Bitcoin News and Finance: What You Need to Know

The Technological District of Mar del Plata, Argentina, will host a massive crypto mining operation backed by a domestic startup accelerator. Lothal Mining is the company that will run the operations of the mining firm in the Argentinean city. Firm Will Mine Ethereum During the First Stage Per local newspaper La Capital , Grupo Neutrón invested almost 45 million pesos ($310,000), and there are plans to allocate additional funding of 200 million pesos ($2.21 million). The infrastructure is ready, and in a first stance, the firm will mine ethereum ( ETH ). However, the company plans to expand to other cryptocurrencies. The funding provided by the startup accelerator seeks to acquire hardware, refrigeration equipment, building the mining farm, hiring staff to perform electrical maintenance, among other activities. Also, officials of the Ministry of Industry of the Nation were in the mining farm to check the project’s launching. Maximiliano Gonzáles Kunz, Grupo Neutrón’s CEO, pointed...

Ripple chief executive officer Brad Garlinghouse said Friday that the company’s business in the Asia-Pacific region has not suffered from the ongoing regulatory issues in the U.S. Ripple’s Business in Asia and Japan Sees Growth Ripple is facing a $1.3 billion lawsuit from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In December, the SEC charged Ripple, creators of the eponymous XRP cryptocurrency, and its top executives with selling unregistered securities since 2013. The blockchain payments firm denies the charges, but that has not stopped a number of U.S. crypto exchanges, including Coinbase, from delisting XRP , the world’s seventh most valuable digital asset by market capitalization. Garlinghouse, who is accused of personally gaining up to $600 million from the unregistered sale of XRP in an ICO offering, told Reuters in a Mar. 5 interview that business in areas like Japan was flourishing. It (the lawsuit) has hindered activity in the United States, but it has not ...

American financial advisor Suze Orman says she loves bitcoin. She has provided some advice on how to invest in the cryptocurrency a month, noting that she prefers to buy bitcoin through Paypal’s crypto service because the payments giant has made it easy to do so. Suze Orman Loves Bitcoin Suze Orman said she loves bitcoin in an interview with Yahoo Finance published Friday where she shared her bitcoin investing strategy and advised listeners how they should start investing in the cryptocurrency. She founded the Suze Orman Financial Group in 1987 and her Suze Orman Show ran on CNBC from 2002 to 2015. She has written 10 consecutive New York Times bestsellers about personal finance and was named twice on Time Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people. In addition, she won two Emmy Awards and eight Gracie Awards. In 2016, she was appointed as a personal finance educator for the United States Army and Army Reserve. Orman was asked Friday, “what is your take on bitcoin?” Referen...

Global investment bank Goldman Sachs is seeing huge institutional demand for bitcoin with no signs of abating. A survey of Goldman’s institutional clients shows that 61% expect to increase their cryptocurrency holdings. Meanwhile, 76% say the price of bitcoin could reach $100,000 this year. Goldman Sachs Sees No Signs of Institutional Demand for Bitcoin Abating In a podcast published Friday, Mathew McDermott, head of Digital Assets for Goldman Sachs’ Global Markets Division, discusses the cryptocurrency trading environment for institutional investors. He explained that his team conducted a cryptocurrency survey across the firm’s institutional client base, from “hedge funds, to asset managers, to macro funds, to banks, to corporate treasurers, insurance, and pension funds.” He clarified that “all of our institutional client discussion is really focused around bitcoin.” His team received responses from 280 institutional clients and published the results of the survey this week. “Wha...

A number of National Basketball Association (NBA) team owners have formed an NBA blockchain advisory committee for the American professional basketball league. The advisory committee is composed of well known billionaires and blockchain advocates who own the teams the Nets, Mavs, Wizards, Celtics, Kings, and Jazz. Billionaire NBA Team Owners Invoke a Blockchain Advisory Committee for the National Basketball Association The American professional basketball league, the NBA, may incorporate blockchain and crypto solutions into the industry in the near future. Sportico.com contributors Scott Soshnick and Eben Novy-Williams discussed the new NBA blockchain committee with one of the members, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. Soshnick and Novy-Williams also mentioned the popular Flow blockchain application backed by Dapper Labs, which has been producing “NBA Top Shot” non-fungible token (NFT) assets. The Sportico authors say that NBA Top Shot sales have been very productive producing $30...

The cryptocurrency community is in a tizzy this weekend after the founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, tweeted about a new application that allows people to purchase tweets with ethereum. The application is called Valuables and it allows individuals to purchase a digital certificate of the tweet, which is signed and verified by the tweet’s creator. Tokenized Tweets for Sale Tokenization and non-fungible token (NFT) asset industry have swelled during the last six months and a great number of artists, celebrities, and social luminaries have jumped on the bandwagon. There have been 5,368,992 NFT sales equating to $381 million in sales to-date since nonfungible.com started tallying up the market history. Now a project called Valuables or the Web3 compatible web portal v.cent.co is attempting to make tweets valuable by tokenizing them via the Matic blockchain . But there is a lot of controversy over whether or not tweets can be valued and stored in a meaningful way on a blockchain. http...

A recent JP Morgan poll found that 22% of the respondents said their respective organizations were likely to trade or to invest in cryptocurrencies. This figure (22%) is double the percentage of respondents (11%) who said yes when asked if their respective organizations were already trading or were invested in cryptocurrencies. The Institutional Embrace of Cryptos According to a report , the findings of this latest poll represent fresh evidence that backs the claim that more mainstream institutions are embracing crypto assets. Already, since the start of the year 2021, major corporations like Tesla have revealed their cryptocurrency holdings. Similarly, large hedge funds like Blackrock have signaled their intention to get exposure to crypto-assets like bitcoin ( BTC ). Still, as the same report shows, an overwhelming majority (78%) of investors whose institutions are yet to embrace cryptos; said there were no plans to invest or to trade in cryptocurrencies. Additionally, nearly a...

A U.S. District Court has indicted three individuals behind the now-defunct Geek Group for their role in running an illegal money transmission business that used bitcoin to move funds across states. According to the indictment documents, it was Christopher Allan Boden then president of the Geek Group, who “sold bitcoin to numerous customers, in exchange for U.S. currency, primarily cash.” Violation of Money Transmission Laws The indictment of Boden and his accomplices comes more than two years after federal law enforcement raided the Michigan-based not-for-profit organization. Immediately after the raid, the Geek Group, which had previously been involved in charity work, announced the shut down of the organization. Meanwhile, as the indictment documents show , Boden would obtain the BTC from Daniel Reynold Dejager, who lived in Washington. As part of their conspiracy, Dejager would “periodically travel to Michigan to meet with Boden.” According to their adopted practice, Boden a...

A major Russian mining firm is facing legal troubles in St. Petersburg, as three individuals are accusing the company of fraud. Cryptouniverse will now face a trial after a city court issued a criminal case order during the week. A District Court Rejected to Launch a Criminal Case Against the Firm in 2020 According to RBC , the St. Petersburg City Court accepted the appeal of three customers of Cryptouniverse — a bitcoin ( BTC ) and litecoin ( LTC ) miner founded in 2018 — and considered the case should go before a trial. At first, the legal case against the firm made the headlines in August 2020. Businessman Alexei Burik launched the legal initiative, who claimed that Cryptouniverse allegedly embezzled his crypto mining equipment and his mined coins worth 25 million rubles ($340,000). At the time, the Kuibyshevsky District Court rejected the police decision to launch a criminal case on fraud, with the trio now involved, after the mining company filed an appeal. As the St. Peters...

PRESS RELEASE. The Taraxa Foundation, a non-profit body supervising research and development of the Taraxa project, announced a public sale kicking off on March 4 at 6 PM PST . The token sale follows the launch of Taraxa’s public testnet and the release of a flagship application , with the main purpose of distributing TARA tokens to community members and funding ongoing technology and community development. Participants will be required to provide documentation and verify their eligibility in order to participate. The offer is not being made within the United States or to any U.S. persons (as defined under U.S. federal securities laws). TARA token purchasing options and allocation The token sale will take place from March 4 till March 15, with pre-registration starting at 6 PM PST on March 4. This is the first public sale held by the company after the 2018 private rounds led by Fenbushi Capital (an early investor in Ethereum), KuCoin, and LongHash Ventures. Through the sale, inves...

Tech entrepreneur and former anti-virus tycoon John McAfee has been indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) on money laundering and fraud charges. The United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York and the FBI unsealed the indictment charging McAfee and his associate Jimmy Watson with securities fraud. John McAfee Indicted by US Law Enforcement for Fraud and Money Laundering Tied to Crypto Schemes According to a press release published by the DoJ on March 5, John McAfee has been indicted for a number of charges tied to his cryptocurrency operations and his so-called “McAfee Team.” The Federal Attorney, FBI, and DoJ also charged McAfee’s alleged partner Jimmy Watson, who purportedly served as an “executive adviser” to McAfee’s alleged cryptocurrency squad. McAfee and Watson have been charged with “conspiracy to commit commodities and securities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities and touting fraud, wire fraud conspiracy and substantive wire fraud, and mon...

While bitcoin prices have been coasting along between $46k to $48k during the last three days a number of proponents are still bullish about the crypto asset’s long-term value. On Thursday, Kraken CEO Jesse Powell said that he thinks bitcoin could easily reach a million-dollar valuation per coin. “When you measure it in terms of dollars, you have to think it’s going to infinity,” Powell insists. Bitcoin to Infinity and Beyond During the last few weeks as bitcoin ( BTC ) prices saw a climactic rise above the $58k handle a number of crypto proponents and analysts think BTC could region six-digits in USD value. There have been a lot of calls suggesting BTC will reach $100k this year and even people who say it could hit $200 to $350k per unit. After bitcoin touched an all-time high (ATH) on February 19, 2021, on Thursday the CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange Kraken told Bloomberg reporter Lynn Thomasson that he believes the leading asset could make it to $1 million someday. In 20...

As bitcoin prices keep exchanging hands above the $48k handle as of press time, South Korea notices a particular growing trend in a specific profile of crypto investors. A recent study revealed that a new era of “crypto moms” is emerging across the board in the country. Millennials Are Lagging Far Behind, Says Study Per Maeil Kyungjae , citing data from research firm Wiseapp, females aged 40-49 in the Asian country have been actively buying bitcoin (BTC) in recent weeks. The data was collected via major domestic exchanges such as Upbit and Bithumb. The report calls this trend the “second boom” of cryptocurrencies in South Korea, as females surveyed were mostly mothers. According to the figures, over 30% of Bithumb and Upbit users belong to that age range, while 21% are over 50 years old. On the other hand, millennials are losing ground in holding cryptos, as the numbers unveiled that only 19% of the users are just aged 20-29. In contrast, teenagers are at the bottom with just 1.5...

Cipher Mining, a bitcoin mining operation of Bitfury, has announced that it is going public via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). The deal values the combined company at $2 billion, with funding from investors such as Morgan Stanley and Fidelity. Cipher Mining Technologies Inc., a newly formed U.S.-based bitcoin mining operation of Bitfury, announced Friday it will go public through a merger with Good Works Acquisition Corp. (Nasdaq: GWAC). The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter. According to Cipher Mining, the deal values the combined company at $2 billion and “will provide the merged entity with gross cash proceeds of $595 million, which includes $425 million from investors including Fidelity Management & Research Company and Morgan Stanley’s Counterpoint Global,” Reuters reported . The deal is also backed by 25 other institutions. The merged company, to be named Cipher Mining Inc., is expected to be listed on Nasdaq under t...

Galileo Exchange is an innovative ‘hybrid’ trading platform built with elements of a crypto exchange, a DeFi project, and a gaming platform. It combines these essential elements to bring trustworthiness, innovation, value and entertainment. Among the most interesting features it introduces are the Gelt (GLT) token and ‘Zero Edge’ trading. Zero Fees, Zero Spread, Zero Commissions Galileo Exchange is a breakthrough in trader engagement, fun, and profitability. The platform is designed for leveling the playing field by removing all frictions to trading, offering excellent user experience, super-fast action, high-profit potential, and generous incentives. It is powered by the GLT token, guaranteed to return 100% of funds wagered back to its users. The Galileo platform has elements of a Crypto exchange, a DeFi project, and a Gaming platform. As an exchange, traders can speculate on the price movement of hybrid digital assets; as a DeFi project, it has a token (GLT) with multiple use ca...