Bitcoin News and Finance: What You Need to Know

Ripio, a Latin American (Latam) exchange headquartered in Argentina, raised $50 million in its latest funding round, led by Digital Currency Group (DCG). The exchange, which has a stronghold in countries like Argentina and Brazil, will use these new funds to further expand to new countries in the area and consolidate its spot as one of the pioneering companies in the crypto exchange business. Ripio Gets $50 Million in Series B Funding Round Ripio, one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in Latam, has raised $50 million in its series B funding round, aiming to keep growing in the region. The funding round was led by Digital Currency Group (DCG), the famous New York-based cryptocurrency venture capital firm. The round also had the participation of bitcoin investor Tim Draper, Amplo (investors of Robinhood), Marcos Galperin (CEO of Mercado Libre), and Martin Migoya (CEO of Globant). These funds will help Ripio to keep growing its brand in Latam, after having acquired Bitcointrade

Amid regulatory scrutiny worldwide, global cryptocurrency exchange Binance has announced that it will cease offering futures, options, and leveraged tokens to Australian users in 90 days. Changes Coming to Binance Australia Cryptocurrency exchange Binance announced some changes to its offerings in Australia Tuesday. The exchange will cease offering futures, options, and leveraged tokens to existing Australian users. Binance explained: Effective from 2021-09-24 09:00 AM (UTC), existing Australian users will have 90 days to reduce and close their positions for these products. “Users will be able to top-up margin balances to prevent margin calls and liquidations, but they will not be able to increase or open new positions,” Binance added. “Users will no longer be able to manually reduce or close their positions after 2021-12-23 11:59 PM (UTC). Thereafter all remaining open positions will be closed.” Binance Australia has recently gone through some changes. On Aug. 30, the company

On September 19, 2021, the software developer and cofounder of Casa, Jameson Lopp, announced a new project called bitcoinpoliticians.org which sifts through Congressional financial disclosures and records them into a database. Lopp says the aim is to create “more transparency around bitcoin ownership” and so far he’s analyzed about 13% of Congressional financial disclosures. Jameson Lopp Launches Bitcoin Politician Project These days politicians owning bitcoin has become a rising trend during the last few years in contrast to the early days when bureaucrats criticized the concept regularly. There’s definitely a great number of politicians that still hate bitcoin and the crypto economy, but now lawmakers are starting to see the benefits of the technology and there’s a number of bureaucrats in a variety of countries who now own the leading crypto asset. Members of Congress and other U.S. federal leaders are required to disclose their finances to the public, as was the case with the r

PRESS RELEASE. INTERNET CITY, DUBAI – LBank Exchange, a global digital asset trading platform, is proud to list THN on September 22, 2021. For all users of LBank Exchange, the THN/ USDT and THN/ ETH trading pairs will be officially available for trading at 21:00 (UTC+8) on September 22, 2021. In recent months, NFTs have risen in popularity with artists and creators for their transformative role in ownership, commerce, and how creators connect directly with buyers, fans, and collectors. The Throne ecosystem is designed from the ground up to provide digital creators and new collectors an optimized experience. THN, the native token of Throne, will be listed on LBank Exchange a t 21:00 (UTC+8) on September 22, 2021. Introducing Throne Throne (THN) is an NFT ecosystem led by a collective of blockchain engineers and an accomplished team from the music and art world, brought together by the utilization of Ethereum. Founding shareholders include Gee Roberson the former manager of Ka

On September 21, the non-fungible token (NFT) fantasy football platform Sorare announced the company raised $680 million in a Series B funding round led by Softbank. The capital raise gives Sorare a new valuation of around $4.3 billion and the company plans to open a U.S.-based office. Sorare Reveals $680M Capital Raise Non-fungible token (NFT) assets have seen phenomenal growth this year and the company Sorare aims to tether the billion-dollar NFT industry to the multi-billion-dollar fantasy sports market. The market size of fantasy sports in the U.S. alone topped $8.4 billion in 2019. On Tuesday, the NFT fantasy football platform Sorare revealed the company has raised $680 million in a Series B financing round led by Softbank. The latest Sorare capital raise saw participation from Atomico, Bessemer Venture Partners, D1 Capital, Eurazeo, IVP, and Liontree as well. The capital raise is a milestone as it is one of Europe’s largest Series B funding rounds and the funds have propel

Stock trading and investing app Robinhood has reportedly been testing new features, including a crypto wallet and cryptocurrency transfers. “The ability to deposit and withdraw cryptocurrencies is tricky to do with scale, and we want to make sure it’s done correctly and properly.” Robinhood to Add Crypto Wallet and Transfer Features Investing app Robinhood is “quietly” testing several new features, Bloomberg reported Monday, describing: Robinhood Markets Inc. is testing new crypto wallet and cryptocurrency transfer features for its app. Evidence of the new features has appeared in a beta version of Robinhood’s iPhone app, the publication conveyed, adding that the planned offerings were discovered by software developer Steve Moser. Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev previously said that adding a crypto wallet is a priority for the company’s developers but did not indicate when the launch would be. He said on the company’s second-quarter earnings call: It’s something that our teams are w

On September 21, 2021, an Avalanche-based decentralized finance (defi) platform Vee Finance announced that it suffered from an incident that siphoned 8,804 ether and 213 bitcoin out of the system. The team has suspended the defi platform contracts and stressed that the stablecoins have not been “affected by the attack.” Defi Project Vee Finance Suffers a Loss of $35 Million From Hack The Avalanche (AVAX) blockchain has been a popular network in recent times and it has attracted a number of defi applications like Benqi.fi, Trader Joe, Lydia Finance, Shroom Finance, and Osiris. The Vee Finance platform is another defi platform that has gathered a number of users and coins which added to the platform’s total value locked (TVL). However, on September 21, the team explained that the project was “attacked” and updated the Vee Finance community via Twitter and an incident report . “Vee.Finance Incident Announcement,” the tweet details. “The Vee Finance team has suspended the platform con

The Nasdaq-listed cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase has dropped its plan to launch a lending program after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) threatened to sue the company. Coinbase Will Not Launch Lending Program Coinbase announced Friday that it has decided not to launch the Lend program. The exchange wrote: Our goal is to create great products for our customers and to advance our mission to increase economic freedom in the world. As we continue our work to seek regulatory clarity for the crypto industry as a whole, we’ve made the difficult decision not to launch the USDC APY program. “We have also discontinued the waitlist for this program as we turn our work to what comes next. We had hundreds of thousands of customers from across the country sign up and we want to thank you all for your interest. We will not stop looking for ways to bring innovative, trusted programs and products to our customers,” Coinbase added. Coinbase unveiled the Lend program in June wh

Reports of the detention of Dmitry Vasiliev, ex-head of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange Wex, have been confirmed by authorities in Poland. The former executive of the platform, allegedly involved in the theft of funds worth millions of dollars, faces possible extradition to Kazakhstan. Prosecutor’s Office Confirms Vasiliev Is in Custody in Poland Dmitry Vasiliev, who once managed the largest Russian crypto exchange, was apprehended at the Warsaw airport in early August but the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza broke the news last week, quoting undisclosed sources. A representative of the regional Prosecutor’s Office in the capital city has now confirmed the arrest to Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency. The 34-year-old Russian citizen headed the now-defunct Wex, a successor of the infamous BTC-e exchange, before it was sold to a Ukrainian businessman-turned separatist fighter, Dmitry Havchenko, in late 2018. The digital asset trading platform halted withdrawals earlier that

Crypto users access their wallets and exchanges day in and day out and making sure it remains secure is one of their top concerns. While most of these apps have great security features like multi-factor authentication and biometrics, what happens to your data while it travels through the network is still an area of concern. This is where a secure VPN with good encryption from a reliable service like PureVPN comes in. PureVPN Protects Crypto Users Online PureVPN has been in the VPN industry for more than 15 years and has the trust of more than 3 million users. With PureVPN enabled, all your network traffic gets encrypted before leaving your device using a secure 256-bit encryption making it virtually impossible for anyone to snoop into your data and hack your account. This can give you peace of mind to access your exchanges securely no matter whether you are at an airport, in a mall or any other public wifi! To enhance your security even more, PureVPN apps come with two more very i

The Zimbabwean currency’s collapse in 2008 and record hyperinflation are widely seen as textbook examples of what can go wrong with a centralized currency. For instance, some cryptocurrency enthusiasts — as well as opponents of the fiat currency system in general — have routinely pointed to the Zimdollar’s collapse when arguing for an alternative monetary system. In other instances, entrepreneurs like those behind Zimbocash , a decentralized currency and payments platform for all Zimbabweans, have already launched such an alternative. They hope that this alternative to a central bank-issued fiat currency will demonstrate to all that sound money which enables people to save is still possible. To learn more about this Zimbocash system, Bitcoin.com News reached out to Laswet Savadye, Head of Subscriber Network. Below are Savadye’s responses to questions sent to him via Whatsapp. Bitcoin.com News (BCN): Can you start by telling us what brought about this idea? Laswet Savadye (LS): We

According to findings from the Continental Migration Report 2021, remittances to African countries are projected to decrease from the $44 billion recorded in 2020 to $41 billion. The Covid Effect As expected, the Covid-19 pandemic is identified as one of the main causes of the decline. However, despite this projected 5.4 per cent drop, a report by Africa News explains that remittances are now showing “greater resilience and reliability as a source of capital in Africa than foreign direct investment flows.” Consequently, the Continental Migration Report 2021, which was produced by the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) in partnership with the African Union Commission (AUC), “recommends that governments across the world should take effective action to facilitate and boost remittances in view of supporting the fight against COVID-19.” In addition to the pandemic, remittances to Africa continue to be hampered by high sending costs, the report noted. For instance, when sending $200

Pnetwork, a multi-chain bridging protocol, announced it was hacked yesterday, losing 277 pbtc (its bridged version of bitcoin) on Binance Smart Chain. The protocol acknowledged that an attacker managed to exploit a bug in its codebase to take control of the stolen bitcoin. The bridging contracts are currently working as usual but with extra security measures enabled. Pnetwork Protocol Hacked: 277 Bitcoin Lost Pnetwork, a decentralized finance bridging protocol, informed users it was the victim of a hack, losing 277 bitcoin in the attack. Pnetwork eases mobility of assets like bitcoin and ether among several chains. This contributes to extending the liquidity of each decentralized finance environment on different chains. Pnetwork reported that a bug in its codebase was used to perpetrate this attack. The bug allowed the attacker to siphon 277 bitcoin that was being bridged to the Binance Smart Chain network. No other bridges or networks were affected in the process. The protocol’s

The Bank of Venezuela, one of the biggest state banks in the country, is now experiencing an outage that has left its customers without services for five days. The bank published a PR statement stating this was the result of a “terrorist attack” on the national financial system, being perpetrated in the form of a massive hack. More than 16 million customers are still without banking services at the time of writing. Bank of Venezuela Hacked In “Terrorist Attack” The Bank of Venezuela, one of the biggest financial institutions in the country, servicing more than 16 million customers, is facing an outage that has left its online platform without service for five days. Bank customers starting complaining about the outage for these services on September 15, when some of them took their concerns to social media. At that time, a worker of the bank told local media that the outage was the product of several adaptations that were being made to the online platform of the bank to support th

As a number of Federal Reserve presidents have been criticized for their 2020 stock moves, Fed chairman Jerome Powell has been cast into the limelight for owning $1.5 million municipal bonds like the ones the U.S. central bank purchased in 2020 during the pandemic. All Eyes Are On Jerome Powell’s Municipal Bond Portfolio Three days ago, the topic of senior Federal Reserve members making multi-million-dollar stock deals in 2020 caused senator Elizabeth Warren to write a letter criticizing the bank member’s ethics, and chairman Jerome Powell said he would initiate an ethics inquiry. However, not too long after the media grilled U.S. central bankers for their behavior, reports disclosed that the Federal Reserve’s chairman owned a few types of municipal bonds, similar to the ones the Fed bailed out during the coronavirus crisis. It’s also not the first time Jerome Powell’s portfolio has come under inquisition from the public. Wallstreetonparade.com journalists Pam Martens and Russ Ma

ERTHA metaverse is Heroes of Might and Magic game-type inspired economic and social life built on a binance smart chain to explore and investigate the world by choosing specializations and increasing the strength of your NFT and country. Ertha’s globe consists of 350,000 HEX land plots, represented as NFTs. By owning a HEX land plot, you will get a cash-back for every transaction as a landowner. The game is designed to replicate a real-life environment, simulating the actions that people have to perform in order to earn a living.   ERTHA is created to inspire economic and social growth, to investigate the new world, level up and engage in the NFT market. ERTHA’s Alfa took 17,000+ Code commits and 30,000 hours of writing program code to develop. Map of ERTHA is divided by NFT hexagons – players are free to choose where to live, study or work & earn tokens. ERTHA land HEX is an extremely valuable NFT – dozens of companies & players paying taxes. Territorial disputes &

The deadline for cryptocurrency exchanges and wallet operators to comply with the new regulatory requirements to stay open in South Korea is this week. So far, only one crypto exchange has been licensed to continue operations. About 60 crypto exchanges are expected to either shut down or reduce services. 60 Crypto Exchanges Expected to Shut Down or Reduce Services Under the “Act on the Reporting and Use of Specific Financial Transaction Information (Special Act),” crypto exchanges must be Information Security Management System (ISMS)-certified and register with the South Korean Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) by Sept. 24. Crypto exchanges that fail to do either must cease operations on that date. According to local media, 34 exchanges have not received ISMS certification, so they are expected to shut down entirely on Sept. 24. A total of 29 crypto exchanges have been ISMS-certified but only one has successfully registered with the FIU, a unit of the Financial Services Commission

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has clarified the government’s stance on cryptocurrencies, stating that the country is at war with crypto. He emphasized that Turkey will continue with its own currency. A War and a Struggle Against Cryptocurrency Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan answered some questions from young people in the “Meeting with Youth” program held with university students from 81 provinces. The event took place in Mersin, a port city in southern Turkey and an important hub of the country’s economy. A young man in the audience asked President Erdoğan: “My question is about cryptocurrency. Recently, the central bank established a digital Turkish lira platform . With this decision, is Turkey planning to open up to cryptocurrencies? … We are curious about your ideas on this matter.” Noting that it is not their intention to open up to cryptocurrencies, Erdoğan clarified: On the contrary, we have a separate war, a separate struggle against them. He clarified

A South Korean province has seized cryptocurrencies worth over $5 million from 1,661 investors who were more than $12 million in arrears on their fines in total. The seizure followed an investigation of nearly 30,000 companies and individuals as well as their cryptocurrency holdings at four exchanges. Korean Province Confiscates Cryptocurrencies for Unpaid Fines The South Korean province of Gyeonggi, the most populous province in the country, announced last week that it had seized 6.1 billion won ($5.14 million) in cryptocurrencies from 1,661 people who were 14.4 billion won in arrears on their fines in total. The authorities explained that from May to August last year, they conducted an investigation of 29,656 companies and individuals who were delinquent on their payments of 1 million won or more under the category of “nontaxable income.” This includes examining their cryptocurrency holdings at four exchanges. Nontaxable income in South Korea refers to income imposed and collect

On September 18, a Redditor posted to the r/bitcoin forum and explained how he discovered a way to “attack [the] lightning Network’s custodial services.” The Reddit account dubbed “Reckless Satoshi” wanted to figure out if a “discrepancy between real routing fees and service’s transaction fee can be exploited for a profit.” The researcher disclosed that he wanted to see how large the damage could be and said “it is bad.” 6 Lightning Network Custodial Services Attacked, Researcher Discloses Findings to Offenders Prior to Public Disclosure A Redditor called Reckless Satoshi published a disclosure post on r/bitcoin this past Saturday and disclosed how he had found a vulnerability with routing fees and some of the Lightning Network’s custodial services. The research attack was done in good faith and after it was complete he disclosed the bugs to the offending services before publishing his findings. Reckless Satoshi used the Lightning Network (LN) attack on six different services incl

The Bitcoin.com Team is excited to announce the integration of ERC-20 tokens into the Bitcoin.com Wallet . That means anyone can now buy, sell, receive, store, trade, and send ERC-20 tokens with the convenience and security of the industry’s most user-friendly non-custodial wallet . ERC-20 Tokens? ERC-20 is the standard protocol for creating tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. There are over 450,000 sets of ERC-20 tokens as of 2021 and they collectively represent hundreds of billions of dollars in value. All ERC-20 tokens “live” on Ethereum, meaning they benefit from the security of the second-largest blockchain by marketcap and are composable with smart contracts . Curated ERC-20 Support Any and all Ethereum-compatible tokens sent to your Bitcoin.com Wallet’s Ethereum addresses are safe and secure. However, since there are hundreds of thousands of ERC-20 tokens out there, it’s not practical to display them all in the Wallet. That’s why we’re starting off by ‘tracking’ a

Global investors have their eyes peeled on the Evergrande Group or the Evergrande Real Estate Group, China’s second-largest property developer by sales. Evergrande Group shares nosedived on Monday dropping to 11-year lows and many analysts and economists are concerned about a possible credit contagion. Credit problems with China’s real estate industry have affected global markets a great deal as European and U.S. stocks have slid during Asia’s overnight. Evergrande Group’s Counterparty Risk and Liquidity Shocks Could Spark a Credit Contagion on a Global Level Many people woke to the news of China’s Evergrande Group losing a significant amount of its market capitalization as the company’s shares dive-bombed to an 11-year low. While Evergrande losses can’t take down the economy alone, but it could cause a domino effect like the collapse of Lehman Brothers did during the 2007-2010 financial crisis. The domino effect is called a “credit contagion” and signs of this occurring are alrea