Bitcoin News and Finance: What You Need to Know

PRESS RELEASE. AscendEX , formerly BitMax, an industry-leading digital asset trading platform built by Wall Street quant trading veterans, has announced the listing of Taraxa tokens (TARA) under the pair USDT/TARA on Mar 2 3 at 9:00 a.m. EDT. Taraxa is a public ledger platform purpose-built for audit logging of informal transactions. Taraxa provides decentralized infrastructure to track informal transactional agreements and data to help minimize the cost and risk of confusion while eliminating disputes. The Taraxa token (TARA) is used for gas, staking, and governance on the Taraxa network. The vast majority of the world’s transactions are informal, uncaptured, and unverifiable, often leading to costly confusion and unintended disputes. Taraxa leverages inline capturing and audit logging to make these transaction data more trusted and seamless. Before blockchain technology emerged, it was next to impossible to make this informal data trustworthy. Taraxa has targeted and is in th

The iconic contemporary street artist, Shepard Fairey is getting into the non-fungible token (NFT) ecosystem with an NFT sale on the marketplace Superrare. The NFT mural called “Obey Ideal Power” created by Fairey will be auctioned on March 29, alongside a number of other artists selling NFTs like Neïl Beloufa and Petra Cortright. Street Artist and Activist Shepard Fairey Joins the NFT Ecosystem Shepard Fairey is a well known street artist, illustrator, and activist who made a name for himself with his infamous “Andre the Giant Has a Posse” stickers. Fairey also created the iconic Obey images and the company as well that leverages the same name. Back in 2008, Fairey’s art went viral when he created his Barack Obama “Hope” poster. Now the legendary artist who was featured in a film with the notorious Banksy is getting into the non-fungible token (NFT) collectibles industry. Fairey has teamed up with Verisart and the NFT marketplace Superrare in order to join a star-studded list o

Although having a diverse workforce makes a company more profitable, the number of women in the tech industry is still increasing at a slow pace. Girls tend to opt out of the STEM career track at an early age, and women often leave the field early for any number of reasons including a lack of … Continued The post UBRI Panel: Increasing the Number of Women in Blockchain appeared first on Ripple. http://dlvr.it/RwN5Gz

Microsoft President Brad Smith says that “The world is best served when currencies are issued, backed by and regulated by governments.” He further emphasized that he is not a fan of encouraging the private sector to issue digital currencies. Microsoft’s President Says Currency Issuance Should Be Left to Governments Brad Smith, President of Microsoft Corp., talked about digital currencies on Wednesday at an online conference hosted by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). He was asked, “can tech firms be trusted to issue money?” and whether it is something Microsoft would do. The executive replied, “It is not a place where we have gone and I don’t think it’s a place we will go.” He pointed out that when the social media giant Facebook proposed the cryptocurrency Libra , which is now called Diem, “We were not part of that.” Smith continued: “I think that the first question that the world needs to ask is is the world served best when private companies issue their own currency

On Wednesday, the digital entrepreneur Kim Dotcom took to Twitter and talked an awful lot about the stark differences between bitcoin fees and bitcoin cash fees. While tagging Tesla’s Elon Musk in the thread, Dotcom explained that more than half the payments in the world are under $10 and the Bitcoin Cash network is “serving the mass market, [and] not just the 1%.” Kim Dotcom: Bitcoin Cash Serves the Mass Market On March 24, the cryptocurrency community was ecstatic to hear about Tesla accepting bitcoin ( BTC ) for payments. Following the announcement from Tesla’s Elon Musk, the founder of the now-defunct file hosting service Megaupload, Kim Dotcom took to Twitter to discuss the situation. Dotcom has recently been promoting bitcoin cash ( BCH ) a great deal, as he believes the crypto asset offers a sustainable peer-to-peer electronic cash system . Bitcoin.com’s newsdesk interviewed Dotcom in mid-January and he told us his plans to “accelerate” BCH adoption. After the interview,

Fidelity has filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to launch a bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF). The ETF will track the price of bitcoin as measured by the performance of the Fidelity Bitcoin Index. Fidelity Seeks SEC’s Approval Launch a Bitcoin ETF FD Funds Management, a subsidiary of Fidelity, has revealed that it plans to provide financial backing for a bitcoin ETF called the Wise Origin Bitcoin Trust, CNBC reported. On Wednesday, the company filed a Form S-1, a preliminary registration statement for the fund, with the SEC. The filing explains that the Wise Origin Bitcoin Trust “is an exchange-traded fund that issues common shares” that will trade on a stock exchange, which has yet to be named, adding: The Trust’s investment objective is to seek to track the performance of bitcoin, as measured by the performance of the Fidelity Bitcoin Index PR … adjusted for the Trust’s expenses and other liabilities. The sponsor of the ETF is FD Funds Management w

PRESS RELEASE. The Foundation for Interwallet Operability (FIO) celebrates the first year anniversary since the community launched the mainnet of the open-source FIO protocol. With over one-hundred and fifty thousand users and some of the industry’s leading service providers such as ShapeShift, Coinomi, AscendEX (formerly Bitmax), Liquid.com and Edge integrating the FIO protocol, the team are on course to ensure cryptocurrency transactions are simple, private, secure and joyful. The FIO Protocol was designed to ensure the cryptocurrency user experience is uncomplicated and lays the foundation for cryptocurrency mass adoption. Long complex addresses have been replaced with user-customized FIO Addresses such as “user@fio” that enable decentralized sending, receiving and payment requests (invoices, order carts, etc.), as well as, cross-chain end-to-end encrypted metadata (the information for those invoices, order carts, etc.) that can work across all blockchains. Luke Stokes, Mana

Roughly 28 months ago, the decentralized exchange (dex) Uniswap version one (v1) was released and then in May 2020, version two was launched with new features. The dex is by far the largest decentralized trading platform among its competitors, as the exchange swapped $7.1 billion during the last seven days. On March 23, Uniswap launched version three, which features new elements like concentrated liquidity, advanced oracles, and multiple fee tiers. Developers Reveal Uniswap v3 When the cryptocurrency space was still young back in the early days, decentralized trading platforms were merely a vision. When a few did arrive many dex platforms struggled with the problem of providing enough liquidity. All of that has changed since the introduction of Uniswap , the decentralized finance (defi) protocol that provides users with automated onchain transactions between multiple parties. Uniswap has been the largest dex and automated market maker (AMM) for quite some time in terms of trade volu

PRESS RELEASE. The leading blockchain developer platform, Alchemy, will bring its best-in-class suite of APIs and tools to Flow blockchain, empowering Fortune 500 companies as well as thousands of independent developers building on Flow. Alchemy is the leading API platform for blockchain developers, already powering more than $25 billion in annual transaction volume on the Ethereum blockchain. Flow blockchain will be a milestone expansion beyond Ethereum for the San Francisco-based team. Home to leading consumer experiences like NBA Top Shot and upcoming titles such as Dr Seuss, MotoGP and UFC, Flow is witnessing unprecedented momentum in terms of developer traction, with over 1,000 developers and teams actively building on top of the network. “Alchemy’s mission is to enable blockchain developers to build the future, so the activity on NBA Top Shot and explosive growth of the overall ecosystem made the need to support Flow obvious.” said Nikil Viswanathan , CEO of Alchemy. “The d

The legal tussle between the U.S. authorities and John McAfee continues as his associate Jimmy Watson has entered a plea. The former antivirus tycoon’s bodyguard has pleaded not guilty to the alleged cryptocurrency fraud case. McAfee and Watson Jr. Are Accused of Having Built a ‘Pump and Dump’ Scheme According to court documents , Jimmy Gale Watson Jr. entered his plea before the Magistrate Judge Kevin Fox at the Southern District of New York. Watson Jr., a former navy seal, was arrested in Texas early this month, as the authorities indicted him with multiple charges that include money laundering and securities fraud. Law enforcement stated both McAfee and Watson allegedly “raked in more than $13 million” from crypto investors. The personal bodyguard of McAfee ostensibly served as an “executive adviser” of the “McAfee Team,” which was the website built to offer tips targeted to crypto traders, allegedly endorsed by the controversial tech entrepreneur. The DoJ announcement publish

Following the announcement by Grayscale Investments that it will be offering a trust that invests in Livepeer’s LPT, the token surged from just over $6 on March 17, 2021, to an all-time high (ATH) of $32.35 on March 21. LPT’s Four Day Surge The token’s four-day rally briefly saw its market capitalization rising to over $630 million up from just under $120 million. However, at the time of writing, LPT had retreated to $21 and the token’s market capitalization had similarly dropped to approximately $400 million. In addition to the LPT trust, Grayscale Investments had revealed the creation of Basic Attention (BAT), Decentraland (MANA), Chainlink, and Filecoin trusts. Yet only LPT appears to have responded more favorably to the announcement than the rest. To illustrate, MANA, which traded at $0.79 on the day of the announcement, briefly rose to just over $1. However, at the time of writing, MANA had retreated to $0.93. Similarly, BAT, which started March 17 trading at approxim

Major differences in the spot price for bitcoin and the cost of buying the cryptocurrency in the futures market create unique opportunities for traders. Several factors may be behind this development, but it could be bullish for the bitcoin price outlook no matter the catalyst. Curious Developments Could Highlight Supply Shortage or Heightened Derivatives Demand As bitcoin gradually matures and the ecosystem surrounding it expands further, the original cryptocurrency is increasingly behaving like a commodity. Thanks to a robust futures market that continues to grow, derivatives contracts on bitcoin also gain popularity and meaningfully impact its pricing structure. This has resulted in a unique development that has unfolded over the last several months. Known as “ contango ,” bitcoin futures contracts to be settled months down the road are trading at a significant premium to spot prices. This delivers a serious arbitrage opportunity that could temporarily result in relatively high

Non-fungible token (NFT) collectibles have been seeing relentless demand and publicity these days. While the Ethereum network has been the dominant force in this space, a great number of alternative blockchains have been introducing NFT support. In recent weeks, Bitcoin Cash proponents have been leveraging an NFT marketplace called juungle.net. The marketplace has a myriad of Simple Ledger Protocol (SLP)-based collections of NFTs for sale. Meet Juungle.net: A Bitcoin Cash NFT Marketplace Bitcoin cash fans have been recently introduced to a new non-fungible token (NFT) asset market called juungle.net . The market allows individuals to purchase SLP-based NFTs with bitcoin cash ( BCH ), and the NFTs can be stored for collecting purposes. At first, the Juungle web portal only had Waifu NFTs for sale, as the marketplace is still in its alpha development phase. Bitcoin.com’s newsdesk reported on Waifu NFTs in an editorial that teaches people how to create a non-fungible token (NFT) asse

PRESS RELEASE. Bitcoin.com Exchange is thrilled to announce the upcoming listing of XCUR on the 24th of March 2021 at 14:00 UTC. XCUR was created by the Curate team, under founding member James Hakim. For the time being, XCUR will be listed with USDT , with BTC and ETH trading pairs coming next month. What is Curate? Curate is the worlds first all in one marketplace app utilizing blockchain. Curate provides a fairer and more transparent open marketplace by offering an industry low 4% seller commission and provides buyers with zero fees when they use XCUR, curates native token, to purchase in-app. All buyers and sellers are also rewarded in XCUR on all transactions. Why choose XCUR? XCUR is a utility and reward-based cryptographic token which can be used to purchase in-app goods, accepted as a form of in-app payment for selling or staked to collect rewards for holding. XCUR tokens serve as a multi-use utility token offering users a wide number of use cases on both the Curate D

The tech giant seems to be changing its stance on being more friendly with the cryptocurrency sphere amid the current hype. Microsoft has been asking its Xbox gaming console users about the possibility of implementing payment methods, such as bitcoin. The Poll Is the First of Its Kind Released by the Tech Giant With Crypto Questions According to a post in Reddit , a user reported that Microsoft started to show polls with the topic “Payment Options,” surveying people with questions such as how they pay for their things in Xbox. One of the items asks Xbox users about their thoughts on the current range of options regarding the payment options available. However, the poll then puts out the following question: Which of these other payment methods would you like to use on Xbox (select all that apply)? Among the answers, “pay with bitcoin” ( BTC ) is one of Microsoft’s alternatives to the users. The survey concludes with a question that inquiries people about if they have ever decide

JMP Securities has predicted that “$1.5 trillion of incremental capital” could flow into bitcoin, an amount greater than the cryptocurrency’s current market cap. The firm sees more wealth management companies following Morgan Stanley’s example to offer bitcoin to their clients. “Around $30 trillion of assets in the U.S. retail wealth management industry currently do not have direct access to bitcoin,” he said. $1.5 Trillion Could Flow Into Bitcoin, Analyst Says San Francisco-based financial services firm with offices nationwide JMP Securities said last week that Morgan Stanley ‘s move to offer wealthy clients exposure to bitcoin is the “tip of the iceberg” and could result in $1.5 trillion flowing into the cryptocurrency. Devin Ryan is a managing director and equity research analyst covering investment banks, brokers, and asset managers at JMP Securities. He also serves as the firm’s Head of Business Development. JMP Group is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol J