimps to Humpbacks: The Ocean of Bitcoin Entities Oftentimes MSM outlets and reporters publish a story about the cryptocurrency ecosystem without much research and knowledge concerning digital assets. More recently, after bitcoin ( BTC ) surpassed the crypto asset’s 2017 all-time high (ATH) and touched a new ATH in 2021, MSM reports concerning the digital currency’s ownership concentration have appeared. The reporters usually leverage the ‘Bitcoin Rich List’ stemming from the web portal Bitinfocharts , a page that shows BTC addresses

Circle and the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) announced that the second-biggest stablecoin is now available within their network. USD Coin (USDC) is accessible through five integrated wallets, and it can be tradeable on their ecosystem, said the USDC issuer. Stellar Has Been the Official Chain of USDC Since October 2020 Per the announcement , the stablecoin is available in any Stellar ( XLM ) account through Lobstr, Solar, Stellarport, Stellarx, and Stellarterm wallets. Moreover, people could trade USDC across an ecosystem that has over 9,000 assets. In October 2020, the SDF and the Centre Consortium — co-founded by Circle and crypto exchange Coinbase — announced Stellar as the official chain of USDC. Thanks to Circle Account and its API services, both businesses and developers can access Stellar USDC via one-single integration. With a Circle’s account, companies can attach their bank accounts to mint, redeem, store, send, and receive Stellar USDC. Jeremy Allaire, Circle’s

Elon Musk has tweeted that dogecoin is people’s crypto shortly after the billionaire pledged to go off the social media platform for while. Incidentally, the token, which traded at $0.0411 on February 3, surged to $0.0588 just as Musk was tweeting. However, at the time of writing, the token appeared to have retreated to $0.0541, a price which is still 60% higher than that of February 3. Following Musk’s previous tweets about the token, dogecoin’s price surged to an all-time high (ATH) of $0.0791, according to Messari data. At the time of writing, the token is still up by more than 400% in the week while its market capitalization stands at $6.74 billion. Similarly, when Musk amended his Twitter account bio to include bitcoin, the crypto’s value surged by more than 20% in a few hours. Meanwhile, not everyone is impressed with the billionaire’s tweets that have ranged from pumping the dogecoin token to supporting Wallstreetbets traders. Some analysts have accused Musk of de

According to a report, the South African Revenue Service (SARS) has sent out audit requests to taxpayers asking them to disclose their cryptocurrency trades and purchases. Taxpayers that fail to correctly disclose their income from bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies may be “liable to a fine or imprisonment for up to two years.” SARS Tracking Non-Compliant Taxpayers In the report , which is based on statements made by Tax Consulting South Africa, cryptocurrency traders are now required to state the purpose for purchasing the digital assets. In addition, crypto traders must submit a “letter from the trading platform(s) confirming the investments and the relevant trading schedules for the period and bank statements.” However, as Tax Consulting South Africa observes, this changed approach by SARS could spell trouble for taxpayers. According to the tax consulting firm, “it is no longer material whether the taxpayer concerned had justification for such non-disclosure or false statement ma

PRESS RELEASE. February 4, 2021 – New York, New York – Sweet , in partnership with Bitcoin.com, has announced the launch of a highly-scalable Non-Fungible Token (NFT) platform for the broad distribution of digital collectibles and digital merchandise. Leveraging Simple Ledger Protocol (SLP) and the Bitcoin Cash network ( BCH ), blockchain digital collectibles provide consumer and entertainment brands with a previously-unseen opportunity to drive new revenue, create one-of-a-kind consumer experiences, and increase consumer engagement to unprecedented levels. Flexible Distribution With Sweet’s solution, brands have the flexibility to bring digital merchandise to market in an extraordinary number of ways, including for-purchase on existing e-commerce stores, bundled with physical products via QR codes, as social giveaways via web-based reservations, and as rewards for completing actions such as streaming a song on Spotify or Apple Music. The platform uses the Bitcoin Cash and the SLP

Research by Bitflyer released today indicates the growing popularity of the cryptocurrency as an American household investment option. But not in Japan. Stocks Remain the #1 Investment Vehicle Bitflyer , a Japanese crypto exchange, released a research paper that dives into cryptocurrency sentiment and investment trends in the U.S. and compares them to the Japanese market. The most glaring difference between American and Japanese as far cryptocurrency acceptance is indicated through a simple question presented to survey participants: While 76% of Americans view cryptocurrencies positively, 78% of Japanese view cryptocurrencies negatively. The complete opposite pie charts demonstrate how the two markets are miles apart in their acceptance of cryptocurrencies. The research does not indicate when exactly the survey was done, but it can be assumed that the news-worthy ascend of bitcoin ( BTC ) in recent months has contributed to a heightened interest in cryptocurrencies as a whole in

This week the firm Microstrategy held an event called “Bitcoin for Corporations” which looks at concepts like macro strategy, corporate playbooks, and legal considerations toward bitcoin. Prior to the event, Microstrategy CEO and bitcoin bull, Michael Saylor, said “professionals from more than 1,400 firms” would join the event. At the conference, Saylor was bullish on bitcoin as usual and said he expects “an avalanche of companies” to join the crypto economy. Microstrategy’s Bitcoin for Corporations Event On February 3 and 4, the firm Microstrategy ( NASDAQ: MSTR ) held an event called “ Bitcoin for Corporations, ” which aims to entice corporate entities to get into the leading crypto asset. In 2020 and into 2021, there’s been a major expansion of the M2 money supply as estimates believe 25-30% of all USD in existence was printed last year. This has led to a number of firms exchanging cash and bonds for bitcoin (BTC) in order to protect the company from devaluing fiat. Microstr

Billionaire and crypto-asset supporter, Mark Cuban has identified bitcoin hodlers’ endurance as a model that stock investors can follow. According to the billionaire, after acquiring the asset at high prices back in 2017, the hodlers “held on because they believed in the asset.” Following in the Footsteps of BTC Hodlers These long term hodlers were unmoved even when the crypto asset lost more than two-thirds of its value after the 2017/18 bull run ended. Cuban’s remarks about BTC hodlers were in response to a request for advice to stock traders that incurred losses in the past week. In his reply, the billionaire, who recently praised the efforts Wallstreetbets (WSB) traders , explains that regular stock traders should follow an approach that is similar to his and that of BTC hodlers. The billionaire explains: When I buy a stock I make sure I know why I’m buying it. Then I Hodl until I learn that something has changed. The price may go up or down, but if I still believe in th

Asian showbiz stars have been actively speaking about cryptocurrencies on major broadcasting networks. The Japanese pop sphere is not lagging behind, as one of its stars was featured in an interview talking about cryptos. Former Nogizaka46 Band Member Already Sold Her Crypto Holdings Nakada Kana, a former founding member of the Oricon chart-topping girl group Nogizaka46, spoke about her ventures as a crypto investor during a show aired by TBS, a major Japanese TV channel. Nakada Kana. In the interview on “Sunday Japon,” Kana revealed that she already sold some of her crypto holdings, without disclosing which ones, believing prices “would be going down.” Still, Kana said she “made a profit” on the move. The 26-years-old pop star was attracted by Warren Buffett’s books, which helped her unveil a new facet in her life as an investor. Hosts also asked Kana if crypto prices could keep their bullish steam ahead of the Tokyo Olympics Games. However, she limited her answer by just sa

PRESS RELEASE. As an exchange that offers professional crypto trading services, Bityard has been focusing on the fast-changing market as well as the increasing needs of global investors. In 2020, Bityard, with Binance as the liquidity supplier, started offering crypto spot trading services with more than 30 types of trading pairs. Moreover, Bityard also launched “Grayscale Zone” recently to let its users to trade coins related to Grayscale investment trusts, which is a friendly design for both experienced investors and crypto beginners. Compared to some risky altcoins, the assets in the “Grayscale Zone” would be better options for crypto beginners since Grayscale has created investment trusts for those assets. In addition, on Bityard, the fee of spot trading is only 10%, which is much lower than most crypto exchanges in the market. Bityard is committed to bringing a reliable and easy-to-understand trading platform to crypto beginners around the world, and plans to offer more advanc

Jehan Chu, who owns 1,300 Handshake domains, will be able to issue an unlimited number of subdomains under the .NFT extension. The Previous Owner Bought Extension for Less Than $600 Amid the rally in major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, non-fungible tokens (NFT) have experienced an explosion in interest, echoed by Hashmasks ’ recent funding campaign, which raised 7,600 ETH in exchange for over 15,300 digital collectible cards. Non-fungible tokens, which are effectively unique tokens designed to represent a single asset, whether digital or physical, have become the gold standard for attributing blockchain ownership to digital art and other collectibles. To harness the growing interest in these tokens and the ongoing exploration of their capabilities in other areas like finance and culture, Kenetic Founder and Managing Partner Jehan Chu spent a record $84,000 , amounting to approximately 680,000 Handshake (HNS) tokens, to purchase the .NFT web domain extension. The

Visa is piloting a new system to enable banks to seamlessly integrate crypto features. Using Visa’s crypto APIs, banks can offer a number of cryptocurrency services to their customers, including the buying, trading, and custody of bitcoin. Visa announced Wednesday a partnership with First Boulevard, a digitally native neobank focused on serving the Black community. The bank will be the first to pilot Visa’s new suite of crypto APIs. “As part of the initial pilot program, Visa plans to enable First Boulevard to connect to infrastructure provided by Visa’s partner, Anchorage, a federally chartered digital asset bank, to allow their customers to buy and sell bitcoin,” the payments giant explained. Customers of the bank will be able to “purchase, custody and trade digital assets” held by Anchorage. First Boulevard will also launch a Visa debit card. The crypto API development marks the next phase of Visa’s digital currency strategy. The global payments giant explained that the pro

Digital currency markets have been on the move northbound on Wednesday as bitcoin and numerous crypto assets have seen decent gains. The entire crypto-economy has once again crossed the $1 trillion mark as a myriad of digital currencies jumped anywhere between 5-20% in value during the last 24 hours. Crypto Assets See Some Upside Price Action Crypto supporters are pleased on Wednesday as digital currency markets are climbing again and a great number of assets have seen significant gains. The leading cryptocurrency, in terms of market valuation, bitcoin (BTC) is up 5.5% today and is currently trading just below $37k per unit. On Wednesday morning’s trading sessions, BTC jumped to $37,161 across a number of global exchanges but slid a hair since then. With the entire crypto-economy valued at $1.07 trillion, BTC captures $682 billion (62%) of that aggregate total. Overall, BTC is up 20% for the week, 14% during the last 30 days, 134% for the 90-day span, and 297% for the year.

Three people have been charged in the U.S. over two cryptocurrency scams, one of which was promoted by famous Hollywood actor Steven Seagal. The main promoter of the schemes has already been arrested and is facing criminal charges. Seagal previously settled the charges against him relating to the scheme. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged three people on Monday with defrauding retail investors “through two fraudulent and unregistered digital asset securities offerings” that occurred between approximately December 2017 and May 2018. The three are Kristijan Krstic, John DeMarr, and Robin Enos. DeMarr has been arrested and is facing criminal charges by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). Krstic (also known as Felix Logan), a Serbian-Australian national who was domiciled in the Philippines during the relevant period, is the founder of the two schemes, the SEC detailed. DeMarr of Santa Ana, California, was the schemes’ primary U.S.-based promoter. Robin Enos,