Bitcoin News and Finance: What You Need to Know

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has recently suspended the provision of the bank validation number (BVN) service to all fintech and third-party partners. The decision means non-banks entities include crypto startups “have lost one of the most comprehensive means of identity verification in the country.” New Identification System Before the latest decision, the CBN accepted the use of the BVN alongside any other acceptable identity documents for KYC purposes. According to the apex bank, this service helped to “check risk and determine whether or not there is an element of money laundering, fraud and other corruption-related activities.” However, as one local media report explains, the central bank’s sudden decision may be linked to the Federal government’s determination to change Nigeria’s identification system. The report says: Over the last few months, the Federal government has been changing the unique means of identification of all agencies, parastatal and industries to Nat

While bitcoin’s price has been consolidating for quite some time now, every now and then bulls have tried to press the price past the psychological all-time high captured in March. Meanwhile, a few bitcoiners have been saying that the bull market is “just getting started” even though the price has multiplied in value quite a bit. The financial entrepreneur Dave Levine has a bone to pick with these statements, after he insists the bottom was back in December 2018. Levine wholeheartedly believes, as far as the bull run is concerned, “it’s year 3 of the bull; the top of the 7th inning.” Searching for the Elusive Bitcoin Bottom and Top It’s only natural for a large group of investors who have been watching an asset rise relentlessly believe that the asset will continue its upward trajectory for a very long time. Of course, many crypto proponents are all about the ‘long game’ and are willing to hold their crypto assets for 5, 10, and even 20 years or longer. There’s also a great number o

Nasdaq-listed Microstrategy, which has amassed nearly 100K bitcoins in its treasury, has modified its compensation agreements for the board of directors. The company will now pay non-employee directors in bitcoin, citing its commitment to the cryptocurrency “given its ability to serve as a store of value, supported by a robust and public open-source architecture, untethered to sovereign monetary policy.” Board of Directors Will Be Paid in Bitcoin Microstrategy Inc. (NASDAQ: MSTR) has filed a form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) stating that its Board of Directors has “modified the compensation arrangements for non-employee directors.” The filing explains, “Going forward, non-employee directors will receive all fees for their service on the company’s Board in bitcoin instead of cash,” adding: In approving bitcoin as a form of compensation for Board service, the Board cited its commitment to bitcoin given its ability to serve as a store of value, supported by

In mid-January, Bitcoin.com’s newsdesk wrote about the popular artist and Youtuber, Alicia Dawn “Ali” Spagnola after she “accidentally got bitcoin rich” from her Free Paintings project. Since then, a great number of people told her to create a non-fungible token (NFT) asset with her artwork, so she decided to execute the idea after many requests. Spagnola chose to mint an NFT that stems from a combination of the 2,809 free paintings she’s created during the last 14 years. A $500K NFT After Giving Away Free Paintings for 14 Years In her recent video on Youtube, Ali Spagnola is hoping to entice elite NFT collectors ( Beeple buyers ) with all of the hard work she spent on her “ Free Paintings ” project. Spagnola is a popular musician and artist with 345,000 Youtube subscribers, a large following on Tiktok, 2.4 million followers on Twitter. While focusing on her content creation and career, Spagnola started a project 14 years ago where she’s been giving away free paintings by request.

PRESS RELEASE. The first decentralized IDO platform for the Binance Smart Chain Network launched with a bang. The BSC Launch Pad is currently on Pancakeswap, and will soon be released on several popular cryptocurrency exchanges. BSCPAD is empowering crypto currency projects with the ability to distribute tokens and raise liquidity. Through the tiered system, BSCPAD has found a solution to incentivize and reward all token holders in a way that is inclusive of everyone who holds tokens, not just the top 1%, bots, or random luck, with a low barrier to entry. Where other IDOs rely on a randomized lottery system or a first come, first serve system where bots can fill the whitelist spots in a matter of seconds, BSCPAD is creating fair decentralized launches. The hallmark of the BSCPAD is a two-round system that guarantees an allocation to users in every tier. There is no luck, no lotteries, and no bots; only fair distributed rewards for all participants based on their BSCPad token holdi

Mike Novogratz, the CEO of Galaxy Digital and bitcoin bull has warned that the United States’ failure to have its own digital currency could be an “existential crisis.” However, the CEO says the country’s fate is still in its hands. Novogratz made these comments a few days after former U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo suggested that the United States is not going to have a digital dollar anytime soon. Distortions in Financial System Still, Novogratz tells an interviewer that the United States’ success on this front will be dependent on the way the country manages its fiscal and monetary policies. He said: If our fiscal and monetary policy starts looking like it is from a Banana Republic…you are going to run into some Minsky moment where confidence breaks down. According to the report, a Minsky moment, which was espoused by the late Hyman Minsky, suggests “that a period of distortions in the financial system eventually ends very badly.” The U.S. has injected trillions of dol

The American business magazine Forbes recently published the company’s 2021 documentation of the wealthiest billionaires in the world. According to the list published annually every March, there are now 12 billionaires that work directly within the cryptocurrency industry and the list of crypto billionaires is 3x larger than last year. Today’s Crypto Billionaires List Since March 1987, Forbes has been publishing a list of the world’s wealthiest billionaires compiled in a list for the public to view. Back then the Japanese businessman and real-estate mogul Yoshiaki Tsutsumi was the richest person in 1987 with an estimated wealth of around $20 billion. Since then, and every year after, Forbes has deployed around 50 journalists to find and track the globe’s richest people. In 2021, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is the wealthiest man in the world with an estimated $177 billion. Bezos was the first human on earth to be listed on Forbes as a centibillionaire. Bezos is followed by the dogecoin (DO

The Central Bank of Sri Lanka has published a warning notice about the risks associated with cryptocurrency as interest and trading volumes of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies surge locally and globally. Sri Lanka’s Central Bank Warns About Bitcoin The Central Bank of Sri Lanka has published a notice regarding cryptocurrency. “Considering the recent inquiries on virtual currency usage in the international and domestic markets, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) wishes to inform the public of the risks associated with investing in virtual currencies,” the notice published Friday reads. In describing what cryptocurrency is, the central bank explained that virtual currencies (VCs) “are also commonly referred to as cryptocurrencies,” noting that popular ones include bitcoin, ethereum, and litecoin. The Sri Lankan monetary authority cautioned: There are no regulatory safeguards relating to the usage, investment or dealing in VCs in Sri Lanka. Therefore, investing or using VCs in S

Robert Kiyosaki, the best-selling author of “Rich Dad Poor Dad,” has predicted that the price of bitcoin will increase to $1.2 million within five years. Kiyosaki revealed that he bought bitcoin at $9,000, adding that he may buy the cryptocurrency again “today or tomorrow just because I’m more bullish on it.” Robert Kiyosaki Expects Bitcoin’s Price to Surpass $1 Million in 5 Years Robert Kiyosaki has shared his prediction of how high he thinks bitcoin’s price would be. The Rich Dad Poor Dad author accurately predicted in December last year that the price of the cryptocurrency would reach $50,000 in 2021. Rich Dad Poor Dad is a 1997 book co-authored by Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter. It has been on the New York Times Best Seller List for over six years. Over 32 million copies of the book have been sold in over 51 languages across more than 109 countries. Kiyosaki was asked in an interview with Kitco News last week if it is too late to buy bitcoin at the current price of between $50,00

Guggenheim CIO Scott Minerd has warned crypto investors about bitcoin’s pullback. He said bitcoin “clearly has gotten caught in a speculative bubble that Gamestop got into.” However, he noted that it will be a “great entry point” for long-term investors. ‘Great Entry Point’ for Bitcoin Investors The chief investment officer (CIO) of Guggenheim Partners, Scott Minerd, talked about bitcoin in an interview with CNN last week. Minerd is also the chairman of Guggenheim Investments, the global asset management and investment advisory division of Guggenheim Partners. Guggenheim Investments has more than $246 billion in total assets across fixed income, equity, and alternative strategies. Commenting on how fast bitcoin’s market cap has grown, Minerd said, “It clearly has gotten caught in a speculative bubble that Gamestop got into.” The Guggenheim executive elaborated: When we get a risk-off moment, we could be seeing bitcoin pullback to somewhere between $20k-$30k. But I think for long-

Another futuristic cryptocurrency city will be built in Africa, Senegalese-American star Akon has announced. The government of Uganda will make land available to him for the construction of the new crypto city. The akoin cryptocurrency will be used in the city, similar to how it will be in Akon City, the $6 billion “real-life Wakanda” that is currently being constructed in Akon’s home country. Second Akon City to Launch in Uganda Senegalese-American star and philanthropist Akon, whose real name is Alioune Badara Thiam, announced last week his plan to build a second futuristic cryptocurrency city in Africa. Its home will be in Uganda. His first crypto city, Akon City , which costs $6 billion, is being built in his native country of Senegal. Akon described it as a “real-life Wakanda,” comparing Akon City to the technologically advanced fictional African city in the blockbuster movie Black Panther. Akon’s new cryptocurrency city has the backing of the Ugandan government. Isaac Musumb

Over the last eight years, U.S. law enforcement has seized a great number of bitcoins and at one time, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) held one of the largest bitcoin wallets after the Silk Road takedown. A recently published report shows the FBI has started using cryptocurrency mixing applications in recent times in order to obfuscate transactions from seized bitcoins that stem from a forfeiture. Do as I Say, Not as I Do The U.S. government is far from transparent and a newly published report shows just how shady the feds can be these days. The author Joshua Davis explains with great detail that the FBI has been evading “transparency and accountability” specifically when law enforcement has been handling funds from a seizure. For years now, the FBI, the United States Department of Justice (DoJ), and FinCEN have said that the use of bitcoin mixers should be criminalized. The Feds have prosecuted operators of large centralized bitcoin mixers as well charging the operators

PRESS RELEASE. YFX.COM is the world’s first decentralized cross-chain perpetual contract exchange. While other trading platforms that provide leverage alternatives exist, YFX.COM is trailblazing a decentralized alternative to centralized exchanges and perpetual futures trading without a central intermediary. YFX.COM does this by taking advantage of different protocols across the cryptocurrency landscape. Through a culmination of blockchain protocols YFX.COM is allowing traders to participate in trading BTC , ETH and other cryptocurrencies with up to 100x leverage. These cryptos are available to be traded across these blockchains currently, Ethereum, Tron, Binance Smart Chain, Heco, OKEx Chain and Polkadot. Through the advent of QIC-AMM, a state of the art protocol, YFX.COM provides high liquidity with low slippage for users of our ecosystem. QIC is an acronym for Quoted Index Price. QIC pulls quoted prices from centralized exchanges and traders can open and close positions with ou

According to new data, peer-to-peer (P2P) bitcoin trade volumes in Kenya and Ghana surged in Q1 of 2021, with the two countries now ranked second and third respectively. On the other hand, volumes in South Africa, which occupied second place in 2020, dropped marginally. Consequently, South Africa has now been relegated to the fourth position the data shows. Contrasting Regulatory Regimes Meanwhile, one report has attributed the surge in Kenya and Ghana’s P2P volumes to the two countries’ tacit endorsement of cryptocurrencies. For instance, the report points to the Central Bank of Ghana’s launch of “a regulatory sandbox that prioritized blockchain-based companies including cryptocurrency startups” as one factor that may have boosted the country’s volumes. This is in contrast to the situation in South Africa where regulator warnings about cryptocurrency use and investment increased following the collapse of Mirror Trading International, the biggest scam bitcoin in 2020, according