Bitcoin News and Finance: What You Need to Know

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has introduced an action against Terraform Labs, the company behind the design of the Terra blockchain, and its co-founder and CEO Do Kwon. The SEC is seeking an order for Kwon to comply with a series of subpoenas he has failed to address. The investigative subpoenas seek Kwon’s testimony and the production of documents from Terraform Labs SEC Acts Against Terraform Labs and Do Kwon The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has taken the next step in its battle against Terraform Labs, the company behind Terra, and its co-founder and CEO Do Kwon. According to a litigation release, the SEC has filed an order that seeks to compel the company to comply with a series of subpoenas the SEC delivered to Kwon, which he has failed to address. According to the document, these subpoenas include petitions for Kwon’s testimony and also the production of documents from Terraform Labs. These actions are part of an investi

This year, the Sky Mavis-crafted blockchain game Axie Infinity has seen incredible growth and has recently surpassed $3 billion in all-time sales. However, researchers at Naavik explain in a recent study that Axie Infinity players called ‘scholars’ are seeing daily earnings drop, and many have seen earnings dip below the minimum wage line of countries like the Philippines. Naavik Researchers Take a Deep Dive Into Axie Infinity — ‘Scholar’ Earnings Have Been Dropping Since August The Ethereum-based blockchain game Axie Infinity is one of the most popular video games hosted on a distributed ledger network. The game was developed by a studio called Sky Mavis , and as of this week metrics from dappradar.com indicate the game has seen $3.23 billion in all-time non-fungible token (NFT) sales. Sky Mavis launched the game in 2018 and the company is headquartered in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Bitcoin.com News has covered the project on various occasions and just recently Sky Mavis revealed

In development since 2018, Integritee AG’s solution enables sensitive business or personal data to be securely handled in an interoperable blockchain ecosystem. Using a hybrid of blockchain technology and hardware-enabled trusted execution environments, it enables businesses to securely process sensitive data, aiding compliance with privacy laws like GDPR. Alain Brenzikofer is the CTO and Co-founder of Integritee Network . He recently joined the Bitcoin.com News Podcast to talk about the technology and the business: Project initiator and Head of Decentralized Systems at Supercomputing Systems AG. MSc from ETH Zurich. Brings vast experience designing and delivering high quality IT and blockchain client-projects. Alain has been involved and active as a thought leader in the blockchain space since 2013. To name a few of his accomplishments, he has actively contributed to Quartierstrom peer-to-peer energy markets as well as the driving force behind Encointer, a crypto-based univers

Skybridge Capital’s founder says bitcoin “will easily trade at $500,000 a coin,” noting that investors should buy some right now, even at the current price. “I’m trying to do my best to explain to them why they need to own this right now,” he said, emphasizing that we are still “very, very early.” ‘These Coins Will Easily Trade at $500K a Coin’ Anthony Scaramucci, the founder and managing partner of New York City-based investment firm Skybridge Capital, commented on the U.S. economy, inflation, and bitcoin on CNBC Friday. Scaramucci briefly served as the White House director of communications during the Trump administration in July 2017. He was asked whether he advises people to buy bitcoin at the current price of around $64,000. Scaramucci promptly replied, “no question about that.” At the current BTC price level, he said, “I still believe we are very, very early.” He noted that if Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood is correct and there are “a billion wallets at the end of 2024 into the

Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary, aka Mr. Wonderful, has some advice on how to get into bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies. “It’s a wonderful universe. It’s a fantastic asset. It’s a must-own if you’re an investor,” O’Leary said. He also revealed that his crypto exposure has grown to about 10%. Kevin O’Leary Has Some Advice for New Crypto Investors Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary, chairman of O’Shares ETFs, gave some advice for new investors wanting to get into bitcoin or the crypto space for the first time during an interview with Bitcoin Magazine, published early this month. O’Leary was asked, “Do you have any advice for people curious about bitcoin or just getting into the space?” He replied: I really advise them to explore this asset and the way to do it is to start small, start to understand the platforms. Are you going to buy it through a centralized wallet? Are you going to decentralize? Try all the options, learn by experience. He added: “The thing about bitcoin is you need

Crypto exchange Coinbase has been meeting with a number of regulators to convince them that the U.S. should have just one federal regulator overseeing the crypto sector. Currently, there is a variety of different regulators in the U.S., CEO Brian Armstrong explained, noting that Coinbase has “53 regulators in just one country, the United States.” Coinbase Wants One Regulator in the US The Nasdaq-listed cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is pushing for the U.S. to have just one crypto regulator. “We’ve met with a number of different regulators out there … on a regular basis … I had a meeting last week with the chairman of the SEC, Chair [Gary] Gensler, which I think was very productive,” Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said during the company’s Q3 earnings call last week. “There’s a variety of different regulators in the United States … There’s the CFTC [Commodity Futures Trading Commission], the SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission], the Treasury. And then, of course, we have state

A government official in Rivne region of Ukraine owns close to $8 million in cryptocurrency and 500 Tesla shares, his declaration shows. The news comes as another Ukrainian lawmaker in Kyiv has found it hard to prove possession of the crypto holdings on her asset statement. Ukraine Officials Declare Crypto Assets, Fail to Provide Proof of Ownership Crypto investments have enjoyed a growing popularity among Ukrainian politicians in recent years, mandatory asset statements have revealed. According to recent media reports , a member of the Virovsky Village Council in the western Rivne Oblast has declared having 124 BTC worth almost $8 million in today’s prices. Vladimir Pachesny acquired the coins in early 2013 for 73,920 hryvnia at the time of purchase, a little over $2,800, using the latest exchange rate of the inflated Ukrainian fiat currency. In 2019, the 36-year-old local deputy also bought 500 shares of the U.S. electric vehicle company Tesla which pushed crypto prices up this

After becoming one of the top non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces, the Tezos-based NFT market Hic et nunc has discontinued its services. After more than $50 million in all-time sales on the market, Hic et nunc’s creator has not disclosed why the NFT marketplace was shut down. Tezos-Based NFT Marketplace Shuts Down A popular non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace that leveraged the Tezos network has closed down its business and has not explained why. The now-defunct NFT market is called Hic et nunc and it was one of the top twenty NFT markets in terms of all-time sales. At the time before its closure, dappradar.com metrics show Hic et nunc was the 14th largest NFT marketplace in terms of all-time sales. Has anyone deciphered wtf happened here? https://t.co/1xOhZOjV2r — 2kew (@2kew4u) November 12, 2021 At press time, the Hic et nunc front end is not operating and it gives a server error explaining that the server cannot be found. Although, other affiliated links like hen101.x

Bitcoin advocates are celebrating the successful implementation of the Taproot upgrade after block height 709,632. The upgrade was highly anticipated as it was one of the biggest changes since the introduction of Segregated Witness (Segwit) in 2017. After the upgrade was completed, the Bitcoin community discussed the slew of benefits Taproot and Schnorr signatures have to offer and have started measuring Taproot usage as well. Taproot Has Been Activated on the Bitcoin Blockchain At 12:15 a.m. (EST) at block height 709,632, at difficulty period 352, Taproot was officially activated on the Bitcoin ( BTC ) blockchain. The upgrade was long-awaited as it’s an improvement that’s taken seven years to complete. 709632 🎇 — jack⚡️ (@jack) November 14, 2021 Taproot allows users to operate Bitcoin scripts in a myriad of ways in order to improve privacy, scalability, and security. Combining Taproot with an improvement called Schnorr signatures allows for more compact transactions and k

PRESS RELEASE. Miami, FL – As the first and only company publicly known to date to use blockchain technology to fight depression and anxiety, FivebalanceUSA is one of a handful of Companies listed on Coinmarketcap and trading on exchanges that has a real product fighting real world problems. The Company has just signed a linkage agreement with V.O.A to provide services. Fivebalance trades on the Mercatox exchange under the ticker symbol FBN. At time of writing it’s current price is well under a quarter of a penny. This is significant for a number of reasons which will be laid out in this article. Fivebalance has just over 1 billion coins in circulation as verified on Coinmarketcap. The order books on Mercatox exchange look extremely thin, so much that 50 dollar transactions move the price. When speaking with the CEO James McCoy, he has said he wants to see a minimum of 10 cents, but he believed fair value to be a dollar per coin. When asked for the reasoning behind those numbers,

Dutch authorities have seized more than 25 million euros in cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin and ether, from dozens of suspects in criminal cases. “Cryptocurrencies are widely used as a means of payment for various types of crime,” said the Netherlands’ Public Prosecution Service. Authorities in the Netherlands Seize More Than 25 Million Euros in Cryptocurrencies, Including Bitcoin and Ether The Netherlands’ Public Prosecution Service announced last week that it has seized more than 25 million euros ($28.6 million) in cryptocurrencies in recent months in collaboration with two other agencies. The Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD), the National Criminal Investigation Service (DLR), and the Public Prosecution Service (OM) collaborated on various investigations in which the emphasis was on seizing crypto wallets, the announcement details. The FIOD is an agency of the government of the Netherlands responsible for investigating financial crimes. The National Crimin

Following the Securities and Exchange Commission’s rejection of Vaneck’s bitcoin spot market exchange-traded fund (ETF) on Friday, a number of cryptocurrency advocates discussed the subject this weekend. For instance, the veteran FX trader Peter Brandt told his 581,700 Twitter followers that bitcoin maximalists “should oppose” a spot market bitcoin ETF. Bitcoiner Preston Pysh said bitcoin could care less “about the approval of a spot ETF.” Crypto Community Discusses Recent Bitcoin ETF Rejection — Peter Brandt Says ‘Let’s Not Encourage Wall Street to Convert Bitcoin Into a Vending Machine Asset’ During the first week of November, U.S. lawmakers urged the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to approve bitcoin spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs). But on November 12, the U.S. regulator rejected Vaneck’s bitcoin spot ETF and cited a lack of prevention toward “fraudulent and manipulative acts and practices” in the market. The rejection also follows the approval of the first bitcoin E

The Russian Ministry of Interior has rejected a request filed by clients of Wex to do its part in the blocking of crypto funds removed from a wallet controlled by the now-defunct crypto exchange. Over 10,000 ETH have been recently withdrawn from the wallet and transferred to other platforms. Wex Victims Try to Freeze $46 Million of Cryptocurrency Lost to Bankrupt Russian Exchange The Investigation Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia (MVD) has refused to act on a request from victims of crypto exchange Wex to take steps aimed at seizing digital assets worth $45.9 million withdrawn from one of its wallets in September. Details were shared on social media by the CEO of Indefibank Sergey Mendeleev who quoted an official document from the department. The former Wex users have provided the MVD with a detailed scheme of how the funds were transferred from the wallet to other crypto platforms, Forklog reported . They also submitted data from an analytics tool to prov

A South Africa and London-based fintech startup, JUMO, recently revealed it has raised $120 million in a funding round led by Fidelity Management & Research Company. AI-Powered Financial Services According to a report by Techcrunch, financial services giant Visa and Kingsway Capital also participated in the funding round, which now sees JUMO valued at $400 million. This latest capital influx comes a year after the startup successfully raised $55 million in what the report calls a similar but unnamed funding round. JUMO, which was founded in 2015 by founder and CEO Andrew Watkins-Ball, claims to use AI to power financial services, particularly lending in emerging markets where over 1.7 billion people do not have basic access to financial services. So far, the fintech has reportedly served loans worth over $3.5 billion to more than 18 million customers across these markets, granting up to 120 million individual loans. Although JUMO claims to have the opportunity to disburse $29

Santander, a leading financial institution in Spain, is preparing to offer a Bitcoin ETF to its customers in the country. This, while Spanish asset managers have been largely reluctant to embrace crypto products as part of their investment portfolio offerings to customers. Santander Bitcoin ETF in Preparation Santander will be giving the finishing touches to a Bitcoin ETF product in Spain, according to reports from local sources. This reportedly positions the company to be the only financial institution interested in offering this type of product to its customers in Spain. Santander’s Executive Chairman Ana Botín declared that the institution has had a team working on this offering for some time. She stated: Our clients want to buy bitcoin, but we have been quite slow to adopt it due to regulatory issues. We are now about to offer crypto ETFs. The fact is that most asset managers in Spain are still reluctant to put their funds in cryptocurrency-based investments, at least dome

This week Universal Music Group, the Dutch–American multinational music corporation announced the formation of a non-fungible token (NFT) metaverse music group called Kingship, which features four Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFTs. Following the announcement, the hit record producer Timbaland revealed the creation of a metaverse-based entertainment company called Ape-In Productions (AIP), which will also leverage BAYC NFTs. Universal Music Group Reveals BAYC NFT Supergroup Called Kingship While non-fungible token (NFT) collectibles have been all the rage this year, one particular collection called Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) has turned a lot of heads in terms of sales and popularity. Data shows that BAYC has an overall market valuation of $1.82 billion and the collection has seen $658 million in all-time sales volume, according to dappradar.com statistics. BAYC’s trade volume has been among 9,296 traders across 22,122 sales. The average sale price for a single BAYC NFT on November

PRESS RELEASE. The blockchain industry is an ever-evolving world and Litentry is at the forefront of this revolution. Litentry intends to create a truly decentralized identity aggregation solution that will power web 3.0 applications. Its blockchain architecture is advanced and has witnessed massive growth due to its application in different sectors. Litentry has also created a DID Startups Programs that incentivizes innovative teams to build products that will add value to its blockchain. To continue its growth, Litentry has applied for a Polkadot Parachain slot that will transform its ecosystem. This article will open your imagination into the future of web 3.0 that can be achieved when Litentry gets a parachain. A decentralized ecosystem for innovative projects Litentry has built an innovative decentralized based identity ecosystem that has attracted several projects to its blockchain protocol. One of such projects is the Polkadot Naming System (PNS). PNS intends to introduc

Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris has said he remains bullish on gold and has no intention to invest in cryptocurrencies like bitcoin because such investment is a very risky business. Sawiris Says Gold Still Safe-Haven Asset In his remarks published by The National News, the billionaire reveals he believes it is wrong for people to make comparisons between gold and bitcoin. Sawiris, who is also the executive chairman of Cairo-based Orascom Investment Holding, insists gold is still the safe-haven asset. “I’m still very bullish [on gold] and it is a safe haven. People now are comparing Bitcoin with gold; it’s a wrong comparison,” said the billionaire. As a sign of his endorsement of gold ahead of cryptocurrency, one of the companies that Sawiris backs, AKH Gold, is reported to have signed a deal to explore nine blocks in Egypt’s gold-rich Eastern Desert. Similarly, La Mancha Holding — the company which the billionaire chairs — is reported to have launched a $1.4 billion investmen

Goldman Sachs’ head of energy research says, “Just like we argue that silver is the poor man’s gold, gold is maybe becoming the poor man’s crypto.” He sees funds starting to flow from gold into bitcoin as inflation fears escalate, noting that “We’ve argued historically that crypto and gold do not have to cannibalize each other.” Goldman Sachs on Gold and Bitcoin Damian Courvalin, Head of Energy Research at Goldman Sachs, talked about the outlook for gold and crypto in an interview with Bloomberg Thursday. He was asked whether he sees any evidence of investors using other assets, including bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, to hedge against inflation other than gold. “I think it’s actually starting,” he replied, adding: “We’ve argued historically that crypto and gold do not have to cannibalize each other.” Admitting that “it’s a fact, we have seen substitution recently,” he detailed: Just like we argue that silver is the poor man’s gold, gold is maybe becoming the poor man’s crypto.

A former CEO of Citigroup said that every major bank and securities firm will consider crypto trading or services within one to three years. He also hopes that central banks worldwide will adopt digital currencies. Former Citi CEO Expects All Major Banks to Embrace Crypto in 1-3 Years Indian-American banker Vikram Pandit, a former CEO of Citigroup, talked about the outlook for cryptocurrency and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) at the Singapore Fintech Festival event last week. Pandit became the CEO of Citigroup in December 2007 and led the U.S. bank during the financial crisis. Prior to Citi, he joined Morgan Stanley in 1983 and ultimately became president and chief operating officer of the company’s institutional securities and investment banking businesses. He co-founded investment firm Orogen in 2016 where he currently serves as the chairman and CEO. He explained at the fintech conference that all major financial institutions will soon be thinking about trading or provi

Another major cryptocurrency exchange has added support for the meme cryptocurrency shiba inu. Gemini has begun supporting SHIB alongside a few new defi, metaverse, infrastructure, and data management tokens. Meanwhile, the petition for Robinhood to list the shiba inu crypto has garnered more than 531K signatures. Shiba Inu (SHIB) Now Supported on Gemini Cryptocurrency exchange Gemini announced its support for the meme cryptocurrency shiba inu (SHIB) Friday. The company wrote: We are delighted to announce support for shiba inu (SHIB) as well as a range of new defi, metaverse, infrastructure, and data management tokens. The exchange detailed: “shiba inu (SHIB), audius (AUDIO), mask network (MASK), wrapped centrifuge (WCFG), quant (QNT), radicle (RAD), burn (ASH), superrare (RARE), fetch.ai (FET), and numeraire (NMR) are now supported for deposits and custody on Gemini.” The company added: We believe these tokens will provide value to our users and will continue to support defi

Visa’s head of crypto sees a “whole new class” of mainstream consumers entering the crypto space due to non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The executive f urther says: “Crypto is becoming cultural. It’s becoming cool.” Visa’s Executive: ‘Crypto Is Becoming Cultural, It’s Becoming Cool’ Cuy Sheffield, Visa’s head of crypto, talked about cryptocurrency during a panel discussion early this week at the Singapore Fintech Festival. He explained that a “whole new class” of mainstream consumers are entering the crypto space because of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The Visa executive added that people who are interested in art, music, or culture are “setting up crypto wallets in waves,” noting that they are excited to create their own NFTs and support other creators. Before the NFT boom, Sheffield said crypto assets mainly attracted people who are interested in gold and finance. “It used to be that if you were investing in crypto, you were kind of weird,” he opined, elaborating: Crypto is becomi

PRESS RELEASE. ChangeHero instant cryptocurrency exchange listed SHIB on its platform. Customers can exchange SHIB against over 80 cryptocurrencies without an account. Now crypto enthusiasts can easily exchange or buy SHIB not only with Ethereum based tokens but also with cryptocurrencies of different blockchains. To celebrate the listing, ChangeHero announced a zero fees exchange offer for SHIB. Users can exchange SHIB to any other cryptocurrency or the other way around without any fees. The offer is valid until November 15, 2021, and available only on the web version of the platform. One can make a simple exchange with SHIB using the Best Rate type of transaction on ChangeHero. Please note that the zero fees exchange offer is not valid for the Fixed Rate type of transaction. There are no additional requirements such as a registration for the users to enjoy the offer. Furthermore, there is no maximum limit on the amount of SHIB that can be exchanged in a transaction. About Shiba