Bitcoin News and Finance: What You Need to Know

USDC, the second most popular stablecoin in the cryptocurrency market, is late in releasing its attestations, which are documents that certify the number of dollars the custodian Centre holds in banks. The last attestation available for the currency dates back to February when the currency had a market cap of nine billion dollars. This fact and the sudden growth the cryptocurrency experienced in the last few months is raising alarms about the delay of these documents. Centre’s USDC Runs Late in Its Attestation Reports USDC, one of the biggest stablecoins in the crypto market today, is late producing its attestation documents, according to data taken from its own transparency website. The attestations, that are scheduled to be produced monthly have stopped, with the last one dealing with February’s funds released last April 27, a considerable delay from its normal issuance date. There has not been a public disclosure of why the tardiness is happening from any of the people who have...

Nobel laureate and professor at Yale University, Robert Shiller, is tempted by the crypto market. He is mulling over investing in cryptocurrency to experience the market. “I never bought bitcoin. Maybe I should be active in that market,” he said. Yale Professor and Nobel Prize Winner Mulls Over Getting Into Crypto Nobel laureate Robert Shiller talked about cryptocurrency in an interview with CNBC, published Sunday. Shiller won The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel in 2013 alongside Eugene Fama, Lars Peter Hansen “for their empirical analysis of asset prices,” The Nobel Prize’s website details. He is currently Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University. Shiller is concerned about the current housing market, stocks, and cryptocurrencies, stating that he sees a “wild west” mentality among investors in these markets. Discussing the crypto market in particular, Shiller said “That’s a very psychological market. It’s impressive technology.” Ho...

Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio has revealed that he owns bitcoin despite concerns he has long voiced about governments interfering and even outlawing cryptocurrencies. The boss of the world’s largest hedge fund said “bitcoin’s greatest risk is its success.” Ray Dalio Got Bitcoin Ray Dalio, the founder of the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, has revealed that he owns bitcoin. In an interview at the Consensus 2021 conference, which was recorded on May 6 but released Monday, he said : I have some bitcoin. Dalio is the co-founder and chief investment officer of Bridgewater Associates, whose clients include endowments, governments, foundations, pensions, and sovereign wealth funds. Emphasizing that bitcoin is still small and not a threat to governments, he noted that if it succeeds, “one of the great things, I think, as a worry is the government having the capacity to control … bitcoin, or digital currencies. They know where they are, and they know what’...

There have been two back-to-back flash loan attacks in a short period of time stemming from two unique Binance Smart Chain decentralized finance (defi) projects. Last Wednesday, the yield-farming platform Pancakebunny lost close to $3 million in a flash loan attack according to reports. The following Sunday, Bogged Finance saw $3 million exploited from a flash loan attack. Pancakebunny Gets Hit by a Flash Loan Attack – $3 Million Drained Ever since hackers leveraged flash loans to attack the defi margin trading protocol Bzx, flash loans have been a common attack in the defi world. Flash loans are a type of scheme that allows the issuance of loans within a single transaction or attack. Besides average people leveraging the flash loan construct for fun, malicious actors have found attack parameters in order to drain funds from defi projects. This past week between a five-day period, there were two flash loan attacks that saw around $6 million in total taken from both projects combi...

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has spoken with North American bitcoin miners and they have committed to forming a Bitcoin Mining Council to “promote energy usage transparency & accelerate sustainability initiatives worldwide.” They have also agreed to publish their current and planned renewable usage. The meeting was hosted by Microstrategy CEO Michael Saylor. Elon Musk and Michael Saylor Say Miners Have Agreed to Form Bitcoin Mining Council The Technoking of Tesla, Elon Musk, announced on Twitter Monday that he has spoken with bitcoin miners. He wrote: Spoke with North American bitcoin miners. They committed to publish current & planned renewable usage & to ask miners worldwide to do so. Potentially promising. Microstrategy CEO Michael Saylor immediately tweeted explaining: Yesterday I was pleased to host a meeting between Elon Musk and the leading bitcoin miners in North America. The miners have agreed to form the Bitcoin Mining Council to promote energy usage transparen...

Yield Farming protocol DYP has launched its long-awaited DYP Tools. DYP Tools V1 is a decentralized tools dashboard built with features that will increase the use cases for DYP Token and the entire DeFi ecosystem. The tool dashboard serves as a liquidity locker for any DeFi project and protects the DeFi community by providing a decentralized trust score for all DeFi. The launch of the DYP Tools V1 is a significant milestone for the yield farming protocol, and the dashboard tool is equipped with extensive features. Some of these include UniSwap Watchman, Pool Explorer, Unique Community Trust Vote System, Big Swap Explorer, DYP Locker, Top Tokens Page, Yield Farm Data, and many more. Let’s look at some of the features. Comprehensive data aggregator DYP has integrated a UniSwap Watchman option that aggregates data from Uniswap V2 smart contracts periodically. The data is transformed into the proper format and takes care of storing and sending it within the DYP Tools core. The Pool Ex...

Vitalik Buterin, one of the most renowned Ethereum founders, has rebuffed Elon Musk’s take on fixing cryptocurrencies in a new paper where he details the limits of blockchain scalability. Buterin touches on three subjects: storage, bandwidth, and computing power, commenting on their limits with today’s tech. Vitalik Buterin Criticizes Elon Musk’s Simplistic Take Vitalik Buterin, the founder of the second most successful cryptocurrency (Ethereum), criticized yesterday Elon Musk’s take on fixing cryptocurrencies just by raising some key aspects. In a new paper titled “The Limits to Blockchain Scalability,” Buterin sends a pair of jabs to Elon, asking in its very first paragraph: Can you really, as Elon Musk wishes , “speed up block time 10X, increase block size 10X & drop fee 100X” without leading to extreme centralization and compromising the fundamental properties that make a blockchain what it is? Buterin, who has always been worried about blockchain adoption, then goes on...

According to this week’s data, cryptocurrency trade volume touched an all-time high on May 20, reaching $1.76 trillion in reported 24-hour volume. Daily trade volume statistics for Monday have been high, as reported volume from crypto market aggregators shows over $300 billion in 24-hour volume. Meanwhile, stablecoins capture 50% of Monday’s global trade volume with tokens like tether, binance usd, and usd coin leading the pack. Reported Crypto Exchange Volumes Worldwide Capture Lifetime Highs Out of all the volume reported across the crypto economy’s lifetime, May 2021 saw the highest cryptocurrency trade volume in history. In fact, on May 20, the reported volume across hundreds of crypto exchanges shows an all-time high (ATH) of $1.76 trillion in daily volume. The reported volume for bitcoin ( BTC ) on Monday is around $71 billion in global swaps. Statistics indicate that April saw a significant amount of trade volume as well, nearing a trillion when it tapped a 30-day high at $...

Global investment bank Goldman Sachs now considers bitcoin an investable asset. “Clients and beyond are largely treating it as a new asset class, which is notable — it’s not often that we get to witness the emergence of a new asset class,” said Goldman Sachs’ analyst. Goldman Sachs Now Considers Bitcoin an Investable Asset Goldman Sachs published a research note on cryptocurrency this week stating that bitcoin has become an investable asset, a reverse of its earlier stance. Mathew McDermott, the bank’s global head of digital assets, wrote : Bitcoin is now considered an investable asset. It has its own idiosyncratic risk, partly because it’s still relatively new and going through an adoption phase. “And it doesn’t behave as one would intuitively expect relative to other assets given the analogy to digital gold; to date, it’s tended to be more aligned with risk-on assets,” he continued, elaborating: Clients and beyond are largely treating it as a new asset class, which is notabl...

U.S. Congressman Jim Himes says that Congress is not ready to pass cryptocurrency legislation anytime soon, citing a lack of deep understanding of cryptocurrencies among lawmakers. “There’s going to be a lot of discussion in the coming years about ways to regulate” cryptocurrencies, said the congressman. Crypto Legislation Not Expected From Congress Anytime Soon U.S. Representative Jim Himes has revealed some discussions Congress is having regarding cryptocurrency legislation in an interview with Yahoo Finance Friday. The Connecticut representative serves as the chair of the National Security, International Development and Monetary Policy Subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee. He previously worked at investment bank Goldman Sachs for 12 years. His crypto comments came as the U.S. Treasury published a proposal to require businesses to report crypto transactions above $10K to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Himes said that Congress is not ready to act on crypto...

As cryptocurrency regulation heats up worldwide, South Korean officials have been increasing regulatory discussions concerning the swelling crypto economy. While digital currency markets like bitcoin have tumbled in value in recent times, global crypto market prices have increased across the board on Monday. In South Korea, crypto-assets like bitcoin are once again experiencing a ‘kimchi premium,’ as the price per bitcoin is 8% higher than the global average. Bithumb and Korbit Bitcoin Exchange Rates Indicate Bitcoin Premiums Are Returning The ‘kimchi premium’ in South Korea has returned, following the market carnage that plagued digital currency prices last week and into the weekend. Global averages show that crypto-assets like bitcoin ( BTC ) and ethereum ( ETH ) have jumped significantly in value . BTC is up 10% and ETH has gained 20% during the last 24 hours. At 8:42 a.m. (EST), bitcoin’s global average tapped a daily high of $38,800 per coin. However, in South Korea, BTC pr...

Following some stern warnings from a few major trade associations and regulators in China, two prominent exchanges, Huobi and Okex, have stopped offering services to Chinese residents. After the two exchanges halted specific services to residents of mainland China, two bitcoin mining operations have also abandoned the country on Monday. Btc.top and Hashcow have suspended services over “regulatory risks.” Crypto Firms Are Abandoning China Two mining operations have revealed specific services have been suspended for residents living in mainland China. The news follows the recent announcement from Huobi and Okex when the firms announced this weekend that specific services would be halted for Chinese citizens. There’s been a flurry of government announcements stemming from China and the first warning was published on May 19. Last 48 hours have been crazy. So what will happen & what has already happened? Here are some initial thoughts: 1, This is first time such high ranking memb...

PRESS RELEASE. On what could be tagged as the worst day of crypto this year, African-founded exchange, Quidax, raised over 7,772 BNB from the public sale of its token, QDX. The crypto market suffered its first major dip in 2021 on Thursday, May 19, 2021 with Bitcoin dropping as low as $30,000 from highs of $64,000. In spite of this, the public sale of QDX sold out in less than 48 hours. Recently, Quidax announced that it had processed over $3 billion in transaction volume since its launch in 2018 with over 400,000 customers across more than 70 countries. In the announcement, Quidax also shared a shift from its African-focused strategy to becoming the global home of BEP20 tokens. Next Steps for Quidax On Friday, the exchange revealed that $QDX will be listed on its platform and DeFi platform, JulSwap, from Sunday, 23rd May, where anyone will be able to trade QDX. Quidax also unveiled its QDX roadmap that highlights the next developments within the QDX ecosystem. The revelati...

HSBC has confirmed its bitcoin and cryptocurrency stance as a growing number of major banks are beginning to offer crypto services. CEO Noel Quinn says that HSBC views bitcoin as an asset class rather than a payments vehicle but the bank is not rushing into providing cryptocurrency investments for clients. HSBC Confirms Crypto Stance HSBC CEO Noel Quinn said that the bank “has no plans to launch a cryptocurrency trading desk” or offer cryptocurrencies as investments to customers, Reuters reported Monday. Quinn was quoted as saying: “Given the volatility we are not into bitcoin as an asset class, if our clients want to be there then of course they are, but we are not promoting it as an asset class within our wealth management business … For similar reasons, we’re not rushing into stablecoins.” The HSBC executive explained that he is skeptical of cryptocurrencies partly because it is difficult to assess the transparency of who owns them and the problems with their ready convertibili...

When billionaire Elon Musk announced that Tesla would no longer accept bitcoin as payment for its electric vehicles, the price of the crypto asset tanked. In justifying this decision, Musk cited bitcoin mining’s inefficient use of electricity as well as its impact on the environment. In fact, before Musk waded into this debate, many opponents of the crypto had repeatedly attacked bitcoin’s energy-consuming transaction confirmation process. The Bitcoin Mining Environment Argument As expected, bitcoin maximalists and crypto supporters have been pushing back against what they see as an unbalanced argument. To bitcoiners, the environmental impact claims or electricity costs argument completely ignores the negative externalities associated with the creation/production of alternative stores of value like gold and fiat . Already, a number of reports have not only countered the BTC ’s carbon footprint argument but have also exposed the environmental costs of running a conventional currency...